VII
Lake Yorgrim
If there was one thing Vinye hated as much as a lie being disguised as truth, it was being surprised.
This was for a number of reasons, but the most prominent among them was that she liked to be prepared for absolutely everything. It came with the territory of having both a fondness for literature—and an eidetic memory to retain it all. Of course, both had their own shortcomings, but Vinye had decided long ago that the price to pay was well worth it. She'd never paid much heed to showing an interest in social gatherings, and in her case, being able to remember every single manuscript she'd read, and almost every detail of her life from birth—whether she wanted to or not—made her more equipped than most people when preparing to delve into someplace that had heretofore been largely unexplored.
But all the foreknowledge on Mundus could not have prepared her for what had happened in that infernal iceberg—the personages she had spoken with, or the quest with which she had been reluctantly saddled:
"What do you want?" Her heart was still thundering in her chest from the sight, and she felt a rising fear as the glutinous many-eye focused its attention on her.
"I have been watching you since your conception, mortal. Three times now, you have borne witness to the power of the dragons—and you have also seen the power of the Dragonborn … as I once did." The voice came from every direction, and spoke in every tone; some times it would be a booming roar that echoed off the ice, other times it would be an intimate whisper in her ear, as if to a lover.
"What do you know of the Dragonborn?"
"What I know of all things, mortal. I. Know. Everything." Something in the entity's boasting told Vinye it was not joking.
"And that, mortal, is why you have caught my … eyes," it said, chuckling darkly at its own wordplay. "There are many things you wish to know—even if you do not know the lust with which you pursue them."
Vinye tilted her head. "The lockbox."
"Yes … " The voice was knowing, yet longing as well. "Septimus has proved a useful tool thus far, but he knows not how little time he has left to be so. For too long have I waited for another to take up the burden he no longer can, and you have been … molded … into something most exemplary."
She did not like the way the entity emphasized that one word.
"You will open this infernal lockbox," it said. It was equally a command as it was words of encouragement. "And the truth you have been seeking will be yours … and yours alone."
Vinye frowned. "Truth? … Are you talking about the Dwemer?"
The entity chuckled again. "Hm. I know what you seek … Vinye—even if you yourself do not. And it is something far more significant than the mystery that pervades their … disappearance."
And with that, the mass of eyes and tentacles had retreated into the crevice, leaving no sign that they were there …
Vinye shuddered as she recalled the experience; so embedded was it in her mind that even her highly capable memory was unable to remember the details of her return trip to Windhelm. She had remembered asking Gort about a place called Raldbthar, and the ferryman had vaguely pointed her westward, in the direction of the Pale. Other than that, everything had been a total blur—perhaps that was the general effect of having a dialogue with a Daedric Prince, never mind one who had appeared literally out of nowhere.
At any rate, Vinye had thus found herself here, trudging her way south over the frozen edge of Lake Yorgrim. Night had fallen, and the snow was beginning to fall faster. The Altmer fervently hoped that Gort had pointed her in the right direction—she wasn't keen on freezing to death out here for nothing.
Her spirits leapt when she saw a small Dwemer tower in the distance, and she picked up her pace only a little. Closer inspection revealed two levers beyond the gate—one of them next to the gate, and the other in the middle of the floor. Multiple toothed gears surrounding it informed Vinye this must be a lift, much like in Rkund. However, she knew she wouldn't be able to reach it; the gate was locked from the inside. Lockpicks wouldn't help, either—if there was a keyhole, it was on the inside.
But all was not lost. Looking past the lift, Vinye could see a few flights of stairs leading further south. The snow made it hard to tell, but she couldn't think of any reason why those stairs wouldn't be of Dwemer design. Her spirits thus renewed, she ascended them three at a time.
After about a minute of climbing this endless staircase, a thoroughly winded Vinye finally saw the entrance to Raldbthar waiting for her. She reached in her backpack, and pulled out a bright green bottle. Thank the Eight for stamina potions, she thought as she drank its contents, feeling the welcome taste of crushed honeycomb and essence of histcarp trickling down her throat—
—when the bottle suddenly shattered in her hands.
Vinye leapt back with a cry, and her fingers instinctively sparked with magicka. She only spared one glance at the remains of the bottle—enough time to notice the still-trembling arrow buried among the shards—and turned back to see several bandits barring her way into the ruin. Two of them were notching more arrows.
The Altmer was just barely able to dodge one of them—ducking into the snow and rolling to escape the salvo. She fired a lightning bolt frantically, aiming at nowhere in particular. The missile struck the golden doors, but Vinye had overcharged the bolt unintentionally in her panic; a small amount ricocheted off the door and into one of the archers. It didn't kill her, but it was enough to make her drop her bow. A second bolt from Vinye finished the job.
By now, the Altmer had dimly recognized a change in her physical and mental states, and she knew enough about the mortal body to recognize the characteristics of a "fight-or-flight" response: a change in the rhythm of her heart and lungs, and a change in her vision as well. Even though it was nighttime, she could see as though the sun was still shining, and she could feel her heart thrashing against her ribcage even through her thick coat.
The world around her had shrunk once more. As in her near-fatal climb to Rkund, everything around her retreated into pitch-black darkness—except for a slice of snow-covered hillside, and the two remaining bandits between her and Raldbthar.
The remaining archer fired another arrow. Vinye saw the arrow coming, and felt herself slowly moving out of the way to dodge it, as though she were wading through the swamps of Hjaalmarch. But she wasn't fast enough; the arrow just grazed her on the shoulder—nothing too serious, but enough to draw blood.
She used one hand to apply healing magic to her shoulder wound, and the other to fire off another lightning bolt. This one was overcharged deliberately—and she felt her heart rise in relief as the bolt flash-burned the outlaw through his heart, bounced off his corpse to the other bandit—and her heart promptly sank again as the third bandit threw up a ward, nullifying the errant missile completely.
