A tap on her arm jolted her out of the depths of her thoughts, and back into the Bannered Mare, startling her for a moment before realising that the man by her side was attempting to gain her attention. Like most of the other patrons, he had been watching Kaius's fight with the thugs with considerable enjoyment, but unlike everyone else he was already as drunk as what Sofia typically was at the end of her nights in a tavern. That, and unlike all the others he had a keen, curious interest in her, while she had been staring off into the distance.

  "You look like a l-lady in desperate need of a drink."

  A glance to her still-mostly-full flagon and the mead within, slowly growing warmer with every passing minute left her chewing her lip in thought. The colour still reminded her all too much of the elves left fertilising a couple of acres of Whiterun Hold and as a woman who needed a bottle of mead to start the day, being off-put by alcohol was a new experience.

  “That would have to be the understatement of the Era I think.” She said in reply, looking the man in the face and seeing how he was somehow even shorter than she was, only just coming up to her forehead but for the moment he was of little interest. Fading through the crowds in the direction of the bar, Kaius was moving with a distinct purpose, receiving more than just a couple pats on the back or patrons raising their flagons in toast as he passed by. Knowing what she knew about him in the month past, she would have been more surprised if he didn’t end up offering to pay Hrulda for any damages that had occurred during his fight. Whatever the case was going to be, at least the mood of the tavern had been lifted. It was no longer filled with a foreboding and cautious feeling that weighed as much as her chainmail shirt, but instead contained a celebratory feeling that even the appearance of a handful of city guards did little to quash.

  “Well then. Perhaps I c-can be of some assistance.” Every word slurred out of his mouth as though his tongue was made of soaked wool. "I'm Sam."

  "Sam?" Curiously she looked between the way he swayed on his feet and glimpses of Kaius being the centre of attention of the newly arrived guards. The way they were gesturing and trying to make sense of what had happened meant that she was without his presence for a few minutes at least.

  "Y-yeh. Sam Guevenne." Half leaning, half swaying he looked over her, ignoring everything except for her mostly filled flagon that he seemed to try, and fail to focus on with one eye partially closed. "You don’t seem in the m-mood of a bit of revelry are -hic- you, miss…?”

  “Sofia.” She replied, shuffling towards the table and returning to her seat. "The mead tasted a bit off."

  "Yesh... I have noticed that the H-Honningbrew stuff has been tasting terrible lately." Either not caring or not noticing the lack of invitation, he swayed and staggered over to the table before nearly falling over as he sat down. "M-maybe something -hic- got added to their latest batch?"

  "Or it just normally tastes like piss."

  Laughing again, his inebriated smile was as large as the bottle in his hands as he lifted it to his lips before taking several shuddering gulps.

  “Oh don’t I know it. Terrible q-quality stuff.” Neither of his eyes appeared to be wanting to work with the other as he leaned forward, thumping the sizable bottle of alcohol onto its wooden surface and pointing a finger at her. "What about some fun? A friendly -hic- wine drinking contest."

  “What’s the prize?”

  “Besides more wine for a lovely -hic- lady?” Despite the time of the evening, Sofia was stone cold sober, a truly unusual situation and traces of opportunity were creeping into her mind as she studied Sam. To say that he was drunk would have been a vast understatement. He was also at the point of being unable to hold onto Nirn with how much the world was spinning around him. “How about this? Whoever wins gets to keep my staff?”

  For once, a potential drinking partner wasn’t speaking in sexual euphemisms and Sofia’s eyes studied the long, wooden staff attached to Sam’s back in its worn leather travelling case. Only the head of it, and a dozen or so centimetres of elegantly carved wood was visible outside the leather but it was more than enough for the temptation to creep in. Her years in the only magically aligned organisation in all of Skyrim allowed her to appraise the value of what most people would consider to be little more than a walking stick. It was enchanted, the head carved into the shape of a half-opened rose and easily worth two or three dozen gold septims from half a dozen buyers in Whiterun alone. In fact, with the right buyer she could probably swindle more coins than what Farengar was offering for the Dragonstone.

  A drinking contest? A barely conscious magicka user versus a habitual alcoholic? If Sofia wasn’t the sort of individual that had no issues walking down the street nude, it would have been a shameful competition to take part in. Then again, fair fights were something that Sofia believed occurred when one of those taking part was being an idiot.

