Middas, 8:10 PM, 7th of Morning Star, 4E 202

Silent City

There was a lot of old sort of infrastructure in the Silent City. Running water, sanitary things, decent roads. It was strange how the dwarven machinery worked so well after all these centuries. Even the best Nordic machinery, which was like a whittled flint knife versus the dwarves' ebony dagger, never lasted more than a few decades without needing parts replaced.

Blackreach didn't really have a working food supply of its own. Maybe there'd once been a hydro-farm like in Alftand, but it'd been lost before the dwarves vanished. So there was a work team trying to basically make a replica of the farm upstairs. Slow going.

There were a lot of work teams, actually. Considering how secret this place was. About twenty or so people in the city were just there to mine ore veins nearby. Apparently, soul gems were just naturally in the rock down here, and the Dragonborn wanted them for stuff.

That was everything Lenve had explained to him before ditching him for the shuttle back to Alftand.

The members of the Black Machine used the debate hall courtyard, the big stone-floored clearing with the sun-ball above it, as their living space. When Thorald had arrived here, he'd been assigned a bedroll somewhere in the rows and columns of one-man tents. He'd also been assigned a number. 145. Whatever that was about.

This courtyard was packed. He couldn't find his tent until he told some men his number, and then they pointed him right to it. They liked their numbers. His tent was way in the far corner. It actually had his number sewed onto it. It felt very Imperial.

It was at his tent that Thorald met his squad leader. A couple armored men were standing nearby, just chatting, and one of them turned to him.

"Hey. You new here?" The man was wearing the same dwarven-metal armor as everyone, minus the helmet. He looked like the perfect Nord. Flowing blonde hair and all, bit of a beard going on.

"I'm number one four five," Thorald said, blankly. He had no idea what was going on, this was still crazy. Also, Thorald just realized he was really hungry. He was pretty sure he hadn't eaten since he arrived at Alftand.

"All right, that makes you the last member of my team!" The man grinned and held out his hand. "But no one calls each other by their numbers here. What's your name, kinsman?"

"I am Thorald Gray-Mane." Straightforward.

The man's eyes widened. "The Thorald Gray-Mane? It is a true honor! I never expected a member of House Gray-Mane down here. I mean, it… Ah… I am Ralof of Riverwood." He smiled sheepishly and held out an armored hand.

Thorald took the handshake and smiled back. Ralof of Riverwood. Where had he heard that name before? "All right, enough of that, you're my team leader. I… Honestly, I have no idea what's going on down here. Lenve didn't exactly explain, uh…"

"Oh, well, allow me, Thorald. This is Tarkhor, by the way." Ralof gestured to the man standing by him. Looked like a Breton, maybe. Younger fellow. "Another member of the team."

"Nice to meet you. So, uh… What do we do down here?" Thorald looked around the courtyard. The sun ball was a fair way behind him. He couldn't get over how huge this place was. And it was all somehow underground.

Ralof smiled. This was something he could answer easily. "For the moment? Train. We're not going to be fighting the normal way. There are less than two hundred of us."

"Right, so how do we fight?"

Someone called Tarkhor's name. He excused himself and walked off.

"Let's compare what's already out there in Skyrim," Ralof said. "The Imperial Legion. Well-trained, honorable men. They've earned my respect, even if their leaders haven't. A few thousand of them gathered by Rorikstead for an attack on Markarth. And now their staging area is a smoldering ruin, thanks to the Thalmor."

Of course. He should've expected this. He should've. He was talking about the staging area with Tullius, and then the elves showed up on Solitude's doorstep. "You know they attacked Solitude afterwards, right? I was there. I traveled straight here."

"Dragons are very fast on their wings," Ralof smirked.

Thorald frowned.

"Did no one tell you? The dragon Paarthurnax led a counter-attack on the Aldmeri Army. Solitude is completely fine!"

A long, long pause.

There was a shrieking roar of flame from someplace above. The river lit up with orange light. Thorald looked up. Somewhere around the city gates, there was a storm of fire, raging so hot and bright that he could see it all the way down here.

And he'd thought that it was the elves' doing, too.

"No. No one told me that."

"Well, I'm glad we've mentioned it now! You mentioned you were there?"

