After they scavenged the storage room for potions, they had to climb over several other pieces of rubble on the other side of the second entrance to the room to get to another hallway.

"How big is this place?" Lokir asked, feeling the side of his head where the hair was shaved short. Blasted Stormcloaks.

"Big," Hadvar replied in his accented voice. "I don't think I've even been through all of it."

Rayla narrowed her eyes at him from between the bandage across her face. They'd tried to get her to drink one of the healing potions they'd found, but she refused, saying that such a small bottle wouldn't heal a big wound, and that they should save it for later. "And yet you're guiding us through this place?"

"Do you have a better idea?"

"Not really," she admitted. "Please, continue."

Hadvar rolled his eyes and led them down a steep incline. Lokir felt his frustration. Being trapped with an Imperial soldier and am injured warrior while a dragon flew around outside wasn't exactly on his top ten list of things to do, but they had little choice. For now, they were all stuck with each other.

Hadvar stopped suddenly, looking conflicted.

"What is it?" Rayla asked, hand on her sword.

"I think we're nearing the torture room," he replied. "Gods, I wish we didn't need these."

Lokir reluctantly strained his ears, listening for the tell-tale signs of a man being tortured. For a moment, he heard nothing. Then he heard a man cry out in pain, the sound echoing up to where the three stood frozen.

Rayla and Hadvar both started running, and Lokir hesitantly sprinted after them. He'd accidentally left his borrowed sword in the storage room. It wasn't like he knew how to use it, but Rayla was right. He'd rather have that than nothing at all.

When they reached the torture room at the bottom of the stairs, there was a surprise waiting for them. Nobody was currently being tortured, but there were three more Stormcloaks attacking two Imperials, whom Lokir assumed were the torturers. The room was already covered in blood, and three cages stood against the farthest wall. One corner of the room held a caged-off counter.

Lokir prepared to step back and let Rayla and Hadvar run forward to help the Imperials, but only Hadvar drew his sword. Confused once more, Lokir looked at Rayla, only to find her green eyes staring intensely at the mutilated body of a Stormcloak on the floor. The man had no fingernails, and one of his eyes had been…Lokir didn't even know how to describe it. Blood fanned out from the dead rebel like the sinister wings of an angel.

He looked back at Rayla to see her look at the tortured Stormcloak, then at the torturers, before taking her hand off of her sword.

This time, Lokir did vomit. He rushed to the corner of the room and hurled the contents of his meager breakfast onto the stones, trying his best to get out the sickness that he suddenly felt. When he turned back to the chaos, wiping his mouth, the two torturers were dead, but so were all of the Stormcloaks.

Hadvar sighed as he flicked the blood off his sword. "I can't believe these people called themselves Imperials."

Rayla said nothing, but as Lokir tried to wipe some of the bile from his shirt, he saw that she seemed very agitated as she stepped over the body of the torturer in the hood. As an added insult to the dead man, she reached down and tore his hood off of his armor, tying it around her own neck with a wince as the leather brushed her facial bandage. When she pulled the hood up, her bandage wasn't even visible—no doubt that had been her intent.

Lokir groaned in disgust as he wiped his hands off on his pants and stepped over the bodies in the room. In doing so, he stumbled into the wooden table near one of the pillars holding up the ceiling and knocked a book and a dagger to the floor.

Grinning, Lokir picked up the steel dagger and hooked it into his belt, glad to finally have a weapon that he was comfortable using. Curiously, he looked at the black book that had fallen to the floor, titled, The Book of the Dragonborn. Of course, because he was a Nord who had grown up with stories of the Dragonborn—and there was currently a dragon flying around the keep he was taking shelter in—he snatched the book off the ground and placed it in a satchel that he hadn't knocked off the table. As he did, he noticed the jingle of metal at the bottom of the bag. Feeling a flash of hope, Lokir dug around in the bottom of the satchel, only to find four lockpicks.

His grin widened. Lockpicks were as common as copper but as precious as gold to thieves like him. These would come in handy.

