Talvas paced nervously as he stared down the walls of the old Imperial fort. He would admit without hesitation that he was scared if anyone were to ask him, but not to himself. He knew the things that lurked within - he was the one to track them, after all. But yesterday's experience left him… wary. He'd faced an ash spawn or two close to Tel Mithryn. Always with help. Never a swarm like the other day, and even though there were people there, he still…
Talvas clenched his fists and shook his head. Danger or not, he still had his pride. He was an apprentice in over his head, sure, but if he didn't do something impressive like this - would he ever be anything but an apprentice? "You got this, Talvas. You got this…" The mage muttered to himself as he took the first steps forward towards the ruined docks. He had his sights on two ash spawn. Just two. He could take care of that just fine.
Until, of course, they turned to him. The Dunmer froze in place as two pairs of hollow eyes stared at him with a glow that radiated animosity. One of them raised its hand and from the ground, ash rose and wrapped around itself into a thin staff before compounding on one end in a crude polearm, something between a halberd and an oversized maul. The other moved back and its chest began to glow as the creature drew in a deep breath and suddenly released a piercing noise he could only describe as a voiceless scream.
Talvas covered his own ears in a futile attempt to protect himself until the sound subsided. He only snapped out of it when he saw the other ash spawn rushing straight towards him, prepared to strike. At the last second he backed away and the creature's hammer crashed into the planks below his feet, snapping them with barely any resistance. Panicking, Talvas raised his hands and began to chant the first incantation that came to mind.
"Behind you!" He heard a female voice call out and immediately ducked to the side. Before he could respond, he saw a trail of frost roll across the ground where he just stood. The ash spawn watched it move with a vacant gaze before the trail suddenly stopped right in front of it and exploded into a wave of icy spikes, impaling the ash spawn upon it.
Without a moment's delay, a cloaked figure rushed past Talvas and cut into the creature's chest with a longsword before reaching within and pulling out the piece of red rock that served as its heart. The other ash spawn ceased its call of alarm, attention shifting to the newcomers. This attention gave it little advantage as the figure placed their hand upon its chest. Energy gathered at their fingertips before blasting a fiery crater in the ash spawn's torso. A moment later, their blade sank into its heart, and the rest of the body scattered to the winds.
Talvas looked at the two people with wide eyes. The first of them approached him - a hooded woman, wearing a metal mask with slitted eyes. Was that a Nordic design? "Are you alright? Can you walk?" She asked as she offered him a hand. He took it and got up to his feet, dusting himself off. Though he couldn't see it behind the mask, she seemed to be smiling at him. Then she turned to her friend, calling out: "He's fine!"
The other person turned around. He couldn't tell at first, but she seemed to be a woman as well. Most of her upper body was covered in a thick desert cloak of coarse brown cloth, the kind caravans would wear for travel in the ashen wastes. Beneath her cloak was steel plate armor, and on her face was the same mask of black iron as her friend… or no. Different, though subtly. Less decorated, more weathered. And if Talvas knew anything about Nordic craft, then hers seemed much, much older.
Saya took off the mask and looked Talvas up and down. "You think? The way he's gawking I'd say he got whacked in the head." The Dunmer blinked at the remark, his expression changing to confused outrage. Saya chuckled. "Now that's more like it. So, we doing this thing or what?" She nodded over towards the fort. Talvas glanced towards her, then at the fort's walls. Even from here, he could already see ash spawn gathering at the entrance to the docks, called by their brethren's alarm.
He nodded. "Yeah, you're right. Let's go."
Saya smiled and nodded. "Then lead on, Telvanni," she said and pulled down her mask, readying her blade once more.
I was wondering why Talvas didn't come by earlier today. Had to ask Veleth to find this fort once I got my stuff back from Glover. I have to say, I don't know the man but he definitely knows his craft. He put some kind of wax on my armor to make it fare a bit better against ash, and he provided us both with proper cloaks that could protect against the winds here without also making me sweat buckets. It's a very obnoxious balance, freezing when cloudy but hot when it isn't. Back home I'd just wear looser clothes to make up for it, but that's not exactly an option now.
We made it through the courtyard well enough. Serana's frost magic works especially well against them, so she did most of the heavy lifting. I generally stuck by Talvas and made sure he didn't get caught under a stray weapon or two. He did shoot out the occasional lightning bolt, but then he hit me with one of them so I very politely told him to stop.
Anyway, while I had the opportunity I decided to ask him a bit about the ash spawn. He said that his master had moved to the island sometime after Red Year because he wanted to research them - or more specifically, the rocks powering them. They are called heart stones, and apparently they carry a magical energy unlike anything he'd seen before, which is pretty high praise from a Telvanni.
Especially when that Telvanni is fucking Neloth. Yeah, THAT Neloth. Brelyna's uncle? Bloody small world it is, I knew that I heard the name "Solstheim" somewhere before! This is where she's from! Talvas even said he knew Brelyna, though she wasn't very keen on him. Not too surprised, the guy is a bit gutless.
Still, there's a conversation starter if I ever need to pay Tel Mithryn a visit.
I think we've spent about an hour or two in here, done a clean sweep of the whole place. Some of the sections are buried in ash and I couldn't be arsed to dig them up. We found some interesting things even without a hypothetical basement.
For example, the corpses. The entire place is full of bodies in varying stages of rot, though all of them are really old. Some of them have even started turning to ash. The interesting part is the fact that all of their chests are cut open - and I do mean cut, not split or crushed or torn. They're a bit too decayed to say for sure, but the wound is identical on every single one: a single, straight downward cut along the sternum, leaving a big hole to access the internals.
None of them had hearts.
I asked Talvas if he knew what this was about but he seemed about as clueless as I was, or at least pretended to be. Now that I think about it, I do recall Veleth mentioning that the reason this investigation was called for in the first place was the fact that the ash spawn were starting to come in organized groups. If someone was making them on purpose… Yeah, seems like cause enough for an investigation. Let's just hope the pay is decent.
The group stood in front of a large wooden door. As far as they knew, this was the last place they've yet to check in the entire fort. If there was nothing behind that door, then they just exterminated enough ash spawn to make a sand castle from their remains. But that would leave too many questions unanswered. They had to go, and so the handle turned and the door creaked open.
It was a large room, perhaps an office, though most of the furniture was barely of any use anymore. The windows were shattered, ash and dirt seeping in from the outside. The ceiling at the back was caved in, crushed by a massive chunk of debris. The only things yet surviving from the old furniture were a chair and a desk, a bloodied Imperial banner draped across its surface like a tablecloth. Behind the desk sat a single man, seemingly asleep.
