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It was Do'Qanar who called everyone to join him in a tail-chase over at a downtown smoke-lounge. We were all having such a good time by then, even me despite my initial saltiness over my failed covert operation. I readily agreed, reckoning that if I couldn't be the architect I could at least enjoy my passage down a road to hell paved with my own incompetence.

Sorvild and the Baron both showed their wisdom by choosing instead to retire for the evening, but soon I was packed into the bone wagon with Prince Findulain, Lady Elindel, Do'Qanar and a half dozen rowdy Bosmer courtiers. We rumbled over the parade grounds and down the torchlit streets of Dune with another wagon and an army of the Khajiit revelers trailing us on foot, along with Shebah and several other Senche guards patrolling alongside.

My first sign that things were about to get out of hand came just as we rolled off the parade ground; the prince uncapped a horn on his belt, revealing a wriggling mass of black grubs within. Do'Qanar and I met eyes before both asking what devilry the mer had stowed in his crawl, which he answered by smiling putting a palmful of insects thumb-first into his pipe until we heard several soft pops.

"Midnight Weevil larvae," he confided while packing his pipe next with what appeared to be dry grass. "Worth a king's ransom."

The pipe was lit on a swinging beeswax lantern before making its way around those assembled. I, ever the academic, elected to experiment with this heretofore unknown foreign good, but good it was not, and it left me I hacking and coughing against what tasted like burnt suet scraped off a dirty oven’s guts — and stuck uncomfortably like plaster on my windpipe. Do'Qanar found this hilarious until his turn came around and left him wide eyed and cursing.

"So bitter — huyuuch!"

Moreover, it was powerful stuff and set my head to spinning. I was shocked to see Lady Elindel indulge as well, giggling when she noticed me watching before she blew up a cloud of burnt critter.

The lounge was nearly deserted when we arrived besides a few of their regulars puffing moonsugar in the corners. Within minutes pandemonium took hold as the rest of Mane’s blessed court arrived behind us, roaring and ready for a good time. If you've never loosened the ol' wizard robes with a crowd of beastfolk I can only promise you that it's truly a wilder time. The tribals brought their own music, a drum competition of some sort on the lower level whose thrumming ran up the wooden walls as on the upper deck we took to dancing in circles as they do in Anequina.

Somehow I ended up in possession of a skull-shaped bottle of Juju'Rash (a local spirit from some desert weed or another) which I drank straight from the nose-cork hole. A gaggle of low-caste nobles cheered me on in drinking the brain cavity dry after I'd topped off a few of their cups with it.

I must confess that my recollection of the rest of the evening may be less than perfect. More drink. A sloppy toast screamed over shouting voices by the bishop of Rimmen — it seemed like he would never shut up. Sickly sweet smoke steaming from my lips, a veil between me and the crowd from a corner table where I hid to collect myself. Do'Qanar gripping me and Prince Findulain by our shoulders and swearing one way or another that we would soon be blood brothers. I escaped him, only to later have my thighs clenched around writhing muscles as my spine was nearly wrent in twain as I rode Shebah bareback across the central promenade; I fear it may not have been consensual as she bucked me so ferociously that I left Nirn for a brief moment only to return to her embrace atop a table and sending cups and a sparking pipe clattering across the floor.

And I could not stop laughing.

Dusting myself off, my vision was a mess of dancing stars as I walked with legs skewing this way and that atop a spinning world so that they could barely keep up with one another as if my mind was haunted by some misplaced instinct, an expectation for an extra set of grubby caterpillar legs to somehow help carry my weight. My vision was an astral kaleidoscope so I staggered to the bar, grasping it to steady myself before gesturing to the gold-chained panther-man tending bar for a flagon of ale to soothe me.

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In that moment of quiet I suddenly felt the weight of the Miser’s Mirror against my chest again.

A crushing weight. And with it all the anxiety and fear and loathing of a thousand eyes upon me, of the thousands of lives I might have been damning for siding with this person or that person — it was all so confusing. I needed air.

