Chapter 8

As he felt the liquid flowing down his throat, he also felt a very bizzare sensation that very closely resembled nothing Ndugu had ever felt before.

"AMAZING, IT REALLY WORKED!" Divayth said ecstatically. "You're almost completely cured of Corprus!"

"Almost?" Ndugu asked incredulously.

"Well that's the idea, to rid you of all your physical symptoms, the bad ones at least," Fyr explained.

"And the good ones?" Ndugu asked.

"Well, you're immortal now, and you can never get sick again. Only..." he trailed off.

"What?"

"Well, I didn't want to waste a good sample of the cure on you because, well, you're black, and simply not worth it, but it did work, and that's all that really matters, right?" he said hopefully.

Ndugu was somewhat taken aback by this news. Divayth Fyr, a four thousand year old Dunmer wizard, had openly expressed his racial views against Redguards. But not only that, he had given Ndugu a Spoiled Cure Corprus Disease Potion. "So what are the draw backs to drinking a potion that could be hundreds of years old?" he asked cautiously.

"Urm, well, I dunno," Divayth admitted sheepishly. Suddenly, Ndugu began to do something very strange. He had suddenly begun to cry out in agony. His skin was turning pale, and bumps were popping up all over his body. His face stretched out and his mouth formed a beak. His arms turned into spindley little twigs with tiny claws on the ends, and the flesh of his arms connected with that of his waist, forming wings. His legs split into two, the front ones shrinking up into little bird feet, and the back ones becoming a long, split tail. His chest also shrank, some would say he became bird-chested. In fact, he had, because from the aforementioned bumps came hundreds of feathers. Ndugu had seemingly transformed into a cliffracer.

"Oh, that's right, I used the racer plumes from one of the creatures! Mean case of blight, that one had," Fyr said, reveling in old memories. "Now what else was in that potion? Scuttle...marshmerrow, lots of muck, finely ground bonemeal and Coda flower petals, and ectoplasm," the thought obviously hadn't occured to Divayth that the blight disease in the origional cliffracer had somehow survived, and was still infused with it's DNA, but how could he know that? Nobody knew what that was anyways. So, as a cliffracer in general, especially a blighted one, such as Ndugu had magically transformed, he was bound and determined to attack anything that looked remotely bipedal, so while Divayth was distracted, Ndugu gouged out his eyes.

"AAAAAIIIIIIIEEEEEE!" Divayth screamed, clutching his empty eye sockets. Having your eyes torn out can be quite painful, and having them torn out for no apparent reason can add insult to injury. Most people don't take too kindly to those who recklessly maim innocent people, and so it was quite easy to see why being permanently disfigured sort of got under Divayth Fyr's skin. Just a little bit...You see, you don't have to be able to see in order to cast spells, so he went ahead and summoned a Storm Atronach, who hurled a huge lightning bolt at Ndugu. Somehow, miraculously, and for the sake of not killing the main character and ruining a perfectly good story, it missed completely. This did not, however, discourage the Atronach from trying again. Fortunately, and by an equally unbelievable stroke of luck, it missed yet again. The Atronach figured that the third time was the charm, and Ndugu was inclined to agree, so he flew out of the room with all the chemicals. Unfortunately, this didn't prove to do much of anything because there were two doors between Ndugu and freedom, and it's somewhat difficult to open doors, especially perfectly round, gold, iron, and/or wooden doors with little claws. It was somewhat amusing to watch though, but the effect was completely lost on Divayth, who couldn't appretiate this quite as much seeing as how his eyes had been ruthlessly torn out. He meerly heard lots of skritching sounds that gave him a general idea of where Ndugu was, so he charged him with (brace yourself) a Deadric Dagger. As it happened, it was about this time that the Atronach hurled his last, most powerful lightning bolt, that Divayth sort of jumped in it's path by running at Ndugu. Just as Divayth raised his dagger to kill Ndugu, the bolt struck it and surged through his body. The fact that he was wearing what could have been almost 400 lbs of metal armor didn't really help him any. In fact, it only served to amplify the electric current that was ravaging through his 4,000 year old body. Of course, being hit by a little lightning bolt wasn't going to stop him, but falling down and impaling himself in the throat with his own dagger because he was stunned by said lightning would, and that's exactly what happened. Well, actually, THAT'S not what killed him, but it did weaken him considerably. By this time, the Atronach was out of magicka, and couldn't reach Ndugu because Divayth was there on the floor, you know how it is when an NPC goes down, so he was pretty much just growling and walking around in little circles in a completely futile manner. Somewhere, deep in the darkness that was the mind of the cliffracer, was Ndugu. And somewhere in there was a logical thought that said that if Divayth was dead, the Atronach would return to oblivion. With this somewhere in mind, Ndugu comensed to finish off Divayth by pulling out the dagger with his tail, thus completely opening the wound and making him strangle to death on his own blood (GRUESOME!). Apparently the sun had risen outside, and thus Ndugu's Wereracer affliction wore off for the moment, and because the summoner had died, the Atronach returned to Oblivion.

