Guide:
Dwemeris
Thoughts
"Speech"
"Dovahzul"
Warnings/Disclaimer: see chapter 4
Chapter Warning(s): Ha. Ha. Ha. None, technically.
A/N: Short chapter, so I added another instalment of the Dwemer Construct book series! Any new characters introduced in this chapter are my OC's.
Last time…
"Now. If you'll all excuse me. I must take my leave. Places to go and mythical scrolls to hunt down." Their knowing chuckles follow me out of the cistern.
Chapter 61 – Kagrenzel
I'm barely out of Riften's gates when things start to get… Odd.
At least, I'm pretty sure I'm feeling eyes on my back. It's a highly unnerving experience in the wilds of Skyrim.
Not a single animal attacks me.
A dragon roars in the distance but before my fingers can as much as twitch towards my blade it cuts off abruptly.
Some dead bandits are spread across the ground in increasingly embarrassing positions as I move towards where Brynjolf said Kagrenzel is located.
The Dwemer key in my pocket seems to be humming with anticipation.
It has me on edge. It has me so very, very much on edge that I spot the recent footprints in the snow as if I had been walking behind them whilst they made them. If anything, it makes my already confused self… want to scour the entire area from top to bottom. It's an instinctual reaction that I can temper only by reassuring myself that Kagrenzel is the higher priority at the moment.
I've finally found the place, I can't afford to waste even more time than I already have.
If this turns out to be yet another dead end, I do not think I will ever be able to look a Thieves Guild in the eye. Mainly because I would kill them all.
Despite my violent thoughts, I am tired.
Weary in a way no mead or bed can fix, a deep-seated melancholy that seeps down to my very bones, making them grow aching and heavy like a festering disease. I am not ill physically – I learned my lesson back in Winterhold. It's the weariness that comes after the desperation, after the bargaining, the anger, the pain, the depression, the sort that would come across as reluctant acceptance of fate by those foolish enough to believe in such concepts.
The roads are long and lonely and I'm tired.
Hopefully, this place will finally put an end to the searching.
Miserably, I trudge further, spotting the Dwemer building ahead and taking a deep breath to center myself. The doors are unmarked by inscriptions, or perhaps time has worn them away, and so I won't know if this is the place I have been looking for unless I step inside.
A small group of dead bandits in the snow next to the entrance, bodies long dead and half-rotted and reeking, but the white they are half-buried in recently disturbed, has me on edge.
Someone has indeed been here not too long ago. Not even a few hours, if that.
The first room is uninspiring, to say the least. The lights have been destroyed at some point, and the semi-darkness is only offset by the sky outside. Barely, I distinguish shelves in the alcoves at either side of the room. The entire place is barren as an emptied mine.
The second room is lit by a warm, golden glow. The sounds of tinkling bells like a wispmother's echo throughout the chamber, strong pillars holding up the ceiling as the light burns merrily over a small raised altar. The centerpiece of the room stands on a circular, raised platform. It's completely empty aside from the light on the altar… or perhaps more of a plain pedestal, now that I'm closer.
Closer?
I pause in my steps abruptly, realizing that I am mere steps away from touching the light source whereas before, I was just gawking from the entryway. Pursing my lips, I take another step, the bells originating from the glowing orb becoming almost deafening when this close.
Gently, and without even noticing it, my fingers brush against the light.
The trap springs.
Around me, quick as lightning, high fences shoot up from previously unnoticed grooves in the stone.
"Shit!" Comes my eloquent reaction, even as the glowing orb starts to spin around the newly formed golden cage, casting striped and painfully dizzying shadows onto me.
There's no way out.
Is this how I am to die?
And:
'Gods damn it Brynjolf'
...Are the thoughts shooting through my head rapidly as I turn on my heel, desperately trying to find a way out before I end up like the bandits outside.
"Calm down." Comes a voice over the now screeching orb of light. A figure approaches from the entryway, clad in a set of black Master Robes of Destruction, the enchantments glowing faintly in the dark. The figure's face is shrouded in the shadows, but I would recognize that voice anywhere in Nirn.