Hesitantly, Saya took vanguard and stepped forward. The man bolted awake and his eyes immediately fixed on the unwanted guests within his chambers. "Who… are you?" As he spoke, there was an unnatural echo to his voice, the wheeze of a man who almost seemed unused to breathing. "More intruders? How did you get past my men?" He rose from his chair. With him standing at full height, Saya could see now that he was wearing armor of an Imperial general, though definitely an older design. The chestplate was torn open, a bright red heart stone pulsing with light inside his chest.
"What are we doing?" Talvas muttered from behind and Saya grimaced under her mask. Her grip around Stormblade tightened.
"Doesn't seem like he'll be much for conversation, though you're welcome to try." She turned to him and the mage visibly recoiled at the thought. She rolled her eyes. "Plan A it is, then."
The general's eyes shot over to Talvas as the two of them spoke, and an ominous red glow began to build within his gaze. "A dark elf? Here?" He said, reaching for the maul that stood beside his chair. "Men? Men! We are under attack! To arms!" At his shout, multiple ash spawn began to crawl out of the ash around the room. All of their eyes were set upon the three trespassers at the door.
"Shit," Saya cursed under her breath as she moved into the room. A bright flame began to swirl as an orb in her hand and she hurled it forward at the Imperial general. The man grimaced, swinging his maul to strike the fireball away only for it to break upon his weapon, magical lava splattering all over his armor and sticking to his flesh like glue. Looking to seize this opportunity, Saya tried to rush him down only to get shoulder-checked by an ash spawn coming from her side.
"Saya!" Serana's voice rang out and she stopped her assault on the ash spawn coming from their left. She saw Saya fall to the floor and tumble back onto her feet, the ward from Hevnoraak's mask still holding strong, and then she leapt back into action. Talvas stepped back nervously as Serana pointed her finger back at her targets and whispered an incantation. A shimmering white glyph appeared below their feet, and the moment one of them took a step forward - it exploded violently, freezing all four creatures solid for a time.
Saya's blade hissed as she deflected the ash spawn's next blow and its weapon slammed into the ground. Out of the corner of her eye she noticed the vampire approaching, and so she slashed at the spawn's arm to keep it from retrieving its weapon before taking a few steps back. "That one's bigger than the others. All else fails, I could try shouting," Saya told her and pointed at the ceiling. "Though in that case, this flimsy thing might just collapse."
Serana glanced at her, then pursed her lips. "Save it, then. We don't know what kind of-" she paused when she heard frantic footsteps heading straight for them. Immediately, she grabbed Saya's shoulder and fell to the floor, pulling her down with her. Not a second later, the general's massive cudgel swung right where their heads were and instead crashed into the ash spawn, all but turning it to dust with the force of the impact.
"Intruders… die… must protect…!" The man muttered to himself monotonously as he lifted his weapon again. His head turned to the side, seeing Saya scrambling to her feet, and his eyes lit up red once more. "FOR THE EMPEROR!" He roared, swinging the maul with wild abandon. Saya barely had the time to put one of her hands out and cast another ward when it shattered, his weapon flashing at once with fire and lightning as it crashed into Saya's shoulder. Once again, the dragon priest's mask did its job as a shimmering force field absorbed the impact and broke, sending the general reeling back from his own blow and Saya - all but flying back into the wall.
Talvas watched the fight unfold with a deep sense of dread. The general was no mere ash spawn, in fact he didn't look like an ash spawn at all. Unlike them, he moved with precision and purpose, practiced movements amplified by an ungodly rage that consumed his mind. He watched Serana try to distract him with her spells, Saya lunging and slashing at him to minimal effect as his wounds healed nearly instantly, the general's frenzy growing deeper and deeper with each moment they remained alive.
Then, Talvas heard a crack from beside himself. He turned and saw one of the ash spawn Serana froze earlier begin to break out of its icy shell, its body searing with heat and rage. Talvas felt his knees shake. The other two were distracted. If he just stood there, he could do nothing. He should run. He would die if he tried to face them…
…unless, of course, he could actually do something.
With frantic motion, Talvas reached for the spellbook on his hip and flipped through its pages. His eyes scanned the text therein before he found the right ritual and lifted his eyes. One had almost broken out. Three more were starting to crack. Talvas crouched down on one knee and began drawing lines in the ash at his feet, trying to follow the pattern as closely as he could. He heard two more loud cracks as the ash spawn broke out of the ice. He couldn't let that distract him. Taking a breath to steel his nerves, he pressed his hands down to the circle and poured the magic into it, chanting the incantation as though it were a prayer.
Just as the first ash spawn reached him, its top half was crushed to dust with the massive fist of an ash guardian that Talvas summoned. It was a monstrous behemoth of a creature, a crude form vaguely reminiscent of an ogre or a troll, constructed from amorphous ash and animated by a spirit just too weak to be a proper atronach. The creature roared as it rose out of the ground, winds full of glowing cinders lifting its body above the ground. It charged towards the ash spawn, tearing into them with massive arms and crushing them with formless fists.
Talvas watched the four spawn before him be obliterated in seconds before the creature turned to him. Even without a face, he could feel the bloodlust radiating from it and for an instant, he felt a chill run down his spine. He lifted his hand and pointed towards the general, shouting: "Kill him, now!" The ash guardian lifted its eyeless gaze off its summoner and saw the general, still locked in a fight with the two women. It growled something incoherent in response and then immediately took off, obeying the command.
The next thing Saya and Serana saw was a massive ashen form crashing into the Imperial general with the force of a battering ram, knocking the man off his feet and into the wall. They watched the two creatures wrestle and exchange wild roars like two rabid animals, clawing and grappling with one another, the very notion of weapons all but forgotten.
"Is it working?" Talvas asked as he came up behind them. He looked exhausted, yet there was something else in his eyes now. Not quite pride. Determination, perhaps? He looked at the two of them. "Are you two alright?"
Saya huffed as she stood up and dusted herself off. "More or less. Though I'm not sure how long that's going to last." She stretched out her hand and it lit up with a faint green shimmer as Stormblade flew back into her grasp. Weapon back in hand, she turned to Serana. "Everything okay?"
"In a manner of speaking…" The vampire grunted. Unlike Saya's, the mask she wore provided her with little protection against physical attacks, mostly defending against fire. Earlier, the pair decided to give it to Serana since she mostly stayed in the back, so there was little aside from spells that could harm her. Now, though, in the thick of battle, the vampire was quite ready to reconsider that decision. "That man reacts too well for an undead. If the heart stone is his weak point, we will need something to restrain him first."
