Intense. Great work.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again - this is VERY good. One of the best TES fanfics I've ever read. It might be THE best by the time it's done with if it stays at the current level of quality.

The lingering mystery and palpable fear give this story an incredible intensity that made me hold my breath far longer than I had planned. I look forward to learning more about this mysterious ruin.

Thanks for the comments, bit of a delay this time due to exams and this bit being rather difficult to get right. It really needed the fresh atmosphere and flow of the part before to make it work but I think my rework has more or less solved it.

Enjoy


9. Unto Darkness

He lay on his back, his armour dented. The bottom of his plate cuirass had buckled deep into his flesh. He must have fallen, but it hadn’t killed him. There was too much blood – the floor was slick with it. And someone had cut away some of the armour and half dressed the wound. He’d bled out, and not so long ago.

Something behind made me turn, sword ready. My feet slipped on the sanguine floor. I glanced around. There was nothing but dancing shadows. A moment later Varnan lowered himself down next to me. He looked ill.

“My torch died on the way down,” he muttered. I gave him mine to relight. When he’d done I snatched it back.

“I’ve found Keersk,” I said needlessly, “He fell and bled out from it.” I was too tense for emotion. Something in the ruin was wrong. Deeply wrong.

“Why would Thyra leave him?”

For a moment I wandered how he knew but it was obvious. Keersk hadn’t dressed the wound himself. But why she hadn’t returned to the surface, or at worst stayed with the corpse, I couldn’t imagine. “Maybe he bled out while she was dressing the wound.”

Varnan believed the lie. The wound had been bleeding when Thrya left and corpses don’t bleed. I turned away from the thought. Something had made her leave…

Varnan spun, his sword half drawn. He stopped. “Sorry,” he muttered, “I thought I saw something.” He twitched. “Did you feel that?”

“What?”

“A chill, or something.”

“No, wh-“ a breath of wind cut me short, “I felt that.”

“What?”

I swore. Copiously. “Probably just me,” I said.

The shaft had a single narrow exit, the torches’ smoky light barely penetrated the gloom within. I stepped towards it and all my instincts screamed. But at what I didn’t know. I needed to find Thyra and as yet we’d seen nothing alive. Only shadows to jump at.

I held my torch before me and stepped into the passage. The dark stone walls pressed in, suffocating. I crept forward through the gloom. I couldn’t say how long the passage was, only that it felt far longer than it could possibly have been. At length I realised the gloom was less, there seemed to be a slow vacillating light from ahead. I barely see it for the torch, but there was no way I would lower the light for a better view. I padded on and the glow grew.

And abruptly the tunnel opened. I stepped out into a gallery and into madness. Enchantment hung in the air like burnt tin. Fountains of light danced blue reels in fonts set along the floor. But they was not the worst. Every surface; walls, ceiling, even the floor, squirmed with alabaster sculpture. It was like a moment frozen in hell. Every manner of man, beast and mer crowded the room. They screamed, and writhed in an iconoclasm of debauchery. Every sin there could possibly be was depicted in flawless sculpture. And that is what was worst – they were perfect and in that perfection terrible. Every detail, every hair, pore and anguish was exposed in the flawless white stone. The effect was horrific.

I tore my gaze away. What sort of mind could devise to create such things, let alone succeed? My stomach felt twisted. I took a deep breath. Onward or back? I hesitated to step from the darkling haven of the passage. What magic ruled here? Would I become as them – the statues? I swallowed, such thoughts are madness, and stepped.

My heart crashed back into its rightful place as my foot touched the shoulder of a mer, the plight of whom I tried not to note. Nothing happened. I was still Firen, a scarred addict but a man. They were simply statues. And yet as I stumbled over them they seemed to whisper, to move when I looked away. Almost I could hear their moans and screams.

I approached the first fountain of dancing light. I had seen their like before, in Cyrodiil. Alyeid structures, wells of magic sunk into the land. The mages went mad for them. I gazed into the fascinating, hypnotic light. I reached out. Would just touching it fill me with power? I would know great sorceries, be free of my shackles and able to aspire. I cupped my fingers. Greatness chuckled and splashed in the magic bowl.

A breeze cut through the hall and through my folly. Our torches guttered. I drew back, leaving fate untempted. Nothing is so simple; they could keep their devilry.

The torches recovered. Varnan moved closer.

“We should leave,” his whisper seemed all too loud in the gloom.

I nodded. That we had seen nothing corporeal no longer mattered, I wanted to leave. But she might be round the next corner. So I continued on, cursed with a sense of duty.

Varnan kept ever closer as we struggled over the bodies, limbs and worse to the end of the corridor. I could see how tense he was in his movements and I didn’t blame him. Things seemed to move in the shadows at the edges of my vision. Half imagined sounds kept me glancing at corners. Whenever I did I had the feeling that the statues had been moving infinitesimally before I looked. I was acutely aware of how my armour chaffed my shoulder, of my right bracer being a fraction too tight, of my full bladder.

Tension, I told myself. It was all in my mind, Varnan’s discontent had set me on edge. I breathed deeply to calm my shredded nerves. It didn’t work. Fortune favours the bold. My old mantra felt out of place. This was more akin to insanity.

All the same I kept on to the end of the gallery. There were no more dramatic gusts but the air was restless, its metallic tang rang on my throat. Varnan hung behind me, torn between fear of whatever was ahead and of being left behind. Just what I needed to back me up. After the final magic fountain the gallery narrowed again. Inside the passage the darkness was pure. I gazed in, things flitted thought it. Just tricks of the eye. Probably. I drew my sword and shifted the torch into my left hand.

The tunnel was bare. It was also short. I inched round a tight bend and got the impression of a large space ahead. Faint sounds echoed. I realised I was squeezing my sword and loosened my sweaty grip to avoid fatigue.

It was an effort to step into the chamber beyond. Thick dust padded the floor. The air was redolent of age and magic. I lifted my torch and weird machines loomed out from shadows, I could not make out the walls. A mosaic path led into the darkness. Varnan held his torch up and I saw something on it at the very limit of the light. I approached it while Varnan trailed behind. It resolved into a black pedestal with something slumped on it. I stepped forward and my first thought was confirmed. Thyra. By the congealed blood under her eyes, nose and mouth she was dead. Varnan stepped up behind me.

“She’s dead,” I said. I noticed that her fingers lay scorched a fraction from the sole item on the pedestal: a sphere of perfectly black crystal. I looked at it for a moment then felt Thyra’s neck. It was cold.

Suddenly her head cracked right round. My heart clenched and I sucked in a breath. Then she fixed her blank eyes on me and screamed. I lashed out with my sword and it met bone. The scream ululated on though the cavern. An empty sound of pain and fear and a cold bleak grave. Its aberrance made me recoil. I stumbled back and sucked air.

I felt rather than heard something behind me. I turned and stepped. My reactions saved me; a vast metal blade crashed into the ground an inch from my arm and threw my sword into the darkness. A giant of metal clicked and hissed before me, a machine given life. The great arm swung up then blasted down at me. I sidestepped. Into the path of another metal limb. It twisted and reached out. A multitude of blades pulsated at its end. I let instinct take control and took it on my pauldron. The limb hissed out and collided. It’s power was immense, the armour straps cut into my oxter before they snapped and dropped me on the floor.

The first huge arm was poised above me. I tired to roll inside its reach and immediately realised my mistake. It crashed down where I had been and scraped back. I was crushed against the main body of the machine, I couldn’t turn away, I struggled for breath. I felt my ribs begin to bend. Spots flashed in my vision then there was a groan and a tremendous crack. Wild hissing filled the air and the iron crush loosened. I crawled out and panted.

