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]

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.