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 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.