"I'm telling you, uncle, I can walk! Put me down!" Naruto protested in vain.

“You were injured,” Conrad grunted. After the battle in the distance had died down he had picked up the boy and started walking towards the city, followed closely by the two other kids and the masked guards in tow.

“Well… yeah! But I’m not now so it’s fine! And you’re embarrassing me in front of my teammates!” Naruto pointed out, gesturing towards the two other children.

“That was an impressive medical jutsu, that’s for sure,” the girl with pink hair mumbled.

Pink hair. Had Conrad not just seen the boy badly wounded, he wouldn’t have been able to not stare at her in disbelief.

“Hey Sakura-chan, are you alright?” Naruto asked as he tried once again to get free from his grasp and turn around to face his friend. The boy was as wriggly as a ferret.

"Since when do you even have an uncle?" the girl asked, not even bothering to respond to Naruto’s question. Kinda rude, but the Nord had to admit that her question was a legitimate one.

"Since two days ago, I guess?" Naruto shrugged. Conrad almost interjected saying that technically speaking he had an uncle since he was born, but it was fair. After all, Conrad himself had not known about the boy until he literally stumbled into him.

"Sounds fishy to me..." the girl—pink hair—said, giving the Nord a pointed look. The other boy, who looked to be the moody one of the bunch, seemed to agree by scowling harder.

"Fish?” he wondered out loud. “I didn't go fishing. I have no fish."

"What?" she asked, her suspicious stare replaced by utter confusion.

"Uncle doesn't understand us very well. He comes from a far away place. They talk funny there," Naruto explained.

"Naruto, don't lie," Pink Hair told him with an admonishing tone.

“Boy is not lying,” Conrad said with a slight frown. “I come from Skyrim.”

“Skyrim?”

“Land in Tamriel. Far from here.”

“Tamriel... ?” she repeated, casting a glance to the dark-haired kid.

"What did you mean earlier—" he started impatiently, only to be interrupted by an annoyed cough.

"Haruno-san, Uchiha-san,” one of the masked guards calmly requested, silencing any further questions. “Please do not discuss S-ranks secrets any further in present company.”

Conrad almost missed a step as he heard that phrase. Where had he heard it before? It seemed to trigger one of his 'Daedric Prince' alarms in the back of his head for some reason...

Taking advantage of his distraction, Naruto managed to squirm free and jump on the ground, yelling about victory and freedom. Conrad almost tried to pick him up again, but decided otherwise. If the boy had so much energy to celebrate his little conquest, he could walk just fine.

"... Is it just me, or does Naruto's 'uncle' look a bit like the Yondaime?" Pink Hair whispered to the moody one after a few minutes of silence.

Both masked guards coughed.

x:x:x:x:x:x:x:x:x:

Kakashi was not wandering aimlessly around Konoha. In fact, he had a purpose.

Glancing up, he saw a team of shinobi jumping over the rooftops, sweeping the village for any enemy unlucky enough to have been left behind. As soon as the invasion was repelled, the Leaf forces had started to organize again, taking care of the wounded and escorting the prisoners to the cell blocks.

Someone had even formed teams of volunteers, shinobi and civilians alike, to help with the clean-up operation, be it taking care of rubble or bodies.

He had convinced Gai to show the great Konoha hospitality to that team from Iwa so that he could look for his genin. As far as he was concerned, deciding how to deal with a foreign team caught in the crossfire was too much work, but it wouldn't look good if they ran away or got hurt while in the village.

Konoha had been hurt, not just because of the invasion but also politically. A betrayal from an ally didn't go unnoticed by your enemies. Kakashi knew that everyone would watch them now, hoping to find a sign of weakness.

There had been no official reports yet but from what he was seeing the invasion could've gone worse. Especially when the giant three-headed snake or the dragon appeared.

The snake's allegiance was obvious, but the dragon's? One of the many enemy nin he had encountered that day had actually asked him if the dragon was on his side. Kakashi promptly stabbed him in the face, of course. But it did shed some light on the situation.

He had checked later and nobody knew where it had come from. Most had even wondered if it had been a genjutsu, but illusions didn’t rip a giant snake's throat. Or feast on their corpse.

To make it all confusing, the beast had vanished in a flash of purple flames after that.

Today had been weird.

He wondered if his missing students had been caught up in the weirdness. Hopefully not.

This search was getting frustrating, though. Where had they gone?

“Kakashi! Hey, Kakashi!” a familiar voice called him. Turning around he saw the familiar shape of Pakkun, running towards him as fast as he could.