He's a mage, too?!
The bandit grinned lopsidedly, and cast a stream of sparks at Vinye with both hands. She had just enough time to erect a hasty ward, and initially she was successful—the sparks flowed over the magickal shield, seeking their target but finding none. But the ward was not perfect—Vinye could feel her arm numbing as the aftereffects of the electricity broke through the ward at the same time as her magickal reserves drained.
Quickly, Vinye thought back to her days at the Mage's Guild on Alinor: one morning, there had been a representative of the Aldmeri Dominion present in the lecture hall, and together, she and the Archmagus had performed a demonstration on applied magical skills on the battlefield.
When you cast a ward, the Archmagus had said in the middle of the demonstration, you push the magicka out with your hand, and thus pushing magickal attacks away from you as well. But such a means of defense, while certainly most effective, has its drawbacks—chief among them being the amount of magicka necessary to maintain them.
Now, he had said, as he proceeded to cast one thunderbolt after another at the Justiciar, one of the most fundamental rules of this world, not just in magic, is that every action has an equal and opposite reaction—give and take. Naturally, we as mages seek to find that unique situation where everything is given and taken in equal measure. Total balance: pushing, pulling, all at the same time—and this, students, is what our honorable Justiciar has presented to you here. While pushing my attacks away—watch the edges of her ward, watch how the construct seems to distort and swirl towards the middle—she has simultaneously pulled it back in, focusing it back towards the middle, the source—and thus add the magicka I spent attacking her to her own previously depleted reserves.
He had then laid a crate of glowing, foul-smelling eggs, each the size of a fist, before the class. You will pair off, and practice your wards together. Each of you will take one egg, and hold it between you while simultaneously casting a ward in that same hand. I warn you, he had said with a slight smirk, this will likely be messy.
Remember. Push and pull.
Push and pull …
By the time Vinye had figured it out, she'd been covered nearly head-to-toe in the remains of countless smelly eggs. She smiled wistfully for only a moment as the memory pervaded her mind, and then curled her fingers only slightly.
The ward responded; the edges flared for only a moment, and then began to spiral inward like water circling a drain, slowly but surely. The sparks, caught up in the magickal "current", went with the flow towards the center, but Vinye wasn't paying attention—all she noticed was one of those luminescent eggs in her mind, being pressed against her by an invisible hand, both doing their damnedest not to get splattered—
Eventually, Vinye felt a tingling in her once-numb arm as the electricity flowed through her. The bandit—perhaps he'd studied enough magickal theory to know what was going on—had stopped his onslaught at that point, and was looking at Vinye slack-jawed.
Too late.
It was Vinye's turn to grin now. "Give and take," she said simply, and fired a bolt point-blank down the thug's mouth. His skull expanded for only a moment, and then blood began leaking out of his mouth and ears. His eyes exploded into paste with the surge of energy, and blood began leaking out there, too. One last bolt from Vinye sent him tumbling into the snow, and the dying bandit left a broad swath of red in his wake as he rolled down the hill.
Vinye exhaled, allowing herself some time to rest and replenish her strength. Once she felt sufficiently charged—and once she'd willed her heart back to its normal pace—she swung open the door to Raldbthar and slipped inside.
As soon as she entered the ruins, Vinye could tell there were more bandits about—they'd clearly made themselves at home here. Barring her way were two jets of flaming gas, and she noted amusingly how they'd been adapted to put some meat on a spit, prop it up a distance away from the nozzles, and let it roast from there. She felt her stomach growl instinctively, and she plucked a particularly large salmon off the spit, and wrapped it in her pack for later.
A flurry of movement caught her eye; she whirled to the left, just in time to see a bandit rising from his bedroll to confront this new intruder. He pulled out a pale bronze dagger shaped like a feather—elven, she thought apropos of nothing.
"Now ain't this a surprise," the bandit sneered at Vinye sarcastically—and then he charged.
Vinye sidestepped him effortlessly—whoever trained this bandit was no soldier; even a mudcrab could have read his movements and acted accordingly. She didn't even need to look his way to electrocute him with a lightning bolt.
She stepped up to his carcass, reaching out to pry the elven dagger from his fingers, and then something completely unexpected happened: a mechanical whirring noise came from inside her pack—and then a series of numerous, snakelike cords burst from within and buried themselves into the bandit's body.
Confounded, Vinye tried pulling herself away, but to no avail—only when the tendrils retracted from their target with a faint slurping noise did she finally stumble backwards, shock painted all over her face.
What in the name of Oblivion?! Vinye quickly emptied her pack; her potions, drawstring purse, and various ingredients were scattered pell-mell over the stone floor. Then her fingers ran across something metal, and the Altmer pulled out a jumbled collection of metal pipes. A faint sloshing noise could be heard within.
It took her awhile before she remembered Septimus had given this to her early that morning. What was it he had said? "Seek you thus your wind-swept children, and bid these tubules partake of their life-drink."
Wind-swept children … Vinye yanked off the bandit's cured leather helm, and beheld two ears with chestnut-brown tips. A Bosmer, she realized.
Is that what I have to do? Collect the blood of elves?
But just as her heart had risen upon this apparent breakthrough, it sank once more at the enormity of such a task. I could be at this for years!
There were definitely plenty of elves inhabiting Skyrim, she knew, but they were hardly all that spread out, either. The Bosmer had been easy enough, albeit a stroke of luck—a very lucky one, Vinye thought; in addition to that elven dagger, he'd been carrying a fully stocked case of lockpicks with him, and those had already come in useful in picking her way through several chests and a gate.
