"Looks like there's a prison ship passing through."
Frenrik glanced at his companion as the Nord two legionnaires patrolled the docks of Ebonheart. After patrolling the same stony docks since the crack of dawn, it didn't surprise Frenrik that Norring was desperate to find something interesting to chat about. Only so many observations could be made about the usual Dunmeri rabble and slimy Imperial merchants after three weeks of long patrols with few drinks in between.
"Just looks like another trading ship to me," said Frenrik as he looked towards the brown blip Norring was pointing at out on the horizon.
"Nah, that there ship is heading towards Seyda Neen. Nothing to trade out there," Norring said while tracing an invisible path between the ship and its heading, "Besides, stay here long enough and you'll get used to the shipping schedules. Imperials run like clockwork."
"Are they are regular as your trips to the Six Fishes after a shipment of mead comes in?" asked Frenrik. Norring roared with laughter and slapped his partner on the back. A lesser man might have stumbled under the friendly blow, as even for a Nord, Norring was a man of impressive bulk and strength. His imperial armor empathized his broad shoulders and sculpted muscles, while his favorite warhammer looked like a toy strapped to his back. Most fighters used two hands for the weapons that Norring only needed one to wield. Nonetheless, most of the regular dockworkers gave Norring cheerful nods and waves as they passed by the two legionnaires unintimidated; the only attribute greater than Norring's strength, Frenrik quickly discovered after his posting to Hawkmoth, was his friendliness.
Frenrik pulled off his heavy helmet and rubbed the sweat off his brow. His thick blond hair stuck fast to his sweaty skin. Ysmir willing, he'd be sent back home to Skyrim before dying of heat stroke. Magnus' heat beat down from its highest point, and heavy Legion armor certainly didn't make it anymore enjoyable. From afar could he pass for the ideal legionnaire: tall and well-built, nary a scratch on his dentless armor. A steel sword hung loosely from his side, though it was more for show than for actual anticipation of combat; his post at Ebonheart proved more about endurance than any real soldiering.
The land of the Dunmer was reputed to be mysterious and strange, but the stone castle towering over the harbor wouldn't have been out of place anywhere within the Empire. The hard, cold edges of both Castle Ebonheart, Fort Hawkmoth, and the docks themselves betrayed their Imperial origins far more than the impressive dragon statue sitting squarely in front of the fortress entrance. A few warehouses lined the docking district bearing the East Imperial Trading Company logo, one of the few major Imperial businesses in all of Morrowind allegedly not involving skooma. On a good day, Frenrik could almost pretend he was back in Bruma.
"Cyril, darling, watch where you're go—" a shrill high elf broke through the wharf's monotony, only a few yards away from where the legionnaires stood guard. A loud splash interrupted her mid-sentence. Frenrik watched as a now-soaking wet Altmer man struggled to pull himself back up onto dry land. With a chuckle and a shake of his head, Frenrik pulled his helmet back on and pushed his way through the busy docks to offer his assistance. Norring contented himself to stay back and bellow with laughter instead.
Saving the day was simple enough. While the High Elf woman was too scrawny to pull her partner out of the water, Frenrik managed it with only one hand. Rather than thank him, however, the two elves awkwardly nodded at the Nord, then fussed over each other like he wasn't even there. Frenrik wasn't surprised—if anything, they were a step up from the local Dunmeri who probably would have insulted him for the trouble.
"Oh, Cyril," the womer said as she pulled a handkerchief out of her pocket to dry off the other elf's face, "No wonder the Guild hasn't let you near Vvardenfell for nearly fifteen years."
"Seeing as those fifteen years have been spent with you, Allina, I'm glad they didn't," replied her partner, running a hand through her red hair and kissing her on the cheek.
The couple were mages at a glance, with the traditional staves dutifully strapped to their backs and potions hanging from their belts. The guild mentioned must have been the Mages Guild, and that's all he needed to know about them. Mages and magic never led to good things, as far as the Skyrim native was concerned, and the more distance between him and them, the better. Frenrik gave the two a quick, albeit unnoticed, nod to the both of them as turned and started to push his way back to Norring. Fate proved against him; a horde of dockworkers swarmed his path and rendered it impassable.
Not that they noticed his discomfort, of course.
"The sweet nothings might work better when you don't smell like slaughterfish," continued Allina, half-smiling, though all it did was convince her partner to shower her in more smooches. Any illusion of the two of them being stereotypical snotty High Elves was evaporating along with the seawater drenching her lover's robes.
