Guide:
Dwemeris
Thoughts
"Speech"
"Dovahzul"
A/N: Here we go again! Hope you all enjoy! Going to have some mushy friendship and a minor background detail that I came up with. Do any of you have more ideas I can bring in? I'd love to hear your opinions! Though, flames will be ignored and heavy sarcasm will pass unappreciated.
ALSO: WARNING FOR LANGUAGE. Thought that a T-rating would be plenty warning for the occasional F-bomb. Disclaimer – refer to chapter uno, one, ein, etc. Spoiler warning!
Revised: 24-2-2020
Last time…
The floor falls towards me and the world around me turns black as I crumple in a dead faint.
Chapter 3 – Friends with the gods
The darkness around me appears impenetrable at first, nothing but blackness and a faint flicker at the corner of my eye. My body refuses to obey my demands, heavy as the mountains I've always lived underneath. It's a gargantuan effort to turn my head to the side, but the reward is worth it: a small, flickering candle, brave against the encroaching night.
My mind is blank, blissfully so. I don't wonder why the candle is there. Why it is so dark. Why my body feels so heavy. Why dried tear stains are drawn across my face. I think… nothing.
After an eternity, my lead-filled fingers reach up, and clasp my amulet loosely, its presence reassuring against my collarbone. I stare blankly at the candle. How long have I been asleep? The question echoes through my mind, haunting me, and slowly my memories come back. New, silent tears drip slowly down my cheeks as I watch the small candlelight dance. I try to take a shuddering breath that ends in a sob and squeeze my eyes shut. The amulet is warm in my cold hand. Mellte, Ma… It's not enough. I feel antsy, the world surreal.
I need to move.
I get up slowly, wondering if the sun is out. It probably is not, since the surface-dwellers apparently sleep in darkness when the sun is down, the fools. Everything feels dulled. I'm not hungry. My head throbs in time with my heartbeat. I'm numb. Empty. But alive. A bit like the candle. Weak, unsure, but burning. For how long? Nobody knows.
A breeze ruffles the tips of my hair, the candle flickers.
Is someone here?
The information I gained from Aicantar is better sorted now, and it doesn't take me as long to identify the words from an up until now foreign language. "Hello?" I ask in a low voice, picking up the candleholder and protecting the flame as I walk barefoot through the darkness, searching for a door.
The world feels out of place. Like I have not walked on stone before. But perhaps, that is merely my altered perception. It isn't the world that changed when I slept away the years, but me. I've been standing still in time for many years – or thrown forwards, I don't know, don't know if I want to know.
I am the one out of place. Out of time.
It's… disconcerting. To not belong from one day to the next. Even the stone hallways, so familiar in design, cannot put me at ease and feel alien. Nchuand-Zel… no, Markarth, is a strange, new place. I absently wonder when the urge to run back to my bedroom and lock all the doors will be overcome with the need to go outside in the daylight and explore this new world with all the curiosity I inherited from my Da. But it's not his advice I want right now.
I want my Ma. How childish of me, I thought I'd outgrown that. But I really, really want my Ma to come here and tell me I'm just having a bad dream.
To tell me it's a lie. Tell me I can be home again.
"Hello?" I open the doors, the candle flickering and dying in a puff of smoke that blows away in an erratic pattern, following the cool breeze in the night. I look down at the stone city, motionless, as it unfolds in all its magic underneath the moons.
I watch the torches flicker in the night, watch the guards patrol the worn-down stone and avoid the heaps of rubble near the city edges. A large mine is barely visible, far below me. The waterfalls roar in my ears, and even in the pale moonlight, I can see that the stone has not been left undamaged by the force of the water. Despite the wear of time serving as a reminder, the scene is serene. I look up, and my breath is taken away by the splendour, as it had been three years ago when I first saw the night sky that blankets the world.
Two moons, silent eyes guarding those below, bathing the world in a gentle light, rise above the mountaintops. The uncountable stars shine and glitter like precious gems on the darkest of blue velvet. Silver clouds dot the sky, drifting lazily, asleep like the rest of the world. And… the aurora. Green, like my mother's eyes.
