Hassour.
Judging by the layout, it looked as though a lava flow had formed the tubular channels of Hassour that Peakstar and Nils were navigating together. The tunnel was just wide enough for them to be able to walk side-by-side, but not much wider.
Keeping up with Peakstar's long strides, Nils was distracted from any other thoughts because of the wretched bells.
The bells... the tune they played was so familiar. Yet there was something different; they were playing it all wrong.
"What is this terrible noise?" Peakstar asked.
Nils did not respond. He did not know if he could make her understand.
This was the Sharmat in music.
Less than an hour ago, Nils heard it differently. Comforting, almost harmonizing. It was the same song, but played here, it sounded a half-step out of tune; still recognizable as the enveloping dream-song in the nightmare dystopia of House Dagoth, yet now that he was awake, lucid, free from that foul thing's corrupting tentacled grasp he heard the horrendous dissonance. Reverberating. Metallic.
To the Sixth House, this was a lullaby of assimilation, an aural coalescence into their collective mind. By listening to this ever-recapitulating refrain their dreams were shared, a nexus of frenzied devotion. And while his brain had been soaked in many of the visions and nightmares of the Sixth House, Nils realized he left behind a simulacrum of his own self, his entire life experience presented to them on a platter, ready for dissection.
The noise was too distracting for him to think. Each thunderous peal, each reverberating note turned his stomach. He wanted it to stop, he wanted it all to stop.
The only way to end the music was to kill Dagoth Fovon.
It was so dark that when they reached the end of the tunnel Nils nearly stumbled over a rock. Feeling in front of him, his hands felt that the dead end was made up of several loose rocks stacked together. The dreamers must have tried to seal off the passage when they knew they were coming. That was smart of them. Peakstar was already kicking at the loose rocks and the wall began to give way. It was all very loud, hearing these stones clattering to the ground and echoing against the cavern walls, but at least it muffled the sound of that agonizing music, for as short that blissful moment was.
Hassour, Shrine.
When Nils crawled through the opening into the wider chamber, his first reaction was to gag from the pungent, inescapable aroma that saturated the air. It was like a pottage of rotten meat, with a nauseating spoiled-fruit sweetness to it. He recognized the scent immediately and coughed into his arm, eyes watering.
There were about six dreamers – all Dunmer, of course - huddled around some unidentifiable fleshy mass, which Nils was willing to guess had something to do with the putrid stench. They turned to look at Nils with glacial faces, but went back to their feast moments later. Vague whispers escaped his comprehension.
At the center of the room was the shrine, a spiky statuette casting shadows against the wall from the red candlelight. He needed to destroy that thing.
In the room he saw the six bells, those six notes that could not be compared to any notes he had heard before; they did not follow any conventional music scale. And there was Dagoth Fovon, the ash ghoul with a proboscis instead of a face, not even turning around to look at him. With a black mallet he struck the bells and send a tremor through the ground. The vibration was strong enough to rattle Nils' teeth.
As soon as Peakstar entered the room, everything changed. Three of the dreamers sprinted towards her. They all wielded clubs, and their attacks were slow and fairly easy to dodge. The fighting became a blur as Peakstar evaded and parried three opponents at once. The song became faster, more frenetic.
Why were they targeting Peakstar and not him? Nils turned to the ash statue. Its three red eyes glowed as the dark aura around it oscillated, pulsating as if it had a heartbeat. When he drew nearer the inaudible whispers grew louder.
Something was different.
The music had stopped. Nils' eyes darted toward the bell instrument, but Dagoth Fovon had vanished.
Two skeletal hands gripped his shoulders. Sharp nails pierced his leather jerkin and cut into his shoulders between the rings of his mail shirt.
"Why do you resist? We have seen your dreams, outlander. You are more like us than your Imperial handlers. We see you, and we embrace you."
Nils could hear the ash ghoul's slithering proboscis-mouth behind him. Slow poison made its way through his bloodstream from the wounds in his shoulders; he could feel the pain burning in his veins.
"Why... why do you resist? You are made of his flesh now."