"Ah—Cyril! Stop! People are staring!" said Allina, "Oh, Cyril, don't tell me that you dropped that map…"
He doubted anyone actually took active interest in pair beside himself, even though a throng had around them while he wasn't paying attention. While Even though Ebonheart was normally a sleepy port town, noon always, without fail, was the worst part of the day. Several large trading vessels would dock at the same time as a plethora of locale passenger boats threatened to crush one another while docking. Redguard and Nord sailors intermingled with the Morrowind natives, while pickpockets and thieves took advantage of confused travelers to make a tidy dum for themselves. Familiar Dunmer and Imperial alike scurried past the three of them, desperately trying to keep clear records and collect fees before the wiser locales skipped out to sea.
With a conglomeration of dozens of people came a conglomeration of dozens of smells, and it looked like the two high elves were about to swoon. A light breeze was but a small relief to the sweltering horde, and Frenrik couldn't help but wish for the thousandth time that he was back in his native Skyrim.
Between the dock workers were legionnaires, weaving this way and that through the throng and occasionally glancing at a suspect barrel or crate. Frenrik had no doubt that contraband got through regardless, though; the entire Legion probably didn't have enough eyes between them to look closely at everything coming into the port, let alone the handful now patrolling the docks. He'd only been stationed at Ebonheart for a few weeks, but it was long enough to recognize all of the dozen or so legionnaires currently on duty. Surprisingly, Norring had vanished from sight. Frenrik frowned, and started pushing his way back towards the fort.
"Watch where you're going, s'wit!" snarled a Dunmeri woman. If not for the language, Frenrik couldn't tell she was a Dark Elf at first. She wore thick brown robes and a heavy hood covered most of her face. The piercing red eyes shooting daggers up at him that told him all he needed to know—there was a distinct look that the natives of Morrowind collectively mastered when it came to addressing outlanders.
Before she could land a few more scathing comments, something in the water that caught her eye just behind him. Her eyes widened, and Frenrik instinctively turned to see what was the matter. Aside from a few papers floating in the water, but why that would scare someone? For a moment he entertained the idea that the disintegrating paper was the map the High Elf couple mentioned earlier. However, all irrelevant thoughts fled his mind as he realized something under the floating map was moving. Almost mistakable for a mere ripple, he narrowed his eyes and peered over the edge of the wharf. Something large moved slowly just beneath the surface, but the seawater was too murky to determine exactly what. However, a similar shape moved in the same direction, mere feet away. As he looked further and further out to see, he saw more and more of the dark shapes moving through the water. The docks were surrounded.
A pale, deformed hand shot up out of the water and grabbed at one of Frenrik's boots. With a swift kick, he knocked whatever it was back into the water. The effort proved only a momentarily setback to whatever the thing was as it grasped the edge of the stone pier and pulled itself up.
The smell hit him first, some combination of living and dead flesh making such a sickening sweet stench that even the toughest warrior would recoil from it. Frenrik, far from Skyrim's greatest, doubled back in horror. The monster, vaguely humanoid, was covered in abnormal, lumpy growths. Open sores spotted the skin where the mosnter's flesh hadn't grown fast enough to contain the expanding organs and muscles underneath it. It was much shorter than Frenrik, but it had trouble staying upright as it swayed back and forth as it shambled to its feet before him.
It had clearly been a living person at one point or another, though it was too far gone to figure out what gender or race. Frenrik's first thoughts of the draugr of his homeland, but that didn't quite describe the thing before him. Despite rotting pale flesh and film-covered eyes, this thing was still alive to some degree. Every movement pained it, it's mouth open to an eternal silent scream. But even so, it continued to force itself forward as if it couldn't correlate the source of its misery and its very own actions.
It lunged at the addled legionnaire, but Frenrik drew his sword and swung at his attacker. Steel met flesh, but the monster took no notice of the new gaping wound in its abdomen. A new stench burst forward, more foul than before. The force of the blow made it stumble back, but Frenrik didn't stop to think before launching into an all-out assault. He hacked away without restraint, the monster doing nothing but grappling helplessly as its attacker The monster's head hit the pier with a heavy thud, then rolled into back into the depths that it had originally emerged from. Bosmer, he realized as he watch it fall, catching a glimpse of pointy ears, this thing used to be a Bosmer…
He didn't have long to think about the matter. While he had been dispatching the former elf, dozens of others like climbed onto the docks and shores of Ebonheart. Some looked like they were being consumed by their tumorous growths, others like seemed to be perfectly normal dark elves—if it was normal to be missing the upper halves of their faces.
