Following in his footsteps, Sofia too was feeling strange, the words and mannerisms of the Jarl leaving her body shivering in a way that had nothing to do with the cooler temperatures.

  "What, in all the gods’ name… was that?"

  "Jarl Ravencrone and her lineage have a… connection." Finishing his escorting duties, Aslfur looked almost apologetic and just as disconcerted as Kaius and the two women were from his wife's words. The way he spoke also gave them all the distinct impression that this was an explanation that he had learned to say by rote. "Pools of magicka have always run deep in her family’s veins. She would tell you that the Divines reveal things to her, but there are some who are not so sure."

  "She knew that you were Dragonborn even before we arrived." Sofia turned and saw the way that Kaius seemed uneasy.

  “Half of Skyrim would know that the Thane slew the Wyrm of Whiterun by now.” Bareheaded, her coif pulled back and spectacle helm attached to her hip, Lydia’s braids were swinging freely as she spoke. “A Jarl also has access to advisors and messengers and agents beyond that of normal folk, so it shouldn’t be too much of a surprise.”

  Sofia wasn't so sure, and the more she stared at Kaius's expression, she understood there was much more meaning to the Jarl’s words than what Lydia realised. A dragon, wolf and songbird… Dragonblood, not Dragonborn… Sofia had heard enough things spoken in similar ways during her years in the College of Winterhold by the practitioners of magicka to not just dismiss them out of hand. But she also knew that it would be damned near impossible for anyone else to determine the truth and meaning behind such things. All prophecies and the arcane were maddingly unhelpful like that.

  “The ruins in question are in the eastern district of the city.” The Steward continued, speaking to Kaius to the exclusion of the two women. “Follow the main road until you reach the Thaumaturgist's Hut. It’s one of the larger alchemists in the city so you can’t miss it. Turn right and follow the street until you come across the burned down ruins. Return to me once you have uncovered anything, and I will see to it that you will be rewarded.”

  Muttering his thanks, while still obviously deep in thought and disconcerted, Kaius turned and strode out of the longhouse in such a manner that he almost broke out into a jog. Clearly wanting to either reach the site of the housefire or put some distance between himself and Morthal’s eccentric ruler, Sofia and Lydia could do little more than follow in his wake.

  Where Whiterun was expansive and rose high above the plains on its mountain, and the likes of Solitude was teeming with men and mer alike, Morthal was comparatively a hamlet. It was practically a collection of smaller villages and buildings clustered together like patches of mushrooms on the sodden soil of the marshes. In most places the buildings were concentrated around portions of solid ground, or built above the swamps and marshland on stilts and jetties. The house they were searching for however was surprisingly easy to find, located down a cramped street eerily devoid of noise or habitation. It was almost as though those who lived there had moved on, or warily refrained from making noise lest they drew unsavoury attentions from beyond Mundus’s veil.

  "Well, when they said it had burned down they meant it."

  Standing on the lower steps of the tiny house set between a handful of its kin, Kaius did little more than nod in agreement at Sofia's statement. Only the lower portions of the walls still remained standing from nothing more than their sturdy construction, and the fact that they were mostly made of stone. Barely anything was left, only charcoal, ashes, and heat scorched, blackened stones sitting out of the ground like gravestones in a sea of ash.

  At first glance it appeared somehow incredulous that this single house had been so thoroughly ravaged by the fires, while yet those around it were practically untouched. Similar fires in other cities had annihilated entire districts, but closer inspections revealed the blackened marks on the damp, moss covered sides of the closest buildings where flames had failed to gain purchase. Despite appearances, Morthal and its buildings were solidly built, constructed to withstand the nature of the environment they were built in, and were more than capable of handling things that would have devastated other cities.

  "It's not surprising that the guards didn't find much." Coals and the burnt remnants of furniture, support beams and the roof crunched underfoot as the three of them moved into the ruin. The door itself had fallen into the building as the flames had eaten through the wooden frame and released the hinges, but the heavy post leaning across the doorway on the outside left them feeling extremely uncomfortable as they ducked beneath it. Sometime shortly after the fire had started, the beam had collapsed and taken most of the roof with it, blocking the door, and trapping those inside to be consumed by the flames.

  "Just… what are we looking for?" Sofia asked, stepping over an unrecognisable collection of wood burnt into a pile of charcoal. It could have been part of the roof, a table or even an entire cupboard and its contents for all she knew.

  "Anything that looks suspicious."