  "Sure.” She replied “You don’t really stand a chance though."

  “We’ll see about t-that, my lovely.” The chuckle was as slurred as his speech was, and the grin was still just as large as it was before. “We shall see.”

  Somehow he leaned over, his hand groping only twice before managing to grasp Sofia’s flagon and upend its contents into a pot containing a set of hardy, but long suffering mountain flowers resting against the wall. It was all the more impressive that despite his condition he managed to get more of her mead into the pot rather than all over the floor and himself in the process.

  "This... This is a special -hic- brew, very strong s-stuff."

  The bottle was large, made from glass and in keeping with the richness of his robes and the nature of his enchanted staff, was extremely expensive in appearance. Such travellers were frequent within Whiterun, however the alcohol was certainly not and judging by the smell of the ruby-red liquid that poured from the end it was very potent. Sofia wouldn’t have been surprised in the slightest if it had the capability of fueling smelters with a flame hot enough to melt orichalcum, especially by just how mind-meltingly drunk he was already after consuming just a quarter of the bottle’s contents. If anything, the hardest part of this ‘contest’ appeared to be keeping a straight face as she practically stole the staff from him.

  "Let's get started." He said, pulling a mug from within the depths of his robes before wiping his hair back with a hand stained slightly red from spilt wine. She watched with some amusement as he concentrated so hard that his tongue was sticking out of the corner of his mouth while carefully filling his mug and her flagon to the brim. "Down the hatch!"

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

  Together, they lifted their drinks and gulped them down, Sofia's eyes widening at the taste and the sheer potency of the... whatever the wine was. It was as warm and filling as mead, as smooth as Blackbriar Reserve and with the kick of that special spiced wine she had ‘acquired’ once. Even for someone as experienced as her with drinking everything that Tamriel had to offer, it was unlike anything she had ever tasted.

  "What is that stuff?" Idly, she wondered whether even she should have eaten something first before starting. The wine was powerfully strong. Her flagon slammed down hard onto the table and Sam leaned forward, his bottle sloshing as he tried to refill it without spilling it everywhere.

  "I'm -hic- not entirely sure. Found it a little while ago and decided that tonight was a-as good a night as any to try it out." He paused, squinting at the faded label that had long since lost the fight against the march of time in an attempt to unravel its secrets, before giving up with a refilled mug in hand.

  "One down my friend. One down." Swaying backwards, and ignoring her almost entirely, he raised his mug and practically poured the liquid straight down his throat. "And another -hic- one for me."

  Burping loudly, he laughed with some of the liquid streaming down his chin as though he was a recently fed vampire, watching and waiting for Sofia to have her turn. It was impossible not to remember the sight of Kaius ripping his teeth out of a golden-tanned Altmer’s throat before licking his lips clean of the blood that stained them.

  "And how about y-you? Are you sure you’re okay to continue?”

  "Don’t you worry about me. It’s just been a long day. " Laughing off his question and expression, she gave him one of what she knew were her most enticing smiles, while raising her flagon in a toast. “Here’s to a second drink.”

  Before she could bring the flagon to her lips, a hand seemed to conjure itself into existence, clasping over the mouth of the flagon so suddenly that several mouthfuls worth splattered her chest. It was calloused and rough, attached to a person that she was increasingly knowing all too much about.

  "Kaius? What the fuck?"

  At some point his questioning by the guard had finished, and they now appeared to be in the process of dragging away the still-unconscious bodies of Mikael and his friends away. Kaius however, as he was increasing his habit, had appeared as though conjured and without warning. One moment she was about to drink some of the exquisite wine, the next he had caught her flagon and hand in a solid, unyielding grip without any noticeable cause or explanation, until she saw the expression on his face.

  There was no trace of the joviality from before, or the enjoyment he had gained from the fight. Now, instead he was regarding her new drinking partner with hooded eyes and an enormous amount of suspicion, especially staring at the staff attached to Sam’s spine. Draugurs, house sized spiders and Thalmor prisoner trains had not given him pause or concern for even a moment. Yet here he was, standing so taut and tense that Sofia could hear his flagon creaking with his fingers leaving indentations and crushing it out of shape.