Varnan pulled me away. He held what remained of his sword, most of it was ruined in the workings of the great mechanical arm, the steel chewed like paper. The arm juddered spasmodically, a thing broken. Then I saw movement behind it and realised that it was not the source of all the hissings I could hear. I scampered back and first felt the damp warmth around my crotch and thigh.

“Where’s my sword?” I panted.

“It was thrown into the dark,” Varnan paused. The noises were getting greater, an insectile cacophony of clicks and hisses and chirrups. “I don’t think we should stay and look.”

We backed away, cloying darkness pressed in all around. I glanced over my shoulder. Which side did the noises come from? Where should I look? Some arcane force pulled the torch flames into streaks as if a great wind blew them. I felt no such wind. Then as one the noises ceased.

The silence was worse. It stalked the chamber, coiled around me like the insidious whisper of a nameless doom. I shivered. Never had I been so afraid, I had come close to death on more than on occasion but it had been an honest death. Fear is worst when it had nothing to focus on, when it can resonate unhindered into crippling terror. I beseeched unto the darkness.

Click.

Varnan whimpered.

Click. Footsteps from the other end of the hall. Hands clapped and there was light. Brilliant and bright it illuminated the chamber in its full vastness, bright metal shone on the nightmarish contrivances which stood frozen in a dance of madness around the walls.

I barely noticed them. My eyes were fixed on the source of the light: a tall figure dressed in long robes of dust at the bottom of a stair about fifty yards away. Light blazed from an upraised hand, parchment like skin stretched over angular bones. The countenance within the folds of the robe was a waxy yellow – like a three-month corpse in the ashlands. A ruin of a face hung from dented cheekbones, the nose sunken to nothing, the eyes oversized but lacklustre. It breathed in a series of death rattles.

I gazed at it, rooted by fear. It stopped at twenty paces and coughed. The sound was like cart wheels on gravel. When it stopped the mouth leered like a skull. I was horrified to realise the crackling breaths had been laughter.

Sounds a bit like they've stumbled upon the lair of a powerful lich who's had an eternity to conjure up a subterranean death trap. While there's no way to tell for sure, it seems they've already survived longer than the 2 member of their team whose deaths they just discovered. I hope they'll be able to find a way to survive a bit longer.

I'm running out of things to say about how great this story is.

10. Failed Divinity

“Welcome,” its voice had the sibilance of a crypt door, “To Arkyngisal.”

I backed away. Heart pounding.

“Come now, its been so long since I was trapped here. You would be impolite to go so soon,” it waved a hand and I was unable to move, “You wander how one as strong as I got trapped? Certainly stone cannot hold me,” it rasped another hacking laugh and waved a hand. The floor under and around it melted, brimstone cloyed in the air and haloed the figure in the lava’s hellish glow. It drew a series of abrupt breaths a grin covering its face, “Stone!” it spat, the lava hissed, “Not even death could hold me. But I am old, so old. This body wears out, I preserved life with magic but it takes so much, always more and always they must come. I outlived them though, here where the magic runs free, here I could endure.”

I couldn’t move my eyes to look at Varnan but I could hear his laboured breaths. He was stuck as surely as I.

It continued, “I so miss the moon, I used to throw fire at it you know? At first I was only here occasionally - to recharge as it were. But with the slow decay of time I needed longer and longer here beneath the earth. Now I must always draw from the source, hence my most lamentable display of magic for you. My humble apologies,” it paused for a moment and turned the ground beneath it back to stone. “It was a pity about the mages, they were all too paranoid or power obsessed or simply intelligent to be useful. Still we must settle for what we get yes? Yes. But I am talking to myself again, speak.”

I felt feeling return to my dry mouth but dared say nothing.

“Speak!” it screeched and danced in circles. The machines in the room scattered like toys. It focused on me.

I felt crushed but couldn’t move. Invisible bands of iron pressed in on me, I felt my skin bruise and bones bend. “Yes,” I gasped. The bands were gone, “You made this place?” It was spur of the moment but it played to the beast’s arrogance.

“Me?” it said in surprise, “No. It is older even than I. Such arts were lost with the races who created them. There is less magic than there was, I feel sure of it,” it coughed, a ribbon of phlegm escaped its mouth. Blood dyed it sanguine. The creature looked at it and then coughed again, it staggered but quickly recovered itself. The air between it and the pedestal where Thrya still lay swam and leapt with magic. “Hmmm,” it said, “I think it is time, most regrettable.” It looked straight at us again. “I suggest,” it said, “You run.”

The fear that had been building as it spoke reached a monumental crescendo as it dropped its hold on us. I fell flat on my face but felt nothing, my terror was complete. I scrabbled away and up, my fingernails tore and broke against the ground but I didn’t notice. I ran, not for a moment did I think of Varnan, or even the sudden sounds and lights and madness which came from the ancient creature behind me.

I crashed into the corner in the tunnel to the gallery and vomited but I ran on. I didn’t care that it covered me. I tore a knife from its sheath at my side and, still running, attacked the straps which held on my armour. The statues seemed alive, hands reached out and clawed, they howled in their eternal damnation. I fought free of my cuirass less than halfway though the gallery, it crashed to the ground behind me. Soon my greaves and remaining pauldron followed it. The dread which lay behind had become something more than death, a flawless fear of what might follow. Not for a moment did it cross my mind that had it wanted it could certainly have crushed me. I simply needed to be away.

In the shaft room I heard Varnan behind me. I stepped in front of him to reach the rope first and hauled myself up it with a strength born of terror. He grabbed my foot and I stamped on his hand. He screeched and let go. I pulled on up and vaulted over the top. My heart hammered. My vision blurred. I breathed in ragged gulps but I didn’t wait for Varnan. I sprinted though the ruin, my injuries irrelevant. Stream rose from the great pool in the first room, skipping wheels of light danced from its depths across the ceiling. I paid it no more attention than the rest of the darkling edifice.

The entrance was a square of golden light, I scrabbled up the rocky excavation and into the blessed open air. But still I ran. A short way past the expedition’s camp my toes caught in the loose earth and I fell. I crawled on a short way to tired to stand then was still. I hauled air into my burning lungs.

A short time later I heard Varnan run up behind me, his steps irregular. He looked down at me and collapsed. I looked over at him, his fingers were badly bruised. I grimaced and looked away.

“Are you ready to go?” I asked him, “We're leaving.”

He hadn't the breath to answer but nodded and stood. I got up and shook away the dizziness. With the ruin behind me I started down the valley. What had the thing been? Humanoid, certainly, but if it had ever been human that was long gone. What had happened as I ran? I shook my head; I would puzzle it once my fear abated. If it did. I still quivered with it.

Our meagre camp lay away to my right. We didn't make for it: getting away was in the forefront of my mind. But close behind my blanket of terror an old beast rose its head. I licked my chapped lips and realised I’d been scratching my arms since I'd left the ruin. The raw skin wept. It was so long since I'd had a fix. Even the thought of it released tension in my shoulders.

I could go to the camp and get it. Go to the camp. The thought echoed, the desire soured. I wanted to put as much distance between myself and the ruin as I could. Shadowy ghasts skipped though my thoughts, my mind juggled a circus of horrors which might be behind us. Mystery is so much more terrifying than the known peril. There was quite enough without me imagining more. I did anyway. I needed to get away.

I needed skooma.

A battle raged in my mind.

Ultimately the beast ripped though the shroud of fear. The addiction won. My feet veered towards where we had spent the previous night. Varnan shot me a reproachful look but followed.

I didn't mess about. I ripped my sack open and let its contents spill across the ground. I stuffed a knife into my trouser belt. For the first time I felt a stab of regret at discarding my armour, I still had the boots and bracers but the rest was gone with my weapons in the ruin. I brushed a sheet of parchment aside and scooped up the bag underneath. Inside was my liquid gold. I took a gulp. I stood to find Varnan staring down the valley.

“Ready to go?” I asked.