Pushing my way outside I brushed into a man, with a shaved head (his back to me) — I knew him, curse me if I knew who he was, but I knew him. Marius I realized, but not Marius. He turned and I thought I saw my brother, my real brother — smooth skinned and pale beyond life’s touch, and my deviator, and more. My thundering heart beat against the mirror on my chest and I ran.

I realized it was the priestess I had brushed into, or worse yet some strange apparition of the mirror itself.

Gagging back vomit, I sprinted like a lunatic down the streets of Dune, only half sure of which way I was headed. No Shebah.

Everywhere were eyes.

***

I don’t know how, but somehow I did make my way back to my room — intoxicated, scared, angry. I peeled off my doublet and washed myself with a cool basin of water. The mirror, still shrouded, was thrown onto the bed. I wondered if I should bury it.

I stood, slapping myself before the washroom, eying its bronze angular rim, I hated it. I hated all mirrors. I hated seeing my skin, my face, my fear; I disgusted myself and I wondered how everyone could stand to look upon me, or worse to know me and all of my hideous selfish eccentricities. It was as though the cursed mirror on the bed had spread a creeping infection across the whole world, carried by the swollen tick that was my mind.

“You’ve ruined everything.” I muttered, wiping sand from the dark circles of my eyes.

A jolt shot up my spine as the door opened and Percy came in. It was uncommonly late for him to visit me, and I went to meet him in my bedroom, face still dewed.

He filled the doorway, bent with age and a candle held aloft.

“What are you doing here, Percy?”

He simply stood there, staring at me. An uneasy prickling on my skin.

“Percy?”

His eyes searched me, and I grew increasingly uncomfortable. He should not have been there, and my heart began to pound. I realized he very well may have been the priestess, and the mirror — my weapon against her — stood between us. Was it her though? And was she here to kill me or congratulate me on the amnesty offer? I couldn’t afford to let her decide.

I lunged for the bed, grabbing the shrouded mirror. He — she — whatever it was moved closer but did stopped after I pulled it back, holding the mirror to my chest again with the shroud between my fingers, ready to draw them back.

“Why are you here?” I asked.

The creature cocked its head. As I wondered whether my brother was correct, and it was the creature of the wastes, it’s mouth flashed into the lipless scowl before reverting to a Khajiit’s smile. Finally it spoke, and I still heard Percy’s voice as if over a great distance. “What does the Berree to see, we wonder.”

I could hear my heartbeat, and tightened my grip on the mirror. But instead of striking out I took a breath and suddenly Percy was gone. He was never there in fact, and never had been real. Percy had just been a character of my own mind, and beneath it, and beneath the idea of him and the priestess there had been someone else. A real person.

Instead now she stood there. And who she was, well it was more than a priestess. A shockingly beautiful Khajiit woman who sent my vulgar and higher minds into a puzzling game of footsie at the sight of her. A graceful neck and elongated hourglass figure graced with gray on silver fur, and gold rings that made their home on each triangular ear in mirror of her saucer-wide golden irises.

I saw then that she was not a shape changer at all, but rather it was that she (like me) merely wore the assumptions of her watchers. A bit more literally in her case it seemed, by some magickal glamour. She had merely learned some magickal craft to further the mental assumptions of others into a passive illusion. And seeing her now I could see through her: how me she found it exhausting to maintain the illusion and yet it’s end unimaginable.

And yet there we stood together, I seeing her, and knowing by her cool eyes that she saw me, the real me, as she had hidden is my midst in my most private moments as my supposed servant. Clever as she was, she about knew all of my tricks and lies and ugliness, but there was only kindness in the way she looked at me. Maybe she just had not realized how dangerous the mirror was, or maybe she trusted me not to use it.

The Miser’s Mirror fell to the floor and we stared into each others' eyes for a long, silent moment.

Finally, I swallowed. "I think I love you.”