Author's Note: Hey! Look who's not dead! Anyways, this portion of the story had to be split up into two or three short chapters because otherwise I'd have to put them all together, and then it'd be really long. Those will be up... when I get to it!
"This doesn't look that bad," James said, sucking in a breath of cool air. His companion looked about the courtyard, dismantled skeleton at her feet and sword in hand.
"No, it doesn't. It looks fairly… normal," she conceded. There were overgrown bushes and vines; to be expected in an old fort, crumbling walls and decaying woodwork; also to be expected, and there was a corpse unceremoniously dumped in the centre of the courtyard to decay on its own accord with the assistance of vultures and ravens and scavengers of the like. This was a tad odd, but neither Blade wanted to think much of it. So they didn't.
The air of the fort was cold; almost impossibly so. Pungent remnants of stale mead mixed with decaying matter greeted the pair, nauseating them upon impact. From beyond the shadows were the rats, clawing and gnawing at bones from gods-know-where, with their beady little eyes staring at them with contempt and malice as to the invasion of their sacred home.
James shivered. "Well this certainly is cozy. All you need now is a few more holes in the walls and well, damn, sign me up and move me in." His fairer companion rolled her eyes.
"Let's just find the orb and get out. I don't like the feeling of this place," she said, moving towards the door at the end of the hall.
"What? No snide comment? Nothing about what an idiot I am for even suggesting such a ridiculous idea? No complaining?"
"No," replied Nhiilaa simply, wrenching open the door. The Imperial followed her with a mixed look of half amazement and half disbelief.
"Who are you? Where is the girl who complains if the air is slightly above tolerable? Not that I'm complaining or anything, because believe me, this is a welcome shift from the normal—"
"Then why are you still complaining about it, hmm? It would seem that you almost miss my whining," she said. James shut up.
The door opened to reveal a clean room. This, in itself, was not ordinary, considering the squalor of the previous chamber. The room consisted of a traditional table and setting, complete with lit candles and a freshly opened bottle of Cyrodiilic brandy, and more than one decanter sent in preparation to receive said viscous fluid. It was… a transfixing sight, to say the least.
James was about to sit and partake in the proffered drink, when a slap on the hand and a harsh glare from the giantess stopped him.
"We don't stop for anything, let alone conveniently placed wine," she snapped. "Really, of all the idiotic things to do, you pick that. Have you completely lost what very little sense you had left?" Surprisingly, the man just smiled back at her. "What? Do I have something on my armor?" She turned round and round looking for it.
"No, it's just that no matter how hard you try, how well you hide it, you're always going to be that giant ball of condescending comments that I know and tolerate." He grinned wickedly as she proceeded to make a face at him, prompting the smile to simply grow wider. They continued onward, moving into the next chamber.
Both the two Blades stopped.
"… Well this is a change," James said. Nhiilaa was forced to agree. He moved into the centre of the room, turning slowly as he did so. "There's nothing here but cobwebs!" What kind of show is this Arkvedrunning, anyway? Honestly, he should fire whatever maid he has. Even though there's no furniture is not a valid excuse to neglect cleanliness, let alone proper sanitation," he droned on. And on. And on… Nhiilaa shook her head.
"It's not empty." James looked at her as if she were mad.
"What are you talking about? Are you in the same room as I am? Because where I am, there's nothing in it. Absolutely nothing." He flung he arms about to punctuate his frustration. After his brief rant, he looked back at his partner. To his chagrin, she was still shaking her head to the negative.
"You forgot to look up."
Out of pure curiosity, James slowly tilted his head towards the ceiling. Affixed there was the exact same table setting, right down to the lit candles and decanters. Everything was perfectly in place. Exactly. Except for the fact that it was suspended upside-down on the ceiling of the chamber and the chamber itself was in a state of pure filth.
"Oh. Well, that's interesting," he muttered. It was clear that he was quite put-off by the entire situation. "Erm, what do we do?"
"What do you mean, 'what do we do?'" She stared at him in disbelief.
"There's a ceiling on the table!"
"Actually, there's a table on the ceiling, but it's a common mistake amongst this sort of thing… then again this is the first encounter I've had with ceiling-inhabiting furniture, so at least that's what I imagine is the common response. It is now, anyway."
"You're not making a whole lot of sense." James was confused.
"Well there's a table on the ceiling." Nhiilaa was also confused.
Being that they were both unsure as to what was the proper protocol in this sort of situation, the Imperial decided to take control of it. "I'm fairly certain that we should leave the table alone. It being on the ceiling and everything..." She nodded.
"I think that is a great idea. In fact, I'm convinced that we should probably leave the room in general," conceded the girl. However, neither moved to leave; instead both stayed firmly planted, eyes still raised to the table in wonder. "We should go."
"Ladies first," James said, motioning to the exit. Nhiilaa rolled her eyes at him.
"Where'd you get that load of crap?" she asked. Never the less, she took the first movements towards the door, and close behind her was her companion.
He turned towards the gravitationally-challenged tabled for the last time. A second later, and a well-aimed rock traveled a one-way collision course with the various cutlery. Another second passed, and every single item that had been previously tightly drawn to the wood careened to the floor quite unceremoniously.