“Pakkun? What are you doing here?” he asked before remembering who he was supposed to escort. “Where is my team?”

“Kakashi, it’s an emergency! You must come to help! Your students—” the dog started talking between pants, each word alarming the jonin before stopping all of sudden and looking further down the road. “Oh, there they are.”

“Kakashi-sensei!” someone called happily, and the last worries for the day finally left him. He turned around to see Naruto, Sakura and Sasuke walking towards him. They looked a bit worse to wear, but none of them seemed to be injured. Kakashi sighed in relief and spared a glance to the two ANBU that were following them and—

He froze. For half a second he wondered if he was seeing things. Then he wondered if it could be a genjutsu or a henge, or some other technique he couldn't think about right now. Because that man shouldn't be here. He was dead. Kakashi had seen the corpse and been at the funeral. He had mourned him.

Someone had the gall, and the balls, to go around wearing Minato-sensei's face in the middle of Konoha. And get close to Naruto. Kakashi felt the handle of a kunai brush against his fingertips.

Stop, the ANBU captain signed quickly. Ally.

Kakashi blinked, his brain once again refusing to comprehend. He must have seen the signs wrong somehow.

No danger, the captain signaled again. This time Kakashi was sure he had got it right. As the group got closer, he glanced uneasily at the man who was wearing his sensei’s face. He couldn't decide if the man's disguise was very good or over-the-top. If Minato-sensei had been alive, he would surely have gained a few wrinkles or scars, but not that many.

Who is this? he signed. Technically he had asked Who is target? but there was just so much that could be said without starting a pantomime in front of everyone.

Not now, the ANBU replied. Kakashi may have imagined it, but he thought he had seen an annoyed glint in the shinobi’s hidden eyes.

“Kakashi-sensei?” Naruto called again, catching his attention. Even Sakura and Sasuke seemed to wonder about his silence.

“Hello there,” Kakashi greeted the group. “So, how did it go?”

"How did it go... How did it go?! It went crazy!" Naruto exploded all of sudden. "Gaara was all, you know, ‘I'll kill you’ and BAM and—"

"The enemy nin pursued us, which kept him away from the village," Sasuke interrupted, trying to give a more understandable report. "They retreated and we weren't in any condition to pursue."

“And we were awesome and fought together and Sakura was using explosives—”

"I was just throwing them, Naruto,” Sakura protested. “It's not like I made them."

"Yeah but you were still really cool! It was all like BOOM and stuff!" Naruto kept going, making gestures that Kakashi guessed were meant to be explosions.

"Well... it was pretty cool to actually use them..." Sakura admitted, sounding a bit embarrassed by all the praise.

Kakashi wondered if Sakura may end being as destructive as her teammates if the habit of using explosives caught on. But he was more interested in the man’s reactions. As the genin kept talking and recalling what had happened in their battle against the son of the Kazekage, the stranger got more worried and… angry? Why would he get angry about it if he wasn’t a prisoner but an ally?

“I’m glad to hear that your teamwork helped,” Kakashi said, silencing his students before acting like he had just noticed the stranger. “And who would this be?”

“Huh?” Naruto looked between the man wearing his sensei’s face and Kakashi for a moment, before turning towards the jonin with a grin. “Oh, that’s my uncle.”

“Your uncle,” Kakashi said flatly. It wasn’t a question, because the statement pretty much froze on the spot whatever actual question Kakashi’s brain may have elaborated.

“Yup! Uncle, this is Kakashi-sensei. Kakashi-sensei, this is Uncle Conrad,” Naruto said, before leaning in a conspiratorial manner and half-whisper to him. “He’s my dad’s brother!”

“Your father’s... brother,” Kakashi repeated slowly. He must have misheard, because there was no way that—

“Yep!” Naruto nodded proudly, not noticing how still Kakashi went all of sudden. The jonin was almost certain he was not trapped in a genjutsu now. It was far too crazy to be one, although he was painfully tempted to check. He glanced again at the two ANBU.

Not here, both the masked shinobi gestured again. Kakashi thought that it was unfair; he just wanted for someone to say something that would make the world make sense again.

“Hey, One-Eye,” the man said, speaking for the first time with an odd cadence and an accent that Kakashi couldn’t recognize. One-Eye? That was a new one. “The boy calls you ‘sensei’. You taught them?”