"My dagger doesn't work," Saya said and waved around the enchanted dagger in her other hand. Then, she pointed the weapon at him. "It's supposed to pack a little extra against undead, but that guy didn't even budge. He's alive."
"Alive?" Talvas flinched, his face warping with disgust. "But this fort hasn't been in use for centuries! How can… Oh no," he muttered as he turned towards the fight once again. At first, he thought the ash guardian was losing, it was quite difficult to tell with how it kept shifting, slamming and swirling around its opponent. But it was not until he looked closer that he saw that it was doing perfectly fine - in fact, it was the general's pained scream that caught his attention as the guardian grabbed the heartstone in his chest and began to pull with violent force.
And then, it came off. Immediately, the man's body went limp and he dropped to the ground. The life visibly left his body, his flesh withering and growing dry and grey as the ash around him. The ash guardian held the heart stone in its misshapen hand, simply floating in place and staring into nothing.
"Huh. Well, that takes care of that then." Saya put a hand on her hip. Serana looked at the guardian curiously, taking off her mask.
"That's the stone that was in the general's chest, is it not?" She asked Talvas, who seemed to be simply staring back at his own summon. There was a weird sense of unease that he felt from how calm it suddenly was. "Talvas?" She nudged him and he turned to her. "Wouldn't your master be interested in that?"
"Hm? Oh. I suppose so, yes. You're right," he muttered, nodding. He looked at the ash guardian again, taking a breath to calm himself. "Guardian!" Talvas called out, putting his hand out. The tall creature looked at him with a featureless face. "Give me the stone. You are released," he commanded. But nothing happened.
Instead, the guardian once again looked at the stone in its hand. Its shine almost seemed a little brighter when it was outside the general's body. And then, it slowly sank into its hand and disappeared into the guardian's ashen body. Gradually, its form began to grow more solid, its amorphous head shaping itself into one vaguely resembling a human face. Its once-misshapen hands grew proper digits, its joints joined together and formed limbs and it stood down on the ground with both feet, which it now had. From within its chest came a faint red glow.
"Hey, you two asleep over there? Aren't you gonna pick these…" Saya blinked as she made eye contact with the ash guardian. Its eyeless gaze focused on her and looked her up and down. Then all of a sudden, the lights in its eyes darted to the heart stone in her hand. Saya could've sworn she heard a low hiss emanate from the thing's open mouth. "...what the fu-"
Before she could even finish the phrase, the guardian took off in a rapid sprint headed straight towards her. Saya felt the breath get pushed out of her body as it pinned her to the wall by the throat, its entire face lighting up. She could barely hear Serana and Talvas call out in alarm over the growing roar in the creature's gut as it took the heartstone from her hand and examined it curiously.
At that moment, Serana sent an ice spike straight for the creature's hand, breaking the stone with its grasp into shards. The ash guardian stared in confusion at the spot where its hand was just a moment ago. Its neck bent at an unnatural angle as it looked towards Serana and released Saya from its grasp, beginning to march towards her.
"Stop! Hey, hey! I said stop, you stupid thing!" Talvas shouted at it, trying to hold the guardian back. It regarded him with a gaze of indifference bordering on disdain, not even slightly dissuaded by his meager attempts to stop it. With the same motion, the creature lifted its hand and tried to grasp Serana by the neck. She quickly ducked away, much to the thing's apparent frustration. She tried to attack it with more frost, yet the thing simply swatted the projectile away, barely paying it any mind. Its only focus at that moment was Serana, and Serana alone.
If it had any capacity to do so, it would regret that narrow-mindedness as Saya came up beside it, drawing a deep breath and speaking words that made the whole fort shake: "FUS, RO, DAH!"
Each syllable that left her lips came out as a blast of pure force that slammed into its body, each impact stronger than the last. After the first word, the arm it stretched out was violently ripped off and blasted to ashes. After the second, a crater-like hole was blasted into its chest, exposing the stone therein. After the last word, the thing's entire body was turned to dust, not a single trace left of the creature or its stony heart.
Talvas looked on with an indecipherable expression. Shock, indignation, and horror all mixed together with pure awe as he struggled to process what he'd just seen. He looked towards Saya, who passed him by unceremoniously and stepped over to Serana, offering her a hand to get up. "That was… What was that? What did you do?"
"Secret," Saya said. Her voice was so gravelly Talvas almost thought it was a ghost speaking. She turned towards him and looked at him, two red eyes gleaming from under that black mask of hers. "One that you'll keep, if you know what's good for you."
Then, she patted his shoulder and walked right past him, like nothing happened. Talvas swallowed nervously and muttered: "Yes ma'am."
I was hoping to get this done without having to fall back on Thu'um, I admit. There were a few times where I considered it just because of how many of the fuckers there were. Oh well. Talvas doesn't seem like the kind of tattletale to kindly inform all of Raven Rock about what I can do, nor does he strike me as clever enough to know what that actually means. If he does tell someone it'll probably be Neloth, and I don't think Neloth will be a problem. At least not for the time being.
We looked around for a little while more before leaving. Talvas found an abandoned journal that he let me take a peek at, and it seems my theory was correct: someone was deliberately trying to resurrect the general, Falx Carius, using heart stones as a power source in a manner similar to the ash spawn. We decided it's better to take that information to Neloth, if he has any use for it. I doubt the Redoran would.
I don't know how to feel about this. If anything, I'm left with more questions than before. Why would anyone try to revive a random general? Why did only he survive? What was happening with the ash spawn? Could he communicate with them in some way, how did he command them? Oh, and what the fuck was going on with that ash thing Talvas summoned? Because he sure couldn't answer.
All I can say right now is that these heart stones are absolutely fucked. I kind of want to nab one for study, but I also realize I probably won't have the time. They have a lot of energy in them, at least enough to animate a creature. Could they be used as a power source for enchantments, maybe?
I met with the council. They seem like pretty upstanding folk. First councilor Lleril Morvayn took over about a century and a half ago, and the people seem to agree that he's a good ruler. Though I get the feeling that that's because his second, Adril Arano, takes care of the more controversial decisions. He definitely seemed more abrasive and pragmatic when I approached them, lucky Veleth was there to back me up. My "Dunmer politician" voice is getting rusty.
Councilor Morvayn seemed very glad to hear the news about Fort Frostmoth, though troubled in regards to the experiments. I told him Talvas and his master are on it, so that should curb his anxieties for a while. In the meantime, I received my payment - a very impressive three thousand gold.