For a long moment he didn't answer, then he drew a sharp breath and shook himself. “Hmm? Sorry,” he said and looked down at himself. His armour was tattered, apparently he had tried to follow my example with less success. He searched quickly and got a knife which had belonged to Thyra and finished the job. “It's heavy and ruined anyway,” he muttered. I didn't hear him. The scroll I'd cast aside had caught my eye. Skink had given me it. Don't use teleportation, he'd said but we could contact him with it. Maybe. If I could work it.

Varnan fruitlessly raked though Keersk's possessions for any equipment he could use. Mainly he found cheap spirits. I puzzled the scroll, the script was one I barely knew. Trust a mage to give you help you can't use. Fetchers. Varnan stood and I waved him over.

“What do you make of this?” I asked.

“What, and can we walk while we do it.”

I started down the valley, “Skink gave me it. He said we could contact him with it.” I had expected an outburst from Varnan. Instead I got a preoccupied silence and he accepted it mutely. “Take a look,” I passed him the scroll.

He held it for a moment then passed it back, “Is that Cyrodiilic? Looks funny.”

I gave him an incredulous look, “No. Can't you recognise your own language?”

He didn't reply. He glare didn’t leave the dead ground for the next couple of miles.

There was a bit of ill scrub when I stopped again. Varnan stopped and looked up. “I'm going to see if I can read it, I know almost all the characters but not the language. Something might happen.” It was also an excuse for another dose of skooma.

OMG another one I haven't yet commented on....so now I took the time to read it through!

Excellent work!



This made me really smile!

Keep up the good work, Olen. I like how you portray addiction as the weight that it is and don't gloss over it.

Well, we seem to have turned over a new leaf on the whole mystery. I wonder where the story is going to go from here. I await the next update with even more anticipation than usual.

Once again, I'd like to point out that the characterization in this story is top-notch. The dynamic between Firen and Varnan is developing in a logical fashion - especially now that the other two members of the party are dead.

Ok sorry for the long wait, its all still there, well a lot is so it will keep coming. A combination of christmas, a hard drive disaster and too much time spent seeing people I haven't seen in too long got in the way.

Thanks for the comments, yes there is the odd bit of possibly malapropos humor in this though it receeds somewhat.

11. Another Man’s Dream

I'd been though it a couple of times within my head, it was time to try the magic. I stood straight and held the unfurled scroll before me. Then I lowered it to loosen the bracer which had been slightly too tight. I rolled my shoulders and breathed out. Here we go. Roll up, roll up. Come and see the exploding man.

I read. The words came hesitantly and without rhythm, more a series of sounds. I felt a little power stir. I read on. The final line was more complex, I had fought my way though the first half when I faltered, trying to decipher a bizarre compound symbol.

“Chignyee Nga,” prompted Varnan.

With astonishment I realised that the symbol could be read as such. I repeated his words.

The crack was deafening. A hissing whine followed it, like a union of wind in ships rigging and the pipes of the devil. It ululated round the valley then as suddenly as it had started it was gone. The ashes of the scroll crumbled in my hands.

I turned to Varnan, “How in hell did you know that? Don't tell me you recognised that symbol set.”

He shrugged, “I wasn't even looking at the scroll. It just seemed to... fit.” He shrugged again.

“But you couldn't read the thing. How could you know that?”

“I don't know. Its enough that I did,” his tone sealed the subject, “I don't think it worked anyway.”

I didn't answer. I had read it well enough, but almost certainly soured some phrases of it. It probably hadn't worked, not fully anyway. I was too relieved not to be laminated over the hillside to care too much.

Before we continued down the valley I filled my pipe. Its calming bubbling accompanied us down the valley. At first Varnan shot me disapproving glances but they became less frequent. It was a generous bowlful. With the hill and without the bags we travelled fast, by the time I had taken the last draw we were near the mouth of the valley. I wandered at how bleak it had seemed on the way up, it was as verdant as Pelagiad in spring compared to the top.

I put away the pipe. “Have you ever tried giving up?” Varnan asked.

I laughed humourlessly. “Every time I empty a bottle.”

“You could have been great you know, when I joined up you were moderately known.”

I stepped over a fallen tree. “Great,” I spooned sarcasm onto the word, “I could be known throughout Morrowind as a killer, people could sing songs of all the lives I've ended.”

“Yes,” Varnan sounded a little unsure.

“Firen: most prolific murderer in Morrowind,” I muttered to myself, “Amazing what skooma can do to you.”

“They say you were good when you were in your prime, you did more contacts than almost anyone.”

I glared at him. “I am still in my prime,” I said flatly.

“Are you trying to say a Kagouti would ever have gotten you five years back?”

I breathed deeply. I knew I was as good as I'd ever been. Knew it. “Luck doesn't change with age, and luck that was.”

He had the sense not to answer directly. My irritation at the subject couldn't have been less veiled. “One day I will do as many contracts as you did in your prime.”

I let the implication go. I was fairly sure it was incidental. I stopped and turned to face him, “Ever wandered what drove me to do so many contracts - why I still do so many? Why only a very few do so many? There is a good reason.” I paused to breathe, “You've not done many have you?”

Varnan's reply was awkward, “I've done a few... Not so many though.”

“You can remember them all I dare say. Maybe even remember everyone you've killed-”

“I've killed more animals than I can remember.”

“I was talking about people. People with lives, loves, family. I can remember the first couple but after that...” I started walking again, the path was a bit further inland than the one we had taken on the way in.

“If they are evil-”

I cut through that drivel, “Evil? I'd like to think true sadistic evil is rare. Most are just doing a job like me. They need to make bread money. Is that evil. What happens to anyone who depends on them after they’re gone?” I laughed blackly, “Don't expect to keep your soul in this job.”

Varnan didn't reply. We walked on south along the narrow path. For the first time I was calm enough to ponder not just where we were fleeing from but where we were running to. Firewatch was nearest. It was a Telvanni town but there was transport from there. The guild wouldn't like the result of this job but it was too late to worry about that.

It wasn't long before the sun was nearing the hazy skyline of Vvardenfell in the west.

“If you hate this job why do you stay in it?” Varnan asked.

I rubbed my forehead. Part of me wasn't going to answer but I did, “I'm stuck. Skooma is expensive, can't save money and killing is the only trade I know. Maybe I could set up and settle down but I doubt it. I've been in this business too long, I have tastes to go with the money...” Another silence yawned, long buried memories stirred from their graves. Another man's hopes and fears. When I spoke again my voice was low, “Get out while you still can. You're young enough.”

“And be what? A farmer in some incestuous nowhere village?”

“If only,” I said to myself. “If only.”

The sun boiled red, igniting the dusty horizon the colour hot iron, or blood. The path was treacherous in the half light, and doubly so once the sun had drowned in the western sea but we pushed on for a full two hours past sundown before collapsing exhausted.

We had no tent, I had not even a cloak but was pleased to see Varnan had taken two from our camp. I stripped and flopped into one exhausted and waited for sleep.

“Being a farmer isn't so great,” Varnan said. I rose from a half doze. I pushed aside my irritation, he'd listened to my talk. Now it was his turn. Not that his timing overjoyed me. I waited for him to continue and said nothing, as is often best, “I could have been, I suppose I was really but that I ever saw it that way. I was better than them, I wanted more, needed more.”

I suspected there was more to it. I didn't push, if he wanted to talk he would. “But why the guild?” I asked.

“The excitement, bard’s songs, to see the world. Surely that’s more than being a nobody peasant in a non-place.”

“I'll bet you had something there. Have something there.”

“Had,” he muttered, “I wouldn't be welcome back. They needed me but they didn't care what I wanted. I had to get out, I was better than them...”

I waited for more but none came. Slowly the soft fingers of sleep dragged me into darkness.