  "A man’s home burns down with his kin inside and he immediately shacks up with the local floozy?” Sighing loudly, she made a point of staring at Kaius as he carefully picked his way through the ashes with a hunter's grace. “This whole situation is suspicious. I don’t blame the locals in thinking it was done on purpose."

  "Yeah... But there's a lot that the guard missed."

  "Oh? Like what?"

  "The roof was thatched and tiled, and both the inner and outer layers were coated in tar.” Carefully, with a gloved finger Kaius tapped on the outer wall, before wiping it down the stonework. He also looked between Sofia and Lydia standing ankle deep in the ruins before motioning to the other houses nearby. “Normal building standards for Skyrim all things considered. Excellent waterproofing even in these conditions."

  "No wonder the place burned down."

  "Most people would think that, but that's not the interesting part." Grimly, he looked at the powder on his gloves and rubbed his fingers together in thought. "The pitch on the roof was flash burned, and it takes direct effort to ignite pitch. That's why the Legion uses it in siege warfare so much. It’s really good for sustained fires, but it's not something that burns quickly. This place appears to have burned down to the ground in less than half an hour. The amount of tar and pitch in the walls especially should’ve burned for hours, but inside it was practically burnt away instantly."

  "So… You’re telling us that it wasn’t the sort of fire started by spilling bear fat?"

  The expression he gave her told her all that she needed to know, and was as dark as the gathering clouds that heralded the approaching night.

  “No. Not unless they really spread it out and lit it all on fire at once. Even then, the temperatures needed to evaporate tar and pitch as quickly as this fire appears to have done are… phenomenally high.”

  The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  The house itself was small in comparison to those of Whiterun and other cities of Skyrim, but it had been built for comfort. Three rooms, possibly bedrooms, led off a small hallway from the living and dining area, and in a far corner near where the stone fireplace still stood proudly, one of the only portions of the house that was still mostly intact. All in all, it was two dozen metres wide, half as deep and would have been a nice home for a small family before being lost to the flames.

  Moving about, head and eyes constantly shifting and studying the details, Kaius moved from one end of the building to the other while, Sofia and Lydia contented themselves watching. Neither of them seemed to be able to notice or see anything as interesting as what Kaius did, as he sifted through the ashes and moved some of the ruins aside in his travels.

  "Found anything interesting, my Thane?"

  "In a manner of speaking." Stomping through the ashes he moved directly over to the hearth and stood over it, looking down over the blackened fireplace and the crumbling chimney that had fallen in the heat. He stood there for a moment, looking around carefully before his hand and fingers almost twisted of their own accord, a ball of blue-white light sparking into existence in his palm. The afternoon sun was still high in the sky, but the approach of Spring was yet to lengthen the days. So the tiny ball of magelight lit up the deepening shadows before he attached the magicka to the crumbling stone chimney.

  "This was no ordinary fire."

  "How can you tell?" Despite her unease and the pressure the tiny ball of magelight was pushing onto her skull, Sofia moved over, trying to see whatever it was that Kaius had noticed in the stone floor.

  "It burned too quickly, and it was far too hot for a simple hearth fire." There was a clunk of his armoured knees as he knelt down at the fireplace before starting to scrape away the ashes and debris from the floor. The fire pit in its stone recess into the wall was surrounded by a collection of raised blocks, arranged to stop any wayward embers or coals rolling out. Soon, a somewhat cleared patch of stone floor was revealed under the ash and ruins, before he motioned for Sofia and Lydia to step away slightly, and whispering a single word.

  "Fus."

  Even whispered, and with Sofia and Lydia standing behind him, the force of Kaius’s Thu'um was enough to feel like a slap. It roiled through the ruined building, ripping away the dust and ash from the floor, and clearing it as it filled the air with the taste of charcoal.

  Ever since the… event proceeding the dragon’s defeat, and especially after his brief time meeting the Greybeards, Sofia had witnessed Kaius’s ability to speak the language of the dragons. Even to similar effect as the ‘shouts’ the dragon had used to murder a hundred or more soldiers and destroy a fort in minutes. She couldn’t explain the how’s or why’s of just how such a thing was possible, but there was no doubting that Kaius had unlocked something with the… absorption? Consumption? Of the great dovah he had slain. Their shared journey to the mountain’s peak had been arduous, and despite spending a relatively short time at the ancient monastery of High Hrothgar with the Greybeards; the hermit-mystics of legend, hadn't been a complete waste. At least, not for Kaius. Sofia had spent the entire week there bored out of her brain, surrounded by old men and young acolytes who had taken vows of silence, while Kaius somehow learned to speak the language of dragonkind.

