Chapter Fourteen: Elder Knowledge I.
Following Septimus' instructions they followed the rough trail from Winterhold southwest into the mountains. As they passed through the town they stopped at the College to return the sled, the trip much faster without the extra weight. They restocked their food supply and picked up their potions and cloaks. M'rassi swapped her patched knapsack for Malborn's old satchel and packed a weeks-worth of food for the two of them into it. Onmund took their potions and a new,blank journal, the last one was completely filled after speaking with Paarthurnax.
They climbed up to the Hsaarik glacier, passing by the College excavation at Saarthal. They ascended up to the top of the glacier along a large crevasse, finding themselves battered by the wind in a horrifying blizzard. The storm had rolled in while they were venturing across the ice and had sat like a brooding bird over the mountain range since.
"Lok-Vah-Koor!" M'rassi Shouted, pushing back the dark clouds long enough to spot a small shack that had been hastily constructed beside the distinctive peaked spire of a Dwemer tower.
The storm clouds were rolling back in when they reached the ramshackle hut. M'rassi was disappointed that most of the wood cladding had been torn off by the howling wind. From the shack they could see a few more spires poking hesitantly out of the ice. There were several collapsed tents, half covered in snow, protecting a pair of poor fools who'd perished from the cold.
"Looks like someone was running an expedition here. Not the College." Onmund said.
"Hmm?" M'rassi turned away from the whirling snow and saw Onmund on a rickety table flipping through a rough folio of notes.
"The expedition manifest. There're seven of them apparently."
"Including the snowmen outside?"
"I don't think so. Says here they all planned to go inside when the storm hit. I don't know who those poor souls were. It says the tower is locked but they found a fissure in the glacier that goes into the ruins. Maybe we should try to find them?"
"What are we waiting for, then?" M'rassi said, pulling her cloak tighter and shivering.
"Still not really used to the cold yet, are you?" Onmund smiled, shoving the manifest into his satchel.
"No, I'm fine, really." M'rassi tried to deny it, but her chattering teeth, the hood covering her ears and her hands jammed into her armpits were a dead giveaway. "Alright, I'm freezing my tail off." She admitted.
"There should be a way down to the fissure nearby."
"Good."
They found a fragile looking catwalk leading down the face of the ice. The wood was snow-covered and slippery, and the wind was strong. It was a relief when the narrow walkway disappeared into a crevasse. The gap turned into an ice-cave, strewn with crates, barrows and various digging tools. This was the team's refuge, so where were they?
It wasn't long before they found blood. It was a small puddle, frozen on the ice, near a scattered fire pit. M'rassi readied her magic, just in case, a sizzling sound telling her Onmund was doing the same.
"I don't think I like the look of this... " Onmund stated.
"Me either." M'rassi agreed.
They found a journal by the expedition leader, apparently an ex-Legion soldier named Sulla. It revealed the men had been trapped by the storm, and Sulla had ordered them to carry on with the excavation. Maybe there was some hope of finding the team alive yet.
They followed the blood train further into the ice-tunnel, the frozen pools growing more and more frequent. As they were passing a rough wall made from and assortment of oddly shaped wood pieces they heard a voice.
"Where is it? I know you were trying to keep it for yourself J'zhar... You always try to keep it for yourself!"
They froze. This must be one of the khajiiti labourers that had hired on to the expedition. From the sounds of it, the speaker was nearby.
"No! There's got to be more skooma... " Bottles rattled, echoing through the cave. "Shut up! Shut up! Don't lie to me J'zhar! You hid it! You always try to steal it from me!"
M'rassi frowned, ears laid back. Skooma addicts.
They carefully moved on, creeping through the tunnels to avoid alerting the skooma-withdrawal crazed khajiit. Skooma withdrawal made most people either apathetic or violent. In Elsweyr many of the city khajiit became addicted to the skooma, refined from moon sugar and M'rassi had seen more than her fair share of addicts growing up in Orcrest. She had never touched the stuff.
Soon the ice tunnel gave away to the Dwemer ruins proper. The walls were made of stone, with pipes made of the Dwarven metal ran the length, large enough to crawl inside. Snow and ice had worked its way into the ruins but melted away from the warm pipes. The Dwarves had used steam and natural gases to power their strange machines. M'rassi was very excited to finally set foot in the ruins, she'd been fascinated by the Dwemer her whole life.