***

That night I dreamed. I always did when I took too much skooma. I was in Cyrodiil again. It was a confused selection of images and faces I barely remembered. Memories I'd spent a life forgetting so that dreams were the only time they could haunt me. The small village burned, the faces burned, faces of family and friends I couldn't put names to. They faded into the smoke and fear and flames. Next a huge city, at least it seemed so. Hunger. Cold. Loss.

Then heat. This one was more coherent, I wore armour. The armour of the legion and was marching to Morrowind in the aftermath of the crisis which ended the third era. The memory was less buried, it was far from fond but there was more than pain to it. I hated the legion. But I was glad to leave my homeland and all the pain it represented. A new life. In the dream I was eyeing up one of the company mages who marched a few ranks ahead. Reneria. In the dream I knew the future, the pain to come, but to my surprise I intended to change nothing.

This post has been edited by Olen: Jan 4 2009, 06:04 PM

Another awesome installment. And it's not even my birthday. Yays!

Just a short one. Cheers for the comment, there's not so very much to go now.


12. The Past Resurgent...

The blue dawn brought with it a chill. I dressed quickly and enjoyed the comfort of not wearing a sword and armour while I wandered at how much I had said the previous day. It had been a long, long time since I'd opened myself so much. I'd paid for it before but for now I felt something of the weight lifted. What surprised me even more was that I felt any interest in Varnan.

The dawn was bright, but dark clouds conspired in the south. The mountains were silhouetted darkly against them. My eyes scanned them for any interesting places to avoid. Staying near, though not directly at, the shore seemed the best course to avoid the panoply of lairs, towers, keeps, citadels and dungeons which litter the wild lands north of Firewatch like warts on an orc. A tendril of smoke showed up in front of them. It rose from the next valley, visible only because of the cloud streaked sky behind it. Whoever warmed themselves there knew enough to use dry hardwood, but they weren't burning it hot enough.

Varnan shouldered his pack and stepped beside me. “To Firewatch then?” I nodded, hunger stirred slightly in my stomach but it was far from bad yet. We didn't have a bow so it might be a hungry day, or two.

The sun was slow to show itself, it had risen in the cleft of two mountains and peaked from behind the southern peak like an agoraphobe unwilling to expose herself to the new day. I walked the dusty path and, though lightened by the knowledge that the every step took us further from the valley, I was far from peace. The grim landscape of crumbling peaks and dead plants was a place for dark moods and we spoke little.

The sun had passed its zenith when we crested the low ridge and looked down into the next valley. It might as well have been any other. Poisoned plants clung to grey dust tinged with ash blown over the sea from Dagoth Ur’s black crater. A greasy stream oozed its way down to the sea. A short way towards the shore a lone alit chewed carrion. I approached it purposefully. I only had a kinfe but that I was watching it before it was even aware of my presence was advantage enough.

About twenty yards separated us when it looked up. Yellow puss ran from under one of its eyes. It stood for a moment but then ran away. I relaxed.

Varnan was staring intently down into the valley, “There was smoke this morning, I’d say from somewhere not so far from here.” Before I could reply he spoke again, “And that plant can be eaten.” He hurried over to a cluster of parched leaves I had over looked as lifeless.

“Great, dead leaves,” I said. I didn't recognise the plant.

“You can eat the root under the leaves,” he said kicking away the dust to expose them, “But the tops are no use raw.”

I frowned at this unexpected knowledge and wondered if he would be insulted if I expressed my surprise. I found I didn't really care, “How do you know this? You can barely tell bunglers bane from a netch.” He glared at me. A slight twinge of regret surprised me, “The plants here are different. Where did you learn about them.”

For a moment I thought Varnan wasn't going to reply then he said, “I don't know. I just recognise the plant and know its good to eat. Well not good but not poison.” He scooped some up and wiped the earth off them. “Want one?” The woolliness of his knowledge was somewhat troubling but my stomach growled and I took the proffered root. He bit into the crisp white flesh and chewed. “Yes I remembered they taste like a bitter radishy potato.”

I took a nibble of my own, thick starchy juice ran into my stubble and I made a face. It was quite like raw potato, but with much more taste. I wasn't fully certain whether that was an improvement.

I finished it off as quickly as I could and we continued down the slope. “How far is Firewatch?” asked Varnan.

“Not fully sure,” I replied, “We should reach it by tomorrow - if we're lucky.” At that moment something caught my eye. I put a hand on Varnan's shoulder and he stopped. I looked again but caught no sign of movement, in spite of the open landscape I didn't hold many hopes about seeing anything, the dusty hollows would easily hide several men, even without a spell. And given the types who live north of Firewatch magic was most certainly on the cards.

Even magic, however, has its flaws. It might help the person to hide but it doesn't stop their feet kicking up dust. It was hard to say exactly where the person, or, gods forbid, people, were but once I looked for it I saw it. There was a small haze of dust directly below us, more than would be kicked up by wind alone.

“Did you see anyone?” I whispered and immediately wandered why when moments before we had spoken normally.

“Where?”

“See the dust haze below us? Someone has put that up but I can't see them.”

Varnan squinted down the valley, “Do you think they've seen us?”

That was the crux. Our dusty cloaks would offer some camoflague but Varnan's blond hair and red tunic were only a little worse than my own green attire. “What do you think?”

He looked around the valley then at us, “I think I'm going to get some less colourful clothes for this sort of thing. What do we do?”

I raised an eyebrow, he was seeing his mistakes now. Still green but perhaps not so wet behind the ears. “We pretend we haven't noticed anything and hope they give themselves away.” I started to walk again, I kept my pace even and unhurried.

“I'll keep my eyes peeled,” said Varnan. I grimaced. The memory the phrase conjured was unpleasant.

We carried on down the hill, my outward calm fooled even Varnan but my eyes worked overtime. My gaze jumped between every bush, stone and hollow like a Khajit on hot stones. The haze dissipated. They had bedded down and weren't moving. They could see us, we knew nothing about them. My thoughts tumbled. I wanted to run. It would be futile, we didn't know the area, we had no weapons or equipment or food.

Fortune favours the bold, I ran the old idiom though my head. It was the veteran of too many desperate situations. I walked on, tense as a lute string.

Seconds later a figure rose from the shadow of a rock less than twenty paces ahead. My fingers flew to my knife. The person pushed back the hood of a travel-stained cloak to reveal long black hair. The woman raised a hand.

My hand didn't leave my knife as I glanced around for any other people. I saw none, “Good day,” I called. Varnan followed my lead and looked about for any ambush.

“I'm looking for some people,” she called back.

This post has been edited by Olen: Jan 7 2009, 04:08 PM

I love this line. Evocative.

And excellent work, overall, of course. If she's looking for who I think she's looking for, there is more trouble to be had.

13. ...In Glorious Dreams

I looked at her. “We've seen no one out here,” I replied.

“The people I'm looking for might have attempted to call for help with a spell yesterday. Its a rather simple spell, I do wander how they made such a guar's ear of it.”

“Who sent you?”

She stepped forward before replying, “That would be telling, they seem keen that no one knows.”

“Who didn't send you?” I looked at her again, for longer this time.

“It wasn't the Telvanni...” she sighed, “The charade tires me. Are you a Fighter's Guild party sent here from Vvardenfell to check on a certain group's interests?”

“That would be an apt description.” I replied.

She began to walk towards us, I started forward warily. I noticed her peering at me. I looked back and this time felt a tingle of recognition. The tingle grew to a suggestion. It was impossible. When five yards separated us I stopped. So did she. We looked at each other challenging our senses, or reality, and daring them to change, or not.

“Firen?” she asked eventually.

“Renera.” I didn't question. Its one thing to dream of a chance meeting, quite another when the wish comes true stripped of the rose tint of memory. I didn't know what to think, or feel.

