A mage was startled out of her dreams by an urgent hiss of her name. She recognized Sissel's voice before she could even distinguish her from the inky blur between asleep and awake.

"Agni!" Sissel repeated, her whisper ever sharper.

The sleepy young woman blinked rapidly to make out the figure in her chamber, to make sure it wasn't a lingering dream. Sissel's form was backlit by the pillar of light at the center of the hall, but it would have been too dark to properly see her expression if not for the cool, blue, arcane glow that was wreathing around Sissel's raised hand—casting a minuscule wash of light across the side of her face. She was frowning, as if Agni had done something disagreeable and Agni would have guessed Sissel was going to wake her with a blast of mage light but had decided against it.

"What is it?"

"There's a man at the entrance. He requested to see you and insisted it was a matter of urgency," Sissel replied, a tone of concern was evident as she spoke. Sissel worried too much over Agni sometimes, but she was getting better at not being so obvious about it.

"Who is he?"

Sissel paused to think and then said, "He didn't give a name."

Now Agni could understand her friend's reason for the apprehension.

Agni wrinkled her nose and gave a stretch before turning down her quilts and stepping to the floor with a sudden surge of curiosity. Her feet found her boots and slipped in.

"Will you go with me to see him?" Agni asked and pulled her thick apprentice robes over her head. After, she grabbed a small blue bottle off the night stand, uncorked it, and swiftly drank the contents. The strong taste of mint stung her throat but the warming effect took to her blood immediately, preparing her for the icy and relentless weather of northern Skyrim.

It was rather alarming not to mention suspicious that someone would come calling in the dead of night to the College of Winterhold. People in general didn't want to have anything to do with the college unless they had an item that needed to be enchanted. If he was a prospective student, there should be no reason he couldn't wait until daybreak to try his test of merit.

Then again, he couldn't have been just a regular person. He had asked for Agni specifically. She had never told anyone where she had gone after running from the boggy swamps of Hjaalmarch, but she figured it wouldn't be hard to guess for those that had known her.

"I'm rather tired," Sissel admitted, catching herself in a yawn when she unceremoniously crawled under Agni's vacated quilts that were now brimming with warmth. This action made it clear that the young apprentice of alteration was not planning on accompanying Agni. They weren't supposed to be out this late anyway which led Agni to internally question how and why Sissel knew of a stranger at the metaphorical gates of the college. Though, that was a question for another time. "I trust that you can handle yourself."

"Fine, stay," Agni retorted indignantly. She teased Sissel for worrying and now the one time she wouldn't have minded the company, Sissel was trying to prove herself to be unruffled at the odd situation.

Sissel gave a tired grin as a response and let the light in her hand extinguish. Agni turned her back on the sleeping chamber and could only hear her promise, "I'll keep your bed warm."

Agni returned the grin, now hidden in shadow.

She had not yet taken to the arts of alteration, or rather, was very behind on her studies—but she was more than decent with conjuration and destruction magic, specifically fire, and easily re-ignited a torch in a wall sconce that had been put out for the night. She grabbed it and left the Hall of Attainment alone.

The wind whistled sharply past her ears when she emerged outside; the night sky was in a rare state of clarity, reflecting an aurora of deep green and blue. The Sea of Ghosts was gently rippling across the rocks below on the shore, providing a distant, yet relaxing, ambient noise.

Down below the walkway, in Winterhold proper, stood a figure holding a torch as she did. She thought perhaps he was a courier carrying a message. Perhaps Falion had decided to forgive her for disobeying him four years ago—but the urgency of the matter worried her too. A letter from the man who fostered her could probably wait until morning. Someone must have paid the courier a great amount of gold to get them to travel the cold wastes of Winterhold at night.

"Agni?" she heard a soft baritone say her name as she approached the entrance of the college bridge, careful not to slip on any black ice.

She held her torch out at arm's length, taken aback, because a courier wouldn't have used her name to address her and not in such a familiar tone.

He looked uncomfortable and had one arm wrapped around himself trying for what little warmth he could get. He wore many layers, it was obvious he wasn't used to being this far north. He was also younger than Agni had assumed from what Sissel had described.

"What do you want of me?"

"Do you know where Joric is?"

"Joric?" she was even more puzzled at hearing the name. The only Joric she had ever known was a boy she was friends with as a child. They had both grown and gone their separate ways years ago.

"Yes, Joric Ravencrone—do you know where he is?"

"I haven't seen him."

There was a touch of anxiety in his voice; she could see his entire body sigh with disappointment and his jaw clench to keep from chattering because of the cold wind blowing across them both. The wind unfortunately picked that moment to bluster away his light source. He cursed under his shivery breath and dropped the torch, using the same arm to wrap up against himself. She stepped closer to see him better. He was a strapping lad. He had the broad shoulders one would have working mines, lumber mills, or even plowing fields. He was not a simple courier.

"Who are you?"

"You don't recognize me, Agni?" his head was still angled toward the ground but his eyes met her curious gaze.