They came to a big room with a large table. Scattered on top of it were a great many books, soul gems and strange looking tools. There were a pair of Dwemer automatons, half dismantled to reveal their inner workings. They resembled spiders, and seemed to be powered by a small boiler hooked up to a space where a soul gem might fit. An ink well had spilled, soaking the cover of a book that lay nearby. Next to the table was a bedroll that looked like the owner had left it with great haste.
M'rassi used a scrap of linen to clean the ink off the book, and was amazed to discover that the vellum pages inside had not been stained. Flipping through the book she discovered they were the research notes of a mage named Valie, evidently unaffiliated with the College. She'd been pulling apart the spider-machines after they attacked the khajiit brothers. She had got excited when she saw a shadow moving behind the barred door.
M'rassi got a bad feeling when she read that last bit, looking over at the passage which was sealed off with a series of barred horizontal bars. There were several gears clanking away on the other side, and a lever in the middle of the floor. Testing the air with her nose, she smelled the metallic tang of blood, although it was faint. It was hard to see the blood trail on the cold stone, there were only a few flecks, and those were frozen.
Keeping an ear trained on the barred passage, she turned her attention back to the Dwemer-spiders, pointing pulling one over to examine.
"See the joints here, imagine the skill needed to smith such small pieces and make them hinge together so smoothly." She pointed with her claws.
"You've seen one of these before?" He bent down to examine it.
"Magister Irorian had one back in Riverhold. He called it a Centurion Spider. It was in terrible condition compared to these and he kept it locked up. He never let the novices look at it, so one day I broke into his chambers so I could see it. I learned more about the Dwemer machines in five minutes than seven years of reading. I was caught and disciplined, but it was worth it." M'rassi smiled fondly, remembering the astonished look on the old mer's face at her audacity.
Onmund listened eagerly. After the confrontation with Ancano all those months ago, she'd never really spoken of Riverhold and her past with the Synod. She could and did speak of Elsweyr for hours on end, and they often made comparisons between their cultures, but M'rassi always shied from her own past. He did not press her, she would tell him when she was ready; of that, he was certain.
So he listened, watched and sketched as she showed him how the joints in the legs moved, her enthusiasm spilling over into him as well. It wasn't until they heard a loud clang behind them, that they pulled themselves from the machines, just as a pipe emitted a small ball of metal. The ball shot out legs, revealing itself as a very-much alive Dwemer-spider.
"Fantastic! Look at the way its legs move, like a real spider!" M'rassi seemed oblivious to the menacing way it was advancing.
"It doesn't look very friendly." Onmund warned her, readying his magic.
The metal spider launched itself at the khajiit, slamming into her and pinning her to the ground. It started to batter her with its claws, while she tried to wrestle it off her. Onmund shot it with a spear of ice, but it hardly seemed to do anything. He mentally slapped himself, maybe lightning would have a better effect?
"Fus-Ro-Dah!" M'rassi Shouted.
Her Thu'um flung the spider off, sending it crashing into the ceiling where it smashed, raining down all sorts of complicated components. M'rassi laid there panting, weaving a healing spell for her bruises.
"Are you alright?" Onmund helped her to her feet.
"I'll be fine. I should have heard that coming, sorry. Anyway we'll probably see more of these as we get deeper. The mage's notes said something about an 'Animonculory' where the Dwemer constructed their machines. For now, we should only make quick sketches." M'rassi said, though truth be told, the sudden attack had shaken her, and her skin was crawling beneath her fur.
"Okay. What's the matter?" He noticed her distracted look.
Her ears were back and the very tip of her tail twitched in agitation. She looked worried.
"It's just... I've got a feeling... a bad one... " She twitched her ears briefly.
"How bad?"
"Like at the Embassy, before everything went to Oblivion and back."
"You think something might happen?"
"I don't know... just promise me this: Whatever happens, finding the Elder Scroll is our top priority."
He took her hands gently. "I promise. We can still look at the machines as we go, but we'll be more careful."
"Thank you." She kissed him sweetly.
Onmund stuffed the ink-stained notes back into his satchel along with his journal; M'rassi pilfered any food the excavation team left, which wasn't much.