“I'm surprised to see you here, I assume you were sent to investigate a certain ruin?”

“Yes, though I doubt Skink would appreciate you being so open. What would you have done if it hadn't been us?”

“Killed you both,” she said it as a simple statement of fact. That was enough to tell me the years hadn't changed her much, “I doubt Skink would appreciate you mentioning him.”

“Oblivion swallow that n'wah. If he didn't owe me so much money I'd sell him out.”

She raised an eyebrow, “What went wrong?”

“He sent us to some gods forsaken ruin because reports weren't getting though.”

“What was really happening?”

I took off my pack and pulled out my pipe and skooma. Renera glanced at them then at the ground. She said nothing. I lit the bowl and puffed a plume of whitish smoke. “I'm not really sure,” I replied.

“Well tell me what you found,” she asked.

I did, though I didn't say that Thyra had almost certainly left Keersk still alive and bleeding. I found myself embarrassed to say just how terrified I'd been and glossed over our escape and how I lost my armour. Varnan stared blankly at the dead landscape and said nothing.

Renera was much as I remembered her, she was intent but detached and only questioned to clear up any ambiguity or for extra information on things I might have omitted as unimportant. My actual memories were sketchy and I could rarely give adequate answers to the latter. By the time I finished the sun was well into the west.

My pipe had gone out while I spoke. While she mulled over what I'd said I relit and tried to enjoy the fumes but somehow every sweet breath only reminded me of the disproving look she had first given the pipe. I decided I didn't care, but the smoke still wasn't as good.

“I would like to take a look at this ruin,” said Renera at length, I shuddered. Nothing could make me return there. “We should go there now, we could be inside it again next morn-”

“No,” Varnan awoke from his stupor. I was glad he led the objection, “Some things are best left.”

“I am quite a powerful mage,” Renera flicked a fly away, “I would understand more than you, these magic wells sound rather fine too.”

“You would be mad to draw from them,” replied Varnan, “And it would be most unwise to return, I would not anyway. The world is wrong there.”

“He's right,” I said before she could reply, “I have no desire to go anywhere near that place again. It's unnatural.”

She pursed her lips, “Very well. Firewatch is less than a day from here but we would arrive late if we set off now. Anyhow I have travelled quite a distance in the last day and a half and wouldn't mind a rest. Now I've found you I can afford myself some comforts. And get you both some more equipment,” she gave a predatory smile.

I'd taken enough skooma to get away from the jitters and didn't want to continue where this was headed sooner than I had to so I returned the pipe to my bag. The sun was high and in spite of the season the sheltered valley was quite warm so I put my cloak in on top of it. I had a stretch and noticed that the alit I'd frightened off earlier had returned. I sighed and started to get up to scare it away again. There was a crack from beside me and a bright flash. The alit dropped with flames licking the boiling skin on its flank.

Varnan alternately looked between the dead alit and Renera.

"What do you suggest?" I asked when the silence started to drag.

She lowered her hands and smiled, “There are some smugglers in the next valley, I'm sure they will share the yurt they stay in.” I decided that shaking my head in disbelief would be unwise so I waited until she got up before I stood and followed her.

On the way across the valley I managed to fall behind with Varnan. By the time we were crossing the turgid waters of the stream I was certain we would not be overheard. “As soon as you get to Firewatch disappear. If you can before that even. Don’t get mixed up with her.”

I think my grave tone surprised him as much as the words. He looked at me.

“She’s bad news,” I said meaning every word, “I… knew her, years ago. Do not trust her, don’t even speak to her if you can avoid it and by all the gods never think there is anything she won’t do.”

“What do you mean?”

I glanced at Renera, she was still far enough ahead. “Have you heard of the Wayrest Assembly?”

He thought momentarily, “Originating in High Rock, and, I would presume, ostensibly an organisation for the development of magical knowledge while more precisely being a resistance to the growing control of the Mage's Guild and growing imperial…” he trailed off to silence. A moment later he shook himself. “Sorry, I’m not sure where that came from. Something to do with mages but I don’t know.” I stared at him. Had the stress of the cave cracked him? But I’d never heard of anyone being brighter after going over the high side. “What are they?” he asked.

“A group of mercenary spellcasters with half the integrity of the Blackwater Company. They will work for anyone. Well anyone who pays. She,” I nodded to the figure a few scores of paces ahead, “Managed to get thrown out.”

“How do you know?”

“We were in the same company in the legion… As I said I knew her…” I hesitated, “Quite well. She was discharged a year after I signed up for my second term. She was too independent, and unreliable. After that I saw less and less of her, it’s been close on fifteen years since I saw her last.”

Varnan said nothing. Sometimes it’s the best thing to say.

I thought back, had I been happy those days? Probably not but better off than I could remember being at any other point, except maybe the day I left the legion. We’d gone out; me, Ceno and Drem, both men from my squad, and drank two days straight. Ceno had a home to return to, a farm to take over and all the likelihood of a family. Drem had boiled with hopes and dreams and ambitions. Even then I had been flat, the world had stretched ahead, a marvellous jungle of locked doors and burned bridges. Drem died six months later after taking bad skooma. I’d drifted back to the only thing I could do – killing. Another memory shattered. I brushed the pieces back under the carpets of my mind.

“Just be wary of her,” I said and quickened our pace to catch up. But even as I said it I pondered whether I would have the sense to take my own advice.

This is very good, Olen. One minor problem I saw was with this part: "...I do wander how they made such a guar's ear of it.” I think wander should be wonder. Other than that, I liked it.

14. Shelter

The yurt lay amid a mass of crates and barrels. I had little doubt that every one was stuffed with contraband; smugglers always try their luck just beyond the reach of law. Renera led us down the narrow path to the camp, I followed with Varnan behind. It looked peaceful against the gently rolling sea. A single masted boat bobbed in the sheltered cove. The sound of a lute drifted fitfully on the breeze. I put the likely fate of its inhabitants from my mind – they would only be natives after all.

The sentries were either dozy or as drugged as myself for we were less than a hundred yards from the camp when the music stopped mid-line and a lone dunmer appeared. His chitin bow and lean figure confirmed my guess that ashlanders worked these coasts.

“Turn back,” he called. His accent thick.

“We are but simple travellers,” Renera didn’t even try to make it believable, “We seek shelter and food for the night.”

“This is no inn, swits,” said the ashlander, he had an arrow notched to his bow, “Begone.”

I knew he wouldn’t back down. I also knew Renera wouldn’t, unless she had changed beyond recognition.

“We will have shelter in your camp tonight,” she had not, “and food.”

A second smuggler appeared. Renera took a step forward but I did not. It was not that I was in any way afraid of them – far from it; armed I would have taken them both alone. But they reminded me of too many others like them. At first it had been glorious, then necessary but with every one I killed I saw more background. Wives, family, children. One leads to the next, I’d never married and thoughts of any offspring I may have spawned were banished to my darkest nightmares. Even so I know all too well what drives men, and all too well what every death leaves behind.

I looked away.

“You will have no such thing,” the second mer said, “Turn back.”

“Or what?”

“Or you will die human,” Ashland diplomacy never ceases to amaze me.

“Thank you.” Renera’s tone made me look. That was a mistake.

A mighty flash burned itself onto my eyes. I dropped and turned away covering them. They felt full of salt. A glowing image of the magical lightning burned in their lids. I shook my head and eased them back open, through the blazing after-images I saw two corpses. I had known I would. One was still smoked.

Renera already strode towards them. In spite of my profession I do not care for killing. But they were outlaws, it was merely justice. Behind me Varnan was looking in shock. I ignored him and continued after Renera, there would be another inside the yurt no doubt, and he would also have to die. The second ashlander bore horrific burns, he also had a dagger in one hand. I took it form him.

Renera waited for me outside the yurt, I offered her a smile, “It been a long time,” I said.