She continued refreshing her memory as she continued delving into Raldbthar, disposing of its population of bandits along the way. Dunmer were plentiful in Windhelm and Riften—besides which … no. No. Absolutely not, Vinye thought, as a vision of Malys swam in her head—not unless she had absolutely no choice. Orsimer, however—
A screech of metal on stone interrupted her train of thought as she approached an inclined hallway; a spinning thresher blade burst out of a groove in the ramp and blocked her path. Vinye took stock of her surroundings; there was no way around—the hallway was too thin to afford any safe refuge from the revolving blades—and no lever she could see to deactivate the trap. Still, there had to be some way through—
Vinye blinked, and subconsciously charged a lightning bolt. She prepared to run as she did so—she was about to do something incredibly stupid and dangerous, and almost certainly at the expense of her life.
Remembering her experience with the dwarven wasp automatons in Rkund, she fired at the base of the rotor, and was immediately rewarded by a shriek in the mechanism. The blade separated from its track, and Vinye hastily ducked out of the way, though not quickly enough; the destroyed trap opened a sizable gash in her arm as it spun out of control and deep into the stone hallway.
Resealing her wound with some restoration magic, Vinye resumed her journey and her recollection. Where was I?
Orsimer, yes—the Orcs preferred to keep to themselves, and inhabited a few strongholds spread throughout Skyrim. They didn't like outsiders, Vinye remembered from some tales Urag had told her; the master of the Arcaneum had also hinted that he was quite nice for an Orc. And if that was the case, she wasn't keen on wanting to seek them out.
She navigated through a series of pistons and firetraps, no doubt designed to push any unwary adventurers into a fiery death. And if they were savvy enough, the dwarven sphere and its retinue of spiders that patrolled the area were surely more than enough to finish the job—but surely they didn't account for a mage like Vinye.
She aimed for the sphere first—a lightning bolt to the crossbow fixed to the automaton's left arm summarily disarmed it. A second and third bolt was directed at the rolling wheels that served as their feet; each one blasted at the hub of a wheel, and the unbalanced sphere fell flat on its metal face. Vinye overcharged her last bolt, electrocuting both spiders before they had a chance to leap for her, and she was showered in metal parts. A little more healing magic soothed the bruises left behind, and she continued on.
Lastly, there were the Altmer. Vinye wasn't all that willing to use herself as a test subject to that end—surely if that was true, this strange little machine of Septimus' would have drained her of every drop already, as it had that unfortunate wood elf. But the fact remained that very few Altmer remained in Skyrim—and even then, the chances were that they were part of the Thalmor, who had withdrawn most of their forces after the success of the Stormcloak Rebellion, leaving only a small occupation within their embassy near Solitude.
There's got to be more to it than this, Vinye thought in frustration. I'm missing something here …
Think, Vinye, think … what else did Septimus say?
The aged wizard's croak echoed through her mind once more as her eidetic memory replayed that encounter in the iceberg. The progeny of the First Folk is scattered to the winds, he had said. Seek you out the forest and the snow; sift you through the dung and the ash.
It was a riddle, Vinye realized with a gasp. They were elves.
"Ash" had to be the Dunmer—the Red Year had made that more evident than ever, she thought wryly. "Forest" was wood—the Bosmer—and Vinye was already set on that front. "Dung" … dung, what would be dung, she thought—
Of course—the Orsimer! She recalled a passage from a short book she'd read on the ancient Aldmer, on how the Daedra Boethiah had eaten his rival Trinimac. His remains were excreted in front of Trinimac's followers, and they became Malacath, patron of the Orcs. The Aldmer still loyal to Trinimac were changed into the Orcs, she recalled, and rubbed the remains of Malacath on their skin as a sign of their continued devotion.
That just left one more … "snow"—and as soon as she thought the word, Vinye felt a deep pit open up in her stomach, and felt a cold sweat falling down her back.
Falmer.
Vinye had heard plenty about the snow elves. She knew of how they had risen up against the ancient Atmorans, the progenitors of the Nords, and razed the ancient city of Saarthal in the Merethic Era. She knew of how the Atmorans had paid them back in kind, driving them underground, and—it was thought—to extinction. But there had been whispers in Skyrim of late; tales of white monsters in the night, of piles of blood and gore—and of people who always seemed to just … vanish, never to be heard from again.
Now, as one more of Septimus' cryptic lines wormed its way into Vinye's mind, she suspected these stories might actually be true.
Begin you hence at Raldbthar … the first and second inside the third …
The first elf had been a Bosmer. The second … Vinye gulped as she approached the lever at her feet.
In less than a minute, the nature of her quest had changed significantly. Before, it had only been a matter of whether she'd make it to Whiterun in time to catch up with Malys and Cosette. Now, the question seemed to not be when Vinye would make it there—but if she would make it out of here alive.
She laughed dully. I could use a little bit of J'zargo's bravado right now, she thought.
Steeling her nerves as best she could, she nudged the lever, and the lift sank into the bowels of Raldbthar.
The first thing she noticed when she forced open the door exiting out of the lift was the smell—musty and cloying. And if it was anything else, Vinye might have been sick all over the floor. But the smell instantly brought back memories of that one lesson in Alinor—of the same eggs she'd been coated in after hours and hours of practice.
Further down the hallway, Vinye could see the source of that stench littering the floor: a glowing, slightly pulsing sac. A thresher blade had evidently tried to remove this infestation, but the eggs were either so tough or so numerous that the blade was permanently stuck in the mass. She gave the scene a wide berth anyway—no sense in taking chances with either of these things.
She pulled open another door, and was greeted with a massive cavern. The lamps high above were not burning, and the entire chamber was instead illuminated by the natural, bluish-green light of yet more of the wriggling egg sacs.
Scurrying among these natural towers like vermin were the Falmer—or, Vinye corrected, whatever the Falmer had become. Their snow-white skin had become a wrinkled, sickly gray, and was stretched taut over their bald, eyeless heads. Two large slits for nostrils ran from forehead to mouth, which was filled with much more teeth than a normal mouth ought to have, and each one of them was as sharp as a razor, Vinye suspected.