It is faint tonight, the green lights dancing just at the corners of the horizon, an endless display of beauty, seen only here, in the far north. A nudge in my mind explains this is called 'Skyrim'. The edge of the skies… A fitting name. There is nothing further north beyond the ocean's edge that I know of.
The night is light, peaceful, almost as bright as the day and far, far easier on my eyes, used to the underground as they are, irises and pupils larger than those of other elven races. The blanket of darkness is comforting, but also reminds me of the journey I undertook with my mother, bringing grief alongside the peace. An odd combination, that I do not feel like thinking too much on. Not now. Not with everything so fresh and heavy on my mind, not with the scent of her soap still clinging to my clothes.
The moons are light, but my heart feels heavier than it ever has.
As my eyes hungrily feast on the sights and my nose is tickled by the smells of lit fires and the night, my pointed ears pick up footsteps over the rushing of the waterfall. I turn my head towards the source slowly, feeling rather underdressed in the plain brown tunic and pants I wear underneath the leather armour – which should be back in the room. Wait, who undressed me?
The stranger comes closer. For a brief, silly moment, I fool myself into thinking it's Mellte, here to reprimand me on being outside this late before dragging me off on a pranking spree. But Mellte is…
"It's rather odd for anyone to still be out this late." The Altmer says, and I recognise him from earlier – he was the one in the elaborate robes that had the two guard escorts with him. He is wearing the same outfit now, and I bemusedly wonder if he also sleeps in them.
"…" I stay silent as I observe him. But the Mer doesn't need encouragement to keep talking.
"That fool Calcelmo claims that you are a Dwemer. That is impossible. Who are you, really?" There's a sharp, interrogative edge to his tone. The words are unfamiliar. But I grasp the gist of it. If it was impossible I wouldn't be here.
I turn my back to him to stare at the night sky again. This Mer, Altmer, is taller than anyone I've met. Calcelmo and Aicantar, too, tower over the Men-guards. Perhaps it is a distinctive trait for their race? I'd rather crane my neck to see the stars, than do the same to look another in the eye. Who is this person, to judge me like this? "I am Fjaldi." A pause. I tilt my head, contemplating the rest of my response. A bitter smile on my face and a gut-wrenching agony in my chest.
"I am alone."
My family…
I meet his gaze, almost surprised to see the gemstone colouring that I thought was unique to Dwemer. "Why a concern to you I am?" The elf frowns.
"Do not speak to me in that made-up language." He bites, voice still low, as if not to disturb the night surrounding us.
I chuckle softly. "I am Dwemer. Your beliefs do not that change… change that." I correct somewhat absently, as the grammar of this language differs from my own. "Does it matter?"
A long, surprisingly comfortable silence settles between us as we both are left to our thoughts. "I am Ondolemar. I am a %$#^ of the Aldmeri Dominion." I raise an eyebrow, sitting cross-legged on the edge of the stone platform we're on.
"A what?"
He doesn't seem annoyed or even mildly frustrated, as Aicantar was earlier. "A head Justiciar. I make sure that no people get the idea of openly worshipping – that is, showing their faith or adoration – for the false god, Talos."
"Tah-loz…" I drawl slowly, trying out the new name as the Mer takes a seat next to me, though he eyes the floor in distaste. My butt is freezing off, but at the moment, I don't care. I have something far more interesting to pay attention to. "Why is this Tah-Loz a false god? And who is the Aldmeri Dominion to dictate the faith of people? – That is, ah, decide what others can and cannot… worship."
"Talos. Decide which deities others can and cannot worship." The tall elf corrects, and I mentally add it to my knowledge of the language. "This is because Talos was a Man, a Nord that rose to godhood after his death. A Man cannot possible be a god."
I blink at him lazily. "You surface-dwellers and your concern about race is dumb." I state bluntly. "My Da, that is, my…" Why do I not know the word for father? "My male parent. He me tea- taught. He… taught me. That every creature has a soul and a story to tell. They are all… unique. He said it is wrong to judge based on what a person is, rather than who they is - are." my lack of knowledge on surface races and their strange language has never been a bigger source of frustration. "It was the last he taught me." I add, seeing the contemplative look on the other's face, the aristocratic way in which he rises and crosses his arms making me feel a tad insignificant.
