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‘’I’m telling you. They’re here to steal the godly powers in this continent. That’s why they’re, uh,’’ Sadri looked at Cilo, who had just finished his cup of flin – Sadri had filled his cup full just a few seconds ago. ‘’You sure you can get some flin from the Warehouses?’’ The boy was eager and friendly, but he struck Sadri as quite inexperienced. Maybe that was because Cilo was full of energy and reactive, whereas Sadri was more akin to a dead fish when it came to responding to people. He looked at Cilo with equal degrees of sympathy, pity and envy as Cilo looked at Sadri with glowing eyes and moved his mouth as he thought, nearly glowing with energy. Then again, he couldn’t blame himself for being tired – you spend the last forty-something years in a midlife crisis gone wrong, and you get kind of jaded.

Maybe that was why Sadri kept fighting. Just recently, when he was fighting the Kamal juggernauts with Cilo’s help, he wasn’t having any of these problems. He was as good as anyone else – maybe better, given how he had managed to kill one of the armored demons and survived. The adrenaline rush was the same, no matter how old you were. Was that why he was fighting? In the past, he had turned down many opportunities to have enough money to live the rest of his life comfortably. He had wasted or lost such opportunities many more times. More than often, he had been aware of the consequences, yet he had done it anyway. Thinking too deeply on it made Sadri feel troubled – so, like nearly every troubled person, he would pour himself another cup of flin and have its fiery taste burn away at his stomach and momentarily cleanse him of such thoughts.

‘’I’m sure, I mean, I did it before, and I’m pretty sure they won’t mind if we request some now, it’s only normal people would like to drink while they’re getting attacked by metal snow demons from unknown lands, am I right?’’

Sadri nodded briefly. Cilo and Sadri had managed to safely get away from the docks following the retreat of the Snow Demons – possibly moments before the onslaught of ice shards. Cilo himself had nearly been roughed up by Argonians during an argument. He had taken the opportunity to run away from the Argonians once their elder had started ranting about the Hist. Sadri, on the other hand, had avoided the Argonians completely – you never know when you come across a guy that you had leashed and dragged all the way to Morrowind and sold for about a hundred and fifty septims. It doesn’t make for a nice reunion.

‘’Yeah, sure, but still, people can be oddly consistent about that stuff. I met a guy once, in a brothel – the damn place was burning down but he barred the door and insisted that we give him his tip for hooking us up with the ladies.’’ 

‘’What’d you do?’’

‘’There was this guy, Joachim was his name, I think, he gave him the tip of his dagger.’’

‘’Damn, that sounds rough.’’

‘’Nah, Joachim took good care of his dagger, it had smooth edges.’’

Cilo looked at Sadri for a moment, trying to make sense of what he said, but then decided to forget it. Elves made no damn sense at all. He had met an Elf once in High Rock, back when he was still with the Legion. Apparently he had eaten his brother’s corpse back in his native province, Valenwood. With the rest of his family, too – apparently they made stew out of the damn boy. No, Elves made no damn sense at all. I mean, this guy, he didn’t have a hand, but he could use his hand, like if it were invisible. 

Not a lot of things made sense for Cilo. He was one of those many people destined for mediocrity from their birth. From his birth in Bruma, to his rather uneventful love life, and his accidental hook up with the Imperial Legion, he was just regular in all the ways that count. He was man, true and true, and perhaps it was this quality of his that made it impossible for him to understand the ways of Mer. See, Mer were unique in their mediocrity – there were no saltrice farms in Bruma, but there were plenty of them in Vvardenfell. They used hollowed out creatures for transport. Even in their ordinary life, they were mythical. But men weren’t. Where they went, the legends died off. They say when Talos came to Cyrodiil with the Red Legions, he had to make the endless, wild jungle into a temperate grassland to accommodate the soldiers with him. And that was how an entire Imperial Province had lost its charm. 

‘’So, what do you think of that bunch who tried to save that Vampire?’’ 

‘’I actually know some of those people. Nice bunch, I guess, can’t be all bad, but they strike me as kind of stupid.’’

‘’Now why would you say that, Dunmer?’’

‘’You live for as long as I do, you learn not to poke your nose in other people’s business.’’

Sadri took a sip of flin and continued as he made a sour expression for a moment, likely because of the drink.

‘’Well, I can’t say I adhere to that principle all the time. But you should try your best anyway. It keeps you alive.’’

‘’Yeah, I see what you mean.’’

‘’Sure you do.’’

That woman, Sadri had thought of her attractive – but after watching her rant on like that to the Dawnguard, blabbering about with crossbows pointed at her, she managed to lose all her charm in one fell swoop. Not that she cared, or knew, but still, Sadri preferred the company of people who weren’t overly melodramatic. She had ranted away with others after the whole thing had died down, on her way to be angry at something else. Yeah, he simply couldn’t tolerate the presence of romantic people.

Then he looked at Cilo ‘I have to make a thousand facial gestures and body expressions for a single word and hang out with people I actually don’t like but stay around because of reasons I don’t even know because I’m so young, for Talos’ sake just fuck my face in’ Livius and cursed the forces of irony. 

Was he just sour from all his years wasted doing nothing, or were people just really that stupid? Sadri didn’t really know, but he preferred to go with the latter. He was proven right most of the time anyway, but nonetheless, that did not invalidate the first option. Maybe he had just grown calloused. He did not even know why he tolerated the kid’s presence – more importantly, he did not know why the kid tolerated his presence. It was like a bad blind date, the type that you can’t just cut off because friends hooked you up. Only they were hooked together by damned Snow Demons from Outer Aetherius, and Sadri had no obligation against them. He was strong enough to fight Snow Demons, but too weak to just call a kid off his back.

And it seemed things wouldn’t change in Candlehearth Hall, at least, not yet.
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