"You must return to Lord Molag Bal!" the necromancer declared, trying not to shout and not to attract the attention of others, especially the imperial guards.
"He let me go. How else would I have ended up here? The shackles were removed after some vile tentacles attacked me," Selena disagreed.
"There were reasons for that. And it's none of your business. And we shouldn't discuss it here in the tavern. You must still be a slave of the Order of the Black Worm," the Anchorite insisted.
"P-f-f!" she snorted, "No! I could only cooperate with necromancers on equal terms. But I'm not going to be a powerless slave. I can be, for example, an adviser to Raelynn, or Mannimarko for a decent salary."
"Are you crazy? How dare you even think of being Lord Mannimarco's advisor?"
"Well. Then I don't want to have anything to do with necromancers. I already have agreements with other people. For example, with the warrior Rigmore. She instructed me to go to Vilverin, to the guild of robbers."
"What? Vilverin?", the Anchorite asked.
"Shit! I shouldn't have told him about Vilverin! What a fool am I?!"
"Rigmore," Selena turned to the Nord woman, who was looking at the necromancer with displeasure, "I need your help. Please. Necromancers want to enslave me."
"Huh?"
Rigmor pursed her lips, but said nothing. Selena became agitated, feeling with her fifth point that something bad was going to happen soon and began to move away to the front door.
"Where are you going?" the necromancer asked and quickly got in the girl's way. Then Selena saw and heard Rigmor calling someone…
"Claude! Claude! Come here!" a Nord woman called someone.
"I think Rigmor will protect me from the necromancer!", Selena decided and clenched her fists.
She swung her right hand and tried to punch the necromancer in the face, but he clearly saw how the girl pulled her hand back for a swing. And when the fist flew in his direction, cutting through the air, he had enough reaction to quickly bend.
The anchorite became enraged and it was obvious to Selena that alone she had no chance to defeat him in a one-on-one duel. She ran back, trying to hide behind the tables and screamed: "Help! Necromancers! Rigmor, help me!"
All the visitors of the tavern suddenly stood up with lightning speed in a single impulse. It seemed that they were just waiting for some signal to get excited. There was the sound of metal sliding in the scabbard. Suddenly, even those visitors who were sitting without armor in ordinary clothes had some kind of weapon in their hands. Selena also took out of the inventory the weapon that first came to hand – it was a club that she had taken just a few minutes ago in the basement room at Rigmor.
People jumped up from their seats with fighting fire in their eyes, and as a result, a wall of armed visitors had already formed between Selena and the Anchorite. The necromancer realized that the armed crowd would consider him the main enemy, and he would become the "doll" on which the bloodthirsty inhabitants of Cyrodiil would satisfy their "hunger".
In this line of people, an armed skeleton suddenly appeared, which rushed towards Selena. It was obvious that he had been summoned by the necromancer! Suddenly, Rigmore, in her seemingly heavy armor, quickly ran up to Selena. She kicked the skeleton with her foot, causing it to bounce back a couple of steps.
Several imperial guards with long swords were about to cut the unarmed necromancer, when a gray-white mist of unknown origin suddenly formed in the air above the heads of all those present.
An armed crowd, in which there were probably many colleagues of Rigmor, rushed at the necromancer, who was supposed to be cut into pieces. But suddenly, within an instant, the white fog collapsed, forming a mysterious circle on the floor with incomprehensible Daedric symbols! Immediately there was a series of some flashes of light, at the same time someone threw a powerful fireball at the skeleton, and the necromancer himself managed to apply a destructive spell damaging or absorbing health to others, a characteristic visual sign of which was a flickering red glow.
"Damn. I don't understand, who is winning?"
Selena stood with her club in her hands, not having time to follow what was happening and who had used this or that spell.
Suddenly she screamed and jumped to the far corner when the skeleton next to her exploded from a fireball hit. Intense heat washed over her in a wave, but thank the gods, the temperature at a distance was not so high as to cause her burns. Running back, the girl stumbled into a chair and flew over it, falling upside down. But when she got to her feet, to her surprise, she saw that the fight was already over.
She looked around quickly and saw no dead visitors. A few meters away from her, near the bar, stood Rigmore and an imperial guard, and between them lay something black. When Selena came closer to them, she saw a motionless necromancer, whose legs were lying on the floor, and the rest of the body was in an unnatural position on a stool. The Anchorite was either dead or unconscious.
"Is he dead?", Selena asked apprehensively.
"Yes. He was thrown against the bar, and he broke his neck," Rigmore replied calmly, as if such events happen here every evening.
"My dad made this bar counter. I think he would be glad, because he did not like necromancers during his lifetime," the tavern owner, Malena, said with tenderness in her voice.
"Hmm. Maybe her father liked necromancers after death?", Selena thought, since necromancers get along well with the dead.
"How did this happen? Why did he break his neck?"
"I don't know. Someone cast some powerful spell. But I don't know what spell it was or who could have cast it" said Malena. "It's very strange".
"By the way!", - Rigmor exclaimed, putting a coin on the counter, - "This is for the bathroom! Let this girl wash upstairs."
"Of course, no problem. Second door on the right. Soap accessories are in a brown chest," Malena nodded, quickly removing the coin under the counter.
"Go upstairs, imperial girl. In the meantime, we will remove the necromancer's body." Rigmor said and lightly slapped the imperial girl on the ass, winking at her.