"A bit," Kakashi admitted with a shrug. Much to his confusion, the man’s anger seemed to be suddenly aimed at him. The tension was so palpable that people passing by, civilians and shinobi alike, had stopped to glance at what was going on. Then went back to moving the rubbles and cleaning the ruins.

Which didn’t seem to be lost on the two ANBU, especially when some of the onlookers started whispering between themselves or tried to get closer to have a better look.

“Harissen-san, we should take you to your lodgings,” Owl said all of sudden, grabbing the man’s shoulder.

“No way, I’m not—” the Minato lookalike started to protest, before the two shinobi grabbed him arms and all but manhandled him away. The man started struggling and shouting a series of very angry-sounding words that Kakashi didn’t understand. The two shinobi darted away as fast as they could with their passenger and Kakashi kept following them with his eye as long as he could, noticing that they were making a beeline for the Hokage Monument.

“Why did they take him away?” Naruto asked, sounding none of the wiser as the people around dispersed after a nasty look from Kakashi.

“Oh, I’m sure he’ll be fine,” he reassured him, thinking that he had to see the Hokage as soon as he could to ask what the hell was all this about. “Now—”

“Alright, Naruto. Talk. How did this person show up claiming he’s your uncle?” Sakura asked before Kakashi could finish, almost hissing. “No offense, but... I thought you didn’t know who your parents were?”

“And what’s this story about your father sealing a monster in your gut?” Sasuke asked, cocking an eyebrow.

Kakashi stared between his genin in silence for a few seconds before letting out an audible groan. His brain didn’t deserve being treated like this, he could feel a headache coming already.

x:x:x:x:x:x:x:x:x:

"Let me get this straight... that wasn't Minato," Chouza said, gesturing in emphasis.

"No," Inoichi drawled out. He briefly wondered how his life would’ve been if a certain person hadn’t shown up, ever. It would probably have been better for his sanity.

"But Minato is the father of that kid, Naruto," Chouza continued.

“Yes,” he almost snapped, not really giving a damn anymore. What was the point of keeping a S-rank secret if the living evidence of it just waltzed around the village and wrecked invaders anyway?

“Wow... we're terrible friends,” the Akimichi leader said, looking ashamed. ”He's even called Uzumaki!"

“That's what I said when Hokage-sama told me," Inoichi sighed, wondering where he could get some drinks. He briefly wondered if there were any bars still open, even if the village was still in a state of disarray.

“So, he really is their son,” Shikaku said pensively, speaking for the first time since they had met Harissen-san.

“You knew?!” Inoichi and Chouza asked at the same time.

“No, I didn’t know,” Shikaku shook his head. “I suspected it, though. But I never tried to find out.”

“Why?” Inoichi had to ask.

“A part of me wondered if I wasn’t just… seeing things,” the Nara admitted. “Wishful thinking, you know?”

Inoichi winced, wondering what his friend may be thinking. All the times he may have noticed something, but ignored it… it was probably worse than not even suspecting anything like he had.

“Come on guys, don’t be so glum,” Chouza interrupted, grabbing the other two in a boisterous hug. “We can still make-up to the kid! I’m sure that if we do so, Minato may even forgive us.”

“Minato would,” Inoichi muttered. “Kushina would still flay us alive with her chains though.”

All three men nodded in solemn agreement before going back to work. Konoha wouldn’t fix itself.

x:x:x:x:x:x:x:x:x:

“Jinchuuriki?” Sakura asked, repeating the unfamiliar word. “What's a Jinchuuriki?”

Kakashi had led his team to a secluded spot away from the clean-up teams, knowing that if the cat was out of the bag, it was better to deal with it and properly debrief them. Especially since it seemed to be a whole herd of cats that had escaped, because obviously the universe hated him.

“A Jinchuuriki is someone that was used to seal a bijuu,” Naruto explained, a tinge of hesitation in his voice. “Gaara is one… and so am I.”

“W-what…?” Sakura stuttered, eyes widening. “Does… does it hurt? Are you alright?”

“Huh?” Naruto blinked. “No I’m fine, it doesn’t hurt. Well, not physically…”

“The seal on Naruto’s body is perfect. The demon can’t hurt or influence him,” Kakashi interrupted, thinking that he had to explain this himself. “The fact that he’s a jinchuuriki is a common knowledge among the adult population but there’s a law created by the Sandaime that forbids to speak about it.”

“But then…” Sakura wondered uncomfortably.

“I'm not stopping you from having this talk only because the Sandaime's law doesn't say anything about Naruto telling this to other people," Kakashi clarified, and his little genin seemed to relax a bit. If he had to use a loophole to inform his team, so be it.

