Yesterday's Shadow Options

[Olen]

Its been a while since I wrote anything of length but, after a few false starts, I have churned out the first few thousand words of something which could get fairly large. I'm not totally happy with it (though I doubt I ever would be) but it should improve as I get back into writing, any comments et al would be appriciated.

1. Gold

I shivered as an icy breeze touched me. Was it real? Yes. I brushed aside my doubts. The Wolverine Hall was built by dunmer: of course it was dark, damp and cold. So cold. I pulled my cloak closer about me and looked around the gloomy room of the Mages Guild. A few guttering candles cast a sickly light on heaps of shadowy grimoires. Crazy reflections scattered from the grease-smeared tangles on an alchemy table. The creation of a deranged glassblower with hiccoughs. In spite of it being Evening Star there were still a couple of mages braving the winter on Azura’s Coast. They kept their rheumy eyes fixed on whatever devilry they were working on and ignored me. I waited idly and rubbed at my arms.

A door opened and I got a brief glance of a small room behind before it was shut again by the old Argonian who entered. A frown flickered over his features as he regarded me with sharp red eyes, “You must be the man from the Fighter’s Guild. Not what I expected, but no doubt Hrundi knows what he’s at,” Skink-in-Trees’-Shade smiled, his teeth were green from chewing hackle-lo, his sour breath twisted my stomach, “I have work for you.”

“I know. What I don’t know is why you couldn’t have left it with Hrundi like any normal contract, your demands are already weird enough.” My breath left a plume of steam in the air.

“I think eight thousand drakes is enough to allow me to make demands,” the lizard paused, I shivered but said nothing. I couldn’t afford not to get the contract. “I know well enough what is required and agreed it with Hrundi but the job itself requires discretion. Hrundi lacks discretion when he drinks…

“Three months ago I sent a group to investigate a ruin on the coast north of Firewatch, just south of Ilethi Point. The last report I received was dated late Frostfall, over six weeks ago. I want you to find out what happened.”

“What sort of ruin is this?” I said warily.

“Its… unusual. That’s why we want to investigate it and why this situation requires subtlety. I would send my own mages but it is deep in Telvanni lands.”

“Has it occurred to you that four men might be hard pressed to clear a ruin full of Telvanni?” I never understood why mages just didn’t get fighting. Another icy draught brushed me. I shivered and scratched an itchy patch on my arm.

“If it is then you will know what happened, investigate as far as you can and return. But I suspect that it is not. Most likely messages have just gone missing, as they do.” Argonians are hard to read but it didn’t take any guile to know Skink didn’t believe it. Neither did I, why spend eight thousand septims to get the best and go to such lengths of secrecy for missing reports.

I said nothing. Nothing I was likely to say would be helpful. I needed the job.

For a moment Skink was hesitant then he said, “If that is all you had best prepare. I will have a boatman waiting for you at dusk,” I nodded and turned to go but he continued, “A word of warning: do not use any teleportation near the ruin. We do not understand why but the only attempt to date prove quite… messy. If you do get into a tight spot read this,” he proffered a scroll and a money pouch, “I will know and do what I can. Otherwise do not rely on magic.”

He stopped abruptly and turned back towards his room. I was about to leave again when he called back, “And by the nine get yourself a fix with that gold. You scratch like a nix with mange.” He shut the door behind him.

For a moment I was too shocked to move. Was it that obvious? It was four days since my money had run out. I’d gone longer, but only once. Descending the dank spiral stair made my stomach shrivel and, backed up by the bag of gold, firmly killed any thoughts of going another hour without. I paused outside the fighter’s guild to fight down nausea before I went in.

Hrundi was waiting for me, “What did the old lizard want?” he asked.

“They’ve lost a bunch of folk investigating some ruin.” I wasn’t sure if Skink wanted Hrundi to know and I didn’t care.