Thorald suddenly remembered where he'd heard Ralof's name. "General Tullius would like me to apologize on his behalf for trying to execute you."

"Oh, well, that's… Kind of him?" Ralof arched his eyebrows.

The older Nord just shrugged. "I don't know. That's what he said. Thanks for telling me about Solitude. What were you saying?"

"Right. So… The Legion's strategy has… It's just… Failed. Well and truly failed. They tried fighting the way they know how to fight, and they were demolished. If it weren't for the dragons, the capital would have fallen! But you know who's succeeded against them? The Forsworn."

"The Reachmen?"

"Aye, them. The Thalmor still haven't wiped them out. They bought us an entire month to prepare, just by hiding in the hills and ruining everything the elves try to do. And that's what we're going to do, except we're hiding in an underground ruin no one knows to even exist."

All the secrecy around Blackreach was starting to make a lot of sense. The fact that this whole cavern existed must have been a living hell of a secret to keep!

"All of us already know how to fight, though," Thorald said. "What's the training?"

"Teamwork, mainly. I'm a squad leader. My official rank is… A-2. I command four soldiers, rank A-1. You're one, Tarkhor's another."

"Uh… Who are the other two?"

"There's another Nord, his name is Valjar, and a wood elf, her name is Alensi. You'll meet them soon enough. We're going to be… Essentially getting to know each other, but also learning a bit about stealth, if I understand it correctly. You were right about fighting. Not only are we all able to fight, we're the elites of Alftand. Everyone in the Black Machine distinguished themselves in some way before even coming here. Lenve and the Eagle-Eye have done a marvelous job organizing us."

Thorald wondered how he'd distinguished himself. He'd never had the chance to have a part in any proper battles. He'd defeated two elven soldiers beneath Solitude, but no one else had even seen that. Maybe the way he'd proven his strength was by not breaking, back in the Thalmor's prison.

Then he came back to reality. And remembered he wanted to ask Ralof about what in Oblivion everyone down here was wearing.

"All right, hold on. What is this armor? This is crazy." Thorald gestured to the other Nord's big bulky Nordic-shaped armor. Which was obviously not made of Nordic materials.

Ralof looked down at himself with a sly grin. "This… This is dwarven metal armor. It's stronger than Skyforge steel, and far, far more abundant."

Thorald noticed that the number 141 was printed in big blocky relief on Ralof's pauldrons.

"I don't suppose there's a suit numbered 145 someplace," he said.

Ralof shook his head, but smiled. "Not yet. Come on, let's go get you measured."

"Uh… Hm. Actually, do you think I could get a bite to eat first?" Thorald hadn't had any meals since he arrived at Alftand earlier in the day.

Ralof blinked. "Uh… Sure, we can do that. Dinner was served a while ago, but we can find you something, aye."

He actually took Thorald to his own tent. It was only a few tents down. Thorald noticed that by the bedrolls, there were a lot of metal chests, shaped and sized to hold an armful of swords or something, locked shut. Ralof opened his chest with a key around his neck, and started rifling around in it.

"I've got something in here somewhere," he said, before surfacing with a fist-sized cloth pouch and a bottle of wine.

"Oh, you don't need to give me wine, I know about the water pipes," Thorald said.

"Nonsense, Gray-Mane," Ralof said without looking up. He pulled out a dwarven metal goblet (of course), set it on the floor, poured it full of wine. Then he sat down by it, and tossed the pouch to Thorald. It wasn't very heavy. Full of firm somethings.

The firm somethings turned out to be bits of dried, salted beef. Obviously, Ralof was just a survivalist.

"I figured you might get a bit thirsty from that," Ralof said.

Thorald sat down by him and started eating. Not bad stuff, for a stockpile of food in someone's little locker. The wine was fancy stuff, too. "Should I be calling you sir?"

"Do you want to?" Ralof shrugged. "We're not the Legion, and we're not the Stormcloaks. The Dragonborn hasn't said we need to call our superiors sir, on account of we're already professional soldiers, and we're working more… I dunno. More personally than that. Still, we're not the Companions, either. We have leaders, we have orders, we have rules."

"Yes sir, I understand, sir," Thorald said, with his mouth full of food.