"Shut up," Nils spat.
He kicked backwards to hit the creature's shins. Dagoth Fovon loosened his grip somewhat and Nils twisted free. He backed away and drew his longsword.
Peakstar was still engaged with the dreamers. There were a lot more than six of them in the room. The others had merely been hiding. If Nils had to estimate, he would say there were close to twenty of them. They just kept coming at her... but before he could use his sword against the ash ghoul, two dreamers ran out of the darkness to come to Dagoth Fovon's aid. Nils raised his sword in time to block an attack from a chitin club. That would leave a dent. He felt the shock rattle his bones. Nils slashed at its chest, opening a deep gash. It screamed like a normal person would. It almost gave Nils a shock to see that this dreamer bled like him, though he already knew this would happen. He knew that they were still Dunmer, but he could not afford to feel bad about killing them right now. Nils took this opportunity to cast a healing spell on himself, which took away some of the immediate pain from his wounds but did not stop the poison stinging under his skin.
"YOU ARE LIKE WE ONCE WERE. A KEPT ANIMAL. YOU SCREAM FOR EMANCIPATION, AND WE HEAR YOU."
The dreamer screamed this, all the while continuing to fight Nils with a frenzied adrenaline despite his deep wounds that would soon kill him. These were Dagoth Fovon's words spoken through the mouth of the dreamer. Nils knew this, and the words only angered him more. He was having difficulty breathing, for each time he tried to gasp for air his nose and mouth were filled with the odor of rotting flesh and it only made him gag.
If he could get to the ash statue...
Nils broke his stance and ran. The dreamers shuffled after him. He ran to the six-belled instrument and lifted the heavy black mallet. His entire body was stiffening from the poison, but he strained against it. Grunting, clutching the shaft of the hammer with both hands, he bludgeoned a dreamer in front of him. This one was a female with long greasy hair. He heard bones crushing. Probably her ribs.
She crumpled to the ground like a sack of apples.
"I do not fight to kill! That is not what the Master wills! Listen to the solution listen for he is the dawn the rust that corrodes the chain and when you grasp at with your meat hands I do see you are bearing gifts his gifts you bear his flesh bear the master's flesh-" she sputtered, descending into incomprehensibility.
Despite her pleas Nils finished her off by crushing her skull. He felt his face flush and his eyes water. He didn't know if it was because of the putrid smell in the room or because of how pitiful these cultists were. He decided it was both. It was still horrible, no matter how much he reminded himself that there was no other way. There was nothing left to save inside of her. They looked like Dunmer but their souls had lost the very essence that made them different from wild animals. They were little more than vessels now, vessels for Dagoth Ur's master plan. And with this bell hammer he was going to strike a major blow to the Sixth House.
Dagoth Fovon was waving his hands around, as if about to cast a devastating destruction spell. But a green light suddenly surrounded the ash ghoul and he stood there, dumbly, for a few seconds, no sparks or fire leaving his hand. It looked like Peakstar had silenced him with a spell. Nils took this opportunity and raised the hammer, bringing it down on the ash statue with all the strength he had left to muster.
It was almost a shock how easily it shattered. Nils expected this to be a lot harder. As its brittle exterior cracked open, a black, choking mist engulfed the room. He coughed, feeling particles of ash invade his throat. The miasma blackened the room, rendering everyone temporarily blind, but he could hear... crying. Anguish. Terror.
"Where speaks his mythopoeic tones? All is silent and we are lost! Empty and alone I am empty and alone."
"My lord! Our insides burn! We are dying. This silence, I hate it! I hate this I hate this Lord Dagoth come save us SAVE US SAVE US this nightmare-trick false lies lies lies!"
"Each spoke of the wheel turns in forever but does it begin in reverse if it has no start or end? My bones will feed the Ghostfence and my ancestors will never forgive me."
"Who will save us now? Is the star-wound's fire extinguished? The bones of our ancestors defiled stolen by lying prophets in golden masks."
