Musty smelling hallways greeted the pair behind the door, the walls were cold, the yellowish toned stone holding up for many years under the cover of the mountain. Burned out torches lined the walls, their scones rusted and blacked from the soot of the flames that burned to close to the bottom. Oren scanned the scones as he reached up, wedging one of the partially intact ones from its place and looking at it.
"Here stick this on your pack in case we need more light" He didn't wait for a response from the bard as he let go of it, she clumsily caught it as he continued down the hall. It was quickly stuffed into the side of her bag as she followed as always. The halls seemed to fill with a cold air occasionally, not an oddity considering they were underground, but what made it strange was the way it seemed to come and go. The doors on every side of the hall threated to break open to some sort of danger, the way the looked so haphazardly shut, as if the person closing them had been in a state of panic when doing so. Ylva stopped and looked at one of the doors, Oren's footsteps drifting down the hall as she slowly pushed the door open. It was dark inside, only lit by the fading light of her orb in the hall.
She could make out the figures though, the bodies that hid in the corners together, arms wrapped around one another. Some who seemed to be hiding behind the furniture, and others who had collapsed right behind the door. Stepping inside she kneeled down to the body by the door, death was not something she a fan of seeing this close, but these bodies had all the same appearances as the ones in the room they had fallen into. The bard made a soft hm as she stood back up slowly, this place was reeking more and more of urgency, though if she relayed it to Oren she knew it would be brushed aside. If there was a challenge waiting ahead for them, then he would want to fight it head on. Darkness filled the room again, forcing Ylva to back out of it and hurriedly follow after Oren and her light.
Oren had come to a stop, hand under his chin as he looked at the room in front of them, whatever door had been there was gone. The tracks for an iron gate framed the entrance way, but the bits of metal were scattered across the floor now, out towards the room. There were large pillars near either wall, cages sat upon them, skeletons of varying positions sat in each one.
"Looks like a room for punishment" Oren said finally as he stepped inside, his iron boots stepping on something decaying with a scrunch. As if to make his point, he kicked a torn leather carrier that was strapped with various implements. Dark dried stains covered the tools and leather, assuring that no one would be able to say they hadn't been used in something cruel. The man walked towards the center of the room, looking up at all the cages, there were some suspended in the air behind the larger supported cages. It indeed was a torture chamber, though the figures in here were mostly skeletal, unlike the others who had still retained their skin for the years they were dead.
"So did the people in this room die..well before the others?" She asked, wondering if Oren was thinking about the same thing from what they had seen. "I only ask because-"
"Doesn't really matter now, they're dead and still unmoving" He said far to calmly, Ylva glanced around the room ass she stepped over some of the loose bones on the floor. Oren took his sword off from his back and raised it, catching the edge of the cage and causing it to swing a little, the skeleton inside shifting and dropping some limbs to the floor with a clatter. "Keep moving, staring at the dead things won't change anything" He said gruffly lowing his sword and looking between the two doors on the walls. He shifted his weight and pointed towards a door on the left. "I want you to go to that one, scout it out and signal your magelight to me if you find anything worthwhile."
The elf raised her hand to protest, but slowly lowered it at the stern look on her hire's face. With a reluctant nod she looked at the door and headed to it, pulling it open slowly and peering inside at the waiting darkness. Since her magelight was with Oren, she pulled the torch piece from her pack and cast her flame spell hoping it would catch easily. It did not and took a few tires before it finally flared to life, the hall welcoming her with the orange light. It almost felt weirdly welcoming in this lighting, the way the flames only moved gently and the shadows faded slowly rather than abruptly. Her footsteps padded down the stone path, the ceiling dropping small bits of debris here and there.