"I swear by the Nine, I'll have you thrown into a lake."

"Are there actually lakes down here? I saw some rivers on the way in, but..."

"And waterfalls. I think those are from the pipes being broken in spots, though, we're looking into it."

"Mm. Do you want some of this stuff?"

"No, Gray-Mane, I happened to be here for dinner."

"The wine, maybe?"

Ralof gave Thorald a look.

When they were done, Ralof explained to Thorald how the toilets worked here, and some stuff about fantastic Dwemer sanitation. How very nice that was. Thorald just asked if they could move on to the measuring. He hadn't eaten much, he doubted the full belly would really change his waist size.

In the following minutes, Thorald went through a bunch of procedures he didn't really understand. Ralof took him from the debate hall to a little building full of clay bricks and kilns and such. Here, some nice gentle men wrapped a tape measure around pretty much every possible part of Thorald that they could. He half expected them to blindfold him with it, just for fun.

Ralof explained that they were going to make a ceramic version of his armor for him. Far easier and faster to shape than with a forge. It'd take hours instead of days. And somehow that would just… Turn into metal. Some kind of process in a place called the 'workshop'. Still, it'd take a couple of days for Thorald's spot in the queue to come up.

And so Thorald spent a couple of days in the Silent City.

By Fredas, he'd gotten pretty used to how things worked here. The residents of Blackreach followed a strict schedule. Meals were served in a big chamber to the side of the debate hall, three times a day. Simple fare, mostly. Thorald noticed they never served any meat. There was just this tasteless bean stuff. He supposed it was too hard to get livestock down here.

He'd gotten acquainted with his other squadmates, too. Tarkhor, Valjar and Alensi. Lovely people, all of them. They'd already known each other for a while, but they welcomed him into the group just fine.

But Thorald didn't really get to do much of the serious training, or even spend much time around his squadmates. He didn't have his equipment yet. And exercises were always done in full armor. From the sounds of things, a typical training session would start with a forced march way into the caves, then a stealthy war game or two, then a forced march back.

If anyone wasn't used to working in heavy armor before, they were now. Thorald had heard a rumor that the Dragonborn was enchanting everyone's boots to lighten the load of the armor's weight. If it was true, though, it was taking forever. As far as he could tell, dwarven metal weighed at least as much as steel, and this armor wasn't just thick, it covered everything.

On this day, on Fredas, Thorald was just coming out of the hall from breakfast, when he was approached by a dark elf in worker's clothes.

"Thorald Gray-Mane?" the elf said, joining him in the traffic. Everyone was pouring out of the hall into the courtyard, they couldn't stand still.

"Aye, that's me." Thorald had only heard him clearly because he recognized his name. A hundred men coming out of breakfast time? It was a noisy crowd.

"It's your turn to have your armor made. I thought you might like to see." The dark elf raised his voice to be heard above the clamor.

Thorald waved the elf along to the edge of the courtyard, just by the big outer walls. The main gate was only a stone's throw away. "The workshop, right?" They could talk normally now, at least.

"That's right. My name is Darakur. I lead the workshop team. I received the ceramic forms for your armor just today. We've already begun the reproductions, I just thought you might want to see it for yourself." He had a refined, noble-sounding sort of voice. Very elf-like.

"What, trying to impress a nobleman, now?"

"That would make more sense if we were still in normal society."

Thorald sighed. "All right, I'll look at your strange little machines."

The road from the debate hall to the workshop was fairly short. It was a big block of a building, hardly any windows. Kinda smaller than Thorald expected, no bigger than a regular house back in Whiterun. But even by dwarven standards, it was really sturdy-looking.

And Thorald was about to find out what was inside. He couldn't bring himself to be that excited about the machinery, not after the last couple days' adventure, but... Hey, new armor. That was something, right?

"This workshop is the only one of its kind in Blackreach," Darakur said. "And seeing as none have been discovered elsewhere, it's likely the only one of its kind in existence."

"Fascinating," Thorald said flatly.

Darakur stopped in front of the workshop doors, pulled on a pair of leather gloves. "You ready, Thorald?"

"Let's go."