As soon as that thought crossed his mind, Rayla said, "Hey, I think this guy is still alive!"

Lokir spun to find her staring at one of the metal cages. Quickly, he stepped over the bodies to join her, and was shocked by what he saw. A man was lying on his back in the cage, unconscious. However, his chest was rising and falling, albeit weakly. His hands were closed around a book with some kind of spell symbol on it, and he was dressed in the cotton robes of a mage.

"Did either of you find anything to break the lock?" Rayla asked, turning to look at Hadvar.

Lokir was already on the move, delving into his newfound satchel to grab a lockpick and holding the steel dagger in his other hand. He may have been a thief, but he wasn't the type of man to leave another for dead. Especially not after what the torturer had done to the Stormcloak on the other side of the room.

Luckily, the lock wasn't terribly difficult—it was a wonder that this meager thing could keep any prisoners in at all. A few moments later, the lock opened with a quiet snick, and the cage door swung open.

When he stepped into the cage, he was surprised by the absence of the smell of blood. In fact, the cage was probably the cleanest smelling part of the dungeon. Below him, the slumbering mage gave no indication that he was going to wake up. His breathing had become even more faint, so much so that Lokir wasn't even sure if the man was breathing at all.

"Is he alive?" Rayla asked from outside the cage.

Lokir leaned down by the mage and pressed two fingers against the man's neck. The mage's skin was cold and clammy. Perhaps he wasn't feeling for the pulse correctly enough, because he couldn't feel anything at all on the mage's skin.

Suddenly, the body of the mage jerked upward, and Lokir yelped and scrambled backwards as the mage sat up, eyes glowing a deep, dark blue. The book he had been holding hit the metal floor with a thud.

"Necromancer!" Hadvar exclaimed, drawing his sword.

The mage looked straight at Hadvar, then shook his head. "No," he said.

His voice was deep and sounded unnatural, but for some reason Lokir didn't find it menacing. Maybe he had hit his head against the bars, but he didn't feel threatened by this mage all. Perhaps it was just because the accused necromancer was just…sitting there.

"Lokir," Rayla said, her voice dripping with caution, "Why don't you get out of the cage now?"

The mage looked at her, cocked his head, and said in a monotone voice, "Last born."

Rayla frowned. "Urm…okay?"

Lokir started to move, but his foot scraped the spell tome on the floor, and the attention of the mage turned to him.

"Nocturnal," the mage said. "Akatosh. Take my robes."

"Uh…" Lokir said, slowly backing away. "I think that I'm going to have to pa—"

"Take my robes," the mage repeated, a bit more emphatically.

Then he turned into dust.

It was very sudden. One moment he was a man with creepy glowing eyes, and the next he was crumbling into ash on the floor. Lokir cursed and jumped backwards to avoid breathing in the dead mage.

They all stared at the pile for a full minute before anyone said anything.

"Well," Hadvar eventually said. "That was interesting."

"Interesting?" Rayla demanded. "He just collapsed into dust after he died!"

The keep shook again as the dragon flew overhead. Lokir ducked out of instinct, though nothing rained from the ceiling.

"If we're not careful," he said, "it'll be us who turns to dust next."

Rayla and Hadvar nodded and sheathed their weapons.

"We'd better get moving, then," Rayla said, looking shaken as she walked toward the tunnel entrance on the other side of the room.

Hadvar followed her, but Lokir hesitated for a moment, looking down at the now empty robes of the mage. Whatever had just happened, it felt significant. He couldn't just leave these things here.

Quickly, and with as much respect as he could muster, Lokir shook out the mage's robes and stuffed them inside his satchel. After a moment's hesitation, he stuffed the mage's spell tome in there as well. What was the worst that could happen? It didn't seem right to just leave it there, and if the mage's stuff turned out to be trouble, Lokir could just sell it off.

Oh, yes. He rather liked that idea. As he stood and slung the satchel across his back, Lokir couldn't help but grin as he pictured the coin that a spell tome would bring.

After all, he was still a thief.