They carried on through the ruins, soon finding themselves on the other side of the rough wall they'd passed earlier. Here they found another journal, this time by the leader's bodyguard. It had been penned a week after the disappearance of the mage, reporting another man missing. The bodyguard fingered the khajiit brothers, but other others were not so sure. It also seemed the leader of this ragtag party was growing increasingly paranoid, claiming the missing people had found a way around and were trying to steal his discoveries. It was a mess.
They carried along the icy passage for another hour, delving deeper into the glacier. They passed a makeshift campsite, bedrolls and fire pit scattered. Tools were strewn every where. They could hear someone moving around a bend.
"Where is it? I know it is here!" It was the skooma-crazed khajiit.
They readied their magic, just in case. There was no telling what he was capable of. They rounded the corner and found him picking at the clothes of another khajiit, obviously deceased. Onmund slipped and accidentally kicked an empty bottle, the tinkling overly loud in the silent cave. The khajiit whirled around, ears laid back, tail waving in aggression. He bared his teeth.
"What? Who is this, Brother? Another of the smooth skins looking for food? But these were not trapped with us... " He snarled. "No...No! You must be the ones who took my skooma!"
He flew at them, swinging an ordinary woodcutters axe at them.
"Tiid-Klo!" M'rassi Shouted, slowing time itself.
She ducked below the axe as it sailed toward her, fling a lightning bolt as she went. The cat-man winced as the axe hit the ice with a clang. Onmund loosed a torrent of flame from his fingers at the cat, M'rassi moving back to avoid the fire. The khajiit gave a strangle yowl as the attack burned off his fur, lunging at M'rassi. Time returned to normal and he hit her knocking her back.
She brought up her knees and pushed out with her legs throwing him off her. As the khajiit sailed back, Onmund shot an ice spear at him, impaling him and pinning him to the stone column behind him. The khajiit squirmed and coughed up blood before succumbing with a deep gurgling sigh. The ice had punctured a lung.
"Nice kick!" Onmund pulled M'rassi from the ice.
"Thanks." M'rassi stretched her back. "Sometimes it seems I spend more time on my back than on my feet during a fight."
Onmund snorted a laugh.
"These must be the brothers from the logbooks."
"Looks like." Onmund tossed her a small journal. "Poor bastard has been dead for days."
M'rassi caught it and started reading. The elder brother, J'zhar had signed the pair of them onto this expedition in order to clean up his younger brother J'darr. Once they were trapped, the small amount of skooma had quickly run out, and J'darr turned nasty and started raving about seeing creatures prowling in the ruin. J'zhar had attributed these to skooma withdrawal hallucinations. Neither of them were responsible for the disappearances though.
M'rassi gave the book back to Onmund for him to read and she snapped the icy spear holding the charred khajiit. He dropped to the floor and she pulled him over and laid him next to his brother.
"Khenarthi guide you, clan-mates." She whispered.
They carried on and soon the glacier vanished entirely and the tunnels warmed slightly. It was slow going, M'rassi kept stopping to examine the pipes and gears that clanked away in the gloom, not even her bad feeling could not overcome her insatiable curiosity. Steam hissed from breaks in the pipes, and everywhere there were pistons, gears, levers and all manner of odd machines made of the same bronze-like metal the dwarves favoured. She hadn't expected the Dwemer ruins to be so... so... noisy.
"Got to give the Dwemer credit, after almost four thousand years, their machines are still running. Amazing..." Onmund said as they walked into a large chamber with a large empty area flanked by a pair of pipes with suspicious looking apertures.
"Wait!" M'rassi grabbed his arm, and pointed out the slick sheen of oil coating the ground. "Looks like a trap."
Sure enough, as they crept forward the pipes emitted a loud clanking and spat out a pair of metal orbs, significantly larger than the centurion-spiders. With a hiss and a screech of metal on metal the mechanisms unfolded themselves into vaguely man-shaped contraptions. They carefully balanced on their sphere bases, using them for locomotion.
"Wow!" M'rassi said excitedly.
The centurion spheres pivoted on their bases at the sound of her voice, and extended swords from what looked like arms.
"Not good." Onmund said readying his magic.
M'rassi flung a lightning bolt at one, but it barely even slowed. She turned tail and ran. The mechanical warriors followed her and as they rolled into the oil, Onmund hit them with a fireball. The oil went up with a roar, and M'rassi whirled around and Shouted.