When the ash cloud dissipated, Nils saw them all contorted into pathetic positions. Some were lying prostrate, others were huddled in fetal position, while a few were banging their heads repeatedly against the walls or scratching at their own faces, as if trying to claw their own eyes out. Dagoth Fovon himself stood motionless, though Nils knew the ghoul had more clarity than they did. He had been the leader of this operation, after all. As the emaciated creature lunged forward, Nils only had the hammer to raise in self-defense. But the poison in his veins made his arms and legs feel like lead, slowing his movements to a mudcrab's pace. And then, a figure darted through the darkness and strong hands pushed him out of the way. Shoved against a cave wall, Nils watched Peakstar take a lightning spell for him. Her body shivered visibly from the shock, but she recovered long enough to drive her spear into Dagoth Fovon's heart.
A necklace shaped like an eye sat atop the pile of ash salts left by the ghoul.
Nils' vision turned to stars. His legs started to buckle from under him and he clutched the wall again.
"I've been poisoned," Nils gasped, lowering himself to the ground and closing his eyes. He felt very ill, and behind his eyelids his mind created swirling images.
And then there was a blue light, and Nils felt the toxicity purged from his body. It was remarkable, this feeling, as if the purest energy were entering him, cleansing all of the foul things in his blood. After she helped him to his feet yet again, Peakstar cast a healing spell on herself.
"Thank you," he said.
Peakstar only nodded. They were not finished here.
The dreamers of the Sixth House were still sobbing, vocalizing their madness into cryptic words.
Without hesitating, Peakstar walked to one that was lying with its hands clasped together in desperate prayer, and plunged her spear into its back. It writhed in pain a moment and then fell still as she twisted her spear deeper.
Nils understood this. He understood it but it still felt terrible. They looked so helpless now, like lost children... and yet, a quick death was the only merciful thing they could do for the dreamers. He trudged towards one banging their face on the wall, moaning in anguish. Nils grabbed their skinny arms, forced their body around to face him. A youthful-faced male with the awkwardly long limbs of late adolescence. He spat in Nils' face, but remained passive, not even struggling against Nils' grasp.
"Away! Betrayer! This pain you have caused! The road leads nowhere. All is over. The silence will consume you too, as time's moth-bitten fabric –"
Nils cut open the boy's throat open with his dagger and shoved him to the ground. This was messy. Nils choked on the lump in his own throat. His face was tingling. Was he crying? Gods, yes, he was crying. Lost children. They were all like lost children. But he knew this had to be done. He knew this as well as Peakstar. There was nothing left in these half-naked, miserable flesh-eating creatures to be saved.
"Do you remember my mother? Have you seen her bones? I tasted her blood but I cannot remember her face – did I kill her? Were those my hands? I would slay her again if you would come back! The things I have done in your name, Lord Dagoth, is it all for naught?"
This one Nils silenced too. They had all been people, ordinary folk. With lives and personalities and people they cared about. And now Dagoth Ur had taken all of that away from them. He remembered Selvil the caravaner. Thankfully he had not yet passed the horizon of madness. But it could have been a matter of weeks or even days before Selvil finally succumbed to the dreams. Nils should have been happy that he had been able to save him, and probably several others in Balmora. But there wasn't anything happy about what he was doing now.
He killed a third dreamer, feeling his heart tightening in his chest.
Then, when he thrust his sword into the body of another dreamer, there was no movement, and Nils realized he was stabbing a corpse. He moved on to the next one. Killing them had already become a methodical thing.
He did not even feel relieved when all of the voices were silenced and it was time to leave that place. He didn't feel anything. Didn't want to feel anything.
Ascadian Isles Region.
At least Selvil and his beloved silt strider were looking better. He had regained consciousness and was busy fixing up her passenger compartment, but when Nils and Peakstar exited the cave he coaxed her into lowering him to the ground.
"You... oh, Almsivi be damned, I can't believe what I'd done, sera. Is it over? Please tell me the dreams will stop."
Nils was trying to think of something to say to Selvil, but Peakstar spoke for him.
"We have defeated Dagoth Fovon, and his influence will haunt you no longer. Yet this fight will not be over until Dagoth Ur is defeated beneath Red Mountain."