In Dwemer society, I definitely am. Merely a smith's apprentice. Not the son of an advisor, or anyone important. Why am I even trying to explain this to him? Even I still do not fully understand that lesson, considering that I have been disregarding the humans around here as woefully unimportant all this time.
"I still do not believe you are a Dwemer." He says at length, and I snicker softly as I rise, wincing at the cold numbness spread across my behind and upper legs. "But your words bear thinking about." A beat. "Your father was a wise man."
I smile sadly, the grief in my chest weighing down my shoulders like I'm carrying a heavy pack filled with ore. "Aye. A scholar, was he. Ma used to say that his thoughts ran deep enough to hit magma. Molten rocks deep in ground." I explain at the Altmer's questioning look. "We used it to fuel – feed? Our larger forges. Places where we make weapons." A light of understanding. Then his entire expression shifts into something icy.
"Ah, you mean 'forges'… Very interesting. Perhaps we might talk again. Now, if you will excuse me, I am a busy Mer. I have little time for liars." Abruptly, too abruptly to make much sense, he turns and leaves, leaving me to stare after him in confusion. Ondolemar, is it?
The next few weeks I settle into a pattern. I wake with the sun, and have breakfast with Aicantar and Calcelmo. Then, I accompany the former to the marketplace for fresh produce, with Aicantar teaching me how the currency works, and how to barter. Hah. The first and only time he tried that, I gave him a filthy look and got the price down to something reasonable with a few well-placed words, to the amusement of the bystanders and the wry humour of the stall owner, who parted with his venison reluctantly.
The remainder of the mornings with Aicantar are spent studying. He teaches me the language, writing system, and the general information about the world I now live in through books and many linguistically tricky conversations. Of course, we also use the Calling, though only a few seconds at a time when I do not quite process a concept. Aicantar is… Nice. A little too obsessed with gaining Calcelmo's approval for my tastes. Slavishly following a Mentor is not the Dwemer way, no matter how prominent a scholar they are.
After a brief lunch, I sit with Calcelmo instead, and let the Altmer grill me for any and all information about my people. I gladly part with it, and even teach him a bit of the language. This goes on until Calcelmo started muttering to himself, writing notes like a Mer possessed, at which point he stops listening.
The continuous activity keeps me from thinking too much about… certain matters. So I quickly learn how to keep myself busy. And how to not lock myself away in my room.
The remainder of my days are spent training in the first room of Nchuand-Zel, where the Animunculi now hung around more often, wandering around the city getting to know people, or helping Ghorza at the forge, since… Well, since her apprentice can barely hold a hammer. The way he abuses the iron makes me want to show him how to hold a hammer by slamming it into his thick skull. Unfortunately, Ghorza forbade it. She did laugh, though.
I love spending time at the forge more than any of the other ways I keep myself busy. The singing of steel makes me calm down, and after hearing from Ghorza how orcs poured their feelings into their weapons, I decide to forge myself a new dagger, made out of malachite. When Ghorza first holds it to inspect it, she gruffly pats me on the shoulder and awkwardly tells me that if I ever needed to talk, she'd be there. I smile softly, say nothing, and go to bed early that night.
The nights are terrible. I'm continuously haunted by nightmares. Mellte screaming at me, telling me I abandoned them all. My uncle, disappointed in me. My mother, clutching a faceless body, her eyes empty, always so empty, like she doesn't see me standing there no matter how I call for her. The worst ones are – the ones where they are all going about their everyday lives. I'm walking amongst them, but they don't notice me. I'm a ghost. I try to warn them to escape, to run away, but my hands pass through their bodies. Then, they finally look at me, asking me why I slept. How long have you been asleep?
And they crumble, crumble to dust in front of my eyes, their gazes accusing and there's always the looks, their blackened eyes, empty and dead.
I wake up drenched in sweat and shrouded in silence. Then I glance at the golden morning sky, plaster a smile on my tired face, and walk downstairs for breakfast.