“Can we see it?” Sakura blurted all of sudden, before realizing what she had just said. “I meant the seal!”

Naruto looked at her for a moment before getting up, lifting his ruined jacket and shirt and closing his eyes, concentrating to mold his chakra. Slowly, the seal’s complex pattern appeared on his belly. Kakashi watched as his teammates got closer to get a better look. Then Sakura, for some reason, poked the seal with her fingers.

“Sakura-chan, that tickles!” Naruto protested, covering himself and trying to not laugh.

“Sorry!” she quickly said before staring back at the seal. “So, what’s inside of this—”

“The Kyuubi,” Sasuke said, deadly serious. “The Kyuubi is sealed inside of you.”

Naruto’s mirth quickly died and he nodded, avoiding their gazes. Kakashi had never seen him so nervous before.

“But… but it’s dead! The Yondaime killed it, we learned it at the Academy—” Sakura started, while Naruto shook his head.

“It wasn’t. The Yondaime sealed it into me.”

“But you said that it was your father that sealed a—” she protested, as a glint of realization flashed on her eyes. “No way.”

“Sakura—”

“No way! You—You can’t be meaning that…”

“You never told us,” Sasuke said, almost accusing his teammate.

“I found out two days ago,” Naruto explained. “About my dad, I mean. I’ve known about the Kyuubi since we graduated but it’s supposed to be a secret, so…”

“But then your uncle…”

“He’s the Yondaime’s brother, yes,” Naruto nodded. “Long-lost twin, actually.”

Kakashi kept his eyes on Naruto but noticed Sasuke scowling all the same, an odd mix of jealousy and longing on the Uchiha’s face. The jonin knew that the prodigy would’ve done anything to discover another member of his family, so he could understand why he felt that way. Even if Naruto’s “uncle” was obviously an impostor… right?

“Sensei, why are you being so calm about this?!” Sakura asked, turning towards him.

“I don't know about the uncle part, but all the rest is true,” Kakashi confirmed from his spot. If it was true, he couldn’t even imagine how the Hokage would deal with it.

“You knew?!” Naruto exclaimed, turning towards him with a shocked expression.

“Yes,” Kakashi said guiltily, looking right in Naruto’s eyes. “Your father… he was my sensei.”

It had sounded more like a confession than an explanation to his ears. All the genin looked at Kakashi in disbelief while Naruto seemed to be shocked to the core. After a few seconds, his loudest student had to sit down.

There was a long, uncomfortable silence as Kakashi watched Naruto dwell on what he realized must have been yet another life-changing revelation in just a few days. Sasuke and Sakura kept looking between the two of them, but they didn’t dare say anything, realizing how important this moment was for their teammate.

“Why… ?” Naruto uttered, not looking up at Kakashi, the implied part of question obvious for everyone. The older shinobi could feel all the old guilt come back at him at once, like an ugly beast that refused to just die and decided to haunt you instead.

“Your parents loved you, Naruto,” Kakashi assured him. “They would’ve been really proud of you.”

“Then why didn’t you ever show up to tell me that?!?” Naruto exclaimed in anger, looking up. Kakashi could see tears forming up in his eyes and had to look away in shame, jonin or not. What he saw instead were the dark look Sasuke was giving him and how white Sakura’s knuckles had become.

His students were all mad at him, Kakashi noticed. He felt like he deserved that, though.

“I wasn’t allowed to,” he admitted in a low voice, trying to tell himself that it didn’t sound like a weak excuse. He forced himself to look back at his student. “And I didn’t know how.”

It was Naruto’s turn to be silent now, but it didn’t last long. “Why not?”

“Because,” Kakashi started, trying to choose his next words carefully. “I was very young at the time, and I was in no condition to do anything but…” he felt himself trail off for a moment. “It was better if I watched you from afar.”

“But later—”

"Later... it was too late. By then there were orders in place, to keep you safe. If anyone ever suspected that you were your father's son, you would've become a target so I had to keep my distance," he continued as his mind trailed to that team from Iwa. After weighting what he had just said, he rolled up his sleeve, showing the genin his ANBU tattoo. Today they had learned a lot of secrets, what was just one more? “I tried to watch you from the shadows, when I wasn’t on an assignment. I know it isn’t enough, but…”

His voice trailed off and once more, nobody talked. He felt Sasuke’s eyes stare at his shoulder even after he hid the tattoo back, but he kept staring at his sensei’s son. After a brief moment, Sakura awkwardly reached over and patted Naruto’s back.