"It – No, it can't be - " I manage to choke out, eyes nearly popping out of their sockets in disbelief even as my stomach twists itself into knots and my heart makes a valiant effort to climb up my throat and out of my body.
Pearly teeth gleam in golden light as the hooded Imperial grins.
"You're going to be fine, you hear me? You'll be fine. Stand in the middle of the platform."
I obey without a thought, too shaken to do much beyond staring breathlessly.
"Marcurio..?" It is a wretched whisper that falls past my lips as if in prayer.
Is this an illusion of the orb? Am I dying even now?
The grin only broadens.
"Fjaldi." He replies, and I choke on a sob, staying rooted to the spot.
It's a lie. A small voice whimpers in the back of my mind, gaining momentum with the speed and destructive force of a Shout.
It can't be him. He's dead. Dead, dead, DEAD, DEAD-
I give no head to the sudden darkness that surrounds us.
"Don't – Don't fuck around with me like this, you vile apparition!" I roar in an agonized rage, my voice bouncing off the walls with the power of the Thu'um. "I'm going to fucking KILL you! Who the FUCK do you think you are?! Don't you dare -!"
That's when my stomach lurches and previously solid stone gives away beneath my feet, my yelling being abruptly ended with an embarrassingly high-pitched yelp as gravity reasserts itself and I'm send plummeting down a narrow tunnel.
I scream the entire way as I'm besieged by jutting rocks on all sides.
Instead of falling to my death, however, I tumble ass-over-kettle into a bright pool of light, spotting the flash of a purple cloak up ahead.
"You must bring the Scroll to Mzark before time runs out, Dovahkiin-Tumgol. Alduin grows ever-stronger, and you spent too long finding your way. Now, find it again… You must make haste. Even my protections shall reach their limits on the fourteenth day."
And in the midst of my panic and shock of seeing Marcurio and falling into an endless abyss of light, a single thought comes to me as clear as a lake on a wind-still sunny day.
Finally some Daedra-forsaken clear instructions.
Then I hit the water with a resounding 'splash'.
It closes in on me from all sides, forcing itself into my airways - my nose, mouth, even my ears are flooded. I resist the urge to gasp for air as the force with which I slam onto the surface knocks it out of me painfully.
A few moments of disoriented flailing later, I manage to figure out which way is up and break through the surface, getting a first glance at my surroundings.
A wooden platform is held above the water by sturdy pillars, and from it, two elves in researcher's garb are staring down at me, perplexed.
I stare back up at them, mirroring their expressions since I find myself equally befuddled.
"Kinsmer. How come you entered via the supply shaft rather than the entrance?" One of them speaks, his shoulders - swathed in a triangular poncho that broadens his shoulders and is embroidered with thick stripes and patterns – shake with amusement, causing the beads in his hair to jingle like bells, silver and ebony glinting under the Dwemer lamp set into the ceiling above our heads.
I scramble to make sense of the situation even as I decide to just roll with the punches for this one – These Dwemer… Did they survive after all? Did they manage to bypass whatever it was that destroyed my entire race?
…Or…
Or… am I back in the past?
A/N: You can kiss canon goodbye from here on out. I mean, I'll stick to the lore, but the main quest? In this fic it's not gonna happen the usual way. Now, without further ado:
Dwemer Constructs in Skyrim, Vol. IV
By: Fjaldi dû Bthardamz, dûn-ek Nchuand-Zel.
Introduction
This volume, more than any of the previous ones, will to me and perhaps you feel like a trip down memory lane. It was more difficult to put these words to paper, because, unlike in the previous volumes, one of the places of which I write is not build up of second-hand accounts and my own experiences with their haunted ruins millennia down the line. It might be all the shorter for it, for I cannot bear to think of the memories left to roam in Bthardamz.