Honestly, he caught me a bit off guard. Even with Calcelmo's generous offer I was running a bit light thanks to Gjalund and Glover, but with this… Man. I should kill undead generals more often.
While I was there, I also took the moment to ask about Miraak. Somewhat unsurprisingly, everyone was quite unhelpful. At best, some said the name was vaguely familiar, but they could recall nothing in detail. Still, after a couple leading questions, they did actually point me somewhere useful: apparently, a treasure hunter arrived a couple weeks ago from Mournhold. His name is Ralis Sedarys, and he was looking into the ancient Nord enchanter Ahzidal, hoping to excavate his tomb.
The name "Ahzidal" immediately got my ears perked. For one, it's in dragon language. For two, that's the guy who enchanted Ysgramor's own legendary axe. Serana told me he didn't count among the Five Hundred, but he was a survivor of Saarthal and actively helped the Companions with their crusade, so we've got quite the important fellow here. And if he's involved with the Dragon Cult, or with Miraak…
Well, let's just say I have a vested interest in whatever this Ralis has to say.
Morndas, the 12th of Morning Star, 4E202
"Hm. Well this is… barren."
Saya left for the excavation site almost immediately after she had breakfast. The locals were helpful enough to point her to the location - Kolbjorn Barrow, they called it, though few could tell her much about it. Back when Solstheim was still owned by Nords, it was a site of quite some importance. Sages would visit the place to commune with spirits for wisdom, others would perform rites to try and purify the land from some kind of ancient evil.
Either way, the tomb had been mostly abandoned ever since the island was handed over to the Dunmer, and it showed: where once was a doubtlessly grand burial mound now was a completely unremarkable ashen hill, the only remnants of its true nature being the great stone pillars, eaten away by the harsh winds until the markings all but vanished from them. A tent was set up a little ways away from them. There, a lone Dunmer man was mumbling irritably over a table, sketching some kind of schematic for himself.
"Hello?" The man nearly jumped out of his boots at Saya's greeting. His hand immediately darted to the dagger on his thigh and never once left it as he turned around and looked the stranger up and down. Saya put a hand on her hip and raised an amused brow. "By the gods, f'lah, I just said hi. What's the matter with you?"
"With me? What's the matter with you, sneaking up to a man like that!" Ralis barked. His every feature screamed nerves and irritation. It took a moment for him to calm down and move the hand away from his weapon. "...Sorry," he sighed. "I've just had enough… encounters in these past few weeks. Can't be too careful."
Saya chuckled. "You can say that again. I nearly died three times in twice as many days." Ralis looked her up and down at those words. He looked a little doubtful, but not enough to say it out loud. "So, you're Ralis Sedarys, right? I hear you've been making a bit of a business digging up a tomb around here." She gestured in the general direction of the pillars.
Contrary to her expectations, Ralis' expression only soured. "Oh, I see now. You're one of those hork-faced cowards come to mock my work." He shook his head and waved her off dismissively. Whatever interest he had in the conversation seemed to have died a swift death. "Well go ahead then, throw whatever quips you've got. I'm sure they'll be just as good the seventeenth time around," he grumbled as he returned to his table, where some kind of book lay open for quick reference.
"Actually," Saya said in a sing-song tone as she stepped up behind him and peeked over his shoulder - nevermind the fact that she had to tip-toe to do so, "I'd be much more inclined to learn about your uncanny interest in this particular tomb." Ralis looked at her skeptically. Saya smiled and nodded reassuringly. "See, I've been to a good few crypts in the mainland, and I've even got a couple things to show for it." She gestured to Hevnoraak's mask hanging from her hip. Ralis' eyes widened in surprise.
"Azura's tits, is that…?" Ralis gasped, struggling to find the words as he kept looking between her and the mask. "Can… Can I just…?" He reached for the mask and Saya quickly snatched it away, clicking her tongue.
"Oh, now you want to talk, hm?" Saya snickered and flashed him a knowing look. Ralis cleared his throat, attempting to regain his composure. Try as he might, he couldn't deny that his curiosity was piqued with that little demonstration. "Like I said, I'm no stranger to Nordic tombs. And from what I hear, you came all the way from Mournhold just to dig up this specific one. Mind illuminating a girl on what's happening?"
Ralis chuckled grimly. "A disaster, that's what." He turned to face her properly, leaning on his desk and gesturing to the papers on it. Now that Saya could take a proper look at them, she could see that they were sketches of the barrow entrance - or whatever Ralis estimated it would look like, going off limited information and whatever he knew of other such barrows. "You come from the northern ashlands, you learn to expect the worst. But this was something else entirely. When I first got to Kolbjorn Barrow, you couldn't even see this much. Buried in the ash, like everything else on this blasted island. Had to dig up a pile taller than me just to find the barrow itself." He gestured to the pillars and Saya rubbed her chin.
"What, all on your own?" She whistled, half in awe and half in sympathy. Even with her Thu'um, that would probably be a hell of a job. Frankly she didn't want to imagine what kind of labor it was for a regular person. "Don't you have a team or something?"
"Ha, if only." The Dunmer crossed his arms. "I'm a treasure hunter, not an archeologist. Normally, I go where you don't need to dig, or where most of the excavating is already done for me. This is outside of my specialty completely. Especially with the ash storms," he spat angrily. "Blasted things bury this place faster than I can dig it up."
Saya glanced at him curiously. "Why come at all, then?"
He returned the glance with a glare. Not a cheery man, this one. "I've got a financier back on the mainland. Been working with him for years, can't afford to lose the goodwill now. I was promised a very big payout to come here and dig up a set of antiquities called 'the Relics of Ahzidal'. One of the greatest human enchanters of all time, or whatever. Point is, these relics of his are old, and they're powerful - a combination that makes them very valuable to certain people." Ralis sighed, casting another dejected glance at the buried barrow. "Should've known that that kind of gold doesn't come easy."
Saya hummed as she walked past him, looking at one of the pillars. If one examined them very closely, they could find some faint traces of what was once ancient writing. "If it's such an important job, why not hire some help?" Saya turned to him. "You say there's gonna be a big payout. Can't you spare some as a business expense?"
Ralis snorted. "Hire them with what money? I only get paid on delivery, I wouldn't be here if I had the money to buy myself a crew just like that." He snapped his fingers for emphasis. Then, his sardonic smile slowly degraded into a depressed scowl. "Takes money to get money, and all that rot. I've barely enough to get myself off this island if this turns out to be a waste. Even if I had a thousand septims to throw to the wind, I can't afford to pay out of pocket for a job with this little security."
