Kahzarku glared silently at the traitorous daughter of Mephala as she retreated, encased in her web and paralyzed from the throat down. Every breath was a labor as his lungs struggled to inflate. He was lightheaded from the blood loss and the slowing of his heart. If it took him until the end of time he would hunt her and torture her slowly for her trespass.
He entertained visions of himself ripping the spider limb from limb, gouging out her eyes and flaying those sweetly smiling lips from her face. Eventually he realized that he could move his head more than a twitch. Kahzarku wiggled his fingers, then his toes inside his boots. Those, too, were responding. The venom seemed to be wearing off, but he was still encased in sticky web.
The elbow of his daedric gauntlets flared out in a series of sharp points. He twisted his arm the little bit that he could, slowly sawing back and forth at the strands of web. His progress was agonizingly slow and Kahzarku expected the spider to return at any moment, but she did not, and for every inch he cut through, he could better twist his arm to reach more of the web. His elbow ached from the repeated movement.
It seemed like hours before he cut enough to wiggle out his arm, and then he had to strain to cut away the web on his lower body with the claws of his armored finger tips. When he'd sawed through the length of his prison Kahzarku leaned forward, yanking his still-trapped arm and legs against the sticky web that clung to his armor. He popped free with a wet sound and clattered to his knees with a grunt.
He stomped outside to collect his axe, seeing that the portal to Nirn still stood, and wasted no time running for the iron gate. The sentry towers were silent and the gate slowly swung open when he neared. Kahzarku slipped through when the crack was large enough, and sprinted for the towers, face twisted in a malicious grin. The elven mortal would fall before him yet.
When they were finally ready to move on, the exit wasn't far. Just a few twists and turns ahead and they burst into the light, free of the baking heat of the caves and the stench of death. Outside wasn't cooler by much, but at least the air was fresh; the breath of Kynareth in comparison. Saraven felt renewed strength to step out under any sky, even the black and red hellscape of the Deadlands.
Two towers connected by a walkway stood in the distance. A pillar of light rose to the hellish sky from the furthest. A wide path cut downslope, leading to the iron gate set in the mountain. It was still closed. The land near the towers was mostly flat, strange red grass growing in patches were the armies did not tread, but out by the mountain it remained hilly and rocky. They made their way closer, sprinting to natural rock formations and peeping over the top before making for the next set. There wasn't much activity outside; a few stray clannfear roamed, but they were easily avoided. The fresh air was like a breath of Kynareth.
As they came closer to the towers, they watched a dremora dragging two prisoners by the arm. One walked obediently, desperately trying to keep up with failing legs and at times falling and being dragged through the dust. The other was thrashing and kicking the armored daedra to no avail, but probably only succeeded in bruising himself. The dremora didn't react at all to the bare-handed blows against his armor. It was too far away to see very clearly, but the passive one seemed a Dunmer woman, and the fighter some species of human, both in bloody rags that had been peasant's clothes.
The dremora entered the closest tower, throwing the thrasher down and pinning him with his boot long enough to open the door. Then he grabbed the man by the neck and dragged him in as he screamed and thrashed even harder. The cries were cut off as the door ground shut. Saraven watched with narrow red-on-red eyes, lips pressed tight together.
Zudarra looked to Saraven, her mouth a grim line.
"There's no one outside now, so we'd better make a run for the second tower."
"No," Saraven said harshly. "Close the gate and collapse the tower on prisoners from Skingrad?" He took two quick steps and vaulted the rock in front of them, then started for the first tower at a run, drawing his longsword. If he waited to argue with her she might change his mind. There were things he could live with – Galmir's thralldom was, reluctantly, one – but this was not.
"What are you doing!" she hissed, but leaped after him and caught up quickly. She considered grabbing Saraven and running for the second tower; she was certainly strong enough and fast enough to do it, but he'd probably kick up a fuss and draw unwanted attention.
And he'd never forgive her, and hate her more than he already did.
Zudarra growled under her breath, cursing the Dunmer's idiotic hero complex. This was the wrong choice. But she unsheathed her greatsword as she loped beside him and soon they stood before the arched double doors of the tower. Even through the thick stone she could hear wails of anguish.
"Get ready," she said, and pried open the toothy doors at the base of the tower.