  "Weren't you ever told not to drink with strangers?" Kaius muttered, neither releasing his vice like grip on her drink or taking his eyes off Sam as he spoke.

  "There's nothing wrong with a little drinking contest." Tugging futilely, she found her flagon was trapped in his hand, locked in place so tightly that she couldn’t even shake or spill its contents. "Especially one that I was going to win!"

  "And there are some fights that are impossible to win. Especially against ones such as this."

  With an expression that was both filled with amusement and disappointment that their game had been interrupted, the short Breton rolled his head drunkenly towards Kaius. The alcohol in his body was so potent that it was practically oozing its way out of his skin, while he moved like a puppet with half its strings cut being controlled by someone sedated by Canis Root. His eyes however widened, as he looked Kaius up and down.

  The look of recognition was immediate, but not as noticeable as the way the shorter man leaned back, straightened up and lost a large amount of his swaying, unsteady nature. His eyes refocussed, the drool from the corner of his mouth vanished and in literal seconds Sam had gone from being on the brink of falling into an alcoholic coma, to becoming almost entirely sober.

  "Kaius? By all the mead in Sovngarde is that you?" There was a pause, the eyes looking Kaius up and down several more times before he slapped his thigh with a laugh. "It is! I haven't seen you in what? Two centur-"

  Quicker than her eyes could see and cutting him off in midbreath, Kaius kicked Sam hard in the shin, causing the smaller man to jump from the impact. There was none of Kaius's usually calm, polite nature, and Sofia instinctively flinched at the way he reacted. She did however see the way that his expression turned thunderous, eyes darting around the filled tavern and nodding towards the dozens of people standing nearby in silent threat at Sam.

  “Two… Years?” While framed as a statement, there was no doubting the way that Sam spoke as though questioning Kaius's agreeableness to his words, leaning forward and idly rubbing his shin where he had been kicked. For most people, especially those living in Skyrim such an unwarranted attack would have been cause for a fight, or even the drawing of weapons. Instead, Sam didn’t appear hurt at all from what appeared to be a full strength kick from Kaius, but was instead appearing extremely amused.

  What was worse by far was the simple slip up and the cut off ‘centuries’ that Sam had been in the process of muttering revealed enough to know that whoever he was, he knew a whole lot about Kaius. A revelation that left Sofia feeling very, very wary.

  "Okay, what is going on? You both know each other?"

  Somehow, the grin on Sam’s face was no longer one of pure merriment, but was deeply unsettling, turning to look her in the eyes with his own bright and shining and with no evidence of his previously drunken state.

  "Oh, Kaius and I go waaay back. Isn't that right buddy?"

  "Just keep telling yourself that.” If words could cut or maim, Kaius's tone would have sliced Sam into a neat pile of pieces, which only seemed to amuse the smaller man even more. “Just what in Oblivion are you doing here anyway?”

  "Not being in ‘Oblivion’ for starters, especially how the drinks and the shows here are of much more for my liking. What’s the problem? Can't a man have some fun?"

  "You're no more of a man than what I am. What are you going by these days? Sam Gwynne? Sam Guen?"

  "Alright, Alright. You caught me." Both his feet thudded into the top of the table and Sam leaned back in his chair, putting his hands on top of his head and not once removing the smile from his face. "I must admit though, watching you fight is always a treat. I haven't had such entertainment for at least a decade!"

  "Just who exactly are you?" Her curiosity got the better of her, and despite Kaius's choked exclamation of warning and his nervous expression directed to the nearest tavern patrons Sofia asked Sam directly, again feeling the strange, burning intensity in Sam’s eyes as his attention was drawn to her.

  "Relax Kay-Kay. We don't want you having a stroke or something." While his attention was now on Sofia, Sam’s gestures were entirely for Kaius's benefit but there was also a definite tingle of magicka that crept the back of her neck and into her molars. "They won't hear us or even see anything out of the ordinary. I know how much you love your privacy and I would never dream of breaching it."

  With his boots still on the table, he gave a theatrical wave and half bow, nodding to her with an even larger, anatomically impossible smile.

  “My name, for tonight at least, is Sam Geuvenne. Although my friends and those who know me better call me Sanguine, Prince of orgies, debauchery and revelry.”