Saya stared at him for a few moments, contemplating his words. She still didn't quite know what to make of this Ralis fellow. He seemed like an honest fellow, if a bit rough around the edges and down on his luck. Though it's not like she could judge anyone for that, herself. And regardless of his character, the subject of his search could be of use to her, as well - her leads to this Miraak were few and far between, and if a bit of gold is all it would cost to get a better one, it would surely be a good investment. Not to mention those relics…
"Tell you what," she said, leaning on the pillar with her shoulder. "I just so happened to come into quite a bit of money recently, and…" She paused for dramatic effect, watching for Ralis' reaction. Thankfully, the man was listening to her as attentively as possible. "I may be convinced to part with it, if you're looking for a partner on your little venture here. What do you say?"
Ralis' expression was torn between excitement, puzzlement, and utter disbelief. His mouth opened and closed a couple of times without ever giving a proper reply. Ralis began pacing back and forth, considering his options while he stroked his beard, and Saya watched him with growing amusement. Finally, once he seemed decided - or rather, when he calmed himself down enough to speak properly - he stopped and asked her: "What are your terms?"
Saya smirked. Hook, line, and sinker. "Tell me more about this Ahzidal. What are the chances this isn't his actual burial place and you're digging up a random cairn?" Ralis pursed his lips at her words, visibly given pause. Demonstratively, then, she reached for the purse on her side and jingled the coin as a bit of encouragement.
Ralis sighed. "I thought about that, but I doubt it. My patron went to great lengths to find this place, and every other local here confirmed that it should be the real deal." He gestured to his table, beckoning Saya over. While she came over, he picked up his pack off the ground and pulled out a journal of some kind from it. He flipped through the pages and then showed her his notes. "Here. From what the old coot found, records of Ahzidal's life past his involvement with the Five Hundred are spotty, but there are a couple of different chronologies where the same legend comes up - in his pursuit of power, he turned to 'forbidden insights' and became an acolyte to some kind of 'darker power'. For this, the Nords have sealed him away here."
"Sealed. Not buried?" Saya noted, looking at Ralis curiously. The man only shrugged in response, which did little to alleviate her worries. If Hevnoraak was any indication, these ancient dragon priests were no strangers to cheating death. And if Ahzidal, reportedly one of the greatest enchanters in history, was dabbling with knowledge considered 'forbidden' by his peers…
"Same difference, if you ask me. Whatever the case, it's said that his greatest works were sealed away along with him. The Nords believed them to be 'tainted' with the powers Ahzidal supposedly dealt with." He closed his journal. "Now, I'm not one to talk about superstitions, but I'm also not one to judge a client for odd requests. Besides, this wouldn't be the first tomb I'd been to that's supposedly cursed," he scoffed and shook his head. "If there's enough to it that the locals didn't want people prying, I'd say it's genuine."
Saya hummed, feigning deliberation for a few more moments. "Alright, good enough for me." She shrugged. Ralis looked at her with confusion right up until she took her purse and tossed it on the table. He looked back at her, then at the coin. She nodded towards it. "You can count it yourself, if you're so inclined. Think that'll be enough to get the dig going?"
Ralis reached for the purse somewhat hesitantly. It was a bit unfair to call it a 'purse', if only due to the sheer amount of money kept inside it. He took a bit of time to count the coin, glancing at her multiple times as he did. It wasn't as though he doubted it was genuine - he had a good enough eye for that. Rather, he wondered just how deranged of a partner he was dealing with that she would carry around this much money on her person.
"I…" He cleared his throat and hit his chest a few times. Nervous habit? Saya stifled another half-hearted chuckle. "Well… it's all there. I suppose I'll have to head back to Raven Rock and round up some diggers. If- If that's how this is going to work?" He looked at her, unsure and scratching his head. Saya shrugged.
"If you've got the time, I was just going to head back there myself. We can flesh out the details as we walk, or over a drink. Sound good?" Saya asked, offering him a handshake. Ralis looked at her hand, then at the amount of gold in his other hand, and gave a shaky nod.
"Yeah. Yeah, that sounds good." He took her hand and shook it firmly. Then he turned to the rest of the camp and quickly began gathering the papers into his pack. "Just give a minute to pack up some of the more important things, don't want any reavers getting ideas. You don't mind waiting, right?"
Saya smiled. "Oh, take your time. I'll be ready when you are." Her red eyes drifted to the pillars, looking at them curiously. She couldn't quite explain it, but something about them seemed vaguely familiar.
Ralis and I came back to Raven Rock shortly after, swung by the Retching Netch and grabbed a couple of drinks. I got to know the guy a bit more. He's from Mournhold, a couple decades my senior, been doing treasure hunting professionally for about twenty years, mostly for the same guy. Some museum owner collecting antiquities. They've been friends even before that, so he's not really keen on letting him down after all this time, hence his stubbornness with the barrow.
Anywho, we settled on this arrangement: Ralis manages the dig, I do my own thing and keep the money flowing as needed. Seht knows how deep that barrow runs, and all and any findings will be reported to me. Once the whole thing is excavated, we'll do a thorough search of all and any things that may be useful or valuable, and then we split that forty-sixty, with him getting the bigger cut. It only seemed fair since he'd be doing most of the work, but I could probably talk him into halfsies if there's something I really want down there.
Serana came back in the evening, so we talked about her day for a bit. She decided to help Geldis out around the tavern - he made some kind of new kind of sujamma and had her give out samples for taste-testing and to advertise it. Serana got a bit of coin for it and took the chance to chat with the locals a bit. She's not exactly making friends yet, but she did start chatting with one Aphia Velothi, a former priestess from the local Temple who helped her find people that might've been interested in Geldis' brew.
Aphia is on the older side, closer to my mother than myself, so I'd imagine she kept an eye on Serana while she was going around town. I'll probably have to come by hers later to thank her for the help, if nothing else.
Though apparently, I may have a better way of giving her thanks: while they were talking, Serana learned that Aphia is married to one Crescius Caerellius, an old Imperial miner. She met him while he was having a depression streak after failing to try and restore the local ebony mine after EETC pulled out. It's been more than ten years since then, but he still hasn't given up on his search - what's more, he thinks that the mine wasn't closed down for a lack of resources, but as a deliberate ploy by the Company to try and hide something there.
Recently, they found some kind of letter from his late grandfather who died in an accident at the mine, claiming they discovered some kind of "great secret" down there. Now, Aphia's been spending her days trying to keep her eighty year old husband from getting himself killed trying to explore abandoned tunnels that haven't seen maintenance for twice as long as he's been alive.