"Yol-Toor-Shul!"
Onmund backed away from the searing heat of M'rassi's Thu'um. The khajiit was slinging her own fireballs into the conflagration, and soon the centurion spheres were little more than molten slag.
"Careful with your Shouts, M'rassi! I'd rather not be roasted today!" Onmund teased.
"Sorry about that." She looked chagrined.
Onmund laughed at her expression so she cheekily swatted him across the backside with her tail as she stalked off down the corridor. Still chuckling he followed.
They set camp in a small alcove around the corner, they hadn't slept since leaving Winterhold and they were bone tired. They each laid out several Lightning Runes, as well as a few other protective wards. If the Dwemer machines came upon them during the night, they would at least be warned.
"This is the Animonculory." Onmund said, looking from the book to the massive doors inscribed with Dwemeris.
"You can read that?"
"No, but this book has the letters and provides a rough translation. One of the mages from the old Mages Guild in Third Era Morrowind wrote it after finding a tome in both Dwemeris and Aldmeris. Edwina Elbert, that was her name. She used it to translate ancient Dwemeris into modern Tamrielic. Its not perfect, but it suits our purposes for now." Onmund snapped the book shut. "So, trouble or treasure?"
"Treasure!" M'rassi grinned.
"Treasure it is!" Onmund leaned on the door, but it wouldn't budge.
"I think it opens the other way." M'rassi smiled, giving the other door a tug.
Together they pulled the door open and were immediately jumped by a centurion-spider. Several bursts of electricity later and the thing blew apart, showering them in metal components.
"These are almost as good as skeletons!" M'rassi laughed.
"I love the sound of metal gears scattering in the morning!"
"Except it's the afternoon."
"Is it? I can't really tell down here." Onmund chuckled until he saw M'rassi smelling the air intently, whiskers twitching. "What is it?"
"Blood... and something else... I've smelled it before, but I can't remember... "
"You reckon another one of the expedition people is nearby?"
"Aye, but dead a few days, judging from the stink... we should check."
"Let's get going, then." Onmund agreed.
M'rassi led the way, following her nose to a small space below a grate in the floor. She slung off her pack.
"Down here." She pulled at the grate but it only moved a small bit, leaving a gap only large enough for her to climb down.
"I don't think I'll fit down here." Onmund smiled.
"I'll go. Just... stay alert." M'rassi slipped into the narrow opening and dropped to the floor.
The stench was very strong down here and her khajiiti eyes made out shapes in the dark. There was a man laying against a pipe, an arrow in his shoulder. The body was black, the voided contents of his bowel and other bodily fluids pooled in a festering mess below him.
"Oh, gods." M'rassi gasped and immediately regretted it, getting a lungful of the fetid air.
"Are you all right?" Onmund called down.
M'rassi spied a book and quickly snatching it up, she tossed it up to the waiting Nord.
"Help me up!" M'rassi barked when she saw him start to flip through it.
Onmund dropped the book and helped his lover out of the pit. She felt weak in his arms.
"I'm gonna be sick!" She pushed herself away from him and staggered into a corner where she brought up her lunch. She felt Onmund start rubbing her back, and when she was done, he picked her up and took her around a corner, out of sight of the grate and mess.
"By the Nine Divines! That was awful... If I never smell anything like that again, I will die a happy woman." M'rassi muttered.
"We still have four members of the expedition to account for." Onmund sat beside her and put his arm around her shoulder.
"Let's hope they're still breathing, but I doubt it. What does the book say?" M'rassi asked, draping her arm and tail limply on his lap.
Onmund fished the book from his robes and began to read. "The man's name was Endrast. He was taken captive by some eyeless creatures... "
"Falmer?"
"I believe so. Anyway, those khajiit boys were not with them, and the mage taken earlier was nowhere to be seen. Endrast managed to pick the lock of the cell and they made a break for it. He and the Orc, Yag gra-Gortwog, made a break for the surface, while the expedition leader and his bodyguard headed deeper into the ruins. Apparently they were looking for something called the Cathedral."
"So how did our liquefied friend get here?"
"The Falmer chased them up the Animonculory shaft, and they came to a high ledge. The Orc picked up the Bosmer and tossed him up to safety, but couldn't follow. The Wood Elf ran, he didn't even look back." Onmund snapped the book shut.