One of the Falmer was crouched over the remains of what looked to be an ill-fated pack of bandits. He held a crude-looking dagger in his bony, clawed fingers, and was idly skinning one of the corpses. Vinye saw ragged piles of cured leather and reddish lumps of meat on a makeshift tanning rack nearby, and again fought the urge to vomit.
She could see more Falmer as she looked around the chamber; all of them were tending to various duties. Some were crouched over crude campfires in heavy-looking tents; others were plucking mushrooms from a vast patch of dirt, and a pair even appeared to be eating a meal in the form of a dead skeever, talking between bites in a language of incomprehensible growls and clicks. None of them appeared to have noticed her, which puzzled her briefly until she remembered that the Falmer were blind—they couldn't see her at all.
Vinye felt a brief upsurge of scholar's opportunity at the sight. Perhaps if the circumstances were different, she could have taken this moment to study them; she regretted not having any paper in her pack for taking notes. An entire culture—if an absolutely savage one—had developed in the wake of the Dwemer's disappearance, right under Skyrim's collective nose, and she wondered if she might be the only living person in the province right now to know that the Falmer were not only surviving—but thriving.
If only the Synod Council could see me now, Vinye thought with savage pleasure. She had studied there, once, but had tired of the endless political undercutting after only a month. The College of Whispers hadn't offered much more comfort for her—she didn't last that long there either, after experiencing nothing but one lie over another being accepted as fact, and being silenced at every turn by pompous, self-proclaimed rivals for all her efforts.
For now, though, she decided to continue on with her journey. The Falmer could wait—another, more mysterious race awaited her, and Vinye's thoughts of the Synod and the College of Whispers had steeled her resolve more than any dose of J'zargo's bravery.
The mystery of the Dwemer will be mine to uncover, she thought resolutely.
She stepped into the cavern, not daring to make a sound—partly out of respect for the rudimentary culture around her, but mostly for her own safety. The Falmer had been living underground for so long, their sight had deteriorated to nothing—but Vinye had seen from a cursory glance just how large their ears and noses were, and she suspected that they didn't need to see her. They could easily hear her just fine, and likely smell her as well, and so she had to be extremely careful.
An idea came to her at that moment—and were it not for her prior experience with that one lesson in Alinor, she would have immediately cast it aside as the most ludicrous one she'd ever had. But even as she pondered the outlandishness of it all, she knew there was no other way she'd be able to make it through.
And so, with a look of disgust on her face, she silently crossed over to one of the egg sacs, one that was devoid of any Falmer lurking nearby. Bracing herself, she quickly sliced open the sac with her newly acquired elven dagger, watching the slimy eggs spill out of the tear for only a moment before plunging her free arm into the sac, all the way up to her shoulder. She felt the warm, viscous substance cling to her arm for a few seconds before she pulled it out, and then it was the other arm's turn to soak inside the slime.
After that, Vinye dipped her boots inside—and her legs, for good measure—before stripping to her underclothes and coating her robes and effects in the muck. Last was, reluctantly, her face and hair—she still had enough vanity to worry about any potential damage to her roots before liberally applying the goop over every square inch of her head. The smell was almost overpowering, but Vinye hoped that would work in her favor; now, she could walk among the Falmer for as long as she wanted—all they would smell was a burst egg sac, and with any luck, there was enough dried slime covering her boots to muffle her footsteps as well.
Once she was sure her impromptu "makeover" was complete, she continued on her way.
She passed more Falmer going about their business as she slowly, silently ascended to the upper levels of the cavern. There were several tents located here; one was larger than the others, and under it stood a Falmer that must have been the chieftain of this particular "tribe." A full head taller than the others, he wore the head and jaws of some large insect over his head, and his body was encased in spiky, slippery-looking armor. An axe in the shape of a crablike claw hung at his side. The smell coming off him was appalling—even worse than the secretions Vinye had coated her clothes in, and that was saying something.
For only a moment, the two elves had stared each other eye to nonexistent eye, and the effect had been more than a little disquieting. Then he had turned away, and Vinye was left to stare back at him, heart thundering so loudly that it was a wonder the Falmer didn't hear that.
Only many hours later, when she left the cavern on tiptoe and barred the door behind her, did Vinye exhale in relief. She relaxed, and turned around to continue her journey—and ran slap bang into a Falmer.
The scream she let out was more than enough to rouse all of Raldbthar.
Both Vinye and the Falmer leapt back in comical near-unison, each clearly as surprised as the other. Vinye recovered a split second before the snow elf, however, and that split second saved her life. Before the Falmer could unsheathe his cruel-looking sword, Vinye had burned right through his chest with a lightning bolt, and the creature toppled to the floor with a choking gasp. As if they sensed the creature's death, the tubules strained inside Vinye's pack again, ripping through the seams and shooting straight for the Falmer's body of their own accord. They embedded themselves inside the flesh, and proceeded to extract his blood.
As the pipes finally retreated back into her pack, Vinye knew that she had to rush onward—if the Falmer didn't hear her screaming before, they would certainly have heard her lightning bolts. They knew someone was here now, and all the glowing eggs in the world wouldn't change that. They were on high alert now, and so she had to be as well.
Two more Falmer appeared before she had a chance to catch her breath. It seemed they still knew how to use magic; one of them held a flaming purple sword in her hand—a bound weapon, Vinye remembered, not unlike those used by soldiers in the Dominion—and was covered in swirling clouds of ice shards. A cascade of sparks erupted from the Altmer's hands, and the Falmer screeched in her death throes as her wizened form sizzled and popped under the onslaught before she could get any closer.
