There's the man, Sinding, the werewolf! The murderer!

Uthgerd guessed he did have all those titles...

She sprinted through the opening of Falkreath just as a group of men went by her with swords drawn. They weren't looking for her at the moment; so they were looking for Desraim at the jail?

She watched them turn a corner, but she couldn't see the place they determined to go. 

She hoped Desraim would fend for herself...by herself. 

She fled the city and breathed hard, every step of the way. Closing in on Helgen, then Riverwood, where she didn't collapse, surprisingly. Because she could've taken a wagon but didn't find any on the way. That's the benefit of living near a town in the first place, and if Falkreath hadn't been having a ruckus, then maybe she would've jusr hopped on their wagon. But the trouble she's she would expose herself to if she showed her face to any living soul...she basicaly, as an accessory, let go a traitor. Of life.

The faces of people she hadn't viewed in a while, since she never really traveled, and never arrived back here after leaving Desraim for the first time (besides travel through it to go elsewhere), made the hairs on Uthgerd's nape stand. It was almost like a foreign place to her. She grabbed a seat at the Riverwood Trader goods store since she didn't want to hear the crap that was probably being spoken presently about Desraim in the Sleeping Giant Inn, here. She didn't want to hear a lick, good or bad, about Desraim. Quieting her mind, besides the tiredness that she felt, almost made Uthgerd snooze. And so maybe the owner would just be kicking her out, today...

*   *  * *** * *  *

I took to running after Uthgerd had left and I was completely sure of it. I wanted to test if she would leave. I was able to leave through the unguarded entrance, and as I saw Uthgerd running ahead, I felt it was the right thing to do, for her to leave me. Who knew what they were looking for now, the man or the culprits of his escape? I just new that men were running, women were yelling, and kids were nowhere in sight. I didn't hear the werewolf of a guy roar, or know where he was at, either, so that was proof we all could be fair game for capture and whatever, for all I knew.

So I decided to take it slow: where would I see a deer? I closed my eyes and lit my hands with the color of gold...a learned power from a spell book which blessed me with the gift of knowing where I'm to go for a certain something at a certain time. 'Clairvoyance' was the spell. Figured it was useful since I don't usually have to find specific, though very large deer, in the woods, if that's where this thing was.

I could usually do missions on my own, actually, with the help people give me or my geographical knowledge, since I travel and have a map I'm always updating wherever I go or see someplace new - ah, it was in a plains, not a wood, I figured out as I wandered to one, thanks to this spell. Well, who would've thought -

The roar above me made me say weird words to myself that weren't swear words simply because I share that same nick with Uthgerd: I don't like to say vulgar language. It was a happy day to know that if I didn't kill this deer, it wouldn't matter if I got killed by a dragon or not, because I wouldn't have done anyone justice, and so I was no longer important to the situation at hand, which to me, was very important. 

My arrow whizzed past several times as I ignored the roar of the reptillian besst above - this deer just didn't want it. I closed one eye and notched an arrow, again, close near my face, and it flew again - this time, finally, piercing the deer's skull between the antlers, since I used them as a marker. Seems like it worked.

I hurried to the deer which took way less time than it did finding the deer and catching up to it enough to shoot. Some deep musky voice spoke to me: "What do you want?"

"I - uh - want the curse removed from this ring, mighty Hircine."

"I don't do lip service, but here. You've got my word if you kill Sinding, first."'

I gasp, then bit my lip in remorse. "That's the guy that gave me this ring, right? Okay. You've got it."

"I'll have his skin." The deer spirit spoke to me, I knew was Hircine's form. "You'll skin him for me. Every last bit of it."

"Want a fur coat, ma'am? I'm sure we could arrange that in a more...civilized fashion."

"Backing out?" 

