Chapter 3
The Shattered Mines
Bjorn's eyes opened slowly, his surroundings becoming clearer. He sat in a cold, metal seat, jostling slightly, as if on a carriage. As the last clouds of haze lifted, he snapped his head up, alert.
"Hey, you're awake," called a voice across from him. Bjorn looked up to see a dirty but stoic looking dwarf, bound in chains. "You've been out for awhile now, outsider. How's your head feel?"
Bjorn put his hand to his head, feeling the gash where the sword hilt had come down on him. "I've been better," he answered, resting his elbows on his knees. "But I'll survive."
"Good to hear. You'll need your strength."
"Where are my friends?"
"You mean the Dark One and the Man? They're in the car ahead of us. Quite alright, I assure you."
Bjorn turned to the front, seeing a long caravan trekking across a massive bridge. Each carriage was built of dwemer metal, clattering along the bridge. Each one moved on it's own power, the same mystical glow Bjorn saw in the automatons emanating from vents at the head.
"There are no horses. No beasts of burden. How do they move..?"
The dwarf laughed. "I guess there's much you don't know, then. My name is Rourken."
"Bjorn Frosthammer. Pleased to meet someone with manners here."
"Likewise."
"Now, please explain these carriages, and anything else I should know about this place."
Rourken reclined and nodded towards the carriage train. "You may notice there isn't any water here. Without water, the steam power our kind relied on cannot exist. But the Anvil has gifted our kind with new tools with which to improve our civilization. Each automaton, which these carriages could be called, is powered by a rare crystal buried deep in these black masses. With them, they drive pistons with a magicka we have never seen before. We can do everything we could do with steam, and more."
"That's amazing."
"I know, I know. I was the one that discovered them."
"You? Then why-"
"Am I here? On this slave carriage to the Shattered Mines? Because I disagreed with our ForgeLord. Quite the temper on him."
"What'd you disagree on?"
"I wanted to use these gems for the betterment of our race. Draal wanted to use them to drive his war machine."
Before Bjorn could reply, the carriage ground to a halt. The caravan was parked next to a large crevasse, surrounded with metal scaffolding and pulleys. The city of Sunder-Mzel was far behind them now. With the caravan safely across, the bridge groaned and screeched, retracting in on itself. As the last few feet of the bridge disappeared, only the chains tethered this obsidian chunk to the foundation of the capital.
The guards driving the caravan walked around to the back, shouting the prisoners and miners out of the carriages, herding them down into the crevasse. One prisoner broke free and rushed towards the edge of the landmass, stopping at the lip. The guards rushed after him, swords drawn, but they hesitated when the Dwemer took a step over the edge. Bjorn saw him disappear over the ledge into the void below, after which the guards sheathed their blades and returned to corralling the prisoners.
"Why did he do that?" Bjorn asked, turning to Rourken.
"The Mines test the will and strength of every man," he answered, jumping down off the carriage. "Rather than be tortured by their own race, they prefer to be tested by the Daedra in their own realm, praying they'll fare better."
Bjorn searched for Drenyir and Pyric, just glimpsing them disappearing down into the mines. Once the guards were out of earshot, Rourken sauntered up beside him.
"Keep quiet and keep your head down. Stick with me and I'll tell you whatever you want to know."
Bjorn nodded silently as the guards pushed them down into the crevasse. Compared to the relatively mild air outside, the innards of the stone were blisteringly hot and reeked of strange magicka. Staircases cut into the stone led deep into the caverns, weathered by the travels of many pairs of feet. Rail systems wound in and out of various tunnels with self-propelled minecarts hauling black stone, bronze metal, and peculiar purple gems rushing to various unseen chambers. Off in the distance, the rumble of machinery could be heard, which Bjorn figured was some machine designed to dig out new tunnels.
Packed shoulder to shoulder, the crowd of laborers shuffled down the stairs and huddled into a large central cavern. Armored guards with contraptions that appeared to be crossbows without strings patrolled the chamber from elevated platforms supported by metal scaffolding. As the disheveled prisoners stood murmuring, a distinguished dwarf addressed the crowd from the central scaffolding. With a black whip in one hand and one of the strange crossbow devices in the other, he scanned the crowd, the disgust apparent in his aged eyes.