The other Falmer held a crude bow in his hands, though, and was firing one arrow after another—an astonishing feat, Vinye thought, considering they were blind. Even more astonishing was that they weren't all that far off the mark, either. But superhuman senses couldn't excuse the fact that these arrows were just as crude as the bow they were being released from; the first few broke apart when they hit the carved corridor behind her.
Acting on impulse, and not having enough time to form a ward, Vinye grabbed the fallen snow elf's body by the scruff of the neck, and held it in front of her like a shield. She heard several more arrows thud into the carcass, and she pushed forward slowly with grim satisfaction, waiting for her strength to replenish so she could get back on the offensive.
The Falmer seemed to get wise to Vinye's strategy, though; his next arrow sailed into his dead companion's neck—but the arrow broke through on the other side with enough force to bury itself a good three inches into Vinye's palm. The Altmer yowled in pain, and tried to let go, but to no avail, the barbs had sunk too far into her flesh.
Eventually, though, the shoddy arrow snapped in two, and the Falmer's body finally crumpled to the ground, full of arrows. The archer followed not long after; one lightning bolt from Vinye blew his bow apart, and another blew his shriveled brains all over the corridor.
Vinye pulled out the arrow, gnashing her teeth all the while. The crude missile felt organic, like it had been created from the bones and innards of some unknown animal. The forked tip dripped with a thick black liquid.
Poison.
Even as she mouthed the word, Vinye felt her vision beginning to go. The halls of Raldbthar swam before her eyes, distorting into shapes she could not recognize. Her arms and legs felt like they were made of pastry, and within a few steps they were incapable of supporting her frame. She tried to cast a healing spell, but found that she could not lift her arms at all.
I have to … get … away …
She stumbled into a small alcove, feeling cold sweat break out all over her body, and she immediately began to shiver. She tucked herself in as far as her slender Altmer body would allow, and curled into a ball as darkness washed over her …
" … Vinye? Come here, Vinye!"
A dulcet, stately voice echoed in the chamber. From her vantage point, she could see the glass-like spires of Firsthold gleaming in the setting sun, rising a thousand feet tall or more into the sky. Against the golden waters of the Abacean, the panorama looked positively alien.
Her tiny footsteps echoed on the mirror-polished stone floor as she obediently ran over to the blonde-haired woman in navy blue robes that just entered. They embraced in a warm but all-too-brief hug.
"It's time for your lessons, dearest," the woman said perfunctorily after smoothing her hair. "And speaking of lessons, what did I tell you about running in the hallways?"
The little girl let the question hang deliberately before answering. "'S not ladylike," she said, pouting slightly as her mother led her out of the room.
"Proper young ladies do not scamper around like the beast-folk, dear," said the woman, nodding to emphasize her point. "You are an Altmer, and you must learn to carry yourself as such … "
…
… "Spell combination," said the Archmagus in the main assembly hall of Firsthold's Mages' Guild, clapping his gnarled hands together as if it was self-explanatory. He indicated the Justiciar next to him, pointing out the ethereal sword in his hand that burned purple and sparked with vivid blue energy.
"Thus far, we have been teaching by the book, as it were," he continued with his lecture. "But there are no books in the battlefield. The enemy will not stop to lecture you as I am now. And yet, the enemy abides by the book as well. So we must adapt. We must be more creative, unexpected, in order to achieve victory."
The young elf, barely ten years old, took notes—already seeing ideas for potential combinations laid out before her.
"We have one hour left to us in our lesson. You will have until then to develop, perfect, and demonstrate your own unique spell," said the Archmagus. "Your time starts now … "
…
" … And so you see our position, Madam Emissary," said the soldier at their door. She listened only half-heartedly, concentrating more on her dinner. "We believe your presence there would be most beneficial for the Dominion."
The woman nodded. "I'll see what I can do. The High Chancellor will have my decision by tomorrow morning." The two elves saluted each other, and the woman returned to the table.
"So," said the justiciar across from the girl, "how are your lessons progressing, Vinye?"
She waited to swallow her bite of jazbay crostata before answering, she was a growing young lady, after all, and she was expected to behave in such a manner. "The Archmagus taught us how to combine spellwork today," she said dutifully. "It was a little strange at first—I never read anything about it, so I thought it couldn't be done, or that I'd have to be a really powerful wizard to learn it."
"And the Archmagus told me you rose to the challenge very well, dear," beamed her mother. The girl looked at her in surprise at this bit of information. "Why don't you tell Papa the spell you made?"
"It's just a lightning ward," the girl shrugged. "The Archmagus says we have to outsmart our enemies, and I thought if our enemies knew we used a lot of magic, then they'd use something to stop us from using magic, like lightning. So I made a ward to protect against lightning better."
The justiciar arched his pointed golden eyebrows. "Show me," he said encouragingly.
"Okay." She rose from her seat, and spread out her arms.
Silver flames erupted from her left hand, and spread out around her in a circular shield. Her right hand sparked with electricity, and the sparks wove into her ward, tinting it a faint purplish-blue.
She squeaked as the justiciar suddenly sent a tiny bolt of lightning at her. The worst it would have done was left her arm numb for a few hours, but she panicked all the same. The bolt bounced off the ward, shattering a bottle of spiced alto wine, and the ward destabilized within seconds.
"Orinwe!" The woman looked at her husband with a mixture of shock and grudging admiration. "That is most unbecoming for an elf of your position! Think of the example you are setting for our daughter!"
Orinwe appeared to consider this. "I'm thinking she'll make for a fine Justiciar herself one day," he said with a roguish grin. His wife tried to fight it down, but eventually she couldn't resist a small chuckle.
"The Archmagus has also informed me how far you've come in your overall studies, Vinye," she continued, clearing her throat delicately. "I think you've earned yourself some time away from the Isle, don't you think?"
The girl's face brightened, and she let out a gasp. "Can we go to Elsweyr?" she said excitedly. "I want to see their acrobats again!"