The configuration of this tower was new. Instead of a fiery basin in the center and doors leading to rooms in the outer ring, this tower was one massive, open space. The stone was gray-white instead of black. Best for displaying blood stains, Zudarra thought. Tall cages like the ones they had found themselves in not too long ago lined the walls, some on the floor and some hanging from diagonal stone buttresses jutted from the upper wall to support a circular walkway above them. These walkways ringed the entire tower all the way up, with more cages on each level and no obvious way of reaching them. There were no stairs or ramps. Pale red, thick frosted windows and the occasional brazier lit every level of the tower.
The ghastly scent of death and excrement mixed with terror hit them as soon as the doors opened. Every cage in the room was packed full of people, some untouched and rattling the bars as they wailed, and others so horribly mutilated they would surely be dead within the hour. An Argonian with blackened stumps at the ends of his arms gazed brokenly from behind the blood-slicked bars of his cage. A disemboweled body was slumped in another, intestines trailing across the floor several feet away and shut in the door. Every lucid prisoner in the room seemed to turn their hollow eyes on the door as it opened, but some were sobbing so hard they didn't notice.
In the center of the room was a circular platform covered in holes. Massive, blood-stained stone spikes rose from the floor through these holes. A Bosmer was impaled on one of them, belly up, blood from his open mouth dried across his face and sightless eyes staring upside-down in Zudarra's direction. Several corpses lay on the platform, twisted around the spikes or on the floor beside it. It seemed as if the dremora had made sport of dropping prisoners from an upper level with the intention of impaling them.
Equidistant around the platform, four sets of gears were built into the floor. On the far end of the room the dremora had stooped to shove both his prisoners into a previously empty cage with his foot. He held a mace in his hand and both of them were unconscious; probably he was finally forced to club them to get them into the cage. Even that broken Dunmer would have put up a fight after seeing the state of the others in the room. He didn't seem to notice the door had opened under the awful racket of the screaming prisoners.
Zudarra had seen many unpleasant things in her short life; had brought death to others without mercy, had sucked dry the infirm until empty husks remained. But nothing in her life could rival the horror of what she saw in that room. Suddenly dizzy, she took her free hand from the door to brace against her thigh. The door started to crawl shut.
It was the smell that froze Saraven but the noise that snapped him out of it At first it was:
Bodies piled behind a fence in the dim light from the mushrooms -
Children stacked like logs by the furnace in the orphanage's basement, waiting their turn for the flames -
Then the screaming registered and he was looking back into a scene that was worse, the living tormented, the dead ignored. It turned his stomach even after everything that he had seen. He shook his head as the door started to shut in front of him. He turned to see Zudarra looking genuinely ill, leaning over with her hand on her thigh.
"Easy, now," he said. He debated putting an arm around her in case she should fall. She would resent it. On the other hand, if she fell and hit her head they'd have to use another healing spell. He risked it, strong arm around her waist, gray lips whispering in her ear.
"That's the new army of Skingrad you're looking at. Let's go let them out."
Zudarra instinctively began to move away from the touch, and then her mind registered that it was just Saraven. She didn't have time to wonder why his arm was around her.
"Right," she said, shoving back the closing door and darting inside, greatsword hefted and ready to strike. She sprinted around the platform and the spikes in seconds, unavoidable guts and blood squishing under her toes. The room had grown silent as prisoners watched, feeling hope for the first time since they'd been dragged to this hell. The dremora turned at the unmasked sound of her clanking footsteps, mace still in hand, and raised his weapon to block her blow when she slammed the blade toward his unprotected head. Sparks flew as daedric steel clanged, and the dremora's mace was knocked back to slam against his own face. He tumbled backwards, stunned, falling against the cage behind him.
Zudarra raised the greatsword over her head. A heavy thunk echoed in the silent room as blade cleaved skull and brains. The dremora didn't even have time to scream. The body sagged down the cage and Zudarra put her foot on his chest while she yanked her sword free, flinging blood over the floor.
The prisoners broke into a cheer. This was not the cheer of arena spectators. It was a cheer of true joy and gratitude. But Zudarra could pick out sobbing voices among them. Some of these people were too far gone to be saved. Some of them had probably watched loved ones expire minutes before.
Some army, she thought, bending down to take up the keys that were still hanging from the door of the cage. These people have been laying in their own filth for what looks like days.
Saraven followed behind her, staring upward. He saw no faces peering down. Yet.
The dremora died swiftly and messily, which seemed too good for him, but there wasn't time to worry about that. There was work to do.