There was machinery. So much machinery. Mammoth-sized masses of metal frames, shifting gears, hissing pipes, levers and buttons all over the place. Thorald counted eight different big machines. He didn't know what any of them did. Not one bit. But a few workers were standing in front of one of them.

The inside of the workshop was just one big room. Like a stone box, basically. All of the lights were on the ceiling. The whole place was evenly lit. Odd, for the dwarves, but it made everything a lot easier on the eyes. Also, damn, was it hot in here. It was well-ventilated, he saw and heard air vents running, but it was hot.

Towards the middle of the room was a sort of island of stone tabletops and such. There were basic metalworking tools here and there, but the main thing Thorald noticed was a pile of red clay shards, and a pile of golden plates. He quickly realized that the golden plates were his new armor, and the shards were the ceramic version they'd made.

Thorald walked up to the gathering of workers. "So how do you turn them from clay to gold?"

The dark elf wasn't far behind. "This is Thorald Gray-Mane, boys. Number 145."

"Oh, excellent. Well-met, Thorald. We're working on your armor right now." A she-orc towards the front of the group took the reins. "If you'd take a look at this machine…"

The machine was mostly dwarven metal, of course. It looked sort of like an oven with two doors. One on the left, one on the right, with big round dinner-plate-sized windows in the center. A faint orange light was coming out of the right door. Above the oven-things was a huge green-blue glassy cone-thing, like the top half of an hourglass. All but its very top was glowing with more orange light.

"What's all that glowing?" Thorald pointed at the glassy cone.

Darakur was the one to answer. "The hopper is full of molten dwarven metal. It just makes whatever's inside it red-hot. You don't want to get your hands in there, believe me."

"We're doing the gorget right now," the orc said. "Your helmet's up next."

"My helmet?"

The glow was starting to fade from the second door.

"I think that gorget's about done, Durzge," Darakur said.

"Indeed it is." The orc reached out with a gloved hand and pulled open the right-hand door. A rush of steamy vapor poured out. One of the other workers reached in with a huge pair of tongs, and pulled out a beautifully crafted piece of armor, sort of crescent-shaped, made of solid dwarven metal. Steam was still coming off it.

"Careful," the worker said. "This is hot." He walked over and laid it down on the pile of golden armor pieces. Another of the workers followed him and carefully picked up one of the bigger ceramic bits.

"So how does this machine work?" Thorald turned back to the oven-things.

"Take a look inside," Darakur said. "Don't get too close."

The orc, Durzge, held open the door while Thorald peered in. It was like the inside of a furnace. No dwarven metal in here, just a box-like chamber made of a dull gray surfacing, smoother-looking than stone. And mounted on the sides, on triple-jointed arms, four silvery-blue nozzles, connected to the ceiling of the chamber by black tubes.

Thorald stared silently for a little while. "… This doesn't look like a dwarven machine."

"That's because it makes dwarven machines." Darakur snickered. "It's, ah… Those little tubes in there pipe in the molten dwarven metal, and… It builds the item you want like that. It's capable of extreme detail. Our work on everyone's armor is why it's taking so long to build the hydro-farm."

The Nord stood up straight and stretched his arms. That worker with the ceramic bit was standing right by him. He realized it was actually a clay helmet. It didn't look quite Nordic, and it didn't look quite dwarven. Rugged, full-face thing, decorated with little swirls here and there. And it was made out of nothing but fired earth.

Darakur decided to explain. "It takes one skilled man a matter of hours to make a helmet like that, and we already have all the different sizes we need. Now, we can just pick the pieces of armor that are the right size for you, and... They're the template."

Durzge closed the right door and opened up the left. This looked more like a regular dwarven machine inside. The chamber was actually made of dwarven metal, in other words. But where the right-hand chamber had nozzles on jointed arms, this chamber had… Lenses. On jointed arms. Green-blue glassy lenses, hanging from the top of the chamber by spindly metal bits.

The worker with the helmet passed Thorald by. He put it inside the chamber with the lenses, then stepped back. Durzge closed this door too, then pressed a button on the top of the machine. They'd obviously gotten this down to a routine.

Thorald scratched his head. "How did you figure out how this works?"