"Vinye, dear," her mother simpered, "you've been to Elsweyr three times this last year, and twice in a row to Corinthe. Don't you want to explore more of the Dominion's territories?"
Her face fell at the words, and her mother appeared to take notice. "Oh, don't give me that look, Vinye," she said kindly. "I have just the place in mind … "
…
… She gaped at the immense trees spread out before her. Even the towers of Firsthold weren't half as tall as these monstrous creations of nature. Everything was a mixture of lush greens and muted browns, and colors she'd never dreamed possible were scattered here and there in the form of exotic flowers and birds.
Forgoing any semblance of her ladylike reserve and composure, she finally managed to close her jaw, and she spoke in an awed whisper, "Valenwood is amazing."
Her father chuckled. "I did tell you," he said knowingly as they stepped off the boat and onto the land of the wood elves …
…
… She picked at the meat suspiciously, as though worried it would come to life and bite her fingers off.
"Vinye, dearest, is something wrong with your food?" Her father had finished the last of his salmon, and was now looking at her with a concerned look on his face. They had been staying in Falinesti for two days now, and Orinwe hadn't seen his daughter eat anything in that time.
"I don't trust it," Vinye said skeptically. "What if it's one of them? The elves eat each other here; it's disgusting!"
Orinwe cleared his throat. "Now, Vinye, just because the Bosmer have a religious obligation to do such a thing, does not mean they do it all the time. Just as some elves choose to worship Talos, distasteful as the practice may be, they are a very select few. And do act your age, please; you are fifteen years old! You're almost ready to be the youngest Justiciar that Firsthold's produced in a hundred years!"
Vinye groaned under her breath. "I wish Mother were here."
"As do I, my dear. But your mother has some very important business to attend to in Alinor."
He looked up suddenly, and his face grew tense. "And speaking of business … "
Two Justiciars had appeared beside their public table. They, like Orinwe, were dressed in Bosmeri plainclothes. None of them saluted, nor did they speak, but the glint in their eye was more than enough to suffice.
"Vinye, dear, I'm afraid I'll have to take my leave for the night," he said, turning back in her direction. "Go back to our room, and get back to your studies."
"But Father—"
"Vinye." Orinwe's sharp bark did not invite argument. She stared at him for a few eternal moments longer, before pushing her untouched plate of food away, and trudging away from the marketplace to their residence …
…
… She did not get to sleep that night. No matter how she tossed and turned, her eyes simply refused to close. Her father had never raised her voice before at her; why the sudden change in mood?
Was it something she had said, something she had done? Or was there something else at work here? Valenwood was Dominion territory, she knew, so Justiciars—even in uniform—were not exactly an uncommon sight. And yet, they seemed to know each other on some level … even though she knew she and her father had arrived alone.
A small puff of noise in the distance distracted her from her train of thought, like a log popping in a fire. There were shouts in the street below.
Another puff. Then a third, a fourth, and suddenly they were coming in rapid succession—like a rainstorm beating on the roof.
The shouting became screaming, and the screaming became louder and louder—
And then there was chaos.
The noise came first—an invisible, roaring wall of a thousand sounds; the BOOMs and BANGs of explosions both near and far, the continued screams of the population outside, and something else, magnified over the pandemonium: a deep voice, bellowing indistinctly over the noise that sounded vaguely familiar to her.
What is going on?!
The lights followed just behind, and suddenly a massive explosion rocked the hollowed-out tree where she had been resting. The floor-to-ceiling window glowed with blinding illumination, and shattered into a thousand pieces. She rose from her bed, and peered through the wreckage.
For a solid minute, she wondered if the forces of Oblivion itself had descended upon Falinesti. She had heard chilling tales of the Oblivion Crisis, of how the hordes of daedra that had poured through had toppled Crystal-Like-Law—the sacred tower built by the Aldmer of long ago—and slaughtered all who had sought refuge inside.
But even that could not compare to this.
The earth heaved, and light and sound filled her world. Her senses were being oppressed in every direction—the fires blinded her, the screams and explosions deafened her, and the smoke and stench of burning wood and flesh choked her. Dozens of shadowed forms flitted about the treetops and the trunks. Some of them carried swords, daggers and axes, hacking more of the figures to pieces, while others leapt upon them with open mouths and claws, physically tearing the monsters to shreds and consuming the still-warm remains—
The voice boomed out again, and this time she could make out individual words over the din. She listened intently, doing her best to filter out all the background noise—
"Purify the land with our fire!" the voice roared, amplified by some arcane magic. "The lives and lands of these beasts are nothing to us. We shall reign supreme!"
She felt her breath seize up in her lungs, and felt sweat dripping down her neck. In spite of the hellish scene around her, her skin felt clammy, cold as the grave. She knew that voice. She had heard it for all her life, congratulating her, encouraging her to be better. Tears began streaming down her cheeks, only to be evaporated by the heat and stinging her eyes even more—
Please stop, she thought, beginning to convulse uncontrollably. Please stop … please stop … please stop please stop please—
"STOP!"
No one would ever have hoped to hear her, but she did not care; a desperate, childish fury had latched into her mind with an iron grip, and now she behaved like a rabid animal. Her hands blossomed with magic, more than she had ever produced thus far in her short life; her entire body crackled with transient lightning—
She did not remember striking out at the nearest figure to her, or the fleeting relief she felt when she saw it crumble into dust from the force of her lightning attack. She did not remember doing the same thing to the next figure, or the next one—or any after that; all she wanted to do was to make it stop, to make everything peaceful and quiet again—
It seemed to take forever before the chaos finally diminished, though the fires still raged all around her, and she finally gained the courage to limp around the devastation. Bleeding bodies, parts of bodies, and piles of ash filled the streets. The swirling embers half-blinded her, and she could make out very little detail, but a faraway part of her noted how many of these bodies seemed to be alarmingly close to her.
Did I do all this?