The city – Markarth, isn't helping the nightmares any. I see familiar things everywhere, and it hurts a part deep inside of me, but nothing that I see is the same as I last saw. The itch grows, and sometimes when I wake up after a nightmare, I go to the stone platform. And Ondolemar - poor Ondolemar, forced into a job he didn't want, something he confesses to me when we're both surrounded by bottles of mead, hushed in the darkness, drowning our grief - his father, too, was a scholar. His father, too, saw the races as unique, their cultures as something to be treasured. That's why Thalmor killed his father and brought him in for re-education. No high-class Altmer is allowed to think that way.
I watch, I listen, and I learn. Aicantar and Calcelmo feel more like… colleagues than friends. But Ghorza, Ghorza and Ondolemar are two people I would call that. Friends. It warms me even in the cold Skyrim air.
I also get to know Verulus. The resident priest of Arkay. Or monk, as he claims. He is quite adamant in teaching me about the eight divines, and we make a deal that, in exchange, I would teach him about the gods my people knew. I knew not of the story of the Night Mother before he off-handedly mentions her, and I wonder where she got the idea of courting Death. Courting Sait'iis. She must have been very impressive.
Good thing I'm not stupid enough to share that thought with Verulus.
I asked him to bring me books on all of the … Divines, as well as their antitheses. That's how I find that I'm what counts as a Daedric worshipper. And that what counted as a half-assed Dwemer pantheon, where really, Xrib seemed to be the sole Dwemer-only deity in Nirn. But. Meridia… the White Lady, Arnknurlaf.
Xrib, Sait'iis, Meridia. The only things reminiscent of 'gods' my people knew. They're more like concepts, really… Not even one of them is acceptable in this new world… Especially Sait'iis. Or should I just start referring to him as 'Sithis' now? *
…I suppose it is a very good thing I am no priest or avid worshipper. I glance up at my current company. Yes. Aicantar also looks about ready to quit studying Aedra and Daedra.
I close the last book, adding it to the pile tiredly even as Aicantar's eyelids start to droop. "That was the last one. You're getting better." I nod in acknowledgement. "You have my thanks for teaching me to read and write." Please do me a favour and don't ask me any questions on my literature of choice. He waves it away.
"It wasn't a problem, really, maybe Calcelmo will get off my case now."
I hum in agreement, shoving him playfully. "Aye, let me suffer instead." I groan, standing up and stretching.
"You're leaving already?"
I glance out the darkening window. I am supposed to meet Ondolemar soon, and I want to go back to my room at the Silver blood Inn to grab some mead beforehand. "Aye, I am." I am happy that Ghorza pays me a small fee for everything I make or repair, especially if it is Dwemer, since it can be sold for higher prices. It allows me to use a room at the inn and no longer burden the two high elves that helped me out so much already.
As I walk through Understone Keep the next morning, my heart aches once more at seeing the remains of what was once a proud centre of Dwemer activity. It's strange, not to see the vendors, or any of my people, really. Ma would sometimes go here to get higher quality cuts of meat. I miss her. I miss all of it. I don't belong here. Not like this.
Staying in this city… In Markarth, is not helping me with my recovery. Though recovery from what, I cannot exactly figure out. I sigh as I pass the large piles of rubble that lead to the centre hall and from there, I exit the ruins.
The open, vast blue sky entices me as I walk down worn pathways, surrounded by the stone walls my people built ages ago. Part of me is immensely proud. I'd last been in what these people now call 1E 705. My people, according to the vague and contrary history books, disappeared around that time. I only vaguely remember what was happening outside of the city – some mountain blowing ashes into the sky, raining death on the other side of Nirn was the last major news we received. Calcelmo spent a week on the calculations: my people's work has been standing for over four thousand years.
I wonder… I glance up at the skies again, expertly dodging a passing child - isn't she that one jeweller's kid? - And wonder what the world outside the walls is like. I've been thinking about it more and more, and with the end of the year approaching quickly, I have to make up my mind. People from all across the Reach will come and celebrate, and therefore, many caravans and carriages will be around the city. If I want to leave, it would be best to join one of those – preferably one headed for Solitude. I'd become curious of the place.