"Attention! Attention, you ingrates!" he boomed, leaning on the rail over his flock. "I am Warden Cragin, your master in the Shattered Mines. I will begin by saying I take no shame in condemning my own kind to the mines. A Dwemer that commits treason, or does not provide a useful skill to the empire, is no use to us. The old, the blind, the sick, and the unskilled. All you are good for is swinging a pick at the stone. But I can see that not all in our group are Dwemer. There are three here, all outsiders. Two men and a Chimer, though none of you may recognize him. To you three individuals, I warn you that you will find no sympathy here. To all of you, as you enter the mines you will be given your pick and sent to work, and here you will work until the strength leaves you. Dismissed."
The guards shoved the mass of prisoners forward, funneling them into the mines through a narrow passageway. Pushed into a single file line, one guard distributed pick-axes to each worker and pushed them through a thick metal gate.
"Quite a character, that Warden, eh?" Rourken joked, watching Cragin disappear into a tunnel up on the scaffolding.
Bjorn thought for a moment about the Warden. He appeared to be an older dwarf, one who had seen many years and had many experiences. The darkness of the mines had given him slightly paler skin, and what was once a grand black beard had withered to a scraggly grey scruff that hung down to his shoulders. As old as he seemed, the Warden appeared to be built like a younger man, strong and tall, with impeccable posture and authority. His armor was not ornate, but appeared to serve only for practical purposes, seemingly cobbled together by whatever pieces were available.
"I have a feeling this is not the last we'll be seeing of Warden Cragin," Bjorn muttered.
Once Bjorn reached the distributor, the guard cautiously eyed Godbane, which hung expectantly at Bjorn's hip. With one gesture, another guard approached and was assigned to Bjorn as a safety precaution. Once he, his supervisor, and Rourken had entered the actual mine shaft, they broke off into one of the many endless tunnels, the unmistakable sound of working picks echoing through the caverns. In front of Bjorn and Rourken was a vein of dull bronze metal, which Rourken explained was a material incredibly similar to the Dwemer metal in Tamriel.
"After you," he grinned. "You have first swing."
Bjorn sighed and turned to the wall, raising his pickaxe above his head. With a swift swing, he brought the pick down on the stone, which clinked disappointingly and scraped off a few pebbles.
"Oh for the love of Talos..." he sighed, taking another swing. "Is it like this all over?"
Rourken laughed as he watched Bjorn struggle with the wall. "Welcome to the Shattered Mines! There's a reason people are here forever." And with that, the Dwemer hoisted his pick and began helping.
After a few hours, the pile of jet black pebbles had grown in size up to Bjorn's knees. The hours had passed with no words exchanged between the two, with Bjorn's supervisor intently watching him as they worked. Disregarding the silent guard, he turned to Rourken and attempted to create conversation, as well as find out a bit more about the Anvil.
"Earlier," he began, taking another swing, "you said some Dwemer would rather be judged by Daedra than be imprisoned by their own kind. How exactly do they go about doing that?"
Rourken chuckled, staggering backwards to rest his arms. "You noticed the swirling voids above and below the Anvil, correct?"
"That I did. Quite a sight."
"Well, they aren't just pretty clouds, you know. The fiery one below us is a gateway to their realm. And the blue one above us? Thats Aetherius."
"The Anvil was said to be built between the two worlds..."
"Precisely. Anyway, they're gateways, not windows. Doors to their world. Should someone fall off an Anvil stone, they plummet directly into Oblivion. There, they will either be saved and have their souls tested by whichever Daedra they're unlucky enough to encounter, or they will simply fall through it, landing with a splat on whatever hard surface they hit first."
"So is there a way into Aetherius, then?"
"Theoretically, yes. But falling up, isn't really an option, is it, Bjorn? I suppose one of our airships could pass through... but the Aedra are heretic gods and false idols. We have no dealings with them."