“Yes,” she answered.

“There’ll be another inside.”

“Yes.”

I nodded then took a deep breath. I hadn’t used a short blade in a long while and my hand wasn’t as steady as it had been. I breathed again then swept the curtain door of the yurt aside.

A fire in the middle, burned to embers. Clutter round the walls. A single dunmer. All the impression I got before he screamed and pulled a dirk. He ran towards me and took a wild lunge at my face. A clumsy strike. I turned sideways and planted my blade into his throat. His own momentum drove it home and warm blood ran over my hand. He was dead before he could cry out. Renera entered behind me. She looked at the corpse and nodded.

“It’s been a while,” I said.

“Maybe too long,” she answered.

I bent to the corpse, he wore native armour. They made it from the shells of some of the weirder fauna which afflicts Morrowind. I had tried a couple of pieces of it before, it hadn't impressed. I dragged the corpse outside, the mere act brought back more memories of the past. It was not the first time I had cleaned the mess Renera and I had made. She stayed inside; just as the dead chief had. I wandered what she would do now. Sell us out? Help us? Go back to that cursed ruin? I doubt the gods knew.

Outside I lay him by a small chest round the back of the yurt. The dead eyes glowered an accusation. I closed them. I could never have taken his armour under that empty stare. With them shut I could forget that the wearer had lived and loved but moments before, I could forget that others had loved him. I shut off the layers of pain my actions had caused and stripped him of weapons and armour. They were still warm as I strapped them on.

I straightened from the black work. The chest caught my eye. Probably because most of the goods were in crates, but maybe just fate punishing me. Or rewarding. It was full of small vials sealed with a crescent moon. Skooma.

Sweet white smoke wreathed me when Varnan approached, he glanced about him as if in a surreal nightmare. I looked up at him though eyes blinded by the golden tint of bottled peace, dressed in the bloodied armour of a foe, pipe in hand. His eyes didn’t meet mine. He was fixed upon the corpse propped next to me.

“There was no contract on them,” he murmured.

“But they were outlaws were they not? Evil men: they deserved it.” I gave him his own words back.

He frowned, for a moment I thought he would walk away but then he said, “You told me-“

My laughter cut him off. The skooma lent it a maniacal edge.

“I don’t understand,” he said and sat next to me, “Why?”

Such a question. I took another draw and ignored it.

“Does it give you such relief?”

Don’t ask me. Please don’t get into this.

My prayers were answered, he scowled and left. I took another deep draw and stared at the eternal sea. I didn’t see the waves, questions filled my mind. Why did I so fervently not want Varnan to ask for a draw? Was it refusing or allowing which terrified me? Admitting fault or leading?

Below those questions more writhed like worms at the heart of a rotten apple. No matter how common I still wandered at the morality of killing smugglers. Crusaders, the Temple and Cult called them; killers who hunt outlaws to make a living. I avoided that train of thought, I couldn’t blame Renera, I couldn't wander if we might be her pray.

I looked at the dead ashlander. “What am I?” I asked the corpse. “Who have I become?”

***

That night we sat around a fire outside the yurt. Both the past hours and the skeletons of a past decade were obscured by the same sickly pall of white smoke which maintained my sanity. Renera alternately scowled and smiled at me. We had taken the best of the yurt’s food and I was stirring a cauldron of soup with a rather unsteady hand.

“Smells like that scrib jerky has seen better days,” said Varnan without taking his gaze from the spot on the horizon it had been fixed on for the past hour, “Some alleron might help disguise it.”

“Alleron?” I looked at him blankly, it was the first time he'd spoken since the afternoon.

“It’s the aldmeri word for thyme,” said Renera, “Where did you grow up to use it?”

Varnan shook himself. “Yes,” he said, “Thyme. I meant thyme.”

Renera shot him a quizzical look but didn’t press him. “Is that stew ready?” she asked.

“It needs a few minutes yet.”

“Fine, just time for you to tell me again of this man you met in the ruin.”

I grimaced. We were far enough away that I could half bury the memory but it still scared me. “It was no man,” I said.

“What was it then?”

“I don’t know. Terrifying.”

Renera thought for a moment, her gaze wandering into the distance. A mirror of Varnan’s. “Have you ever come across demoralisation magic? It’s a branch of illusion.”

“No,” I answered flatly.

“I wander how much of the fear was… enhanced.”

“Would I know?”

“Probably not, it does feel different – so I’m told – but not so as you’d notice, unless you knew what to look for.”

“What do you make of what it said to us?” I didn’t doubt that she remembered every word I’d said.

“Its hard to say. It seemed to say it required a great deal of external magic, certainly your description suggests the place didn’t want for it. But how much was mad ranting or simple lies I have no idea.”

“One of the dead mages had a tome in sloadic, using the old runes,” Varnan said musingly. His brown eyes flickered from the distance and pierced into me.

It took me a moment to recover. “What,” I spluttered, “How in oblivion would you know?”

His stone gaze lasted another moment before he dropped his eyes and put a hand to his forehead, “Sorry.. I feel a bit off,” he said and paused. “Perhaps a bowl of stew would help.”

I ladled him a bowl. Renera frowned but kept her own council.

15. Wasted Dreams

The stew was rich and hot and I felt better for it. Varnan gazed across the glowing sea. The western sun ignited its surface and silhouetted Vvardenfell black against a cabal of clouds. I glanced up at Renera from my bowl and was surprised that she already looked at me.

“Its been a while,” I said.

“It has. Maybe too long, how has the past decade treated you?”

“Much as life ever has. I can’t see it changing until someone finally gets a lucky hit in, or I get some very bad skooma.”

“You’re even jollier than you were,” she said, “What happened to the recruit I knew?”

“He was abandoned.”

She lapsed into silence. I didn’t notice whether it was awkward, my own thoughts wrapped me. I didn’t know how to feel now the past confronted me.

Renera glared at Varnan. After a time she sighed, “Do you remember the heartlands?”

“Yes.” I forced a smile. I remembered it alright. We had got to know one another there, but I remembered those verdant braes still better from six years before that. Even after two and a half decades of running and horror enough for ten times that the spectres of my village still haunted my dreams.

“Fond memories,” her words were a sharp antithesis to my thoughts, “Do you ever wonder what could have happened?”

The sea lapped gently at the shore. The fire crackled. It took me a while to work up a reply but I wasn’t going to lie, “Yes. But things took quite a different path.” And maybe for the best… Maybe.

“They did,” she nodded, “You were right.” I raised an eyebrow. “Back when I left the legion,” she explained, “I made all the money I wanted but now I see that the cost was so much more. Hindsight.” She spat the last word.

“I avoid looking back,” I said.

“To busy going forward?”

I laughed, “No, its too depressing.”

She smiled uncertainly. The half-joke was a little too close to the bone. “Still they were good days,” she sighed deeply, “What I wouldn’t give to get them back.”

“For their part, but you’re not the first to pine for youth.” I said. Varnan’s words of the day before still stung. I’m not over the hill yet. Not yet, I’ll have sorted my urgent business by then. “I never heard much of you after you left.”

“You listened?”

“Yes.”

She grimaced and her voice was quieter when she spoke again. “So did I, and I heard a bit. You were one of the guilds finest, I never did understand why.”

“What choice did I have? I have one hell of a sugartooth - what else makes that sort of money?”

She nodded, “I didn’t think… I might have come to see you again…”

“You’re here now,” part of me screamed. She had just murdered two relativity innocent smugglers – certainly not deserving of death. I’d just murdered for her. I knew fine well that she was bad news. That my feelings were as much for lang syne as for her. I didn’t care.

We spoke about the rose-tinted past over the cherry embers of the fire. The sun was a hazy red disk suspended above the burning sea when I noticed her gaze flickering again to Varnan. I’d forgotten he was even there, he was never that quiet. His eyes still stared to the darkling horizon. He sat still but was far from relaxed, tension racked him, his hands contorted into clawlike fists.