Aye, Bthardamz, the city for which I have been named. Funny thing about Dwemer names, is that most of us did not own any semblance of a last name. the dû, or "dû" in my own name stand for, roughly translated, the phrase "he-who-was-born-in". Thus, my Dwemer name simple means "Fjaldi who was born in Bthardamz", and nothing more complex than that, such as what certain Dwemer researchers first assumed. At least, that was the name I held when I lived in Nchuand-Zel. Now that I no longer live there either, my name has been extended to, you may have guessed it: "Fjaldi who was born in Bthardamz and who was raised in Nchuand-Zel": Fjaldi dû Bthardamz, dûn-ek Nchuand-Zel. For women, it is much the same, only they do not use "dû" and "dûn-ek" but "dích" and "dích-ek" (written in Dwemeris as dích and dích-ek respectively).
But enough musings on Dwemer naming. In this work I will discuss two Dwemer locations in Skyrim; Bthardamz and what is now known as Reachwind Eyrie, formerly "Hawk Feather Tower" or "Ecchandak", in your writing. Be cautious, reader, that these books serve as guidelines, but not guides to Dwemer ruins. That said, if you wish to search out either of these places, you would by far have a higher chance to live facing the Forsworn to get to Reachwind Eyrie than to brave the enormous complex that is Bthardamz.
Bthardamz, "Bthardamz":
The first thing that will strike any visitor to the ruins of Bthardamz is their sheer size. Not only was Bthardamz the largest Dwemer city west of Arkngthand (Arkngthand) in Morrowind, it is also one of the largest ruins of any type in the entirety of Skyrim. I would, in fact, be rather unsurprised were I to learn that it is the biggest ruin this province knows. Of course, this size is not merely due to the favourable stone types in the area at play – though if you seek to mine stronger metals, you are better off searching elsewhere.
Even for a Dwemer City State, Bthardamz was fairly isolated and hard to reach. The local Nedes and other races had little contact with the city beyond the necessary trading of goods. Not to mention that the locals at this point were in conflict with each other and wanted nothing more than weaponry. Contact with other Dwemer cities was limited to a twice yearly caravan – one that my mother and I travelled with when we moved to Nchuand-Zel. It might be interesting to know that before the rivers and rocks in the Reach shifted and carved the landscape into what you find today, Bthar-Zel (Deep Folk Crossing) was the only available means to the city proper.
The isolation of the city has drawn the Daedra Worshipping Afflicted to the area, who commune with and revere Peryite, Daedric Prince of Pestilence. They are generally a peaceful lot, not interacting with the outside world – they are however not too fond of intruders attempting to murder them. I'd advise you stay away and leave them to their lives.
Reachwind Eyerie, formerly known as Ecchandak, "Hawk Feather Tower"
Reachwind Eyerie's original function was to serve as a watchtower to Nchuand-Zel and nearby above-ground Dwemer settlements in the west, which have since been completely wiped off the map. Of course, this was due to the frequent civil and interspecies wars in the First and Second Eras. However, the function of the tower changed long before these conflicts even took place. The Dwemer, too, had their legends, though few of those feature humans quite as prominently as the stories attached to Ecchandak, or "Hawk Feather Tower" in your tongue. I fear I may not be able to tell you much about it beyond the bedtime stories of my mother.
She would often speak of it. A mage, visiting the north and all its settlement during the first era, in the early days of Nchuand-Zel, searching for something that to this day remains a mystery. My mother's great-great grandmother had seen him, or so she claimed: a tall, round-eared stranger with no hair on his head but a beard to the middle of his chest, clad in black, red and silver robes with enchantments unlike any she had ever seen. He held great power, but instead of enhancing it, he sought a method of sealing it, fearful for reasons he would not speak of.
He sought a place to study this sealing in peace, close to where his suspicions led him to believe he would one day be forced to rest. It was not too strange for a mage to gain powers of clairvoyance or precognition back then, and as such, the Dwemer accommodated him, granting him the renamed Reachwind Eyerie and showing him how to activate our most secret locks. After he suffered an untimely death by hands of his kin, an old Dwemer guard sealed away the mage's research in honour of him, so that none would touch what he had so long sought to keep secret. But this guard did spread his name to all who would hear. Perhaps, dear reader, you may recognize it even today: Gauldur.