Chapter 10 – The Forbidden Halls
Led by Camri, the group walked through Sideways Cave, the way lit only by a torch held by Camri. The floor of the cavern was coated in a thick layer of dust. There had been bootprints in it, but they had stopped a few yards into the cave, where the Dunmer had been hiding. Evidently no-one else had set foot in this cave for a long time. The silence was eerie, almost haunting.
"What are we actually looking for?" Areen whispered.
"Some sort of Ayleid structure" Lunia said from the back of the group. "When the Mages' Guild found it, the entrance was sealed. Maybe it has been re-sealed, who knows"
"We'll re-seal it" Camri said. "It will stop Assurrani from following us. Ariel, is there anything in here?"
Ariel looked around, scanning for purple blotches in her vision caused by her life-detection spell.
"No, it's empty" Ariel replied. "Completely empty"
As they walked down the cave, side-passages led off it, leading to dead ends, rockfalls and vast, yawning chasms. However, Camri was keeping to his natural instinct of navigation and continuing in a straight line.
"Look at this" he said, pointing at one of the walls of the cavern. Whilst the floor, the other wall and the ceiling were rough and coated in dust, one wall was smooth and pale, as if it had had water running over it in the past.
"I guess this cave lives up to its name. This wall is an old waterway. It's as if the entire cave has turned onto its side"
"That means we're looking in the wrong place" Ariel said. "I'm guessing that the passageway leading to Abagarlas was originally on a horizontal plane. Now it will be vertical"
Ariel pointed up. There was a shaft vaulting up into the rock above them. At the top of the shaft, dimly illuminated by the light from Camri's torch, was a door.
"How do we get up there?" Lunia asked.
"We climb" Camri said, inspecting the shaft. "It's narrow, the rock's rough. We should be able to get up it"
Camri handed his torch to Areen, then leapt up and grabbed two handholds in the shaft. Pulling himself up, he was able to climb the rough surface of the shaft like a ladder, his back pressed against the opposite wall.
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"What in the name of the Nine Divines happened in here?" Camri said to himself as he emerged in an enormous cavern. Areen emerged next to him and took in the sight.
The cavern was almost completely taken up by an Ayleid building. It looked like some sort of fortress, albeit one whose outer wall was in a bad state of disrepair. A grand archway vaulted over a wide stairway, which led up to a door leading into unknown depths. Each side of the stairway, waterfalls poured down from two shafts cut into the cavern wall, flooding the bottom of the cavern. And there was something else remarkable about the cavern – it was absolutely covered in tree roots. They sprouted out of the walls and floor of the cavern, coating the floor completely, and growing out of cracks in the walls of the Ayleid building. The whole cavern was bathed in an eerie blue light, coming from the glowing blue crystals that were often found in underground Ayleid buildings.
"Look at that" Areen said, pointing across the cavern. Atop a pillar built on the cavern floor, entwined in tree roots, was a statue of the Daedric Princess Meridia.
"This must be the right place" Camri said. "Remember all those references to Meridia? There she is. Stay alert, we don't know who or what lives here now"
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Eldred paced nervously around the entrance to Sideways Cave. This wasn't good. Assurrani should have been here by now.
Suddenly, he felt a powerful arm grab him from behind, and a blade was held across his throat.
"Hello, Assurrani" Eldred said coolly.
"What are you doing here?" Assurrani asked.
"I am here purely to find out what you are doing here" Eldred replied. "You can see I'm unarmed. You can lower your sword"
Eldred felt Assurrani's grip relieve. He stepped forwards and turned round to face Assurrani.
"Who are you?" Assurrani asked him. "How did you know my name?"
"We've been on your tail ever since you first met General Seminus" Eldred replied. "Myself and Commander Villars... We were the ones who captured you and tried to hold you in Fanacasecul. I'm afraid the Imperial and his group beat you to it"
"And they let you live?"
"Clearly they didn't see me as a threat. Now, Falas, I must ask you. What do you intend to do if and when you find the Marsh Spirit? Don't worry, our aim was to stop General Seminus, not you"
"I am going to destroy it. I know it's too late to stop General Seminus and his men invading Argonia but my guess is that whatever the Marsh Spirit is, it will do more harm than good"
Assurrani looked Eldred up and down. "You're a Buoyant Armiger, aren't you?"
Eldred nodded. "How did you know?"