She had run from Morthal as soon as she knew she was powerful enough that she could get to the college on her own—as a fifteen-year-old girl that was determined to master her true potential in the arcane arts. She had little chances of meeting anyone new outside the college, and if memory served her correctly, she certainly didn't meet any men like the one before her. It was too dark, despite the aurora, to recognize any defining features of his face without bringing the torch closer and setting him on fire.

She lifted a quizzical brow, dumped the torch into the snow head-first where it hissed as it extinguished, and ignited her own hand with a small, controlled flame. She held the power until it was a bright ball of heat, floating in her palm.

She raised her hand while stepping even closer, and he flinched as if she would set him on fire but it provided enough light to actually see him by. The dark dimness eroded and his face became clear. Once she saw, she knew his identity, though he had grown much more than she would have imagined in the years since she had last seen him. His voice had thrown her off as well, because the last she had heard it, it was fluctuating between boy and man.

"You are far from home, Virkmund."

He flashed a quick grin at her recognition and then looked above them at the daunting walkways, "May I come up?"

Agni felt a bit guilty, because he did look cold but she shook her head vehemently, "No, the mages don't like strangers."

"I've known you since we were seven years old—"

She cut him off sharply, "You're still a stranger to them. We can talk at the Frozen Hearth."

The fire in her palm diminished and she grabbed Virkmund's upper arm to guide him to the town's Inn. If more people were awake, they might have given her sidelong glances for wearing mage robes but the dismal settlement of Winterhold was sparse of any life at the early hour.

Almost immediately after entering she was engulfed in a hug, pulled tightly against Virkmund's chest. "It's good to see you again, Agni. You have been missed."

"Mmf, thanks Virk," she said, muffled into one of his layered shirts, surprised at his sudden action, and overall surprised that he was even there. He let her go and she gave him a little smile of appreciation. It was good to know someone had missed her presence in Morthal after all.

The Frozen Hearth was cozy, a fire burned at the center of the room and the lingering smell of roast pheasant filled her senses. She assumed that Virkmund had already bought a room for the night until she saw him look around the room as if he had never seen it before.

"This kind of looks like Jonna's place," he noted, studying the long hearth glowing with dim embers, at the center of the room. He meant it looked like Moorside Inn in Morthal. She figured most inns were built in the same fashion throughout the province.

"Can I help you?" the proprietor asked. The reception area and bar was shadowed at the back of the room and the voice made Agni jump somewhat—she didn't expect anyone else to be awake. Winterhold wasn't the type of place an innkeeper should have to stay awake at all hours to receive patrons.

"He needs a room," Agni nodded her head toward Virkmund.

"Only he?"

She glared at the innkeeper's insinuation. Though it was an understandable assumption—he had witnessed them walk in after midnight together and embrace.

"Only he."

Virkmund took a moment before fumbling with a coin pouch that was tied to his belt and dumped its contents onto the counter. He counted out ten coins for lodging, another ten for a piece of stale bread with a bowl of tepid clam chowder, and put the small remainder back into the bag.

Once they were inside the small room with a single bed, he sat in a chair with his food in his lap and Agni leaned against the wall with her arms crossed before continuing their conversation in a low voice, "So what is this all about—what's happened to Joric?"

"He's vanished. No one has seen him for a week. The Jarl sent me to find you."

Virkmund dipped the bread into the chowder and bit a piece off, looking to be waiting for some sort of explanation on Agni's part. Her brows knotted together in thought.

She didn't understand the correlation of his statement. Joric was the Jarl's younger brother. She had been a playmate of the boy when they were children. Agni remembered the first time she had met him—he looked feverish and told her that a Chaurus would try to eat her. Within a week she found herself lost in the quagmires and running from a Chaurus Reaper until it gave up chasing her. She had never been so scared before in her life until that moment. After the Chaurus incident, she took Joric's words more seriously and also didn't wander as far from the town. Not to say he was always making eerie predictions—Joric was an active child and his imagination was vast. He could turn any mundane object to something of an amusement when he wasn't trapped in an episode of melancholy.

One thing she did find irksome though, was that Joric would often blame her father for bad deeds. This claim he could never prove in any shape or form—most of the time he didn't even seem like himself when he went into those particular lucid mumblings, and she blamed it on his overactive imagination. In any case, she, Virkmund, and the noble boy had chased each other around the town's surrounding bogs and blooming deathbells in good fun almost every day when they were children.

Then, she left.

Falion, the closest person she ever had akin to family—he had never wanted her to join the college but she yearned to know more. She could conjure and use destruction magic but had little to no knowledge of the other schools. Also, Morthal was a small place, and as she grew older her home seemed more and more confined. There were little to no opportunities in the hold for a mage's apprentice. Opportunity, to her, was at the college.

She glanced at Virkmund and saw his downcast expression as he ate his meal, and it didn't even occur to her until that moment that she had probably hurt both boys by leaving without saying goodbye.

"Why me though?" Agni pushed thoughts of the past away and asked the most puzzling question in her mind. She pulled herself off the wall and into a straight-backed stand, turning fully toward her old friend for the answer.

Why would anyone think I had seen him last?

Virkmund swallowed his current mouthful of chowder, licked any remainder of it off his lips and replied, "He had a vision before disappearing—they say he mentioned your name, Agni, and that Skyrim was in grave danger."