“Same old,” Hrundi ran his fingers though his greying beard, “If I had a hundred drake for every mages’ guild expedition I’ve bailed out the mages would have paid me,” he rumbled a laugh, “So where’s the catch? You don’t give four folk a year’s wage for nowt.”

“He wouldn’t say but he wants us at the dock this evening.”

“Then Lysander won’t be joining you, news is his silt strider crashed, driver was probably pissed. I can’t see him arriving before tomorrow night.”

“Damn, that’s a problem,” it was too. Lysander was the only person I had directly asked for. The fighter’s guild in Morrowind was a shadow of what it had been before the oblivion crisis. “Are any of your local boys a quarter competent?”

Hrundi laughed mirthlessly, “You ain’t got a whole lot of choice. I’m too old, Sondryn’s already on a contract. That only leaves young Varnan.”

“There’s only three of you in the guildhall?”

“Yes. Who would want to be here? It shouldn’t matter though, the other two are good.”

“So you keep saying. Where are they?”

“Stocking up in town, I sent them to get the supply list you left.”

“Good,” I turned away from Hrundi. Now Skink had given me means to get it skooma was all I could think of. I hurried though the damp corridors and out into the squalid courtyards of the Wolverine Hall.

I kept close to the wall out of the wind-driven sheets of rain. The guard on the bridge looked as grey as the iron sky. The instant I stepped onto it I was soaked to the skin, to my left, and mercifully downwind, the giant fungus houses groaned in the storm. I turned away from them toward Muriel’s, golden light shone though the windows. I pushed the polished doorknob and stepped into the warm air of conversation and rich smell of roasting meat and beer.

However inviting I had no intention to take a seat in the common room. I hadn’t been in Muriel’s in years and didn’t remember the place. It didn’t matter. All corner clubs are essentially the same. I started upstairs and sure enough found a much smaller room full of distinctly shady characters. A grey-haired altmer looked at me as she would a gaur’s leavings on the street. I barely noticed, I could smell a sickly sweetness in the air. A dunmer opposite caught my eye and nodded. Apparently it was that obvious.

I wandered over to him. “You got skooma?”

“Yes, the finest in all Vvardenfell. You got money?” I hate pushers. There’s something about them which makes my fists itch. And they all claim to have the best.

“Let me see the goods,” I growled.

The dunmer paused to brush an imaginary piece of lint from his opulent, yet slightly too gaudy, clothes before reaching into a bag and withdrawing two vials. “This,” the dunmer gestured to the larger one with a bejewelled hand, “Is good stuff, Hlaalu import. Came in though Lake Hairan along with the standard stuff. This, on the other hand, is Tenmar white – costly but well worth it to the discerning palate.”

“How much?”

“Forty gold a quarter for the standard, sixty for the Tenmar.”

The bag had two hundred and fifty in it, even allowing for the high prices on Vvardenfell I expected more. “Half a bottle of the cheap for two hundred.”

“Not a chance. That should be five hundred.”

“I’m buying bulk. Two hundred.”

“Three hundred.”

“Ok two fifty and you’ll throw in a dash of that Tenmar white or I’ll take my business elsewhere.”

The dunmer scowled then got out his scales. I got out my pipe. His eyes widened momentarily as I measured out my dose.

[Olen]

Thanks for the comments. Bit more happening in the next few updates.

8. Into the Maw

Hours passed. The winter sun slunk low around the southern horizon. We waited. As it touched the first of the western peaks I began to regret not setting a time for Thyra to return. They had many torches, and might have found more. Without the sky they would have not sure way to tell the hour. The sun continued its low descent and I started a pot of broth.

“We're going to have to go and look soon,” said Varnan.

“Once this is done, yes.”

We ate the broth. They failed to appear.

“I can’t say I’m looking forward to this,” I said.

“Nor me,” said Varnan, “But I don't see what choice we have.”

I smiled grimly, “I've never been so convinced in free choice. Fate lacks subtlety with myself. I suppose we had best go.”