"And the gold links stretching to the horizon; what of them?"
"Those, Bjorn, are what keeps the Aedra from destroying the Anvil. When we Dwemer appeared here, the only thing we found was a diagram, written in archaic script the likes of which not seen since before the Aedra built the Adamantine Tower. Turns out this diagram was the plans left by Magnus on how to maintain Nirn from the spiritual realm. So, seeing this as our opportunity to secure our place here, our race, numbering in the tens of thousands, set out to keep Nirn from falling into disrepair from right here in the Anvil. Because it saved the Aedra the effort of doing it themselves, they left us alone, so long as we continued to keep the world from collapsing in on itself."
"Magnus' blueprints? Impossible..."
"Thats what we all thought, but there they were. The only recognizable thing in the realm."
"So where'd your people go from there?"
"After the discovery of the plans, thats when Draal began systematically eliminating his competition. After the bodies of his military officers were thrown into the void, he decreed that following the plans should be the task of the Dwemer. After all, we needed some kind of task to keep ourselves busy. Us dwarves are always thinking of the future; never the present."
"How did you discover the metals beneath the surface?"
"The plans told us, believe it or not. We lacked tools at first, with the exception of dwarves who arrived with picks and shovels already in hand. ForgeLord Draal used the power of Sunder to create this chasm we call the Shattered Mines and commanded us to dig. This shaft we're in now is one of hundreds; part of a system that has been thousands of your years in the making. Once the chasm was open, the few who were prepared opened the veins and soon a steady flow of metals were coming out of the mines. Our grasp of magicka allowed us to melt it down, forming it into casts to make tools, weapons, bricks, cogs... whatever we would need. Then we found the crystals. The crystals are placed in resonation chambers in each city's central spire. The crystals systematically exert energy, which is channeled out through the links to places all across Nirn."
Bjorn's guard stepped forward, pushing Rourken to the ground. "Enough of that talk, laborer," he growled, stepping back once more. "The outsider doesn't need to know that much."
Rourken staggered to his feet and spat at the guard, who remained unmoving.
"Whatever you say, sir, but with all due respect, I'm gonna keep talking."
The guard voiced no objections. Met with silence, Rourken smiled and picked up his pick again. "Let me ask you something, Bjorn."
"Its not like I can say no, can I?"
"Not a chance. Have you noticed you haven't been hungry? Or plagued by thirst?"
Now that Rourken mentioned it, Bjorn did notice that the simplest of necessities had not registered with him since he got here.
"Strange, right?" Rourken continued, heaving his pick into the stone. "While we don't know why, the Anvil makes it so we need any food nor water. The only thing we're limited by is our strength, which dwindles the longer we work. We can sleep, sure, but its not like they'll let us here. We think maybe its because this is a spirit realm, not a physical world like Nirn. Here we labor as somewhere in between: soulss simply manifested as recognizable, physical forms. A soul has no need to eat or drink, but can lose strength the longer it has to keep it's 'husk' working."
Bjorn nodded, absorbing the information. Raising his pickaxe high as he'd done so many times, his swing finally sheared off a chunk of the black stone, exposing the huge deposit of bronze metal. Rourken and Bjorn exchanged swings, cleaving off large hunks of ore, which tumbled into a pile at their feet. When a sizeable about of metal had been collected, Rourken turned to the guard.
"All done at this vein. Can you send for a cart, please?"
The guard hesitated before stepping out into the shaft, calling for a cart to be sent down to them. Bjorn and Rourken began hauling the ore to the edge of the tunnel, waiting for it to be picked up and shipped somewhere deeper in the mines.
"Besides my own lapdog here," Bjorn started, gesturing towards the guard, who bided his time dragging his foot through the dust, "there are no guards in the shaft. Do they trust us that much?"
Rourken almost fell over laughing, supporting himself on his pick. Once he caught his breath, he turned to Bjorn. "Trust?" he laughed, bending over to grab another hunk of ore. "There is no 'trust' here. There's simply... no way out. If the prisoners start killing each other, the Warden doesn't care. There is only one gate out of this shaft and its locked tight, and there are plenty of guards on the other side of that gate with magnicasters ready to pick us off..."