"I just did" Assurrani replied. He drew a dagger from his belt and handed it to Eldred. "Come on. I'm sure your objective is the same as mine"
"They've left a very obvious trail" Eldred said. "It won't take us long to catch up with them"
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The four approached the large doorway that led into the Ayleid building. Camri tried the door handle, finding that the door opened easily.
"Well, we haven't found the sealed entrance yet" he said. He flung the door open, expecting some awful creature to come leaping out of the darkness at him, but nothing happened. A wide corridor led into the structure, dimly lit by blue crystals.
Suddenly, there was a loud bang from nearby. It came from behind them. It was the door at the top of the shaft being thrown open.
"Form up!" Camri shouted, drawing his bow and aiming at the cavern that led to the shaft. Areen drew his new weapon, a silver mace bought from a smith in the Imperial City. Lunia had also been armed with a shortsword, which she drew from her belt.
Camri expected Assurrani to leap out of the cavern, but someone else did. A Dunmer, dressed in leather armour, holding a dagger. It was Villars' man.
"Damnit, we should have killed him!" Areen said under his breath.
"He wasn't a threat then" Camri replied. "But I agree he is now"
Behind the Dunmer, another figure emerged. Assurrani. Assurrani lost no time in drawing his own bow and firing across the hall. The arrow soared across the cavern straight towards the group. Instinctively, Ariel held up her hands and the arrow stopped in mid-air, inches from striking Lunia in the forehead. Camri returned fire, striking the other Dunmer in the chest and knocking him to the ground.
"Everybody into the building! Now!" Camri shouted, firing another arrow which passed over Assurrani's head by inches. He began shepherding Ariel and Lunia through the open doorway, whilst Areen hurled a poisoned dart across the hall. It struck the advancing Assurrani in the thigh, paralysing him for a few seconds. That was all the time he needed to follow the other three into the building and close the door behind him.
"Move! Move!" Camri shouted, racing through the corridor with the other three following him.
"Watch for traps, Camri!" Areen called from behind him. Ayleid buildings, especially those that served a special purpose such as Abagarlas, were always laced with booby-traps. But Camri knew this. He had explored enough Ayleid ruins to know how to defeat them, knowledge he had passed on to Areen, Ariel and Lunia.
The wide corridor shrank down into a narrower one, with several dangerous-looking vertical slits carved into the walls.
"Swinging blades" Camri called back as he ran. "Ariel, you ready?"
Ariel ran up alongside Camri as he stepped on a trigger stone, causing several razor-sharp blades, moving in a pendulum-like motion, to swing out of the gaps in the walls. As they reached the height of their swings, Ariel froze them in mid-air. As the group ran through the stationary blades, the door of Abagarlas was thrown open as Assurrani caught up with them. When Areen had passed through the blades, Ariel let them fall back into their swing.
Further down the corridor, Camri snagged a trip-wire. Right in front of him, darts began firing out of blowholes in the walls at chest-height. Had he not stopped as soon as he snagged the trip-wire, the hundreds of darts would have shredded him to pieces. Camri dived to the ground and rolled under the stream of darts, prompting the other three to do the same.
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Assurrani carefully ran past each swinging blade, timing his run as the blade swung by him back up into its recess. Soon, he was clear of them but he knew the others would be far ahead by now. Rounding the corner, he saw the dart trap and rolled underneath it, running as fast as he could down the corridor.
Soon he reached a channel with a torrent of water flowing down it crossing the corridor. He saw the Argonian disappearing into a corridor the other side of it, an old plank of wood leaning against the opposite wall of the waterway. It must have been how the others crossed the waterway, then they had moved it so he couldn't follow them.
He saw the Argonian watching him coldly from the corridor beyond.
"Areen! Come on!" he heard a voice which he guessed belonged to the Breton.
"No. Tell Camri to come here. I might need him" the Argonian replied.
Assurrani backed a few paces back into the corridor.
"No!" the Argonian cried suddenly. "Don't jump! You won't make it!"
Assurrani ignored him, ran at the waterway and jumped. Before he jumped, he guessed it to be about four metres wide.
He made three, before he plunged into the foaming torrent and was swept underwater, dragged along the channel by the current.
"Camri!" Areen yelled. He took off his robe, revealing black leather armour underneath it, and dived into the waterway, grabbing Assurrani. Desperately, he tried to fight the current and get a handhold on the edge of the waterway. He could see Assurrani trying to do the same. But as he was dragged underwater, he saw something. The channel seemed to end, about twenty metres in front of them.