I went into the tent to don my armour. Some fighters almost never take it off, I've never been one of them. Its heavy and uncomfortable but my bulky plate pauldrons offered some consolation for going into the ruin. I'd never felt so uneasy about going underground in my life. I'd met living dead, witches, bandits, cultists – even daedra. What could be worse in there? I pushed away thoughts of the journal from the night before.

I emerged fully armoured. Two sacks lay packed next to Varnan who bucked on his bracer. I grimaced at its excessive decoration, “I see we're not going for stealth then,” I said and shouldered one of the packs. Varnan stuck a torch into the fire and followed.

The black waters of the tarn rippled. “We have to go, don't we?” Varnan said.

“You can stay behind if you must,” I said.

“No, no,” he said quickly, “I'll come.”

I didn't reply but for once I was glad of his need to prove himself. We followed the footprints of Thyra and Keersk round the tarn and though the barricades around the entrance. The door itself was down a steep slope dug into the dusty ground. Golden runes in the metal doorframe flickered in the light of Varnan's torch, I lit one of my own off it and we entered.

I'd been in dwemer ruins a couple of times before but they were nothing like the corridor we found ourselves in. It rose ten feet to a pointed arch above us, decorated pillars were set into the walls at intervals. Yet it all appeared to be made from the same golden metal the squat and pragmatic delvers had left behind. The strange lights they used were set at intervals along the wall - all broken of course. I didn’t stop to gawk. Any traps would have been disarmed and if the mages weren't sure what to make of it there was not point in my wondering. At the end of the tunnel I glanced back at Varnan, he looked around in awe but flinched at shadows. His knuckles were white on his sword.

I stepped into the room at the end. Like the tunnel it was elegant and graceful even though desks and weapons and paper cluttered it. One corner was stained with soot; the wreckage of artefacts, furniture and writings lay scorched at the base of it. Varnan followed me in and whispered, “Shouldn't we be a little more cautious?”

“With you in that armour,” I snorted, “Not much point.” It would have been champleve even as a ceremonial piece. “You do realise that it probably weighs getting on for half as much again as it should?”

“I'm learning,” he answered sullenly.

A body lay in the other corner. I ignored it. The arch opposite the one we had entered through caught my eye, it was a masterpiece, its form flowed almost water-like from a delicate apex in a sublimely portioned cascade of gold. Beyond it was dull but hinted at a vast space. Then it dawned on me: it was dull not dark. I waved Varnan away from the detritus, “There’s light though there.” He looked and nodded. For a moment he waited for me but then he brushed past and entered the hall. I followed just behind.

It was huge.

The light of our torches didn't penetrate the gloom to the far side. Other lights did though: they were mounted high on the walls and around the four great pillars which rose like the pillars of heaven, slender despite their vastness. Their tops were lost in the darkness of the ceiling. Any of the cantons of Vivec could easily have fitted into the edifice. Good place for them too, I mused. Several open floors jutted from the wall opposite to perhaps a quarter of the total width. The rough ladders and pulleys set up by the excavators looked crude and out of place amidst the grandeur. In the middle of the floor before the stacked mezzanines was a pool of glittering green water.

Even allowing for the scattered detritus I was reminded of my thoughts on the outside. Something was essentially wrong. In spite, or perhaps because, of the sheer scale and eloquence of its construction it felt deformed. An insidious somesthesia grated like nails in my mind. There was no doubt it was beautiful but a sophistical beauty.

I wandered over the corroded metal floor to the pool. The corpse of an altmer lay in it, minus head. Stab wounds rent its back. I looked down into the waters. Hints of more debris, or dead, hid down there but I would have bet any money that Keersk hadn't gone that way. A shout from Varnan shattered my contemplation. I looked up, my hand halfway to my sword. He staggered back from the pillar to my right and vomited. I ran towards him but when nothing attacked I slowed again to a walk.