Selvil blinked at her.
"I don't remember you. What is your name, muthsera?"
"Peakstar of the Urshilaku tribe."
Selvil's eyes widened. He shook his head so violently that Nils wondered if it would fly off his neck.
"You're the one... no! I can't be seen with you. Why would you even tell me – argh! You're either very brave or very foolish, Peakstar. Don't you know you've got a price on your head? You're hunted by the Temple. They want you dead. I – I can't be seen with you here. Here's my gold – take it, sera, take it."
He thrust his palm full of coins at Nils' face, but he didn't take any of it. He was just confused. The caravaner grunted and tossed the coins at the ground.
"Just take it, sera. This is what you paid me for passage to Vivec. I can't take you anywhere, can't risk it, you've been seen with her too, I won't get snatched for this. I'm sorry, sera. Vivec is southeast of here, you're halfway there!"
Nils scrambled to pick up the coins to return to the caravaner, but by then he was already cantering away on his massive silt strider.
He was feeling pretty bad about keeping these coins, since the caravaner was probably going to take the rest of the day off after all of this, and he needed every last septim just to make ends meet.
"Why do you give out your real name if everyone knows who you are?"
"The truth is revealed in their faces. It lets me see if they can be trusted."
"And if they cannot be trusted?"
"I run fast."
Nils shook his head and threw his hands up in resignation. He understood now why she had smiled so widely after she had told him who she was. Apparently she had judged him as someone to be trusted. Perhaps she would change her mind if she knew whose orders he was following.
The faces of the dreamers in the cave still invaded his thoughts. The gangly youth with his throat wide open. The one who confessed to killing his own mother. Nils knew they had no life left to live but a life of suffering and emptiness, but they hadn't fought back, they just sat there helplessly, awaiting death...
"You are going to Vivec City?"
Nils nodded slowly at her words. Peakstar whistled. The guar they had left behind happily trotted towards her. She gently rubbed its scaly head in the area between its wide-set eyes and pressed her face against its side and whispered to it. The guar seemed pretty happy, though their long mouths always seemed to be curved into a smile. Nils noticed the bedroll, rolled up and tied to its saddle. Attached to each side was a saddlebag. Peakstar looked like she was carrying all of her belongings with her, and this was probably true.
"What do you know about the city?" she asked him. By now they were making their way up out of the foyada. Peakstar did not mount the guar, but she coaxed it along with its reins, making a clicking sound with her tongue.
"Not too much, to tell you the truth. I've never been there myself. I passed by while aboard a ship. It's enormous. There's this meteor hanging above the entire city-"
"Lie Rock," Peakstar muttered.
"How did it get there? Why is it there?"
"It has been there since the city's beginning. I do not know how it came to be, but if Vivec has the powers of a god, why does he not send the rock back from where it came? Or simply destroy it?"
Nils thought about that in silence. Fear? That was the only answer he could think of to her question. The Ordinators certainly seemed to enjoy striking terror into people's hearts. And Vivec was the one who controlled them.
Now they were back on the path. He picked a comberry leaf and began to chew on it. Even the sharp bitter taste couldn't rid him of that overpowering odor. It was in his hair, his clothes, everything smelled like death.
The late afternoon sun left an orange glow around everything. In the distance Nils could see its bright sparkling against a body of water.
Nils and Peakstar pointed to the lake at the same time, clearly having the same idea, and then turned to each other and laughed. It felt good to smile again.
Lake Amaya.
Facing away from the lake, Nils had his jerkin and hauberk laid out in front of him. He kept running a finger over the chainmail rings, scrutinizing it for the third time without actually knowing what he was looking for anymore.
"What are you doing?" came the female voice behind him.
Nils did not turn around, though he did hear her splashing about back there.
"Examining my armor. You know, to see if it's damaged," Nils replied.
Peakstar laughed.
"You settled people are strange," she said.