"People of Skingrad," he said, raising his voice as the cheer died down. His voice was harsh, poorly suited to this use. "We're going to the Sigil Stone, and we're going to close the gate." He paused to wait out another ragged cheer. "You will have to carry your wounded, those that can still live. Those that cannot should be ended swiftly here, so that we can burn the bodies and ensure an end to their suffering. Is anyone here a guard, a Legionnaire, or with one of the Guilds?"
Grim faces stared back at him, but it was not a worse horror than they had already suffered.
"I'm Vellus Haldorian," said a voice from one of the cages. "I'm with the Legion." Saraven could not see the speaker, but his voice was steady, unbroken.
"Garva gra-Balg, Fighters Guild," said a thickset Orc with ragged coup knots, who was still wearing armor padding. She stood a head taller than most of the people in her cage. One eye was black and that side of her face was swollen.
"Dra'zala, Mages Guild," a gray Khajiit said softly. She had only a loincloth and a rough wrap around her breasts, and her fur was streaked and matted.
"Holds-On, Fighters Guild," said a dull green Argonian with orange cheek patches and curly horns. The end of one horn was broken. He was in a different cage from the Orc, no doubt by design; they were of a height and he was even wider through his thick, muscular shoulders. The hollow look to his muzzle said he was starving in here. A body that size needed a lot to keep it in fighting shape.
A chorus of additional voices identified members of the Skingrad City Guard. Everyone's armor and weapons had been taken.
"All right. Who gets the guard's mace?" Saraven said, stalking forward to scoop up the weapon. "Bearing in mind that you'll be in front with me."
"Nobody's better with a mace than me," said Garva. "Give it here."
"Yes'm." Saraven went and shoved the mace through the cage bars for her to take. "Is anyone good with their fists, fast?"
A few voices spoke up.
"Good. You're in back. Call out if you see anything creeping up."
Zudarra hurriedly unlocked cages while Saraven spoke, working in a circle around the room. She fought to keep her face impassive at the sights and smells that greeted her from each cage. The room reeked of death and blood. Zudarra's tongue grew moist at the alluring scent, triggering a wave of revulsion. How could this abysmal scene evoke her thirst? Zudarra found that she couldn't look the prisoners in the eye.
"That contraption in the middle of the room will take you to the upper levels," a prisoner called down from above. When she was finished unlocking the cages of the lower room, Zudarra inspected the platform and found a lever on the floor beside it. Before touching it, she hoisted the corpse of the Bosmer from the spike. A rotting stench hit her when he was raised, something brown and wet glooping onto the floor from his wound. Others came to help her clear the bodies from the platform, laying them down by the entrance. A few voices sobbed softly at the gruesome work, but most were quiet. They seemed to understand that their lives now depended on holding themselves together and doing what had to be done, no matter how uncomfortable.
The gears in the floor started clanking when the lever was thrown, and with a rusty squeak the platform began to rise from the spikes, carried by an iron pillar that rose from the floor. Zudarra's claws dug into the stone as it rattled its way to the next level, where she unlocked those cages. The process was completed on three more floors, and soon they had amassed a crowd of fighters at least a hundred strong, with almost as many corpses to carry, and plenty of wounded survivors.
Saraven moved among those on the lower level, making sure the walking wounded were paired up with the hale. His nostrils felt half-stunned by the horrible odor, and he fought other images away as he concentrated on the dreadful here and now.
A human man tugged at his mail sleeve as he passed a cage, a man not out of his twenties. His face was haggard, eyes swollen as though he had not slept in a week. "Please, Sir," he said quietly. "It's my wife. Someone has to, and I – I can't."
Saraven turned to look past him. A pretty young woman lay against one side of the cage, eyes glazed and unseeing. Her hair was dark brown and her eyes were still a vivid blue. She was still breathing, but the wounds on her legs were crawling with some kind of dreadful worms, spinier than Nirn's maggots. Pus oozed around them, adding to the stench of waste; she had obviously been unable to move for days.
"All right," he said. "Look away." He stepped past the young man, knelt, and ran the longsword through her heart. She hiccoughed once, that was all. Saraven wiped the sword on a corner of her shirt, as gently as possible. Then he moved out of the cage to rest a hand briefly on the man's shoulder. "Bring her out," he said, then turned to Zudarra as she returned to the lower level.
