The Khajiit’s ears pricked, looking up from where he was busy cleaning fish by the lakeside, the insides left in the shallows to hopefully attract more. He gave his knife a swish in the water to clean the blood off, tail flicking as he snapped the neck of his current fish.
“If you’ve got a knife and don’t mind a warm meal in a few, sure.”
He could smell them.
It was a scent he hadn’t forgotten, though at the time his grasp on his newfound senses at the time had been confusing, overwhelming. It nearly drove him mad the first time he’d been around so many noises and smells, and cities…cities had been overwhelming initially. But out here, in the cold and crisp air, upwind from the pack he’d run into…he could smell them perfectly well.
The scent wasn’t quite the same, though. The scent of blood from the altar outside, a recent victim’s body left to scavengers, too cold this time of year for rot distracted him, made it hard to tell what was different about the scents. The cave itself was nearly as cold, and smelled of decay and that musky scent in the shadier apothecaries he’d been in in various provinces. He drew up his scarf in an attempt to keep his nose clear for when he needed to scent, ears pricked, waiting, listening as he crept forward. He could hear the crunch of snow, claws clicking on stone and metal…ragged breathing… Fresher blood came from within, and after a small bend in the cave’s interior, he could see the source: an unlucky victim on a stone table, skin flayed open and flesh laid to bare. His mouth watered a little as he focused on his targets, one of which strode into view not long after he spotted the body. He pressed himself against the wall, eyes flicking from their face to their body and back.
They’d changed.
Faces that had once been smooth and natural were now warped, twisted until they were barely recognizable. Dark feathers sprouted from their shoulders, limbs, their backs now hunched over akin to a vulture’s. J’hasi swallowed as he saw the claws on both their hands and feet, distorted in a mixed mockery of the two forms they had taken last he had seen them: a raven, and an Imperial woman. Black eyes stared from within pale sockets, making the Khajiit shiver a little at their stare, even if it wasn’t focused on him.
He’d found them, two hundred and six years after they’d vanished, after they’d tricked him.
Ettiene, Isobel, and Fallaise…the Glenmoril Witches.
vvardenfellcat 