It was very far from the first rejection that Katia had suffered, but it didn't hurt any less when the door clanged shut, almost striking her face. Her jaw quivered and her head shook slowly from side to side in a silent no. She tried to breathe slowly and quiet the panic and rage building in her heart.

It's okay, she thought. I'll just make my way back up to the cell and tell the guards that the Empress has pardoned me and they'll let me out oh who am I kidding of course they won't but I'll go back and get the corpse of Captain Roanault and prop it against the cell door and pretend to be holding her hostage and oh by the nine that is so stupid what am I even thinking and where do I get these ideas from, oh wait of course I know where I get these ideas from so it's no wonder. She really hated her subconscious, sometimes. All of them.

Breathing slowly and steadily was working, for now. Pacing about on shaky legs, she searched the room again, double checking the assassin's corpses as she went to make sure she hadn't missed anything and slinging Captain Roanault's katana over her neck. There was no other way out; only the passage leading back to her old cell and the door that Haurus had slammed in her face. She wondered why the Blades had taken so long to decide to go through the room's only forward-progressing exit. They couldn't have been waiting on Katia. No one ever did.

She was so sick of it. It wasn't enough that her childhood had been stolen away from her, that everyone looked down on her, that she was repeatedly kicked in the teeth every time she tried to be nice to someone or tried to help. Hope just had to be dangled in her face, only to be rudely yanked away each time she reached for it. She wanted to fight back. She didn't want to just take it lying down again. And she had no options. The world never left her with any options, never gave her an easy way out.

It. Wasn't. Fucking. Fair.

Katia shook with rage. She braced her forehooves against the stony floor and solidly kicked a nearby wall in frustration... and the wall surprisingly gave way. She yelped as she shot through the hole in the wall, falling through tumbling rocks and choking dust, and when she scrambled to her hooves, coughing and blinking, she found herself in another chamber, musty and smelling of death, composed of rough stonework, a dirt floor and shadowy alcoves.

As she stared, she heard a rattling squeak below her, and she squealed nervously and jumped off the rubble pile. Looking back, she saw the bleeding bodies of two rats that had apparently been crushed by the falling wall, one of which breathed its last as she watched.

Great. She wasn't even at the stage where she could kill a mudcrab with complete ethical comfort, and she'd just crushed out two fuzzy little lives, guilty of nothing but standing under a crappily constructed wall. Should she try to bury them? Construct a cairn? Well, they were sort of in a cairn already.

Staring at the rat corpses, Katia's stomach growled. It had been over a day since she'd had anything solid to eat. But... ugh, rats? No way. She wasn't prepared to sink that low.They weren't even cooked... Argh! Enough!

Katia took two nervous steps into the room. Beyond a rough pillar to the right, she could see a well. And to the left... something gleamed dully on the floor...

Katia took another step, and heard a squeak of rage. It was another rat, rushing to attack.

Katia hesitated. Her first urge was to create a flare of fire, but she wanted to conserve her magicka. And she did have an alternative...

Katia seized the handle of Roanault's katana with her mouth, and with a swift jerk of her head managed to pull it halfway out of the scabbard, but no further. The scabbard was loosely slung around her neck, and with nothing else to restrain it, it had clung to the sword. She tried to shake the scabbard off, but it wasn't loose enough to fall away from her body. The rat closed in, fangs flashing in the dim light...

Katia let go of the sword and flailed desperately with her hooves. She felt a stab of sharp teeth in her left foreleg. She screamed, more in anger than in pain, and bashed down with her hooves, over and over...

Eventually, she became aware that she was hopping up and down in one place. She stopped and looked down. Her hooves were spattered with blood and the rat had become a smear of reddened fur in the dirt below her. The adrenaline rush suddenly faded, and she felt her stomach twist. In a moment, she was retching thin bile onto the floor.

So that was the way it was going to be. There was no one to help her or protect her, no one to advise her, no one to give her an encouraging hug while she was puking uncontrollaby. To have any chance of escaping this place, she would have to kill things, over and over, all by herself. Her, the Redguard Khageet who couldn't even pull a sword out of its scabbard.

She kicked some dirt over the rat's corpse. If she was lucky, she wouldn't have to kill anything larger or nastier.

Or maybe her destiny was to wander through the world, slaying almost anything that crossed her path. She was glad that thought was just a ridiculous fantasy.