"Burn them in here," Zudarra said quietly to the Dunmer. It was too morbid to say, but a good number of them would be impossible to drag out to the lava ocean without them falling apart or spilling their guts over the ground. They didn't have time to deal with the sheer number of them, time that was better spent trying to help the living. Saraven nodded.
"Everyone, bring your dead to this side of the room. A pyre is all we can offer them, but we will see that it's done, that no one is left behind alive or dead. Is there a priest or priestess of the Divines here?"
"I serve Julianos," said an old man. He was still alive and upright, a sturdy Imperial with a face like tanned leather. He had the remains of a white tunic on, beltless and torn. "I can speak over them."
"Good. Anyone who was of a different faith, say your own words. Be brief. We have far to go."
Saraven helped to carry the bodies, smearing his mail with blood and worse things. When they were piled together at one end of the room he made sure everyone stood back a few feet – many still wept, but they were keeping it together, they did as they were told – and nodded to the old man.
"Our loved ones have fallen by the hands of the servants of Mehrunes Dagon," the old priest said. All eyes turned to where he stood to one side of the pile of bodies. "And I want all of you to know, even if you have been the hand of mercy to one who could not come with us, that it is Dagon who is the author of their deaths. Bear no guilt. We are here to see their souls on to their proper destination..."
Saraven did not fully absorb the words that the old priest said. He said them with conviction, that was the important thing, not yet broken by what he had seen and endured. Saraven stared into the pile of bodies with a face like iron, trying to push away the image of another funeral pyre.
Zudarra stood at the back of the crowd as the priest spoke his words, staring at the pile of bodies heaped over one another like garbage ready to burn, sightless eyes staring in all directions. The voice of the priest became a faraway drone as she stared. Sometimes movement caught her eye and she thought one must be alive, but it was just maggots squirming beneath skin or guts dripping down. Most of the living had their heads bowed in prayer or their faces buried in their hands, but Zudarra couldn't tear her gaze away, fists clenched at her sides. Thoughts hurled themselves at her mind, each a cold hook of terror that dug into her brain and wouldn't let go.
That will be me someday, if I ever fall in this place.
That could be my mother.
You look upon the dead and their grieving family, and still your thoughts are only for yourself.
What will Molag Bal do to me if I fail?
What awaits these souls in Aetherius? Do they sleep? Do they think? Are they wiped clean in the Dreamsleeve? What horror will they feel as their memories are washed from the slate of their souls, their personhood lost?
Zudarra thought she was suffocating. You don't need to breath, she told herself, but she sucked in air from her parted lips anyway. It was never enough to fill her lungs. It never brought a feeling of relief, yet she was still alive. My soul is trapped in this cold, undead vessel. My heart doesn't beat. What am I?! The room was spiraling around her now.
The priest had finished speaking. A few people whispered other words, mostly Argonians and Khajiit, one or two others who had probably secretly worshiped Azura or Meridia. No one was prepared to condemn at a moment like this. Saraven stretched out his hand and let the fire go, once and then twice. Some of the bodies evaporated on contact, and the others went up like kindling, flames burning blue and hot as they consumed shit and methane. Smoke rose upward to fill the upper tower.
Zudarra turned away just as the bodies went up in flames, the heat and the light a pain against her skin, the stench of burning flesh inescapable.
It surprised Saraven to see the Khajiit turn from the pyre. He forgot how young she really was. She had not had time to inure herself to mortal death, to become indifferent to every other creature. Perhaps she never would. He almost believed it now. He needed to. There was work to be done, and he couldn't stop to worry any more if he had done wrong to keep a vampire by him all this time.
When the bodies were so far consumed that Saraven judged they could not be used to form floors or railings or any other twisted daedric purpose, he moved toward the door, raising his voice again. "Those with weapons, up front with me. Unarmed fighters in back. Civilians in the middle. Move fast. If someone near you falls, pick them up, don't walk over them. Panic will kill us all. You are Skingrad. Be strong." Zudarra listened mutely as Saraven spoke his instructions with authority, something she never would have been able to do. Her face hardened with the mask of a determined warrior when he had finished. She would fight. She would live.
He led the way out of the tower and into the red light of the Deadlands' burning day. The Orc Garva huffed like a big dog beside him as she scented the clearer air, and there were other sounds of relief as people moved away from the smoke and stench. He hoped it would renew their strength. They were still some way from water and rest.