"Magnicasters? I knew the dwarves were adept, to an extent, with magicka, but I never knew they had battlemages."
"Magnicasters are not battlemages, Bjorn. You are familiar with our crossbows, yes? A magnicaster works in a similar way. Only instead of a bolt, a small ball of metal is fitted into the firing tube. At the pull of a trigger, a powerful field is exerted from one of the Anvil's crystals installed at the rear of the firing tube. A heavy casing protects the marksman from the blast, but most of the force is exerted down the tube, pushing the ball out of the chamber and through the air at terrifying speeds with great stopping power. Like I said, the Anvil allows our race to do great things."
"You did say Draal wanted to build up a war machine..."
"That I did."
"A few hundred of those in the hands of Tamriel's best marksmen could spell doom for any opposing army. But why do you need them here?"
"I don't know why he would need these devices, let alone so many of them. Unless our ForgeLord suspects something coming on horizon."
Once all the ore in the pile had been delivered, Bjorn's guard ordered them back to work on the vein. Rourken eyed Godbane dangling at Bjorn's hip, and with one look, Bjorn knew what his Dwemer friend wanted to do.
"You know, I'm getting real sick of you," Rourken groaned, dropping his pick. "Standing there, silently judging us. Just remember, you're just as vulnerable and alone down here as we are."
The guard seemed puzzled at first, then concern began growing in his eyes. Then fear. As the guard fumbled to draw his sword, Bjorn pulled Godbane from its sheathe, slashing the guard across the chest, the glimmering blade rending the armor like parchment. The guard toppled forward and was caught by Bjorn and Rourken to avoid the clatter of his armor on the ground. Once the guard was safely tucked away in an obscure crevasse and Rourken had procured his sword, the two stepped out into the shaft.
Hundreds of dwarves labored endlessly to dig out black stone, ore, and gems from the rock. The relentless sound of picks and minecarts made it hard for Bjorn to hear his own thoughts. But above the clatter, Bjorn could make out a distinct accent coming from deeper down the shaft. Hurrying down the stairway, Bjorn and Rourken followed the aggressive outbursts until the complaints were heard clearly at the end of another tunnel. Within, Bjorn found Drenyir and Pyric, methodically chipping away at a crystal patch as the Dark Elf swore loudly. An unconscious dwarf lay at his feet, a small trickle of blood seeping down a swollen lip. With his pick raised high, Drenyir turned to the tunnel mouth, seeing Bjorn and Rourken watching patiently.
"Well its about damn time the cavalry showed up," Drenyir complained, dropping his pickaxe on the Dwemer man with a dull thud. "Please tell me you got a plan to get out of 'ere. The clatterin' of these picks is driving me nuts."
"What happened to him?" Bjorn asked, nudging the dwarf's body with his foot.
"Swit tried to off me, claiming he wouldn't work with a dirty Chimer." He spat on the body, which stirred just a little. "I taught him good."
Pyric turned to the three of them, a small frown etched on his face. "Terribly sorry to inform you," he began, presenting his wrists which were clasped with strange glowing bracers. "But they've bound me in slave bracers... meaning my skills with magic are of no use in our escape plan until they are removed."
Drenyir shot him an aggravated look. "Well, you weren't going to be much use anyway, I'd suspect."
Rourken stepped forward. He stood about as tall as Drenyir, meeting him at eye level. Of course, Rourken had his characteristic smile plastered on his face as he extended his hand to the Dunmer. "Greetings, Dark Elf," he began, retracting his hand as it became apparent that Drenyir would not return the gesture. "Before we begin, allow me to introduce myself. I'm Rourken, the once chief scientist and researcher at Emberfall Palace."
"Pleasures mine, I assure you."
Rourken looked around the tunnel before peering back out into the mineshaft. The situation had not changed, with hundreds of laborers working tirelessly, and not a single guard to be found. Rourken clapped his hands together and smiled.
"Well, we've got a bit of a wait, but I think I know a way out. But we'll need help."