"Corprus stalkers!" he heard someone shriek, and his blood ran cold. Scant whispers from native had warned him about the dreaded Vvardenfall disease between drinks at the Six Fishes, a disease with no cure in all of Tamriel.
Civilians fled past them, pushing and trampling one another in their zeal to escape the corprus stalkers. Others jumped, or were shoved, off the piers while trying to escape, only realizing their folly as waterlogged hands pulled them under to a watery grave. He realized with so many running in a blind panic, he couldn't swing his sword without risking the chance of hitting a man or mer in the process. Instead he focused on pushing away the monsters while dockworkers and sailors fled before them.
The Dunmer woman wasted no time throwing spells and punches in equal measure, outright ignoring whether her spells hit corprus beats or innocent civilians. Frenrik slashed at the oncoming horde as best he could, but no time allowed for words or strategy between the man and elf. He turned to see an array of explosions and summoned lightning behind him, stunning the fiends . The fear of magic fled from his as raw instinct kicked in. With a roaring Nordic battle cry, he charged ahead into the smoldering mass, hacking and slashing at exposed vitals before the monsters had the chance to recover.
The Dunmer was not only person throwing spells about, as the mage couple from earlier stood their ground as well. One of them—Frenrik didn't know which one—had summoned some sort of lizard-like daedra to tear apart the corprus monsters with powerful fangs and talons, and both Altmer were flinging spells from their staves at any enemy daring to approach. It chilled Frenrik's blood to be surrounded by so much magic, even it was the only thing keeping them from being overwhelmed.
But it wasn't enough. The four fighters were gradually pushed together and surrounded on all sides, and he guessed even the best Companions back home couldn't have withstood the endless onslaught before them. Even though he knew that he and the mages weren't fighting alone-he could hear other legionnaires clashing with the horde elsewhere-the docks themselves were too thick with monsters and smoke to plan a retreat. As even more of the cursed creatures continued to climb up from the depths, his stomach fell as he realized they were going to be overwhelmed unless help came quickly.
A lumbering giant amongst the corprus stalkers advanced on them. Frenrik's steel sword deflected off of it like the monster of made of solid rock. In life, it must have been an impressive orc, but now it was a monolith of living death. It gurgled at him—inhumane sounds emitting from a fat, tumorous face that seemed to contort itself in all the wrong ways. For a moment Frenrik thought he injured the monstrosity with a particularly heavy blow, as flesh was cleaved from bones, and a terrible stench erupted forth from the wound. To his horror Frenrik realized the corprus stalker's skin started rapidly healing itself before him. A second desperate blow broke the blade of Frenrik's sword clean off, and it went flying into the dark waters of Ebonheart.
Whether it was Nord strength or Nord stupidity that made him think pummeling the monstrosity with his fists was a brilliant plan, Frenrik didn't know. He slugged the former person right in the jaw, where squishy, spongy skin gave clear way to a gnarled mess of bone and teeth. A wicked splintering sound distorted the face further, but the corprus monster advanced like nothing had even happened.
A quick glance at the others confirmed they had just as much trouble handling the horde. The daedra disappeared from the Altmers' side, their haggard breaths and empty vials revealing why they hadn't resummoned their aid. The Dunmer woman seemed slightly better off, for what it was worth, but he knew once her mana was also drained, they'd all be in hot water.
The Dunmer turned to him—or, more likely, the menace towering over him—and yelled at him to hit the ground. He dived onto the stone without a second thought as the woman pulled out a scroll and cast an inferno at the corprus beasts with everything she had. Waves of fire as they scorched the very air above him, the sea water hissed and steamed as multitudes of monsters were set aflame. A resounding explosion only confirmed what the contents of the scroll had been.
Frenrik could feel someone trying to pull him to his feet. He stumbled to his feet at quickly as he could. The stench of burning flesh hit him like a blizzard in Winterhold, nearly making the Nord double over again. The wharf had been temporarily cleared, but the beasts stirred and would likely continue their mindless onslaught. The Dunmer wasted no time shoving other scrolls into the hands of Frenrik and their newfound Altmer allies. Before he could even ask what they were for, having never used a spell scroll in his life, she gave them one word of instruction:
"Pray."