“Something happened in that chamber.” Renera’s voice was sharp. “Varnan you will tell me.”

Slowly he turned his gaze on her but said nothing.

“Speak.”

He looked blankly.

"You will tell me what came to pass in that place. Speak."

Nothing. I had rarely seen Renera this agitated. Her glare could have cracked rocks.

"What is your name?"

Languidly he opened his mouth and his lips quivered for a moment but only a hissing growl emerged.

Renera was on her feet, her voice boomed in a language I had never heard before. Confusion froze me but my fingers already crawled around my sword of their own accord.

Varnan answered. It was no language I had heard before, the creaking syllables dripped from his tongue. The sounds had no meaning to me but even so my hackles rose.

“Begone,” Renera’s voice boomed, unnaturally, “Leave this place.”

A laugh like rusted hinges escaped Varnan’s mouth.

Renera’s hands wove frantic patterns in the air, a beam of light leapt from them. Almost casually Varnan wiped it away but already Renera muttered some incantation. A second flash came; Varnan raised a hand. The magic was unaffected. A glow glimmered around him as it struck then guttered and died. He screamed. He looked at his hands as if he’d never seen them. A thousand opposing emotions warred across his face. He writhed as if in the clutches of a manic puppetmaster.

“What…” I spluttered, “What’s happening?”

They ignored me.

Varnan tried to stand but his legs failed. Renera advanced on him, an aura of magic shone around her. Varnan managed to sit up. A tongue of flame leapt from Renera’s hands and licked across him. He fell back, his shirt scorched.

I stood, unsure of what I intended. Help Renera? But I didn’t want to hurt Varnan. Help Varnan? No. Renera would have her reasons. So what? Renera towered over Varnan now, a haze of magic danced around them. Its heavy sourness hung in the air like smoke. I stepped forward, still uncertain. Then it was too late.

The blinding flash knocked me back a step and for the second time that afternoon my eyes burned. Varnan rose his hands as if shielding his face. An arc of sparks leapt where they blocked Renera’s magic. She staggered back, surprise flashed over her face and was gone just as fast. Determination replaced it. Grim determination. She stepped forward again, her eyes narrowed as if in immense effort. I could hear the magic now. A vociferation of nature scraping my soul. It burned like hot pins-and-needles on my face. Varnan’s hands collapsed down but he still bent in concentration. His mouth twisted with effort.

“Yes,” said Renera, triumphant, “You try that.”

I hadn’t a clue what she meant.

For a moment they faced one another then without any warning flame leapt from Renera’s fingers. A hair from Varnan it bent away from him melting the sand. Renera screamed a curse. With one hand she reached for her belt knife, the other became a blur as it tried to do the work of both. She flicked the knife and it stuck in Varnan’s shoulder.

It was his turn to scream, and scream he did. I didn’t know what to think. I didn’t have time to. With a crack there was silence. My ears rang. Renera breathed deeply, relief flooded her face. “I’ve never,” she panted, “dispelled anything like that before.”

I glanced to the growing red stain on the remnants of Varnan’s shirt. Her eyes followed mine. Then Varnan moved. The relief on Renera’s face curdled. He smiled.

“Too early,” he growled and pointed a finger at her. A beam of light not thicker than a goose quill emerged from it. Black light. It chilled me. Light should not be black. Not in nature, not in magic. The beam lasted a couple of seconds then Varnan collapsed face down.

I looked in confusion at him then to Renera. Shock blanched her white. “It managed it,” she whispered the words as if she didn’t quite believe them. “It managed it,” she said again.

“What in the name of Tiber just happened?”

“I thought…” she still spoke to herself. I was shocked to see tears in her eyes. “The thing in the ruin…”

“Yes?” I prompted.

“It was an ancient necromancer,” she realised that I knew almost nothing of magic, “The slaodic books suggested it. They can take the bodies of others to evade death.”

I didn’t really understand but I thought I saw where she was going, “Varnan?”

She nodded. “I think it must have been very weak, or else Varnan stronger than you’d expect. It took a while,” she stopped abruptly as if pain racked her. When she spoke again her voice was less steady, “He resisted the necromancer's control. That’s why he seemed odd and was getting worse.” She stopped again.

I could think of nothing to say.

Tears ran freely down her face now, “That’s not the point though. It’s in me now. I’d wanted… Hoped that we could be together again. Not any more.”

I wondered how long she had pined over the lost past. When had she found out who she was coming to rescue? When had she began to hope and dream? I sighed, disappointment is the only result of hope. Even so there was a certain sweetness to the idea… But now she said it could never be.

“It could have worked out.” Was she trying to convince herself or me? I didn’t know.

“Perhaps,” I answered at length. It was a nice idea. And really it could have worked. Another opportunity dead, and other door locked. I put my arm around her. She shook.

“I’m scared,” she whispered, “I can already feeling parts of my mind going,” she huddled in closer to me.

I said nothing. What else could be said?

I held her for a while but then she pushed away. I shot her a questioning look. “I’m as good as dead,” she said, “I don’t want to be near you when it takes me. I don’t know what I’ll do, what it will do.” She shuddered.

I nodded reluctantly. I saw the sense in what she said. Logic didn’t seem so good any more, “You know best,” I said.

“What do I know?” emotion weighed down her voice, “I made so many mistakes.” She turned away, “Good bye,” she choked.

“Bye,” that single word tempered my hatred and bitterness in the fires of despair.

She walked away. She didn’t look back. I hunched by the shore and tried to forget that the sun would rise again. She had wanted to carry on. All this time she had wanted it.

Secunda lay in Masser’s arms and looked down at me, alone, on the beach.

The final part, thanks to all who read an commented, I hope you enjoyed reading. Any comments on this part and/or the story overall would be most appriciated.

16. Firewatch

A groan shook me from the grey fields of desolation. I blinked, surprised how dark it had become. Another groan. It came from Varnan. In an instant I was by his side, he lived. The knife was still wedged into his shoulder but it hadn’t killed him outright and he hadn’t bled out. Yet.

I cursed myself for a fool as I rolled him over. Why hadn’t I checked? There was a lot of blood on the burnt remnants of his shirt, the skin beneath was blistered and raw. I tried to peel the embrued cloth from him but stopped when the skin came off with it. I swore inwardly, the wound would bleed when I removed the knife but there are no healers in the wilderness.

I propped him against a rock and went into the yurt. I tired not to look at the fresh blood mottled on the earth floor, and for once almost managed. Pots and crates and baskets flew as I searched; food, curios and clutter fountained behind me. The yurt looked like a heard of kagouti had stampeded though it when I found what I looked for. Small paper bundles of alchemical ingredients. I ripped them open looking for the few I knew would help wounds. My heart lifted when I opened one to the smell of marshmerrow but one look told me it was rotten. I swore and tore at another, my fingers met sticky ooze between the folds of the paper. Resin. One look told me there was already powdered something in it: corkbulb, or whickwheat. I hoped.

I crunched back out of the yurt kicking aside the things crushed beneath my boots and returned to Varnan. A trickle of blood ran from around the knife, the next few moments would decided whether he lived or died. It was down to luck, and my scant experience as a healer.

I reached for the knife’s hilt and drew back. Best have the resin unwrapped. I reached out again. My hand shook. Perhaps I should go and see if there was anything else of use in the yurt? I recognised stalling tactics, they weren’t going to help Varnan. I took a deep breath and cursed my tattered nerves. Quickly I pulled the knife free.

Blood rushed out in a torrent. Varnan stirred and tried to move but could only manage a squirm. I cast the knife aside and pulled a thick strand of the sticky resin. I fed the end of it against the rushing blood and packed it home with my thumb. The blood slowed. I tore off another length and pushed that in on top. In a few moments I had the wound sealed off. I sat back and let the shaking take me. Varnan was slumped and white.