Nils scowled. She expected him to join her in the lake, though preserving her modesty had been his primary concern. Clearly her tribe did not have the same ideas of decency as the "settled people" did. Yet he didn't feel like waiting any longer. After that battle in the cave, he felt disgusting on many different levels, and he wanted more than anything to feel clean.
Leaving his clothes at the sandy shore, Nils stepped into the waters. It was surprisingly warm, almost like a hot spring. Actually, it probably was a hot spring, with how close they were to an active volcano. If the Imperials knew about this lake, they'd probably try to build a bath house on top of it and charge a fee for people to use it.
The shallows became deep very quickly, and Nils found himself treading water. Taking a deep breath, he submerged himself underwater, allowing the lake to envelop his body completely. The warmth swaddled him and it was close to paradise. He hugged his knees to his chest and was a child again. Safe, warm. Calm. All noises were drowned out by the water rippling in his ears. He floated there a while, wishing he could spend eternity suspended in the heated lake, but all too soon his lungs cried for air and he swam back to the surface.
Now everything smelled faintly of sulfur. At least it was better than dead, rotting things.
A docile betty netch floated idly by, her hanging tentacles just barely above the water. She was close enough that he could hear her airy respiration as her translucent blue jelly sac pulsated in and out. Even in the wild, they had a peaceful disposition unless provoked. The life of a netch did not seem too bad. They always looked so serene.
Peakstar swam to meet him.
Nils turned his eyes away from the netch to look at her. This was the first time he had seen the Ashlander warrior without her cap. Her hair was a dark red, almost maroon. Now it hung in wet clumps over her gray shoulders.
She gave him a soft, understanding smile. He could not find it in him to return it.
"Peakstar... what we did back there... are you certain we did the right thing?"
Peakstar's smile faded at this sudden question. Her eyes grew distant.
"It is not about right or wrong. Good, bad, these concepts mean nothing to the Sixth House. We did what was necessary. It may not feel 'right.' But we did what had to be done."
"I know. I know that. I just..."
"Do not mourn them; they have reached a greater peace. They are called dreamers because there is nothing left for them in the waking world."
"It's not that. I..." he trailed off. He didn't know how to say it.
"You see their faces."
So blunt and straightforward. Nils could only nod. His body tensed and he looked away. Gods, he hoped he wasn't going to cry again. Luckily he didn't. Suddenly, he felt arms wrapping around his shoulders, and Peakstar was embracing him. At first, he did not know what to do. His body tensed and became rigid at first, but then he wrapped one arm around her neck and shoulders and the other arm around her back. They still had to keep moving to stay afloat, but this was nice. She was alive and lovely and warm and breathing, and after having to deal with so many dead things, Nils appreciated this.
"I see the faces too," she confessed in a whisper. "Faces from many years past. When I'm alone."
When she was alone. That must be quite a lot, judging by her fugitive status. Morbidly, he began to wonder if she had killed more people than he. It was not as though he were a stranger to using lethal force. During his time as a town guard, when a criminal resisted arrest, sometimes there would be no other way to immediately neutralize an active threat to public safety. He did remember their faces, and he would feel wretched about it and remember it long after, but he'd always been comforted by the thought that it was justified, that it was all part of his job to keep the peace and uphold the law. What they did today in Hassour felt cruel, unlawful even. Even if it may have been necessary. When the dreamers had no hope of rehabilitation. It still was not a pleasant thing at all.
Peakstar's words weren't exactly comforting. The knowledge that even she could not forget the faces of the people she'd killed, well... if the supposed Nerevarine was telling him this, that did not bode well for his own ability to cope. Yet it made him see another side of her, a rare thing that made her seem more like a person he could relate to, and less of an infallible hero. She had moved her arms down to his back and was treading water for the both of them now. Nils just closed his eyes and reflected upon this moment. It felt as if Peakstar needed this embrace just as much as he did. He did not know how she managed. To shoulder the burden of an ancient prophecy, and to do it all alone...
The life of a hero seemed a lonely existence indeed.
Still... they were here, together, holding each other while floating in the waters of Lake Amaya. And Nils didn't feel lonely at all right now. Maybe, in this moment, Peakstar did not feel alone either.