"Guess I know what that other smell is now. Falmer. Gods, I hate those things." M'rassi growled.
The Falmer were a race of mer long thought extinct. Thousands of years ago, the Falmer were driven from Skyrim by the ancient Nords. The Snow Elves faced a devastating defeat at the Battle of the Moesring during the early First Era and retreated, never to be seen again. It was only in the last twenty years that the Falmer reappeared, though they were shadows of their former selves. They were savage, twisted beasts that dragged their victims into the deep passages below Skyrim, to do gods-knew-what.
According to some ancient Dwemeri and Falmeri texts, the Dwarves gave the Falmer refuge after their defeat. The Dwemer betrayed the survivors and enslaved them. They force-fed the Snow Elves a mushroom native to the darkest passages, which rendered them blind. The blinding-mushrooms became a staple part of the slave's diet, and within a few generations, all the Falmer were completely and irreversibly blind. Their other senses more than made up for it. They rose up against their former masters and fled deeper underground. When the Dwarves disappeared in the middle of the war, the Falmer finally had free reign of the deep spaces.
No one on the surface had any idea of the slavery of the Falmer, and considered them extinct. Dwemer cities were always dangerous places, and few ventured very deep, so the Falmer went largely undetected for thousands of years. There were always tales of dark creatures stealing away children in the night, but no one connected them with the Falmer until one was slain and brought to the College of Winterhold, and the truth was revealed.
They'd run into the twisted creatures a couple of times on their adventures and neither encounter left them unscathed. And now it seemed M'rassi and Onmund were about to walk right into one of their camps. What had Paarthurnax got them into?
Onmund took the lead as they wound their way through twisting passages and they emerged into a tall shaft. There were ramps leading up and down, and corridors leading off into factories, smelters and smithies. This was the Animonculory proper.
"By the Nine!"
"By the Twin Moons!" M'rassi exclaimed.
A growl sounded in the dark, and M'rassi whirled around and slung a lightning bolt at an imp-like creature that had been sneaking up on them. The force of the bolt send the creature sailing off the ledge to plummet to it's death.
"By Shor, I didn't even hear that coming!" Onmund looked startled.
"There will be more. Be on your guard." M'rassi kept her magic ready, sinking to a crouch.
"Right." Onmund did the same.
"Use the edge to our advantage." She hissed, and Onmund grunted a yes.
They prowled down the ramp, and surprised a Falmer skulking in a passage. Once he was down, M'rassi studied him closer.
The Falmer was mostly naked, wearing a loincloth woven from some unknown vegetable. He had a crude club made of chaurus chitin, simple but effective, the weapon could easily gut either mage if they weren't careful.
"Shit!" Onmund swore as an arrow skipped off the stone by his feet. He looked around and tossed a fireball at one of the mutated mer on an opposite landing. The elf dropped his bow and collapsed. Evidently the Snow Elves were still weak to fire after all this time.
"Run!" M'rassi yowled.
They tore down the ramps, slinging fireball after fireball at the marauding elves. A couple of the mer were locked in battle with the Dwemer machines, still adhering to the tasks set thousands of years ago during the slave uprising.
Huffing and puffing, M'rassi spotted something ahead. She dug in her heels and skidded to a stop. "Look out!" She shouted, but not soon enough. "Fuck!" She shouted when Onmund slammed into her, almost sending her over the precipice. Her arms and tail whirled, but the Nord grabbed a fistful of her robes and hauled her away from the edge.
"Watch where you're bloody going!" She hissed.
"You're the one who stopped in front of me!" He growled back.
M'rassi's shoulders slumped. "You're right. I'm sorry for yelling." She really wasn't angry at him, but her bad feeling had her on edge.
"Apology accept- get down!" Onmund pushed her shoulder down and he shot a ball of flame at a Falmer coming down the ramp behind them.
"Thanks!" M'rassi breathed, slowly straightening herself.
Onmund simply smiled and gave her a quick peck on her furry cheek.
"This must be that ledge Endrast wrote about." He said, peering down. "See that dark shadow?"
"I think that might be the Orc woman, or what's left of her. She must have been very strong to throw the Bosmer up here. It must be... ten meters?" M'rassi gave a low whistle.