"Trial and error, really." Darakur shrugged. "We don't actually know what most of these machines do. We just sort of guessed with this one, and… It worked, so…"

The machine began to hum and grind. Things were coming to life inside there. Through the round window, Thorald could see the lenses starting to circle around the earthen helmet.

Then the light started. As the humming grew louder and higher, beams of light were forming inside the machine, reflecting through the lenses, flooding the chamber with a brilliant white shine. Soon, it was so bright that Thorald had to look away. It lit up the whole room, practically. He could see his own shadow.

And then it stopped. The light snuffed out, the humming faded, and that was that. Thorald turned to the dark elf. He was starting to get it.

"And now we'll have an exact replica made of metal," Darakur said. "It'll take maybe ten minutes or so to make."

"What about the metal's internal structures? It won't be hardened." Thorald didn't know much about blacksmithing, but he knew that just pouring molten steel into a sword-shaped cast wouldn't make a proper weapon. The steel would be too weak. It needed the work of hammers to harden it enough for use.

"As far as we can tell, yes, it will be," the elf said.

"The Dwemer thought of that too," added Durzge.

Ten minutes. That must have meant the entire suit of armor would take only a few hours. How could anyone produce a full suit of heavy armor in that time? Thorald's father, Eorlund Gray-Mane, was often said to be the best blacksmith in the whole province. He had the privilege of using Whiterun's legendary Skyforge and everything. Thorald had never spent long watching his father work, but he figured it would still have taken the old man maybe a week to hammer out this much metal.

Thorald wondered how his father was doing these days. And all his family, back in Whiterun. He hoped word had gotten back to them that he was alive.

On the other hand… It was awful to think, but it was just as well that his father wasn't here to see this. It took a master smith a whole week of hard work to make a suit of Skyforge steel plate, but here, it took a handful of workers a few hours of just standing around for a suit of dwarven metal plate. This thing could run the man out of a job. Him and every other smith in Skyrim.

It was hard to feel bad about it, though. Everyone down here had things they needed. Better to make use of some forgotten dwarven metalworking wonder than to worry about making the smiths happy.

Now the right-hand window was starting to glow that orange glow again. Thorald peered inside and saw the nozzles moving back and forth, hard at work weaving the helmet together, laying down trails of red-hot molten metal.

Darakur waited for Thorald to stand back up, then spoke. "We don't have many pieces left to do. Would you like to, ah…"

"Thank you for the tour, this nobleman has been duly impressed," Thorald said. He was already heading for the doors. "You can find me when it's done."

It wasn't really a surprise that someone would go out of their way to show a Gray-Mane their work. Especially if it was something as monumental as this machinery. It was more than him just being a noble. Most of the people here were from former Stormcloak provinces, and everyone knew the Gray-Manes had supported the rebellion.

Honestly, though, Thorald didn't really care about the whole machine thing. It wasn't even important. Neither was the thing with making friends with people of practically every race in Tamriel. The important thing was what he'd be doing for the Dragonborn.

Ralof had mentioned that the Black Machine wasn't the same as the Companions. And it was true that the Companions didn't have much of a leader or anything. But that was just one little thing about them.

The Companions' claim to fame was their prowess as honorable warriors. Everything they did was about honor. They fought for honor, they lived for honor, they were basically honor in mortal form. They were what every Nord wanted to be, every Stormcloak, every Gray-Mane. They fought clean, righteous battles, and they won.

Now, in the testing Thorald had done before he'd come down here, they hadn't really told him what he'd be tasked with doing. He assumed it'd be some honorable resistance movement, or other. Something that Nords would like. Fighting for honor and glory and a place in the songs. That sort of thing.

But that didn't sound like his lot down here. No, it certainly did not. They were in a secret cavern deep underground, practicing stealth tactics no army had used before, and idolizing the Forsworn, of all people. The Dragonborn was teaching them to fight dirty. This was going to be a dishonorable resistance movement. And it'd probably work, but… But…

What kind of glorious savior was the Dragonborn supposed to be, anyway?

By the Nine, I've gotten fifty reviews! I can't thank you guys enough. Your feedback keeps me going, more than I have proper room to describe in these little notes. It's so helpful knowing what you're picking up on, what you're enjoying, that sort of thing. Really, thank you all. I hope you've enjoyed my story so far.