Chapter Two: A Helping Hand or Two
"You're hurting my arm, dickhead." I growled at the guard dragging me along.
"Don't worry about it." He said reassuringly. Then he threw me into the room at the end of the hall.
I decided to take a seat. It was the least I could do for myself, because the rest of the room looked a little uncomfortable. Where did I get a crazy idea like that? Well when I hit the floor my face landed about two feet away from a mace just kind of lounging around. Hi there.
"Well, you must be Garrett." The guy in the desk across from me said.
"You must be the asshole that woke me up." I replied. It's not even light out yet.
"Actually my friend Gordmon over there is the one who woke you up." Friggin' Orc. Of course I wouldn't be able to struggle.
"Well then, what do you want?"
"It's not what I want, Garrett, it's what we all need. You're young," I'm twenty, "Do you remember what it was like before the Daedra came?"
"A lot better than it is now." That's all I could really remember.
"A lot better." The guy agreed. Then he just sat there staring, like he was judging me.
"Who the hell are you?" I finally got curious enough to ask.
"I'm Caleb Cosades!"
"You're Caleb Cosades? You gotta be kiddin' me." The leader of Cyrodííl's defense?
"I am Caleb Cosades. And I need you, Garrett. I don't suppose you've heard anything about Bravil lately?"
"...The parties suck?"
"Word hasn't had time to spread, it seems. Yesterday morning an outpost, what was left of an outpost, near Bravil showed up here. In Skingrad."
"What do they want? Better wine?"
"Bravil is under siege." Caleb's face grew grim as he said this. He wasn't joking.
"Their commander died on the way here, the ranking soldier was a guy named Oreyn Nervera. He told me that a veritable army of Daedra was attacking Bravil. 'It looks so serious' he told me, 'that it could possibly be lead by Menta Na himself.'"
"So what do you want me to do? Help you get the fuck outta Cyrodííl before they take over?"
"Quite the opposite my friend. You might actually be saving Cyrodííl." Caleb appeared to be serious after this, too. I got serious as well. I got serious about thinking he was out of his fucking mind.
"This was pretty funny and everything but I just don't think it's my type of party, you know?" I said, getting up. Gooey orc hands pushed be back into the chair.
"You'll follow our instructions closely." Was the only thing Caleb said before leaving the room.
"So, uh, you been in the service for long?" The moron of a partner I'd been assigned asked.
"No."
"How long have you—"
"Less than a day," I cut him off.
We're sneaking through the countryside down to Bravil. We'd each been given a bunch of potions to deal with enemies. An extremely powerful restore health potion, an all-attribute restoring potion in case we got some kind of curse, a potion to cure disease, and a potion to give us a strong chameleon effect.
"What do you mean 'blend in with our natural surroundings'? Does that mean if there's weird-colored, not-natural-looking goop laying around we won't blend in with it?" I had asked, trying to piss them off.
"No, you'd blend in with that." The alchemist replied.
"Cool, psychadelic warfare." I'd said, doing my best to sound like a complete idiot. They didn't go for it. Either that or they think I'm an idiot and are just plain desperate for help.
"Is that it?" The side-kick asked fearfully. Smoke was billowing up in a thick vortex from somewhere ahead.
"I think so."
We stood in silence before I heard something. My "partner" just stood there, I don't think he heard it.
"Well, listen, I think we should just make sure we don't get seen," I said quickly and slammed my chameleon potion. Then I ran like hell.
Wilbur, the oblivious team-mate, stood in the open, not hearing it until it was only a few feet away. When he turned around, a big blue ogre was standing there, and didn't look pleased. It cracked the knuckles of one it's colossal hands. Wilbur reached for the chameleon potion, but the blue blur (the things are faster than you might expect) smashed it into a bunch of sparkly little pieces.