Personally? I might go take a look at that mine. Ralis and his people will need time to dig, and I'm not particularly keen on going out looking for the Skaal. No comment on Neloth. From Brelyna's stories alone I would rather avoid meeting the guy if at all possible, and I'm not invested enough in heart stones to seek him out for it.
So… guess we're going mining tomorrow.
Tirdas, the 13th of Morning Star, 4E202
Crescius Caerellius was about as unpleasant a man as you would expect. Old, decrepit, and an avid believer in conspiracy, he didn't even believe Saya and Serana were there to help until his exasperated wife heard him yelling and came to calm him down. Saya made a point of not paying too much attention to what he said for the sake of her own mental health, though she couldn't help but catch the odd word against her will. Something about the workers finding a massive new vein of ebony and the mine getting closed down soon afterward. Serana would give her the important notes later, probably.
And so, torch in hand, the pair descended into the depths of Raven Rock Mine. Saya had been in mines before, and she felt like 'mine' is an understatement for this facility. It looked more like an underground quarry: a hollow cylinder stretching like a corkscrew staircase down, down, ever deeper into the abyss below. Every once in a while they'd come across a side tunnel which stretched for a while before tapering out, bits of the walls and ceiling chewed out with old pickaxes until the rotted wooden support beams seemed to be the only reason these tunnels were not yet rubble.
"So… this is ebony?" Serana asked at some point, prompting Saya to turn around. In her hand, Serana was holding a piece of crystalline black rock, almost reminiscent of glass, giving off a slight purplish sheen when it caught the light of the torch. "I thought it might be lighter."
Saya smiled, catching the rock as Serana tossed it to her. "It is, once it's refined. This here is just the raw stuff. Good for pounding things into dust maybe, but not much else." For demonstration, she took the piece and smashed it into the nearby wall. The vampire flinched initially, barely catching the stone when Saya tossed it back to her. "The good thing about ebony is how durable it is. You don't need much of it to make a good thing. Though if you're working with raw ore, it's going to take a while."
Serana hummed as she examined the fragment in her hand. It certainly seemed quite durable - despite Saya's… rough handling, it didn't have even a single scratch on it. "I believe I've read once that it takes up to a year to make ebony into anything usable," she said unconfidently. Saya snorted. "Is there any truth to that?"
"A little bit. The rest is embellishment, credible-sounding random numbers…" Saya grunted as she had to take a small leap, getting around a broken wooden platform. The lower they seemed to go, the less stable their footing. She could only hope there was enough to make it all the way down. "...and other genre-appropriate bollocks, applied as needed." She turned around and offered Serana a hand as she made the same jump, pulling her up carefully.
"Thanks," the vampire muttered as she dusted herself off. The wood below them creaked unpleasantly, but it held. After some consideration, she decided it'd be best to put the ebony piece away.
"Blacksmiths don't usually work with raw ore, unless they're show-offs with fancy kilns they can't wait to break with half-molten volcanic glass. Ingots are just plain safer and less wasteful, if you've got the money," Saya continued talking as they walked. She kept an eye out for any oddities or dangers, but aside from one spider infestation some fifty meters up they seemed to be in the clear. "I'd believe it if you told me it takes three or four months to make raw ebony into anything, if only because of how much of a bitch it is to melt the damn thing in a way that won't leave it full of bubbles and cracks. But get me some ingots, and I could probably cobble together a decent blade in a couple of days. Not a masterpiece by any means, but y'know."
"I see," Serana answered noncommittally. The two walked silently for a few minutes then. Serana noticed that the lower they descended, the less frequent these branching paths became and the more their passage narrowed. Crescius' words echoed in her mind: 'The blocked-off section is at the very bottom. Can't miss it.'
"Here," Saya said and Serana lightly bumped into her, both of them stopping in their tracks. The path they were following came to an abrupt stop, the stone beneath them now little more than a crumbling cliff into absolute darkness, almost like there was a cave-in. To their side, meanwhile, was a tunnel - larger and older than any of the previous, covered up with a slipshod wall of planks and rusted nails.
It only took a couple of kicks to get past the withered wood and step into the tunnel. Saya's torch illuminated a crumbling mineshaft, wooden struts still holding against the test of time in spite of the tunnel's unusual size. What truly caught her attention, however, were the skeletons: withered and rotted corpses of guards, miners, and other workers. They had encountered the occasional unfortunate victim on the way, of course, but this was on another level. By the time they reached the end, Saya counted almost forty bodies all in the same tunnel.
And there, at the end, the pair was greeted with a single wooden sign that read: 'ABANDONED. LEAVE OR DIE.' Their eyes drifted upwards, and behind the sign they saw a double door of a design Saya had seen a dozen times before. It was the door to a Nordic barrow.
Wordlessly, Saya pulled out her sword and pushed the door open.
Alright. Maybe I should've listened a little closer to the old man's ravings.
More or less from the moment we entered, we got a friendly greeting from the local residents. For once, I have to admit they caused a bit of trouble. These weren't the usual draugr. And I'm not just talking about the equipment, although I could definitely do without the solid plates of ebony I saw some of the bastards wearing around. It's more about how they move. It's like they're… not quite right upstairs. Like they're undead, obviously, but some of them were going around on all fours or shambling around all contorted-like.
One of them even tried to bite me. Good thing I've got the armor on, broke his teeth on it right quick. Still unsettling, though.
From what I can tell, this place seems to be a crypt like any other. The only thing that's weird is the scale - it's bloody massive, and the moment you think it's going to come close to an end it just keeps on going. It's exhausting. Might end up having lunch down here.
So we've been down here for a couple hours now, and I've been thinking. There's writing on some of the walls, which seems to be somewhere between Old Nordic and Draconic. I can barely read some of the words, and Serana is more or less in the same boat. My thought is, who are these people supposed to be? They don't seem to be dragon worshippers, or at least I don't see any regalia on even the stronger ones. But at the same time, this barrow is old enough that it's First Era at the latest.
One recurring word we've seen is "Bloodskal", whatever that means. And not "Skaal", but specifically "Skal". They made a point of spelling it that way, so I can only assume they're different things. There's also a reference to some kind of "blood sword" or "blood blade", which may or may not be literal. Neither Serana nor I have ever heard of this thing, and you would think a vampire clan would know of something like that.
…is that a rude assumption to make? Well, either way, we'll probably find out soon enough.
"Behind you!"