Or at least, the water did. There was what looked like a wall of white water approaching them.
Areen quickly realised he was looking at the top of a waterfall.
Still holding onto Assurrani with one hand, he kicked as powerfully as he could away from the waterfall. He couldn't fight the current, but he could slow himself down. But it was no good. Soon, Areen and Assurrani were swept over the edge of the waterfall.
As he fell, Areen saw the ceiling of the huge cavern that Abagarlas was built in. He realised where he was. It was one of the waterfalls that cascaded off the roof of the building, into the underwater lake. And the fall was at least fifty feet. There was no way they were going to survive…
Suddenly, Areen felt a sharp jerk as a force from the side slammed into him. Then, he felt two strong arms wrap around him. Still holding on to Assurrani, he turned round.
It was Camri, holding on to a thick vine. Several of them were growing out of the ceiling of the cavern. He had grabbed one and swung out across the waterfall to save Areen and Assurrani.
Areen grabbed onto the vine, and Assurrani did the same. Eventually, the three of them made it to the opposite side of the waterway, where they needed to be. Areen and Assurrani lay on the ground, coughing and spluttering, spitting out all the water that had found its way into their lungs. As Assurrani began to sit up, Camri pinned him to the ground and poured a mouthful of Areen's paralysis potion into Assurrani's mouth, holding his nose and forcing him to swallow the potion.
"How much did you give him?" Areen asked as Assurrani's limp body fell to the ground.
"A mouthful" Camri replied.
"He'll be out for a few minutes" Areen said. "Come on!"
"I sent Lunia and Ariel ahead" Camri said. "They should have cleared the way by now"
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Ariel ran along the dark corridor, Lunia close behind her. Camri had told her to carry on. She trusted him for one reason. She had seen a vision of Camri and Areen running down a tunnel, Assurrani close behind them. They had not yet been in that tunnel. It was yet to happen, but it was going to happen.
As the corridor widened out, the pair encountered more traps. An enormous metal beam swung down at them, but Ariel froze it in mid-air. A zombie burst out of a false door, but Lunia cut it down with her sword.
Soon, they reached a hall with a stairway leading up to a closed door. The stairway was lined with pedestals containing Varla stones – this was something important.
Soon, Camri and Areen emerged in the hall.
"What happened?" Ariel asked him.
"He's still alive. We've got a few minutes before he's onto us again. And when he does, we're in trouble. He must have realised by now that we are trying to keep him alive. But he will still be trying to kill us. What have you found?"
"This" Ariel said, pointing through the now-open door. A perfectly square, perfectly straight tunnel led into unknown darkness.
"Where does it go?"
"Me and Lunia walked a good hundred yards down it. It just kept going. Wherever it goes, it's somewhere far away"
Camri walked up to the tunnel and faced down it, holding his compass. He turned to Ariel, a look of shock and revelation on his face.
"It points right to Black Marsh!"
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Eldred staggered up to the two guards manning the gate leading into the Market District, an arrow jutting from just below his collarbone.
"By the Nine!" one of the guards exclaimed, running over to Eldred and helping him stand. "What happened to you?"
"I need to speak to a commanding officer!"
"My friend, you may be injured but we don't let anyone speak to the generals!"
Eldred looked at the guard. "My name is Eldred Moravahn, Buoyant Armiger of the Tribunal Temple of Morrowind. I have been working with Commander Villars to find out why General Seminus has deployed the entire Third Battalion to the south. He means to wage war on the Argonians. But as soon as they attack, the Argonians will unleash a secret weapon and defeat Seminus' men. But the Argonians think that the Empire itself is invading them. They will fight back and take everywhere south of Bravil for themselves! And our last hope of stopping the Argonians getting this secret weapon is pursuing agents of Argonia through Sideways Cave! We need to help him!"
The guard turned to his comrade. "Fetch a healer, and get someone else to fetch General Imius. Tell him it's bloody urgent!"
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Soon, twenty Imperial agents were racing through Abagarlas. They were all members of the Expeditionary Force, expert explorers and tomb-raiders. They had encountered traps like those in Abagarlas many-a-time.
They stopped each swinging blade by wedging a block of iron into each groove whilst the blades were at the top of their swing.
One held a shield across the blowholes, stopping the stream of darts.
They used a telekinetic staff to retrieve the bridge that would let them cross the waterway. Then, they reached the doorway leading into the tunnel. But they had found no-one yet, not even the body of Assurrani.