"I knew Orcs were strong, but that is beyond what I imagined." Onmund replied, fishing the rope out of his pack. He secured it to a large block of stone and tossed it over the edge. The end of the rope pooled on a pile of rock and twisted metal that used to be a ramp leading down.
"After you, Dragonborn." Onmund smirked and M'rassi swatted him with her tail.
She climbed down the rope and picked her way across the rubble to the remains of the Orcish woman, Yag gra-Gortwog. The dark shadow Onmund had pointed out turned out to be a pool of blood, dried up and dark brown. Of the Orsimer herself, here was only a hand, hacked off above the wrist, the end torn and ragged. The rest of her was nowhere to be found.
"Well, that's another one dead. What the hell were they down here for? Surely they're not after the Elder Scroll in Blackreach?" M'rassi asked when she heard the Nord's boots thump on the ground behind her.
"I think they were just after anything of value." He crouched down to examine the hand.
"This expedition leader, Sulla, really needs his head checked. I would've gotten the Oblivion out after the first one was taken."
"Same here. Bloody fool." Onmund growled.
"Come on, we should keep going." M'rassi stood, surveying the shaft for a way down.
"I'm right behind you."
They weaved down the ramps, killing any Falmer foolish enough to get in their way. Occasionally they had to stop and heal up, the twisted mer getting in a few blows by sneaking up on them. Before long there was no direct way down the shaft and they began to weave through the various foundries and factories. In these places they found more Falmer locked in combat with the Dwarven automatons. Taking advantage of the mayhem, the mages first disposed of the Falmer, then the machines, leaving themselves mostly unharmed, if tired.
As they neared what M'rassi though was the bottom of the shaft, they found themselves in a Dwemer smithy. They found more of the twisted Falmer, who'd set up a makeshift camp, and even a chaurus, one of the giant earwig-like insects rumoured to live with the Falmer. They all soon succumbed to the mage's spells and M'rassi led Onmund through the huts. They found the bottom end of the elevator shaft that led back up to the upper reaches of Alftand, where the mage was taken.
"Hey, wait!" Onmund gave her tail a gentle tug.
"Yes?" M'rassi answered tiredly. They'd best set camp soon.
"Over there, on that table."
There they discovered the grisly remains of... someone. There was little left of the body but the skeleton, the skin and muscle had been expertly carved off with some worn Dwemer tools. Some sort of crawling larvae were squirming on the bones, like maggots, but larger, and jet black. What little was left smelled merish to M'rassi, and she felt bile rise in her throat. It was the missing mage, Valie; her clothes lying in a bloody heap next to the table.
"Oh gods." Onmund muttered and was violently sick on the floor. Despite the number of people he'd been forced to kill on his travels, he'd never come across anything like this. A fellow mage, carved up and cooked like a pig.
M'rassi rubbed his back as he voided the contents of his stomach, fighting hard to avoid doing the same, especially after finding the putrefied remains of Endrast. It was grotesque. How far the Falmer had fallen. They were nothing like described in 'The Fall of the Snow Prince.'
"I'm sorry. Its just... " Onmund said, wiping bile from his mouth, voice shaky.
"Let's just carry on. Get away from... this." M'rassi curled her tail around his waist to comfort him.
"Lead on." He agreed weakly.
She led the Nord through the twisting passage until they came to the bottom of the Animonculory. They killed four of the twisted Falmer at the bottom of the shaft and sat to collect their thoughts, no longer able to smell the gods awful stink of mer-flesh.
Ahead was the Cathedral, according to Endrast's diary. It seemed odd that the logical Dwemer would have such a place, they were known for their apparent disregard for anything Divine. That said, there was the whole business with their mysterious disappearance during the early first era, some three-thousand-seven-hundred years ago. M'rassi had read several treatises on the vanishing of the dwarves each with different accounts as to why, but each one had a common element. That one instant there were dwarves and in the next, there were none.
They decided to camp the night there, surrounding their small campsite with Lightning Runes and various other protective wards, lest the Falmer come across them while they slept. They went to bed hungry, neither of them could stomach food after finding the gruesome remains of Valie and Endrast. They huddled together, grateful for each other's company in such a dark and forbidding place.
And yet, M'rassi could not shake her bad feeling.