Saya grunted as she pried Stormblade out of the draugr's skull just in time to dodge the swing of its comrade. The undead creature hissed angrily and tried to follow up, only for Serana to send an ice spike straight into its unprotected elbow, tearing the dry cartilage apart and sending the arm flying off to the side. The draugr appeared briefly confused and the lights in its eyes flickered back and forth between Saya and where it expected its forearm to be.
Saya cut that contemplation short as she planted her palm on its face and channeled a burst of heat, flame and smoke bursting from the draugr's nose and mouth. The creature let out a low groan as it collapsed to its knees, likely dead. Saya didn't settle for 'likely', however, and promptly finished it off with a quick slash to the throat, leaving the thing beheaded. She took a moment to catch her breath then and glanced at Serana, giving her a thumbs up.
"Thanks for the cover," she said as the vampire walked up to her. Serana smiled a bit but didn't respond. She had more or less settled into their usual rhythm after however long they've been down in this dungeon, so she didn't think it particularly praiseworthy to simply do her part… though it felt nice to hear nonetheless.
In the meantime, Saya's attention had already moved on elsewhere - specifically, to the weapon that the draugr she just felled had been holding. She made a bit of a habit of doing so ever since she noticed that the undead here were not wearing the blackened iron and steel she was accustomed to. Most of the weapons were nicked or damaged in some way, but she held out hope that she might find a couple that might be worth salvaging for sale.
In fact, Saya already had a half decent longsword wrapped up on her back in spite of the thing's cumbersome weight and size. It is only by virtue of Serana's protests that this was the only longsword she'd picked up along the way.
"Another trinket for your collection?" Serana asked with a sigh, putting one hand on her hip. Her tone of voice was somewhere between exasperated, bitingly sarcastic, and ever-so-slightly amused.
Saya shook her head and stood up. "Mace. Not lugging that around," she mumbled and tossed the thing to the side with a clang. After she gave her sword a cursory wipe with a nearby banner, her eyes turned to the rest of the room. It was a rather spacious chamber, mostly vacant apart from a very large brazier at the center of the room. In fact, it almost looked like a cooking fire if the metal grid above it was any indication, almost like an oversized grill. Saya grimaced. "Well, that explains the stink."
Serana hummed as she crouched down to inspect the remnants of the fire. At a glance, one might've mistaken the chamber for being a large kitchen, but that made little sense given the location. Normally, a kitchen like this would not take a central position but instead be off to the side, directly adjacent to a dining hall. Her gaze traveled down and she noticed familiar glyphs sprawling across the floor in deceptively intricate patterns, the text itself doubling as an ornament as well as a message.
"A ritual chamber," Serana concluded. She turned toward the Dragonborn, who had just fished out what most definitely appeared to be a human hand from the used coal. She flung the thing away in disgust. "Though, I cannot remember any gods that would demand human sacrifice. Dragons, perhaps…?"
Saya looked back at her and shrugged. "I think we would've seen some dragon imagery around if that was it. They definitely liked blood, I'll give you that much." Saya paused, gears turning in her head. Then, she sighed and waved the thought away. They still had a dungeon to get back to. "Help me with this?" She asked, standing next to the door to the next room. Serana walked up to her and the two pushed it open together, the door hinges creaking torturously all the while.
Immediately, the two were greeted with an unexpected breath of fresh air and the sound of rushing water. Instead of the expected passage, the chamber opened into a natural cavern vaguely reminiscent of the quarry at the mine entrance. A small stream ran between the basalt formations, hexagonal pillars of rock forming a natural floor that required minimal intrusion to get into shape.
Saya and Serana followed a set of stairs down to what looked like a small abandoned camp. The rusted remains of a cooking spit and an iron pot lay next to a pair of moth-eaten bedrolls, one of them visibly bloodied. Whatever little remained of a knapsack lay in rotted tatters, nothing of value within except for a handful of coins depicting Uriel Septim VII, pointing towards the camp's age. At the center of the little platform they found themselves on was an empty pedestal, covered in flowing lines unlike any found around the rest of the barrow. Beyond that - only another set of stairs, leading up.
The pair pushed on. Once they ascended the staircase, they found themselves facing a massive, semi-circular stone door. In fact, it seemed less like a door and more like a solid wall, split in two by some force that was beyond craftsmanship, encased in a thick stone ring lined in little indentations that split it into six equal parts. Kneeling on the floor before the door was a skeleton, hands clutching the handle of a blade embedded in what was once the man's stomach.
With barely a first thought, let alone a second, Saya walked up to the skeleton and took the weapon from its grasp. This took a bit more effort than expected, as the evidently ceremonial greatsword turned out to be longer than Saya was tall, and the impractically thick and decorated blade made the whole thing heavy enough that she nearly dropped it. Saya had rest the bottom of the blade on the ground to take a proper look at it - quite curiously, it appeared to be made of neither iron nor ebony, but enchanted silver. Though tarnished black with age, it still retained the unmistakable crimson glow of enchantment that flowed through the many engravings and glyphs that riddled the cutting edge.
"This is him." Saya turned upon hearing Serana's voice. The vampire was flipping through the pages of a dirty old journal she had found lying in one of the bedrolls, her expression growing more troubled the more she scanned the contents. "This is Crescius' grandfather," she concluded, lifting her eyes to look at the skeleton. "This journal says he came here at the behest of the East Empire Trading Company to inspect one of the passages where the workers stumbled upon the barrow."
Saya hummed as she continued to inspect the blade, drawing her fingers across the edge. Still quite sharp, though no discernible response from the enchantment. "Anything else?"
Serana went quiet for a moment, reading the journal a bit more carefully. Her mouth tightened into an uncomfortable line the more she read. "It says… there were two of them. Gratian Caerellius and his assistant, Millius. They were trying to study the tomb of what they called 'Bloodskal Clan', a group of heretical Skaal banished by their kin. The only surviving records of this tribe are Skaal oral history, which they refused to share, so Gratian decided to go into the tomb himself, along with his assistant. Inside, they encountered many draugr…" Saya chuckled. "…and eventually found a ritual chamber where a weapon called the Bloodskal was embedded into pedestal, which they removed."
"Sounds like this thing," Saya said, lifting the greatsword in her hands. From a side perspective, it looked almost comical to see the tiny elf trying to hold the ridiculously oversized weapon - even the handle seemed vastly disproportionate, like it was crafted for a person nearly twice as tall as herself. "Go on?"
Serana quirked an amused eyebrow at her friend's struggles before returning to the journal's contents. "Gratian writes that he spent another week down here. They made a base around the pedestal and did a couple of forays out into the tomb. During one of their runs, Millius got injured and…" She trailed off, pursing her lips. At the sudden pause, Saya stopped her fiddling and shot a concerned glance in Serana's direction.
