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]

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.