As Naruto processed his words, Kakashi felt all the memories, what-ifs and guilt accumulated in his shinobi career weight heavy on him. He knew that Naruto would probably hate him for not telling this sooner, orders or not orders and honestly? He deserved it.

“Can… can you tell me about them now, then?” his student finally asked with the meekest voice the jonin had ever heard from him.

Kakashi’s expression softened as his worries washed away, but before he could answer he heard the sounds of someone approaching. He noticed that Sasuke had heard, too. “I will, later,” he said, getting up and giving a look at his team. “Not a word of this, understood?”

"Hey, lazybones! How come you get to skip clean-up duty?" a voice broke through the air. Turning around, Kakashi saw the two Inuzuka siblings coming from around the corner, along with their dogs.

“My little genin had a long day and I was allowing them to rest,” Kakashi offered as Hana scolded her younger brother.

“Hey, Kiba,” Naruto greeted. “What are you guys doing here?”

“We’re looking around for anyone injured or trapped under the rubble,” Hana explained as the dogs kept sniffing around. The pup, Akamaru if Kakashi remembered correctly, got closer to Naruto and after giving the Uzumaki a few sniffs, jumped on his lap and gave him a few licks on his face.

"Naruto, were you crying?" Kiba asked to Naruto.

“I’m not,” the blond answered, rubbing his face with his arm as he kept petting the small dog.

“Looks like you were to me,” the young Inuzuka said teasingly, but before the blond could answer back Sasuke moved right between him and Kiba.

"He wasn't," Sasuke almost seethed, causing Kiba to back off, arms raised. Kakashi raised an eyebrow at that, Sasuke being protective of Naruto? He had thought the day had been strange as it was but here he stood corrected.

“How’s Hinata doing?” Sakura asked, attempting to defuse the situation.

“Shino and I took her to the hospital after you two left,” Kiba said detachedly. “I haven’t heard anything yet.”

“The invasion?” Hana spoke in a low voice, moving closer to Kakashi as she glanced at his genin. He realized what she meant; even if his team had already seen combat in Wave, today was the first time their generation had experienced actual warfare.

“More or less,” Kakashi said, noncommittal. It was a good explanation for their private chit-chat after all. “Now, if you would excuse us, my team and I have to speak with Hokage-sama about a few things, so—”

“Wait, you didn’t hear?” Hana asked with a seriousness that interrupted the kids’ antics.

“Heard what?” Kakashi already felt a sense of dread.

“Hokage-sama… he was badly injured.”

x:x:x:x:x:x:x:x:x:

As soon as Conrad felt his feet touching solid ground again, he freed himself from the guard’s grasp. He started to protest about their habit of carrying people like a sack of wheat, but whatever threat he was about to tell them died in his throat as he noticed the state in which the clearing was.

Bodies were littered in front of the familiar shack, some badly mutilated. Two belonged to the masked guards he had become accustomed to, the others… for a moment he thought it was another group of Shinobi soldiers, but their outfits and masks seemed different from the ones he had seen so far.

He didn’t have time to focus on them too much though because the lonely figure standing in front of the cabin caught all his attention. Must have been the weapon in his hand, or the dark armour full of spikes he was wearing.

Daedric armour.

The figure’s helm turned slightly towards him and he could see the warrior’s face through the opened faceplate. Conrad couldn’t recognize the caste the being belonged to, but he recognized what was standing in front of him.

"I thought I had smelled dragon’s stench," the dremora said in perfect Cyrodilic, giving a huge bite to an apple—no, it was a heart, probably harvested by one of the bodies. Conrad idly wondered how strong his jaw was. "It's been a long time since I met a spawn of Akatosh."

"You're unbound," Conrad stated.

"And you're a mortal,” the dremora replied in a mocking tone. “Must be frustrating."

"Harissen-san?" the guard with the owl mask asked, hand on the sword’s hilt. "Who is this?"

Conrad ignored him, trying to ignore the dreadful sensation he felt as he realized that as much as he wished otherwise, there was only one explanation for the presence of an unbound dremora here.

He flickered his fingers, not daring to break eye contact with the creature in front of him as he called the spell. Faint auras appeared around the cautious guards and the dremora, along with three shapes from the inside of the shack. Conrad felt a flash of relief pass through him.