Saraven felt stronger than he had an hour ago, never mind that his arms ached from carrying bodies, and he now certainly smelled worse. His body would not fail him when something had to be done, away from uncertainty and inner dreads. This was the kind of work that had kept him alive thirty years. This was where he knew himself.
"We're going to the other tower," he raised his voice to tell them. "Be ready for clannfear and scamps, keep them off the civilians. If you kill a dremora, get their weapon - if not for you, for whoever's next to you. Sometimes they have scrolls. Pass that down the line."
There were murmurs behind him as the information moved on through the group, and he turned his steps toward the second tower, longsword in his hand, Zudarra and the Fighters at his side. The survivors of Skingrad came behind them, a breathing mass of grieving mortality. Some of them were beginning to be angry. He could feel the growls and mutters as much as hear them.
They fought their way up the second tower more easily than Zudarra expected. When Saraven first said he was going to free the survivors, Zudarra imagined herself babysitting a bunch of incompetent weaklings while trying to keep herself alive. Garva by herself was a one-woman army, rampaging through dremora with a single-minded hatred. With every slain dremora another fighter was able to take up a weapon. At one point they were ambushed by a pair clannfear from behind, but the daedra were beaten to death in seconds by the unarmed mob.
They were nearing the upper dome now, scrolls of silence at the ready in two warriors' hands in preparation for the mages Saraven and Zudarra knew to be waiting at the top. The mob would overwhelm any dremora on the lower level while Zudarra ran for the sigil stone. It had been a good strategy last time, and made sense still, with one amendment: Zudarra would knock the stone from the pillar with her sword instead of her hand.
Kahzarku was beginning to believe the mortals had died in the caves. Perhaps the spider daedra had hunted them down after all. He paced in the Sigillum Sanguis, waiting for his moment of glory, anger and disappointment festering more with every passing moment that they did not come. The officer of the Keep watched the disgraced ex-Kynreeve disinterestedly from behind the slitted eyes of his helm, content with the knowledge that he and his men would surely be able to keep two weakened mortals from destroying the gate. He kept his mages stationed on the upper level around the sigil stone.
A low rumble of footsteps slowly rose above the drone of the pillar. Kahzarku stopped his pacing, tilting his head to listen, eyes squinting in curiosity. Had the army returned from Skingrad? He looked over at the ramp to the lower level just in time to see a handful of mortal faces emerging over the top.
Saraven Gol rose into view, longsword in hand, and he recognized that same dremora again in the split second that he caught sight of the two armored creatures on the lower level.
"Forward, Skingrad!" he shouted, and charged forward with a hundred screaming fighters behind him.
Green balls of magicka whirred over her head as Zudarra launched herself forward. A hundred mortals could see what she was; not a single one of them could have moved this fast on the best days of their lives.
She heard the dying screams of dremora behind her as they were overwhelmed by the mob, the angry shouts of human and mer nearly drowning out everything else. A black-robed dremora came at Zudarra with a knife at the top of the stairs but she knocked him aside without slowing. He shrieked as he pitched over the side, skull smashing against the walkway below. Like a child playing stickball in the field, Zudarra leapt from the stairs to the balcony with sword wound up tight behind her shoulder. The blade sliced through fire and impacted the sigil stone hard enough to crack the side, sending it rocketing across empty air as the explosive power of the beam knocked Zudarra off her feet.
Kahzarku never even knew what had killed him. He dove for the gray-skinned mer as the mortal crowd swarmed around him, but a blade came at his face from the side and everything went black before his body crumpled, his final hope of redemption wasted. Saraven grinned horribly into the dremora's face as he ran him through, but the creature was already dead, the top of his skull sliced cleanly away.
Above him Saraven heard the thunderous crack of Zudarra's blade striking the sigil stone, and he raised his sword triumphantly as the ground began to shake. People around him shouted in alarm and terror, not realizing what was happening as they saw the ceiling start to collapse above them.
"Don't be afraid!" he shouted. "We're going back!"
The tower shook, great crumbling chunks of ceiling and wall slamming into the floor and ripping through the membrane below. Zudarra didn't bother to pick herself up from where she landed, instead staring up to watch the inescapable destruction that rained all around her. Finally the floor gave way; she felt herself falling, weightless, as a last explosion rocked the air and then they were all dumped into the blinding white.