Promptly he then turned 'round and cantered after his friend amidst the rain of tumblers and knives.
--
"Where did you just go?" asked Nhiilaa, obviously irate.
"Nowhere," he answered quickly. Almost too quickly. "I've been behind you this entire time. Absolutely nothing is disturbed in the topsy-turvy ceiling-table room. Absolutely nothing." Nhiilaa stared at him. She didn't believe him for a second, but decided that it would be much more beneficial to all parties concerned if she did not press this particular matter further.
"Let's just move on, shall we? And for the love of Ysmir, stop messing around. We are here to actually do something, not to 'have fun.'
'We are here to actually do something, not to have fun,' James mouthed childishly behind her as she turned away from him. The pair walked through yet another short hallway only to emerge on the other side in complete darkness.
It was Nhiilaa's eyes that adjusted to the minimal light first; even then, her eyes were drawn hypnotically to the barren torchlight. She hadn't noticed the severe lack of suitable grounding until she misstepped, nearly teetering off the edge. The sounds of her screams echoed above the pyre's roaring flames as the metal from her glove fortunately caught fast on what appeared to be a bridge, allowing for enough momentum to regain her equilibrium.
"Watch your feet," she said curtly. There was no reply, which was disconcerting. Silence from him proved to be damaging in past experiences. "Oh what is it nowPeleius? I swear, if you're off getting yourself killedI'm going to be so mad. Really. I can't spend my entire life making sure you're not running off getting slaughtered somewhere in a pathetic decrepit hole." She whirled around and around and around. "Where in Oblivion have you gotten to? Peleius! Answer me, you bloody fetcher or I swear by all things pointy and sharp I will cut you up into a thousand pieces and then give them to Jauffre as a nice present!"
Nhiilaa attempted to wrench the door behind her. It would not open. It wasn't that it was locked, per se, more like jammed. Like an object was being placed in front of it to prevent its opening. Which was strange, considering the fact that the door opened outwards, towards the torches. She looked down.
James sat, back against the door, crumpled into a small heap. He stared outward, not looking at her, but through her, as if she were a pane of translucent glass. Not a single sound escaped his lips, but the look on his face; it was sheer terror. His lips fumbled for a moment, quivering with what he wished to say.
"—I'm afraid of heights," finally he managed to whisper. Apparently, this was an understatement. Nhiilaa lowered herself onto the rock next to him and stared out, same as him. The bridge expanded beyond them, disappearing at the brink of the horizon, but somehow they knew it went on. It must have been only a hundred feet or so… but still. The abyss below them was unfathomable.
Even she had to admit, it was not the most pleasant feeling in the world.
"… I see." What else was she supposed to say? Well that's too bad. You can just stay here if you want and I'll roam the rest of this most-likely rat-infested hole of a fort while you sit here and cower like a little fetcher. That's just fine with me, of course. It's not like the orb's just beyond that room and this place obviously isn't strange at all. Yes, the whole situation was… disconcerting, to say the least. After all, why in all of Oblivion would this wizard need a bridge across a bottomless pit? To get to the other side, of course. That aside, the whole thing just smelled of a cruel joke, as if someone were just toying with them.
She was not about to allow James to succumb to one little jest, no matter how frightened he was. It wasn't that she didn't care; it was that she did not want to be alone in this damn place. She stood up.
"Look, James, here's how it is: There's a bottomless chasm beneath us. The only thing that separates us from it is this rock here and that bridge over there," she said, gesticulating to illustrate her point as she spoke. "We need to be over there. If we stay here, that sort of defeats the purpose of coming in here in the first place. You might as well leave if you're not going to cross this bridge." His expression brightened slightly at the thought of being able to leave. "—However." There was always a 'but.' "I'm not about to let you do that, because I'm not afraid of heights, but I am afraid of Jauffre's wrath and Martin's whining. So I'm not going back there empty handed, you see. And Vaermina's offered me something very nice on the side, which she certainly did not have to do. Now, I don't know about you, but I'd like to not piss off a daedra lord. I tend to think that's a pretty terrible idea.
"So you now have two options: You can get up and walk across the bridge yourself, or I'm going to have to carry you across, holding you so that you can see the abyss the entire time and leaving you with the knowledge that I could very well likely drop you at any given second because I'm assuming that you're not that light in the first place."
The options mulled about his head for a few minutes. Neither was very tempting. He wished that there was a third option, something along the lines of crawling into a hole and praying for death and getting eaten by lions and wolves and bears.
"Oh my," she breathed, annoyed. "You have fifteen seconds before I haul your god-forsaken carcass over my shoulder and drag you across. Do you really want that? Imagine what the other Blades would say. Oh dear, imaging what your brother would say when I tell him—"
"That's enough!" he snapped, standing quickly. "Let's get this over with before I change my mind." A smile cracked Nhiilaa's sour disposition as she slapped him on the arm.
"That's the spirit!" She was all too cheery about bullying him into submission. It was rather annoying, he thought. Of course, she put him in front of her. "So you don't try and run," she explained.
Wonderful.