The oddly named Cathedral was a large cavern with a walled and terraced structure opposite the balcony where they emerged. Several of the hideous Falmer skulked outside the walls, several bone and chitin huts nearby. This must be their main camp. There didn't seem to be many down there, but then they had killed dozens of the twisted mer during their passage through the Animonculory. Rising up around the walls of the cavern were several Dwemer towers with great bronze faces peering down at them.
Using their fire spells they quickly disposed of the few Falmer that remained and they went up the first flight of stairs through an arch in the wall. The first terrace held another smaller arch made of the metal. It framed a metal constructed that looked like a man, but was as tall as a giant.
"Look at that!" M'rassi said excitedly.
"It's amazing!" Onmund agreed.
M'rassi went right up to it and examined its legs, trying to work out how they might move with he steam hydraulics encased within. She traced a thin seam in the metal with a claw. As she did so, the thing came to life, swinging down with one great big fist.
"Feim-Zii!" M'rassi Shouted, her body becoming ghostly just as the swing would have connected and it passed straight through.
A moment later, Onmund hit it with a bolt of lightning as M'rassi sprang back out of the way. She turned as her Shout faded and she became corporeal once more.
The steam-centurion tore itself from its arch, slinging a massive strut at Onmund , who dodged it, but only barely. He slipped on the top stair and tumbled down. M'rassi circled around the metal-man firing lightning from one hand and fireballs from the other.
The machine slowly turned to her, stomping down with its huge metal boots.
"Come on, I don't have all gods-damned day!" M'rassi snarled, tail lashing.
With surprising speed it charged at her and M'rassi dove aside as the hulk slammed into the wall, burying its fist. M'rassi picked herself up and backed off, watching the automaton try to free itself. A bolt of lightning struck it and M'rassi spied the Nord climb back onto the terrace weaving a healing spell with his free hand.
"Krii-Lun-Aus!" She Shouted, and the machine shuddered, its unknown power-source draining.
Together the mages pelted they automaton with everything they had until they both ran out of magicka. When the smoke cleared the steam-centurion was laying in a heap, its components scattered.
"Nice." M'rassi said simply and they fist-bumped.
M'rassi unlocked the gate at the top of the stairs and they swung wide open with barely a squeal. She heard the thud of boots on stone and she crouched, waving Onmund down too.
"Sulla, lets just get out of here. Hasn't there been enough death?" Said a woman's voice.
"Oh, of course you want me to leave. Just waiting for me to turn my back. So you can have all the glory for yourself!" Growled a man.
It seemed they'd found the last members of the ill-fated expedition.
"Hey, you hear that?" Said the woman.
They heard a clash of steel as the man attacked the woman. M'rassi and Onmund peeked over the metal box they were hiding behind.
The man, Sulla, was slashing away at a Redguard woman, who was expertly parrying the blows. She must be Umana then. She charged at the wiry Imperial and bashed him with her shield, knocking him down. She lunged and stabbed the man through the throat, almost taking his head off. She spotted the spectators and charged. M'rassi shot a bolt of lightning at her, throwing her back. Onmund followed up with his own a moment later and Umana perished, her body twitching.
"Well, that was quick." M'rassi commented.
"That's all of them, then."
"Bloody fools."
"Aye."
They stripped the small amount of valuables from the bodies and had a look around. At the rear of the chamber was a Dwemer lift, a platform which moved up or down by way of a series of gears and several columns of metal, pocked at even distances. This one appeared to go up to the surface, likely to the camp high up on the glacier. They could find no way down.
M'rassi examined the odd metal box they'd sheltered behind. On the top was a series of concentric rings, and a small hemispherical depression.
"Hey, I think that sphere Septimus gave us goes here." M'rassi said.
Onmund fished the odd device out of his pack and handed to her. She set it into the depression and the circles on top spun around with a whirring sound. When they stopped moving, they heard the grinding sound of stone moving and the floor around the box fell away in segments, settling into a staircase winding downward.
"This looks promising." Onmund smiled.
They went down and found a second lift, this one heading deeper into the belly of Nirn. This must be it, the entrance to Blackreach.
M'rassi stepped in and placed her hand on the lever.
"To Blackreach?" She asked.
"To Blackreach." Onmund agreed with a smile, placing his hand on top of hers.
Together, they pulled the lever and they plunged into the dark. M'rassi still couldn't shake that bad feeling.