"How peculiar,” the dremora observed, tilting his head. “You care for—"

Conrad interrupted whatever deceit the creature was about to say with an ice spear shooting from his outstretched hand. The daedra stumbled one step back, mostly because of the surprise than for the impact on his chest.

He heard the two guards readying their weapons, but his eyes didn’t leave the dremora’s ember-like ones, now burning with rage.

Raising his sword, the infernal being charged with reckless abandon. Expecting this, the Nord raised his left hand and a spiked shield manifested from the ether. He barely had time to brace for impact before daedric metal clashed with its brethren.

The two guards flanked the dremora, so fast that their enemy didn’t see them coming until their short swords slashing downwards. While one barely scratched the daedric armour’s surface, the other struck true between the elbow joints, drawing blood.

The dremora snarled, grabbing the masked Shinobi that had wounded him by the wrist and throwing him away like if he was a doll.

“Zun,” Conrad called as the monster turned around to cleave his other ally. The sword flew away from the daedra’s hand, landing among the grass. The dremora hesitated for a moment and the Nord charged, slamming the shield against his enemy putting all his weight behind it.

The daedra stumbled under the crash, barely managing to stay upright. Conrad took a deep breath and bellowed at the top of his lungs.

“Gaan Lah Haas!” A blur of purple flames surrounded the dremora, who finally fell down on one knee as the Thu’um ravaged his body. Not wasting time, Conrad raised his shield and slammed its serrated edge on the daedra’s helm with all of his strength.

Sparks and blood flew as the helmet was ripped away. The dremora struggled to stand, still weakened by the Dragonborn’s shout. The two guards restrained him, putting their swords against the daedra’s throat and eventually he stilled to stare hard at the Nord.

Why, Conrad didn’t know. After all, why would a dremora stop because of a blade? If they were deadly injured they would just disappear and return unharmed from whatever reign of Oblivion they were from.

“Tell me, is this really Akavir?” the daedra asked. That explained the sudden change of attitude.

“Yes,” Conrad said, slightly lowering the shield. He could always slam it against the dremora’s face later. “What of it?”

Much to his confusion, the daedra laughed, drops of blood falling from the nasty gash on his face. “Then I’m the first of my kind to step foot under its accursed moon in a millennia.”

"The moon?" he couldn’t help but ask. He had spent weeks wondering about the only moon visible from here, to no avail. When he had asked Inoichi, he had got the impression that the shinobi thought he was messing with him.

"The veil has been pierced,” the dremora all but yelled and laughed. “And nobody, neither Him nor his accursed mother can do anything about it!"

After this outburst, Conrad blinked for a few seconds before letting go of the shield, which dissolved in a flash of purple light.

“I have neither the time nor patience to deal with you right now,” he told the daedra with disdain, as he charged a spell with both of his hands. “Him, let go,” he told the guards in his broken Akaviri.

“What?” the higher-ranking between the two said, and once again Conrad had the impression that they thought he was crazy.

“Just do it, or you will be hit,” he said as the humming spell between his palms started to make him lose sensibility to his fingers.

The two Shinobi looked at each other for a moment, having some kind of silent, inexpressive conversation about it. As soon as they took a step back, the dremora lunged for Conrad, a hand outstretched towards his face. The Nord fired the spell just in time, and a literal ice storm invested the daedra, encapsulating his body in a thick layer of ice. By the time he stopped, only the daedra’s head wasn’t completely shrouded.

“This should do for now,” he murmured, ignoring the dremora’s obscenities and occasional blasphemies as he walked towards the shack. He would need to find a better solution later. While he had no idea what the dremora had been babbling about the moon, it sounded ominous enough that he didn’t like the idea of sending the bastard back to Oblivion to tell to all his minions and superiors about this place.

Unless he found some permanent solution, the daedra would end up going back to Oblivion sooner or later. Silently thanking the Nine for the barrier placed between their worlds, he took a peek inside of the shack’s broken door.

An alarmed yelp sounded from behind a flipped table as he entered. The apprentices he had been stuck with glimpsed from their hiding place, ready to throw whatever they had at him, be it spells or—was that his journal?

The magelings sighed in relief as they saw him, relaxing from their defensive stances. Conrad looked them over. They didn't look hurt, albeit this was probably the first life or death situation they’d had to deal with. They looked way too young for these things, just like his even younger nephew and the other two kids.

He was going to have to deal with this too, wasn’t he? First though, the important things.

“Alright you three,” Conrad said, crossing his arms. “Who was stupid enough to summon a dremora?”