"HOLY SHIT!" he exclaimed upon seeing Divayth's corpse in a pool of blood. The Deadric Dagger was stuck between his toes, and he pulled it out. He looked around to make sure no one was looking and took all of Divayth's Deadric armor for himself, removing the half-eaten sandwich from Chapter 6. Inside one of the boots, was a key. Ndugu tried it on some of the chests, and one opened. Inside, there were about 25 Dwemer Coins, A wicked looking mace, and a necklace that looked as though it were made with exotic ebony for the chain. On it, was a blue and red amulet. Ndugu stuffed the coins...somewhere (pressumably where he'd put the Limeware), and put on the necklace. Upon doing so, Ndugu was suprised to see that he'd teleported to a very dark and scary place, where a very dark and scary person was running full speed at him, trying to gut him with a very dark and scary weapon. Ndugu screamed and blocked the first blow with his mace, then parried, smashing the person's face. The dark and scary person growled, and shoved his weapon into Ndugu, who flinched, bracing for impact and knowing full well that this wouldn't help him in any concievable way. Ndugu eventually figured out that he wasn't actually hurt, but that the weapon he'd ALMOST been stabbed with was curved, and that he was inside of this semicircle. Before Ndugu could wonder why he was inside of the weapon's semicircle, the dark and scary person slashed to the right, cutting Ndugu clean in half. Well, that was the plan at least. See, if that were to ACTUALLY happen, the slash would've started from the left to the right, but since Ndugu was FACING the dark and scary person, it was indeed HIS right that it started on. Consequently, that happens to be the side which has Ndugu's fighting arm, and thus the blade merely hit his mace, VERY hard and so he just sort of poked himself with it.

"Ow!" Ndugu said. The dark and scary person was so surprised that he hadn't sliced Ndugu in half (how would he have gotten through the armor?) that he dropped his guard entirely. It was when he went to pick it back up that Ndugu brought his mace down on the back of the dark and scary person's head with completely unneccessary force. As it were, the mace Ndugu was using just so happened to be Scourge, which had a reputation for capturing the souls of defeated Daedra. By a staggering coincidence, the dark and scary person JUST SO HAPPENED to BE one, and thus, rather than his spirit flying back to Oblivion, it flew in completely the wrong direction, straight into Ndugu's mace.

As the Daedra fell to the ground, he turned to dust. This struck Ndugu as an extremely odd thing for him to do, because when MOST people die, they turn into fresh corpses...or meals (and sometimes chocolate, apparently)...Of course, if Ndugu had any idea what a Daedra was, it would have made this much easier to cope with, but instead Ndugu just stared, bewildered, at the pile of ashes, and the only thing that remained aside from that, the very dark and scary weapon. Ndugu had no idea what to make of it.

"What shall I call you...?" he wondered as he gazed at it, awed. He looked around for clues. One of the first things he noticed was the pile of ashes, and how it was dead.

"Dead" he began, and suddenly some guy named Rick walked by.

Hi, I'm Rick!" he said.

"Rick..." Ndugu continued, unphased by the fact that some completely random person had wandered into a sealed cavern for the sake of convieniently naming his new weapon. The next thing Ndugu thought of was the crease in Rick's pants.

"Crease..." and an ant bit him in the arm.

"Ant..." he continued, snuffing the ant out of existence with his mace, breaking his arm in the process, and was suddenly at a loss. For no adequently explained reason, Wesley Snipes came through, dressed in a trench coat, weilding a sword, and dragging Rick's corpse.

"My name's Blade, and this guy," he said wriggling Rick's corpse slightly, "was obviously some kinda freak demon thingy that could somehow wander into sealed caverns. Understandably, I had to kill him," and he walked away.

"Blade!" Ndugu finished, "Deadric Creasant Blade! Oh, thank you Wesley Snipes!" and was promptly teleported back to The Hall of Fyr.