What I found behind the pillar shook even me. A woman stared at the ceiling though ruined eyes. Rough gashes were gouged her from brow to jaw, her clothes were stiff with dried blood. She gaped in a rictus of pain, her mouth parodied by rips in her cheeks, her nose half gone. But it wasn't the wreckage of her face nor even her crushed and scored eyes which horrified me. Her fingers were ensanguined up to the knuckle and her nails were split and crusted with blood.

She had done it to herself.

“What on the gods' earth...” I breathed. The magnificence of the place had almost blotted out memories of outside, but this returned them, and more. The hall seemed dark now, oppressive. The pillars loomed, their willowy grace deformed to totems of darkness. It glittered, but there was no gold.

“Lets go,” said Varnan, “Did one of them wear metal boots? There's scratches in the rust leading this way.”

“Thyra did - as if you didn't know,” I said. Varnan had shown too much interest in those boots.

He smiled. It seemed hollow, too much like the corpse behind me. I turned to the marks in the floor. They lead to one of the larger of the many doors around the walls. What had possessed them to go beyond this hall I had no idea. I followed them but couldn't help but think loyalty is a terrible thing. As we followed the trail we passed scorch marks and worse on the ground, the door they lead to hung at a crazy angle from a single bent hinge. The rust and grime had been scraped from the floor by something. Inside was dark.

I stopped, a small creature gazing into the maw of the beast. I entered: I had no choice. Inside a makeshift barricade blocked the corridor beyond. The stub of a burnt out torch lay on it.

I touched it. The char was fresh. Mine wasn't halfway burnt, either they had come a lot more slowly than us or they had explored more. The first seemed unlikely. But why in hell would anyone do the latter? I jumped over the barrier and Varnan came just behind. I cupped my hand behind my ear. It might have been the rush of blood. Or I might have heard something from further down.

“Firen. I don't like this,” whispered Varnan. He looked terrified.

“We're no closer to knowing what happened,” I said, “And I'm not sure I want to. Once we find Thyra and Keersk we're leaving.”

“If they're alive.” I set of down the stair without replying, “This frightens me,” he continued. He looked embarrassed when I turned. I could hardly believe he thought I wasn't. I descended and strained to hear what I could over my own heart.

Another room, and the source of the noises. A great conglomeration of machinery boiled from the floor at the bottom of the stair. Cogs, pulleys, gears and pipes wove an intricate mess. All were still save for the hiss of steam and the grind of a great wheel's mournful turning. Another dead mage lay on a bedroll between the machine and ourselves, a blood-soaked bandage was wrapped around his chest.

Varnan's footsteps receded toward the other end of the room. My eyes shot up and I followed. He stood at the edge of a hole in the floor, the bottom was lost in the gloom but all around it were fresh scratches in the floor.

“Look's like they've gone down,” he said.

He always seemed to have bad news. “Well there's a rope,” I said needlessly pointing to one tied to a pipe on the wall, “but what inspired them to is beyond me.”

“Do we?”

I didn't want to. Not one bit but I already knew I would. “Yes.” The knot looked sound and before I could think any more I threw my torch down. It made a point of light at the bottom. I looped the rope about my chest and started to lower myself down. I was halfway before I considered that the rope might not reach the bottom. A little bit further I felt a breath of wind from below. I stopped and looked around, my torch seemed a long way below me. It was very dark. Did the air stir again? I wasn't sure, maybe it was just the lack of skooma. But I'd taken some before we set out.

I shivered and continued down. My mind flickered between images of the rope giving way and whatever nightghasts lurk in the dark. I stifled a cry of alarm when I felt the ground beneath me and turned, my fists ready. Nothing but shadows moved. I looked up, Varnan was waiting for my call but the shout froze in my throat. Some basic instinct made me want to be silent, to hide. You're jumping at shadows, I told myself. “Ok,” I hollered. My veins ran icy cold until the echoes died away.

I breathed deeply and looked at what I could see. Two bodies lay in the shadows of the small chamber. I lifted my torch. Both were argonians. The first was quite decayed, and enchanted slave bracer was still locked on his, or conceivably her, wrist. I moved to the second.

It was Keersk.