  "Isn't that misusing your mystical, godly powers?" Coughing and spluttering, Sofia injected as much sarcasm and annoyance into her voice while trying vainly to wave the billowing clouds of soot away from her face. Close nearby, Lydia lost her battle against the floating ash and began explosively sneezing with almost as much power as Kaius's shout, covering her face with part of her coif in an attempt to not breathe in the dust and debris.

  "If, I'm the Dragonborn," He replied, with his own brand of bitter sarcasm. "Then how I use my powers is up to me. But, you tell me what you make of that..."

  Exposed by his clearing of the ash from his hands, and the use of the Thu'um, both women could see the strange patterning in the floor, no longer filled by ash, soot and the burned remains of the house. It was almost as though the stonework of the floor and hearth was etched with a series of curved lines roughly forming a circle, surrounded by a handful of roughly chiseled runes and unreadable letters. They were tiny, thin and barely a millimetre or two deep in most places, so fine that they were practically invisible.

  "What is that?" Lydia asked carefully, kneeling down and running her gloved hands over the thin, tiny grooves.

  "That? That is an activated fire rune."

  Looking over it carefully, Sofia couldn't help but agree. Her short time in the College of Winterhold hadn't been long enough for any serious studies, even if she had been inclined to do so. However, one of the seniormost mages; Tolfdir and his focus on safety meant that all students were taught identification of the various runes and their knowledge regularly tested. Too many students had been burnt, electrocuted, suffered frostbite to extremities, or simply left paralysed on the floor from the results of never ending practical jokes.

  Like all runes, this was a type of enchantment, the magicka cast into the stones and channeled by a spell, but when activated, the burst of energies had imprinted itself into the surface. Each ‘flavour’ of rune as Sofia put it, acted slightly differently, and left behind traces when they were activated. Poison runes would leave sludge-like substances where it had been cast, ice runes would freeze their pattern into whatever material they were cast upon, and in the case of fire runes; literally burn and melt tiny channels into solid rock.

  Attached to the front of the front of the hearth, the tiny ball of magelight dimmed and faded away, and without even looking Kaius conjured another into his palm. There was no escaping the sudden, stabbing pain between Sofia’s eyes this time, even despite her best efforts to move away, and he was too perceptive not to see the way she winced.

  "How long have you been having those headaches for?"

  "Headaches?” Sofia felt the surge of apprehension wash through her, that somehow managed to drown the pressure in her mind from the nearby magelight. “What headaches?"

  An eyebrow raised and he made a specific point of staring her in the eyes as he cast another magelight after replacing the vanished one on the wall. This time he held the gleaming, shimmering ball of blue-tinted energy in the palm of his hand like an apple, watching the way that she squinted and involuntarily shied away from it.

  "Oh... You mean, ‘those’ headaches."

  "That's something we're going to have to work on." The ball of light in his hand flickered and died with a single gesture, and he stood silently for a moment, his attention wandering from her, and back down to the rune in the floor. Silence had fallen between them, especially as Kaius fell deep in thought, while ignoring the way that Sofia was watching his every movement, and Lydia was frowning at his use of magicka.

  "The only people who really know what happened are Hroggar and his family." He stated flatly.

  "Well… Even if we ask him, he's not going to admit to anything.” Desperate to keep the topic away from her headaches and aversion to magicka, Sofia shrugged and took a couple of measured paces away from Kaius. “It’s also not like we can ask Hroggar’s wife and kid, that's for sure.”

  "A woman and child were murdered here.” Kaius was deep in thought, concentrating and his hands were conducting slow, mesmeric gestures that left the air tingling with untapped magicka. “The how has been answered; A firerune placed into the hearth until someone triggered it, engulfing the interior and igniting the pitch and tar to remove all traces of it. It’s a lot of effort to go to, just to murder someone if you are having an affair. Especially how divorces aren’t that hard to get in Skyrim. Something else is going on here, and I think I know a way to get some answers.”

  Closing his eyes and concentrating, Kaius blew out a massive breath that rolled onwards as he drew magicka into himself. A chill that had nothing to do with the approaching darkness crept up Sofia’s spine, as what little heat and warmth lay in the shadow strewn ruins was sucked out of the air itself, moments before a sudden, agonising punch of a migraine thundered into her skull.