"Of course not, Hircine," I said as the sky, like I did, seemed to cheered up from the loss of the dragon, now being brighter than usual without the dragon-shadow. "And thanks for keeping my cover." The spirit was blue and deer-shaped so I'm sure the dragon probably just ignored me for thinking I was Hircine or a harmless deer fof standing so close to it. But that was doubtful since the dragon had air-scope. Whatever the reason (Maybe it really didn't want dinner or competition from my Dovah [dragon] side, since my absorption of dragon souls and the information of the Greybeards suggests that I have such a, nature. Not of which that has been awakened in any sort, yet, of course, besides the fact that I can also easily, without training but just with knowing any of the beasts' language, shout like one of the dragons harmlessly in front of human beings), it was long gone and uninterested. But shucks, honestly some dragons just simply wanted to do a more interesting mission like burning cites.  

My fingers shivered in their calloused skins as I walked away from the albeit giant, because it was about nine feet tall, that deer carcass. I'd call it an antelope or a stag more likely than a deer, but tomatoes are tomatoes. 

The place that she wanted me to go to, Hircine said right before I just left her spirit's there in the plains, was Bloated Man's Grotto. I thought about abandoning the mission after I heard her say the name...but now that I'm walking to it, it makes no difference to me. Well one can say that, before one sees a dying Khajiit.

He was on his side, on a mat - so obviously, for the traditions of Khajiit to sometimes sit cross-legged on a mat instead of on his or her side - caught off-guard. The mauling he wore looked like a werewolf's signature. So Sinding must've been close. He wasn't the only dead person, however, this Khajiit: that's the thing. They were all dead.

The red light of the sky above me made me remember the redness I saw shortly before Lydia's death. That was definitely not a bad omen. 

Trees, ones I'd never seen, surrounded the venue and a trail of blood ran straight through it, staining the foliage and highlighting the hues of sky, which also sported a pink and orange. Then a sound of another person dying, well, being mauled, ensued. I swept the drapes of vines off a wall, forming a canopy, from over my face to see prospects of the situation more clearly, which I couldn't find.  Not until a person called my name. How did that person know it - "

"May I ask, what are you doing here?"

"Hircine wants you to die." I noticed it was Sinding by the direction of his fur: a wild tuft of hair at the head, and a very swirled direction of hair from there to his lower torso. He was also a first, a first glimpse of a werewolf for me,  in this case. And I just don't forget the visual aspects of  a first.

"I can't stop you if that's what you want to do," the werewolf spoke naturally like a human, besides the fact that that was one of the more freakier and unreal aspects of him than anything else. "Hircine is too powerful. But if you spare me, I can be a powerful ally to you. And I would promise to never return to civilized life. I know now that I can't live among people."  

I bit my lip not in thought but in apology, like I did when Hircine first spoke to me. "No."

"....So be it."

This point in time I felt the worst betrayal. I actually...helped a person by killing him, in my mind. Of course I'd carry out the duty, but it all seemed wrong.  Why would I kill the very person I wanted to turn back to normal? Cleansing his ring would help him and me. But obviously, it'd only help me since Hircine must've been so offended by him not wanting the powers of a werewolf to want this end for him, and this be the only way to cure the ring.

I could simply leave and not follow her orders. However, he wanted the ring cured. I'm sure he ever wanted it to fall into another person's hands, even if I could dump it into the largest lake I could find or bury it to the deepest I'm able. He wants this ring to be destroyed, and the problem to be resolves: who knows if he could trust me with it? It's best to follow his orders and Hicrine's, and that would be to kill him. 

He ran through the foliage, and the beasty tear of flesh and screams was heard. Still killing people...why did he?

I ran, trying to find him. I finally did. "Sinding, why do you kill these people? I thought you wanted to stop?"

"I thought you wanted to save me? But I'd rather die this way," he said, scratching his wolf head with long ebony nails that unmatched his cinnamon fur.  

I took in their bloody, albeit scattered, carcass flesh. "But why?"

He sighed, inching ever so closer to me as he did. "They came to join the Hunt, which is why I was surprised you're here....you don't seem like the type."

"Hunt what?"

"Each other...until I got here. Then they all thought me good bait and said it was in the name of Hircine...like you. But I should've known. I told you to go to her, and yet I didn't know it would end like this." He lunged at me, all that werewolf mass shifting in five seconds to hurdle me to the ground - and it did. The wind knocked out of me. He was on me. 