When I had calmed myself I felt his wrist a pulse. Nothing. I felt harder but there was still nothing. Apprehensively I reached for his neck. It took a moment but I found a weak beat. I sank back and put my head into my hands. I had done all I could. My treacherous fingers were loading my pipe before I knew.

I got little sleep that night.


The dawn was as hazy as my mind. The first thing I knew was that I had taken far too much skooma. I wandered why. Then I remembered. I fought back the regrets and staggered up to check on Varnan.

His colour was better but the wound was angry and red, faint red lines reached out from it. Not far but I suspected they would grow. Just as I suspected his already high fever would. For a moment I considered letting him sleep it off but I cast the thought aside, he needed a healer. That meant Firewatch.

It took me three attempts to wake him. He looked around though pain-misted eyes.

“We need to get to Firewatch,” I said giving him a drink from a waterskin.

He answered with an indecipherable groan.

I got him to drink some more and chew some scrib jerky before I stood to go. He nodded wearily and I hauled him up and supported him over one shoulder. It was going to be a long walk.

Luck was with us. We saw nothing living. Even so I was bone weary when the smokes of Firewatch appeared on the horizon. My shoulders burned from propping up Varnan who stared intently at the ground and put one foot before the other. I hadn’t dared stop since lunch, I doubted I could get Varnan going again. We crested a rise and the town was spread below.

Even in my desperation it was an anticlimax. What little I’d heard of Firewatch had been uncomplimentary. From my vantage point on the rise it looked halfway between a nest of flies and a midden. Ramshackle buildings leaned drunkenly at crazy angles over filthy streets. There were no walls round the edge of the town, though a decrepit palisade did ring the centre. I started down the slope.

Varnan was a dead weight. I panted as I half carried him the last hundred yards to where the houses started. At first there was only shacks, randomly arranged beneath the shadow of the larger wooden buildings I’d seen from above. Everything stank of rot. The few people outside stared at the ground and ignored us. Few had shoes and all looked as if they had long since given up.

“Can I have some help,” I called two two dunmer men who were ambling a few yards ahead. They turned and looked as if surprised. It was only when I fished out a few gold coins that they walked over.

“What with?” said one.

“And what are you offering,” added the other. They had strong accents, both smelt of cheap shein.

“I’ll give you ten gold a head,” I wandered at how they pricked up. It had been a starting bid but I had expected to pay double, or more, “If you can direct me to the mages guild and an imperial healer and help me carry him there.”

“Meersa’s the best healer in town,” said the first. Several scars ploughed the left side of his face like a field. His left eye was cloudy.

“I want an imperial,” I said.

He dunmer shrugged, “There’s an imperial cult shrine over by the fort but the healer’s not as good as Meersa.”

“Take me there,” I answered. To my surprise the dunmer were quite strong and wrapped Varnan’s arms around their shoulders. His fever was stronger than before: the wound had gone septic. I winced as I straightened my back. The dunmer were already walking. I followed.

Firewatch was more like a village swollen beyond proportion than a city. The air reeked of brimstone from the multitude of tiny smeltings where the local ore was converted to metal for shipping. The low smoking sheds seemed to be small family businesses trapped between the much higher inns and vendors and taverns. There were no mushroom houses like in most Telvanni towns but the stink of rot was no less. The potholed roads were unsurfaced.

After a few minutes we passed though the earth and wood walls which stood around the inner city. Not much changed inside. The buildings were somewhat higher but just as ill repaired. The people looked richer but far from wealthy and had the same downcast look as those outside.

We came to a long street with some slightly more prosperous businesses. I was surprised to see that the guards were Telvanni even though the town had originally grown around the imperial fort which towered before us at the end of the road. The bottom story of its walls were undressed stone which then gave way to the same rotten wood which made up the rest of the town. In spite of the late hour few of its windows showed light. We hurried towards the gate.

The guard didn’t even look up as we passed, I suspected it would be similar to the Wolverine hall and Sadith Mora. The guards would have nothing to guard but their own fort which, even more so in the case of the mouldering pile I was eventing now, the Telvanni could level whenever relations with the empire were deemed unimportant.
I followed the two dunmer up a flight of stairs to a cracked door. The only hint that a shrine lay within was a faded relief carving on the lintel. The dunmer stopped and sat Varnan on the top step, “This is the Imperial Chapel, the mages guild representative is somewhere in the fort. The chaplain should know,” said the one with the scarred face.

The other simply held out his hand. I dropped the coins into it, “My thanks,” I said. They didn’t reply as they left down the stairs.

The door was locked so I banged on it. After a moment I heard muttered swearing from within and it opened. An elderly man looked out, “What do you want?” he asked. A scowl plastered on his face.

“My friend needs a healer,” I said.

The man glared at Varnan and sighed. “Fine. Don’t just stand there, the heat’s getting out.”

I pulled Varnan upright. He looked at me dazedly, his legs jelly. The old priest cursed again and I dragged him inside. The room was low ceilinged and lit only by a few cheap tallow candles. The collection bowl on the alter was almost empty.

“Ceril,” the old man shouted though to the next room, “Come here you lazy son of a nix.”

A painfully thin young man scuttled though from the next the room. By his looks he was Breton. He hunched and looked at the uneven floor, “Yes father Nuncius?”

“There’s a man needs your skills.” He turned to me, “There is the matter of payment though.”

“What?”

“Gold. It doesn’t grow on trees, neither does the wood for the fire, as I’ve surely known this winter.”

I pulled out a fistful of coins, “There father,” I spat, “The mages guild should sort out any more you need.” He counted them out, his lip curling. Without a word he went to a door behind the alter and went though it, I glimpsed a bed before he slammed it.

I turned to the man he had called Ceril. Already he looked over Varnan, “His fever is high,” he said.

“Yes,” I answered, “The wound was from a knife a day ago, its gone bad.”

The healer looked, “It has, what did you dress it with?”

“Resin.”

He nodded, “I might have tried that, it appears it has not worked. Give me a hand with him though to the store would you?”

A hand turned out to involve me moving him, laying a blanket on the floor and rolling him onto it while Ceril got in the way. Once done Ceril bent over him. “Best leave us, I’ll do what I can to draw the poison tonight and drop the fever though he may just have to burn it off.”

I nodded, “Where is the mages guildhall?”

“There’s no guildhall,” he answered in surprise, “But they do have a retainer upstairs. It the second room on the right.”

“Thanks,” I left him looking over Varnan and went out the chapel.

Outside I yawned. The events of the past days weighed heavy in my mind. I doubted I would be paid. Two guild members dead, another injured. And problems I didn’t even understand: such a debacle could well get me demoted. And Renera. Thoughts of her lay over the others like a silhouette. I hadn’t thought I’d see her again. Then I had. Then I’d lost her. Again.

I needed a smoke, and a drink. In that order. Now I didn’t have Varnan to worry about the mages could wait. I went down the stairs and left the grim fort for the bleak city. Somewhere in the city there would be a tavern dismal enough to suit my mood. And waiting for me in that Tavern was the oblivion I so desired.


THE END

Good story. One of my favorites. I would've liked to see it go on for a bit longer. The ending seems a bit...abrupt. It doesn't feel like an ending. If it has to end here, I would've liked to hear some kind of summation of the "moral" of the story, or lack thereof - however cynical it might have been. And at this point in the story, cynical is the only way you can end it (something like "What does it all mean? Nothing - not a damn thing"). The subtext could be brought just a tad bit more to the foreground in the ending (i.e. getting old, which was touched on earlier).

Otherwise, I thoroughly enjoyed this story, and I hope you write more of them. You're really good at this.