She wiped her eyes and blinked a few times, clearing all the soot and spots from her vision. It wasn't much, but she could see clearer now.
When she looked down at the bodies, though, she wished she were blind.
Dozens of Bosmer were scattered about the streets of Falinesti. Some of them carried flesh wounds from physical weapons, others from teeth and claws, and still others were charred all over with burns from the fires. But the vast majority carried small, concentrated burns all over their bodies, and she recognized them as her own lightning.
It was the other bodies, though, that left her frightened and shaking like a scared little toddler.
Once, their armor had been polished to a mirror-sheen, the individual moonstone feathers gleaming green and gold in the sunlight. Their robes and cloaks were normally impeccably pressed and surgically clean. Tonight, however, they were as charred, burned, and shredded as the bodies that wore them.
Thalmor, she thought. All the Thalmor … all the Bosmer … everyone …
I did this. All of it.
And as she brooded over the magnitude of what she had just done, a new, more horrifying thought came to her.
Father—!
It took much less time to find him than she had been anticipating, but when she did, she wished yet again that the gods would smite her and take her sight, even her life—but even then, the sight of her father lying there, bloodied and mangled, his face forever frozen in that mask of terror, would be burned into her mind for all her years—
It was too much. She dropped to her knees, and cinders and ash be damned, she let the tears flow freely, howling in strangled fury, unwilling to accept the truth—
The truth.
She stopped crying then, a strange thought creeping into her mind. Truth. The word had an unfamiliar meaning to her now.
What is truth?
She had come to Valenwood alongside her father, and while she had earned herself a brief respite from her studies at the Mages' Guild, her father had come here for business, he had said.
But who in Oblivion could call such destruction business?
" … They are nothing to us! … We are supreme! … "
And then, the final truth of this crime came to her, and tears sprang to her face once more—but this time they were not of sorrow, but of a rage that burned hotter than all the fires around her.
That was his voice.
He had done this. Her own father.
"You'll make for a fine Justiciar one day … "
This was what they wanted me to be? They wanted me to kill—to destroy all this—
Her eyes blazed with fire and lightning. They lied to me.
My own father lied to me!
Without thinking, she burned a bolt into her father's face, then another, and another—over and over until his face was unrecognizable among all the burn scars. Only then did her anger die down, replaced by an eerie calm, like the silence before a storm.
Attempting to think more rationally, to calm herself even further, she paced the bloody streets and pondered. I can't go back home anymore, she realized. If they find out—if Mother finds out—they'll kill me. But I can't stay here … I can't go to Elsweyr—I can't go anywhere in the Dominion now. I'm branded for life.
I have to get out of here.
Cyrodiil, she realized. Yes … the answer was so easy! She could flee there. The Imperial City was vast, and surely no one would notice an Altmer child among the throngs of people that called the largest metropolis in Tamriel home. Perhaps, if she was lucky, she could continue her studies there—give herself a fresh start, an opportunity to distract her mind from this atrocity—
A new identity … a new beginning …
She tried her best to heal herself again; her leg didn't feel broken, but it was still sore enough to where she would have to constantly apply her restoration skills to ward off the pain and soreness.
She had a long road ahead of her …
The first sign that she knew she was—incredibly—alive was the coldness of the stone against her temple. A cold sweat—she could not tell whether it was an aftereffect of the poison, a result of the fever dream she'd seen, or if the two were possibly connected with one another—had left her drenched, and the egg-slime she had covered herself in had hardened into a bumpy, off-white resin. The smell was nauseating.
Eventually, Vinye opened her eyes, and everything crashed over her in one big wave—Septimus and the iceberg, Raldbthar, the bandits, the Falmer, all the memories of the past few hours returned to her.
It was a miracle she was still alive, Vinye thought—the Falmer could have come back for her at any time, and imprisoned her, tortured her, or worse. She didn't stop to wonder why—for now, she thanked the gods that they had been watching over her in her expedition.
But the question remained: how long had she been here? Hours? Days? Longer? Vinye was not sure. That was the trouble with Dwarven ruins—you had no idea where to find north or south, or if it was midday or midnight.
There was only way to find out, she knew, and there were two ways to go about it—the Falmer she had bypassed, and however many ruins were still left unexplored. The danger I know … or the danger I don't, she thought ruefully. Either way, she knew whatever lay ahead of her was on the lookout for an intruder.
After much deliberation, she elected to push forward—if she was lucky, perhaps there were still some active Dwemer automatons in this ruin, and while they might consider her an intruder too, the case would certainly be the same for the Falmer. That would certainly make things easier for me.
Almost immediately, she could tell her hypothesis was correct; three Falmer lay dead in the next chamber, their black blood coating the floor with a sticky film. One had met his end by some kind of thresher trap in the ceiling (she made sure to give the pressure plate a wide berth this time), and the other two had been defeated by a set of automatons. Losses had been heavy for them as well, two spiders lay broken alongside them; only the sphere was still alive, but the heavy weapons of the Falmer had badly damaged it to the point of immobility. It tried to raise its crossbow to snipe Vinye, but the joint was broken, and the Altmer mercifully disabled it with a single lightning bolt.
Vinye continued on in relative peace and quiet; the Dwemer machinery was growing louder and louder with every step she took. It was possible she was nearing the deepest part of the ruins, which filled her with a sense of desperation. Her trek to Raldbthar wouldn't be a complete failure, thanks in part to Septimus' mystifying machine, but nonetheless, she hoped that she would have something to show Malys, Cosette, and Solyn for her efforts.
Suddenly, she stopped in her tracks. A dozen spikes had risen from the floor, and they barred her from going any further. To the right, she noticed four glowing buttons, each suspended on their own pedestal. One of them must activate the gate, she guessed. The other three were just dummies—or traps.