And perhaps I could make it a point to travel across the province, and see all other holds.
Find somewhere to feel at home. Because I can't feel that here. Not that it's likely I'll find such a place. I look like the cross between a Dunmer and a Breton with Altmer eyes, according to Aicantar. A freak, though he steers clear of calling it that way.
Guiltily, I look over my shoulder, as if expecting a reprimanding from Calcelmo for even thinking about leaving. More and more, he's been following me, asking me about my people, poking and prodding, like I'm a research subject. It doesn't help that he's brought up Dwemer social relationships and family bonds, and that speaking of my family leaves me reeling in such grief that I find myself sharing a bottle of ale with Ondolemar near every night.
I drop by Ghorza during lunchtime, reminding her that food is, in fact, important and subsequently taking her and her worthless assistant out for lunch at the inn. Avoiding Calcelmo when he's out for information, I find, is not an enjoyable pastime, though the evening falls faster than ever and my feet and calves ache from all the stairs I'd run up and down, so at least I got a workout. I smile as I watch Cosnach barter for another drink and Kleppr refuse just as adamantly, other patrons cheering them on. I'm content to sit back for a bit, the venison stew warm and thick as it goes down my throat.
I buy four bottles of ale, and unfortunately, or fortunately, for me, the entire Silver-Blood Inn thinks of me as the odd, half-breed alcoholic that got lost in a Dwemer ruin drunk and miraculously survived the ordeal.
It's annoying, making me the butt of many a joke, but those who matter to me know the truth, and I never bother correcting people a second time since I'd be doing so all day. Kleppr gives me a half-hearted 'get home safe'.
Well, it's not like any of them are going to believe me when I say that I'm regularly getting buzzed with the resident Thalmor Justiciar.
I walk up the many, many stone steps with a pained grimace, flopping down inelegantly with a groan once I finally reach the platform in front of Vlindrell Hall. I'd found out nobody lived there at the moment, but that it was for sale. I eye the door as I wait for my friend to arrive. Even if I got the money together, I'd never buy it. Staying in this city… I won't do it.
I will not stay here for much longer. A sense of relief washes over me momentarily as I finally make my choice, but it also comes with heavy trepidation. My grasp of the language has gotten better, but many cultural aspects still elude me.
Will I survive on my own out there?
Footsteps behind me, followed by a puff of air as Ondolemar sinks to the ground next to me, handing me a boiled crème treat 'left from dinner'. I grin at him in a silent thanks for my favourite food.
"Three months." He says softly, and I glance at him from the corner of my eye, opening a bottle and passing it to him.
"Three months of what?" I inquire, letting the peace of the late evening fall over me.
"Since you waltzed in here and set the lives of every Altmer in the Keep upside down. Since you screamed at Aicantar like a Mer possessed before passing out in front of my feet."
A laugh escapes me, echoing in the evening sky. "Three months of having to see your ugly mug every day." I snicker at his affronted look.
"Well, you're not exactly a beauty yourself… brat. Perhaps I should take your alcohol, it's clear that a child like you cannot handle their liquor." I raise both eyebrows. Ondolemar didn't even know my age.
"Excuse me?" I drawl out, "I cannot hear you through that cloud of ego surrounding you." Were he any less a trained Altmer of superior breeding, he would have snorted into his alcohol. We enjoy a companionable silence, listening to the chirping of insects that had frankly scared the hell out of me the first few nights before I found out the source.
"I'm joining you when you leave for Solitude in four days' time." I say finally, a sense of finality washing over me. There is no going back now. I'm leaving, probably for the better.
"Are you certain?"
"I am." We drink in silence again, and I look out over the city with a small smile playing on my lips, gaze soft as I drink in the buildings. I want to know. I want to know what happened to my people, my ma, Mellte… And I want to know for sure. To find my own proof.
Dwemer are pretty damn fascinating. Also, I'm curious, why do YOU think Ondolemar is such a… inactive Thalmor? That you can get to ruin his own ambassador's party? And that he carries an Amulet of Talos on him after you retrieve it?
*My take on this will be explained in later chapters – I left it vague and confusion on purpose.