"Everything okay?" She asked quietly. Serana managed a shaky nod and took a deep breath before she continued.
"Gratian says he was hearing… whispers, ever since they entered the tomb. A friendly voice that he did not recognize that guided him through the tunnels and went silent when they found the sword. The night Gratian realized that Millius would not survive… he woke up hearing whispers." Serana paused, swallowing a lump in her throat. Disgust seeped into her voice. "Millius was in delirium and could barely resist. He brought him to the ritual chamber and used the last of their matches to start a fire. Then he… he butchered him with the blade and ate him."
Saya's expression turned grim. Her eyes drifted back to the skeleton that sat kneeling before the door. It didn't quite register as such the first time, but it looked like it was… grinning, almost. Its eyeless gaze was fixed upon the door, as though he didn't have the slightest care about the blade in his stomach. A maniacal euphoria. She sighed.
"What about the door?" Saya asked. She tried to keep her voice quiet and gentle, not to agitate her friend any further. "Is there anything about it in there?"
Serana was still for a moment before she started reading further. After a minute of silence, she spoke up: "Yes. There is. After Gratian killed his assistant, he says that the whispers had gotten louder and more distinct. The next time he awoke, the blade was glowing red and the whispers beckoned him to the door. He tried for days to pry it open, to find a key of some kind. Frustrated, he swung the blade at the door, trying to cut through it." Serana then turned towards the sword on the floor, her expression indescribable. "He says that, in that moment of rage, the sword released some kind of ribbon of energy that followed the arc of his swing."
Saya looked at Serana, then back at the blade. Taking the cue, she walked over to the sword and picked it up with both hands. At that moment, the glyphs on the blade seemed to glow just a little bit brighter. She cast another glance in the vampire's direction, as if asking for permission to try it. Serana gave her a single cold nod. "Well… here goes nothing," Saya muttered and took a deep breath. Then, with as much strength as she could muster, she lifted the blade off the ground and slashed in a horizontal arc.
Suddenly, the light that shimmered within the weapon's engravings pooled towards its cutting edge as the swing reached its apex. On the downswing, then, that light left the blade as an arc of red energy that shot outwards, striking the wall in front of them.
Saya blinked as Serana approached from behind. "Woah."
"In his last entry, Gratian says that he had been swinging the blade for hours, trying to match the arcs in it with the grooves in the door. He seemed to think that if he struck at the correct angle, he could get it to unlock. Unfortunately, the sword ran out of energy before he could test that hypothesis…" Serana audibly closed the journal. "…and it seems that the only way to power the blade is with blood."
"So… he stabbed himself hoping to charge the blade, and bled out in the process," Saya finished as she lifted the sword to take another look at it. Indeed, the glimmer inside of it seemed ever so slightly duller after shooting out the arc. "I'm not sure how well Crescius is gonna take this," she said to Serana, who shrugged sympathetically.
"I cannot say I would hold it against him." The vampire turned to the door, looking at the grooves therein. There were numerous scratches in the stone where Gratian tried to strike them, the poor fool. "Though I suppose it won't matter if we don't survive to tell him," she muttered with a grim expression on her face. Saya suddenly chuckled.
"Oh, planning to eat me, are you, sunshine? Tsk-tsk," she said in a playful, husky voice and Serana whipped around to glare at her with an expression so offended that it made Saya break out in laughter. "I kid, I kid."
She walked past the flustered vampire, lifting the sword onto her shoulder to carry it more easily as she inspected the door. As she did, some of the grooves appeared to faintly light up when in the blade's proximity. Saya backed up slightly before winding up for a strong horizontal swing, sending out an arc that fed straight into the groove. Immediately, a low rumble reverberated across the hall as a massive segment of the stone ring encircling the door slid back into the wall, revealing the next section.
Then, she turned to look at Serana with a smug, self-satisfied smile. "So, what was that about dying down here?" The vampire rolled her eyes, pretending to be annoyed though barely hiding a smile of her own.
"Just get the door open, you," she said as she shook her head at Saya's cocksure behavior. Saya stuck out her tongue childishly before getting back to work.
It took a couple of minutes until they were finally done. The first two slashes were simple enough - horizontal swings at the base of each side of the door. The second pair were a bit more of a challenge, requiring a cross-cut that would feed into two diagonal inlets at once. It took her a couple of tries to get that one right and she had to stop to catch her breath afterwards, complaining about the sword's weight all the while.
The final, fifth cut was a single downward slash that sent out a massive arc of energy that split the door in two. The flash of energy was so bright that both Saya and Serana had to close their eyes for a couple of seconds. When their vision recovered, they felt the floor rumble under their feet as the two halves of the door slowly slid apart, finally opening passage into the next room. Without so much as an extra word exchanged, the two immediately gathered their things and stepped forward.
It was a dark and very spacious hallway. Saya would've mistaken it for a cavern were it not for the magical light illuminating the space around them, revealing the carefully carved walls in perfect geometric form, every bit of space covered entirely in glyphs. Neither she nor Serana noticed exactly when the sound of rushing water became little more than a distant echo to them. Such heavy silence hung within the hall that soon, the only noise remaining in their ears was their footsteps and Saya's steady breaths, concealing beneath them the quiet rhythm of her own heartbeat.
Neither of them could say for sure how long they walked in that tunnel, only that they both knew the exact moment they stepped out of it. They found themselves in the innermost sanctum of the tomb - a long chamber with barely any floor to stand on and a ceiling stretching up in a tall arch vaguely reminiscent of a ribcage. A wide set of stairs led them down to a long rectangular pool, the waters in it completely still and dark in spite of the light shining directly on it. At the far end of the chamber, Saya could see the familiar outline of a word wall, calling to her with the faint whisper of a word of power.
Then suddenly, there was a loud rumble as the dull sound of an opening coffin reverberated from the pool's depths. Ripples began to cascade from the chamber's center, sourceless and bubbling as though the waters had come to a rapid boil. Both women assumed a defensive stance as they watched the waves grow more aggressive, each one painting the waters a shade darker until they were left with a liquid black as pitch.
It was then that a humanoid figure slowly emerged from the pool and the waters went completely still in a single instant. It was a tall, hooded man that towered over both Saya and Serana, robes of ink-black, deep crimson and tarnished gold wrapped around his desiccated, withered body. With a breathless groan he lifted his head to look at the ones trespassing in his tomb, and Saya felt a cold, viscous terror grip her by the throat in a flash of recognition.
On his face, he bore the mask of a dragon priest.