Gnashing at my face - I only had my mace to protect me, it pulled out in time. "Ahh - Ah!" I shoved him back, but his fangs closed in on me and the space I was creating. "Fus!" He skidded backwards and yet it wasn't big enough a Thu-um for him to fall. Maybe mass was the big contender in these situations. And maybe I really needed to learn the last word to my Th-um. 

He lunged at me again after recovering, and I'd recovered long enough to pull an arrow out, and when he lunged, I simply pulled an arrow out and stood my ground. I fell with him atop me, but the arrow was now plunged into his chest. He mauled me with his paws. I said, "Fus Ro!" when my Dovah energy finally recuperated from the first Thu'um. It send him sprawling to the ground. I stood above him then took a deep breath; in conclusion of the fight now, I straddled him with my thighs and took a handful of his fur into my hand. Lifting up his furry head, I pushed tightly my mace under his jugular vein. He cried out and I simply said, "That's what you get for looking at my girlfriend," and let his head fall. It made me feel better, even though that's not the reason I killed him at all. 

The downed wolf-creature lay lifeless. I felt a laugh bubble up from the thought of what if this did all happen over my girlfriend...and over the fact that I now thought of her as that, from what our relationship used to be, and it was astounding a change. And I laughed now that this was all done, and because I didn't want to cry. 

My need to cry over this moment conveniently gave out, and I went on and ripped the skin from his flesh with a knife (instead) I first found off one of the downed "hunters".

Hunt or be hunted, lesson of the day, I thought, as I was doing so for what seemed ours, that skin of his which I was peeling coming off pretty easily, maybe due to the natural offset of rigor mortis until a few extra hours. Albeitly it was long: I, there until morning, as the time of my arrival had been an hour beforehand. When I was done, I was greeted with the spirit that I hadn't recognized in the plains. 

I jumped from Sinding's body with an apology. "You've done well, hunter," the spirit voiced. "And found my favor. That skin will serve you well child," he said, and I peered hard even before he said it. Your skin? I thought. 

"Look more closely at it -" he fidgeted in its direction, him standing oddly asides it as if he didn't want to get contaminated by his own body. I now saw the glimmer of a wolf head on that skin: actually, a leather breastplate design - and a trim of fur running around it, and some  other exquisite details, nothwithstanding that it was now a form of breastplate, that I hadn't added. 

"S-Sinding," I said, familiar with the poor plighted spirit, now, "what is this?"

"My glories," he emphasized with 'touching' his chest, "shall protect you -"

"Hold up, hold up, how are you protecting me? Freaking, me that totally -"

"-look, it's not your fault. You went through all this trouble - all - just to do what I asked you. Of course you killed me but, you know, I was looking for a quick death, anyway. That cell was...anyway, my glories shall...protect you from all the world's grievances, even things like these if you can be smart enought to use that armor for good. It's my skin. Don't do anything I wouldn't do with it." I smiled a genuine smile as he winked at me, the spiritual, aura-ish essence of his way more attractive than his humanoid form.

"Sure, I wouldn't kill innocent little girks if I had the chance."

"There we go," Sinding smiled and smothered the ground beneath him with a few steps toward me. The ground indented with his steps, and the blades of grass danced in an odd direction away from his feet. He now placed a hand on my shoulder and my knees gave out one by one. He supported me with another hand that made me feel a bit as if he was sucking my guts out of my abdomen where he placed his hand, the surging energy of it uneasily overpowering. "I have one more thing to say to you," he said as he retracted his spiritual members from me.

"Yes?" I said, feeling a bit throw-upy but pushing it back for courtesy of my last few moments with this guy. 

"Good hunting." He then smiled and put another hand good on my shoulder then dissappeared. I shook my head because my head was so foggy. The spiritual encounter was way stronger than with Hircine. Hircine was sparing me her glory when I'd seen her. 

I walked out of the bloody cavern of the grotto.