Scarlet Snow

Chapter Two: Towers

By: Nekhs

Some time passed, before Scarlet felt safe enough to venture out into the open again: she found herself unable to shake the feeling that someone, somewhere, was watching her.

No one dared to show themselves, however.

Seeing no monsters in her path, she still kept low and quiet, barely breathing as she returned to the thin, paved road. She'd passed several buildings on her mad flight; surely one of them would take her to the surface.

Making her way towards one of the large stone structures may have been a mistake, however.

It stood to reason that in this shadowed underworld, every place that could offer even the smallest sanctuary had been claimed by someone - or something. In this case, she felt a strange tingle throughout her body, and instinctively, she threw herself to the side. The lightning bolt missed her by an inch; its passing made the little hairs on her arms stand on end.

The blast of raw electricity left a kind of trail, a blazing white line against the darkness that slowly faded. That path, then, would take her to something that wanted her very dead. Once again, Lady Nocturnal stood with her - the falmer who had chosen to attack her was unarmed, unarmored, and very much alone.

She'd never seen one before, though of course, Uncle had told her of them. The thing had wrinkled skin where its eyes should have been, and its nose was entirely misshapen, but otherwise it looked more or less like a ghost-white elf. It hunched over, though, its posture more like an animal than that of a truly sentient creature.

Of course, she took all this in as she closed the distance between them.

Fire exploded from her palm with a roar, providing a particularly deadly distraction, before he could cast another offensive spell towards her. The falmer brought his gnarled hands up, and a crystalline barrier formed before him, absorbing the brunt of the blast and deflecting the rest. It obviously took quite a bit of concentration to maintain, so she kept the pressure up as she walked forward, sacrificing speed for precision. One of them would have to give, but who?

When she stood a foot away from him, she stopped the flames. Darting forward with quick, sharp movements, she caught the creature by surprise, the knife in her left hand driving up, under his ribcage and into his heart. She held him close as he gasped his last, twisting the blade harshly, before ripping it free. When he was truly dead, she dropped him carelessly to the ground.

The books Uncle had made her study were entirely accurate on this point: the ward had not protected him in the least from physical contact.

Once again, she felt that sick sense in the pit of her stomach, the knowledge that something, somewhere, was watching her, measuring her. perhaps. It didn't show itself, but then - it didn't have to. She knew it was there, and she sensed that it was oh-so-aware of how its presence rattled her nerves.

She ducked into a small alcove carved into the side of the building, trying once again to see the searching eyes.

But no, there was nothing.

Scarlet took a shaky breath, and began her search for the entrance to the tower.

The street hooked all the way around a rather large protrusion of rock, but she saw the arch that marked the right and proper entrance just above. Rather than risk her chances while climbing, she instead circled around, following the stone-paved road and keeping her footfalls soft and light.

The archway was wide open and absent of any guardian - she took that as an invitation to walk inside. She paid no mind to the intricate carvings that marked these walls, nor did she particularly care how pretty the hanging lantern seemed. Scarlet kept her knife ready, her magic bubbling inside her, filling her up. She was almost certain someone, or something perhaps, would oppose her. What a pointless waste of life - if they'd only let her by, she wouldn't have to end them.

An arrow pinged off the wall next to her, confirming her suspicions. How exactly a blind creature came to be an archer, Scarlet had no idea, but she was ready for him. Flame erupted in a pillar, starting under the falmer and engulfing him as he screamed. Sinking to his knees, he thrashed, trying to put the fire out by clawing at his own melting flesh.

Scarlet looked around.

This wasn't the way, she realized, annoyed all the more.

She took the falmer's bow while he writhed in agony on the ground. Uncle had made her read about all manner of weapons, and so she knew, more or less, how to operate such a thing. She knew she needed the arrows he kept in his thick, leather quiver, for example, and she also knew that the bow was one of the few convenient means of transporting death across long distances.