The surprised human turned and ran, leaping almost ten feet into the air and onto a tree branch. The ogre stopped, contemplated what to do, and then threw all it's weight into one enormous punch, cracking the tree greatly and knocking the dude back onto the ground. As it reached down to crush his head, he pulled out a dagger and shoved it into the monster's eye. Blood momentarily trickled out onto it's hand as Wilbur turned and ran once more, the agonized wails growing quiet.
After running for almost five minutes he turned and looked back. No troll. He breathed a sigh of relief. It had gotten pretty close to squishing him like a bug. Wilbur turned back around and walked face-first into a sailing Daedric warhammer.
Crunch!
Obviously dead, Wilbur crumpled to the ground and the Dremora that killed him merely turned around and walked away as if he hadn't just crushed in somebody's friggin' face.
I kept running, the daedra all not seeing me. It was bloody magic. Though it gave me a rush, I didn't stop to see how much longer the potion would last. Seeing the tower ahead, I put on a burst of speed while slipping out the skeleton key I'd been given. The home of Fathis Aren, a mage who was presumably dead, stood there, alone and crumbling. Nobody had seen activity in the tower since the invasion and it was presumed that he probably couldn't live on air alone. Sometimes people have to eat, and I hear that every once in a while they need to drink as well.
The lock was a real pain in the ass, and sweat was pouring down me, my hair was drenched and hanging, and it felt like it was roughly 200 degrees outside. Almost finished with the lock. I look around real quick. Nobody there. Frantically, I finish picking the lock and toss open the door, run inside and slam it behind me. Dust billows off the wall and some of the older rock crumbles down.
My plan, well, the plan I'd been given, was pretty badass. Caleb Cosades, who had been the Spy Master before the invasion, knew all kinds of things about Cyrodííl that nobody else did. This tower I just entered was connected to Castle Bravil by a roughly fifteen-mile-long set of tunnels underneath the ground. Fathis Aren could travel between his home and the city quite freely this way. Seeing as how my job was thievery, this plan seemed very good. No epic heroism. Wouldn't have to throw my life away in some psycho plot that would send me slicing through hordes of Daedra or anything stupid like that.
I had been warned, however, that some of Aren's old pets might be still be around in the tunnels. Which is why I have this glass longsword and nifty silver dagger with me. It cost me armor, though. Actually, to tell the truth, I don't have any armor.
"Is my boat ready?" The fifteen-foot-tall Daedroth-esque beast asked.
"Yes, my Lord."
"Excellent. Bravil had better be secure by the time I get there," Menta-Na threatened. He stood up from his enormous, spiked throne and walked out of the now-black tower in the center of the Imperial City. The city had become corrupted by the presence of the daedra.
Menta-Na was truly a force to be reckoned with. He had the usual daedroth's head, except for four small, white horns that jutted out a little past where his neck and head met. Over his body was an incredibly flexible, incredibly tough armor (colored a ruby red). The armor that Dremora Knights wore wasn't even this strong. A black cloth hung down in front of him from his abdomen, dangling between his reptilian legs. Gripped in one hand was a gargantuan club, with huge bone spikes sticking out of it. It took three regular daedroths to even lift it. Of course, Menta-Na wasn't really a daedroth; he was a demon created directly by Mehrunes Dagon himself.
With even more daedra packed onto his boat, he set sail for Bravil.
"Gates to Oblivion will be open once again," he told himself coolly.
Strange-looking catapult things were pulled into view. Scamps were piled on and sent screaming into the city, where the exhausted guards were forced to fight even harder against the attack. A mage was surrounded by a group of them. He looked around helplessly as they started to close in. They pounced onto him, clawing and biting and tearing and killing. With a scream the mage used his remaining energy to blow himself up, roasting the pink monsters in the process.
"Do you see that? Please. I'm begging you, help us!" The Count said to the Fighter's Guild Steward.
"Are you finally going to give us the financial assistance we've been asking for?" He asked back.
"Yes, anything, just help us!"
"Alright, everyone suit up," The steward told the guild members there.
Thank the gods...it may not save us, but it will at least buy us some time, the Count thought.