The lonesome feeling crept down her spine as she glanced back at the darkness that followed her from where she had come. These crypts always had a way of making one feel as if they were completely separate from the world, as if this place underground existed entirely elsewhere. Perhapse it was the way the walls seemed to eat up sounds in small areas like this, of the way that no natural light could be seen from within. Either way, this place could drive one to insanity especially on their own. The feeling was replaced with a bit of angry frustration though as she reached a gate, the chain mostly intact on the wall. Her gloved hand wrapped around the cold linked metal and pulled, the gate giving a groaning response as it heaved upwards, only to stop a third of the way up. Her frustration grew, Oren sent her off this way alone. She was no experienced fighter, more likely she end up dying to fear rather than a blow itself. Crouching she slid underneath the gate, the spikes that would have been in the ground caught slightly on the fur lined robes, tugging at them. Giving them a steady yank she felt the material tear and giveway, her body falling backwards down the stairs that had lead up to the gate. Not the most practical of building if she could say so herself, who wouldn't have put a platform on the other side of the gate and simply some stairs. Her thoughts on the architecture were cut short as she came to the bottom of the steps, the cold stone floor pressing against her face. Letting out a quiet huff she pushed her hands against the ground and shoved upwards, placing herself in a half sitting position. The torch laid a ways from her, the light of its flame was slowly flickering away.
"Skeever dung" she cursed scrambling towards the fading light source, her hand brushing the edge of the wood as the flame flickered out. The darkness filled the room hungrily the minute the invasive source was gone, a soft dripping came from elsewhere in the room, though it was hard to place with its echo. From that though Ylva's heart shriveled slightly in her chest, the echo meant that this room was large. How large, she couldn't quite tell, but it was bigger than the torture room they had been in previously. She dared not to move for a long moment, the inability to see..anything at all was horrifying. There was no faint glimmer of moonlight off the walls, no flickering of stars in the distance, not even the welcoming glow of a torch bug floating around in free space. There was only the ever feeding darkness that threatened to gnaw away at her fleeting sanity.
A whimpering sound escaped her lips as the heavy thud of something hit the ground, the reverberations traveled to her hands causing her to pull them back to herself. She ached to light up the room, her right hand shakily moving upwards as raspy breathing became more evident. Her hand opened and the flick of light, similar to that of striking a rock was produced. It was nothing, barely enough to light the room for a brief moment, just enough to confirm that there were tombs in the room, and one was now empty. The darkness brought her back to the nightmare as shuffling steps walked around the room, sounding as if they were pacing the whole perimeter at once. Only to be followed by a few more familiar thuds of the tombs covered hitting the ground, some louder than others but always followed by the sounds of decayed breathing and the sheen of the weapons being pulled from their ancient sheaths. Her own breathing was practically absent, her lungs were burning with the need for the stale air that sat in the room.
"The mountains claim those who venture to far.."
Her shaky voice finally returned as air slipped into her lungs, her hands closing tightly into fists, she mentally cured Oren again for sending her off down this hallway alone. She was useless currently, not enough magicka to signal, no weapons for an actual fight, her only ability was to sit and be the bard that she was. Not that it would really do much anyways besides speed up her death.
"Though their hidden tombs are the real teeth below.."
A quick death would be better than waiting for the creatures to circle until they found her, the quicker pace of the feet around her let her know they were now figuring out where their intruder was.
""For once inside, you become one with the dead"
Ylva bit down on her tongue, the sharp taste of metallic blood filling her taste buds as she sounds of the weapons got closer. She couldn't even tell anymore whether her eyes were open or shut, it all seemed the same to her. Was this what she would have to look forward to once her death was granted. Would she float in an open dark abyss, or would she join the creatures here and wander the halls forever, waiting for new warm flesh to enter.
The footsteps got closer as she stiffened up, her breaths stopping all together again and movement seemed to come from all around her.
Then the cold hands placed themselves around her face, the front over her eyes, as if it would stop her from seeing something as if she could. It was as if death itself had grabbed onto her, though she had felt no pain, heard no sound of metal through the air, experienced the feeling of her life slipping away. She couldn't tell if she was dead or not, until a low, raspy even toned voice cut through.
"Don't you move.."