She liked the idea behind the bow: if she managed to see - and strike! - a monster first, before it even saw her, then so much the better. She put an arrow clumsily to the bowstring, getting a sense of how it felt. Using the base of one of the tall mushrooms as a target, she took a few practice shots, finding the weapon's range and strength. She'd never held a bow before, but she could tell this one was not a good specimen, especially not for her. Its was hard to draw, being thicker than she would have figured. Still, it would do. By the time she'd used up all of the crude arrows, she was fairly confident she could hit a target, at least.

Feeling a bit less like she had completely wasted her time, Scarlet padded back down the ramps that led up to that dais. She really could care less if the falmer lived or died, though with burns that bad, he would probably wish for death if it hadn't already claimed him.

He had stopped moving, anyway.

That building was not the only one she'd seen, and so after she reclaimed the arrows she'd used, she made her way along the road, quieter than a whisper in the still air. Spotting something that looked rather promising in what appeared to be a kind of forest made of mushrooms, and noting a rather imposing figure on the road ahead, she ducked into the forest instead. Scarlet kept the bow at the ready, her knife hanging neatly from her belt, just in case. Her eyes were everywhere, looking for the tiniest of movements to betray a monster. The light here was bright enough to be almost blinding, after so much time in darkness, but she forced herself to peer through the brilliance of it all the same.

She would not be caught unawares again.

Another road bisected the mushroom forest, and this one led under a kind of bridge between two towers. She spotted movement on that bridge, and held deathly still, waiting. It walked with a slouch, its shape suggesting that it was another falmer. When it came to a stop, she drew the bow back. Taking a deep breath to steady herself, she released the arrow. It struck the creature, but as it fell forward off of the ledge it had perched upon, the falmer screeched the alarm. Another of its kind trotted down the ramp, carrying a thick, shiny, black shield and an odd sort of axe.

This one had gotten close enough, she could see him clearly in the light given off by the mushroom 'trees.' His head whipped towards her, pinpointing her by the creak of her bow, she supposed, as she drew back and loosed again. She aimed for his head, but the arrow pierced his shoulder instead - good enough for her. His pained cry indicated she'd done some kind of damage, and he dropped the shield, charging her with just the axe. She took the too-thick bow in both hands and swung it, hard, at the creature's head. He went down in a heap. For good measure, she slit his throat with her knife. Only when she was completely certain he wasn't getting up again did she move on, to investigate the tower.

There were no twists or turns to this building. The ramp led up, the bridge went over a small gap - there was only one way to go. This path was not nearly so clean. It seemed to have been worn into the cavern's edges by persistent travel, rather than architectural ingenuity.

She eventually did come across another paved road, and there, she paused a moment.

A kind of egg-shaped cradle greeted her eyes. Inside, it held an even larger construct than the one she'd fought for her first taste of freedom. This one looked massive, not to mention deadly, and Scarlet naturally decided that she did not want to encounter such a thing in a fight. She edged past it, giving it as wide a berth as possible.

Scarlet wandered, coming to a waterfall that drained from one lake into another.

Everything seemed to blend together, in her memory, such that she could not say for certain that she was not retracing steps she'd already taken, at least, until she found the road again.

Here she came almost face-to-face with another of the massive constructs, though it seemed almost asleep. All the same, she skirted around it, crossing a bridge that stood over the lake. She was sure she saw some kind of tower in the distance. Her attention was distracted by a massive globe, made from the same metal as the constructs, but woven together with painstaking care. It was almost blinding in its golden radiance; the orb glowed brighter than even the center of the mushroom forest.

She considered taking the stairs that led up to that monument, instead, but such a place was almost certainly well-guarded. Lady Nocturnal did not favor fools.

No, better to stick to the plan. She made for the tower she saw, determinedly.

The large double door she came to reminded her of the one that had sealed her room tightly shut. A quick, experimental shove, however, opened these doors with ease, allowing her to walk inside. She looked up - and up. It was dizzying, how far up the tower seemed to go, with no obvious stairs, ramps, or even ladders to climb - just empty space, farther than her eyes could see. She tripped over the lever, and the gears began to grind.