She took a quick scan around the room. Sure enough, she could see several hollow protuberances jutting out at odd angles. Poison darts—or flame jets, she assumed. She twitched her left hand a little, preparing herself to erect a ward at a moment's notice.
Vinye grimaced inwardly—it looked like trial-and-error from here on out. She pushed the one on the far left, and jumped as she heard second set of spikes erupt from the ceiling, closing behind her and trapping her inside. After a moment of panic, she pressed it again, and the gate retreated.
Strike one.
The next button she activated did nothing whatsoever—at least, she hoped that was the case. She leapt away from the third almost as soon as she'd pressed it, anticipating the worst—but her efforts paid off as the bars in front of her slid down into their grooves. She sighed in relief, and continued on.
The next chamber was even more immense—and more populated with Falmer—than the first. Clicking noises echoed throughout the chamber, though Vinye could not yet tell what was making them. They were definitely not mechanical, though, and she surmised they belonged to some kind of cave creature, perhaps captured by the Falmer.
She looked off to the right, and saw the leader of this pack though the gates: a male, covered in even thicker armor than the other chieftain, and clutching something in his clawed hand that looked vaguely familiar to her: a metal hammer shaped like a T, about as long as his forearm. Hadn't there been a similar carving featured in the Reli—
Vinye's mouth fell open as she recognized the object. That's Sunder!
Questions began buzzing in her mind—how was it that one of Kagrenac's Tools found its way into Skyrim? How did a Falmer manage to get his filthy claws on such a priceless artifact?
She slid open the gate as quietly as she could; the grating wasn't giving her the best look. She needed to look closer, see if the artifact was indeed genuine—
Vinye stopped in her tracks when she saw the gate opposite her—and stared in horror at the two creatures behind it.
The frostbite spiders were a feared menace throughout Skyrim, and she'd actively done her best to go out of their way, but these things were on a completely different level of terrifying. The best she could describe it was a horse-sized arthropod, with two pairs of razor-sharp pincers—one on its ugly, flat head, another on its tail—that dripped with greenish-black venom and red blood from the remains of a meal that she tried not to think about.
As her initial shock and disgust gradually subsided, Vinye began to have a suspicion that these bugs hadn't been captured, but had been reared by the Falmer as livestock—domesticated to form the backbone of their culture. Their chitinous bodies instantly reminded her of the spiky armor and weapons many of them carried, and those heavy tents she'd seen earlier looked to be made out of a similar substance. She made a mental note for future reference: if she survived this ruin, she might publish a paper on this new Falmer culture one day—perhaps even shove it gloatingly under the noses of those blowhards in the Synod.
It then hit Vinye that if the Falmer were indeed raising these bugs and farming them for all they were worth, then they had to be coming from somewhere. Some kind of birthing pen, or … Then she looked behind the bugs, and sure enough, there were even more of those glowing, throbbing sacs filled with Divines only knew how many eggs, and she nearly gagged as she felt a wave of nausea wash over her.
I covered my whole body in that?!
The bugs suddenly stopped their clicking and clacking. Vinye, her attention focused on the Falmer who held Sunder, didn't notice their tiny, glowing eyes were looking right at her until it was too late.
When she was fifteen feet away from the chieftain, the horrible insects suddenly emitted a piercing, chittering shriek. Instantly the Falmer snapped to attention, looking around warily as if they could actually see Vinye. The bugs shrieked again, and the high elf felt a lead weight hit her stomach when she saw the Falmer chieftain move in her direction, pulling out Sunder from his leather belt.
Damn it.
Vinye began looking for possible escape routes. Going back was not an option; it would funnel the Falmer, but there was also the chance that the other camp had broken through the bar on the door, and she would be trapped between the two. There were several other corridors inside the chamber, but they had all collapsed save one: a raised bridge off to her right above a large pool of water. There was a button alongside it to lower the contraption.
Vinye knew she had no other choice.
And so she bolted.
Several things then happened in rapid succession: the Falmer snarled and lunged forward, swinging Sunder in a downward arc straight for Vinye. It missed by a long shot, Vinye saw from the corner of her eye—but then there was a flash of blue light as Sunder struck the stone floor, followed by a deafening thunderclap.
And suddenly, Vinye was lifted bodily from the floor by an immensely strong something, like a dragon had just seized her in its talons. The next thing she knew, she was heading straight for the water. She bounced off the surface once—the sensation was not unlike running headlong into a brick wall—before she sank into the water.
Okay, a detached part of her mind thought through the pain. Definitely the genuine article.
Stars danced in front of her eyes as she tried to make sense of where she was—where was up, where was down. By the time Vinye had her bearings straight, she was running short of breath, and broke the surface with a gasp just as her vision began to blur.
She gaped at the carnage that greeted her; that one strike from Sunder had changed the layout of the entire hall. The polished stone floor had cracked like flatbread, and rocks the size of the Falmeri tents had been dislodged from the natural ceiling, crushing upwards of a dozen Falmer under their mass. The ceiling above the pool had massive cracks running through it, and Vinye hastily made her way out of the water before they had a chance to crush her as well. The two repulsive insects had been protected from the onslaught, but the gates housing them had not, and so they were free to wander the wreckage and feast on the mangled bodies of their former masters. The Falmer chieftain and a few of his subordinates had also managed to survive.
And to make matters worse, the bridge control had been dislodged, lowering the causeway of its own accord. Behind it, Vinye saw an enormous Dwemer centurion lumbering towards the remaining Falmer, steam billowing from its shoulders like a cloak. More steam hissed from its mouth, and one of the lesser Falmer screamed as the scalding vapor boiled him alive.
As Vinye watched in fascination from a safe distance, the pair of massive bugs joined the fray, their mandibles grappling at the centurion's limbs. Their strength was surprising—one of them managed to rip out the massive hammer that served as its right fist, its venom burning into the resilient golden metal. The centurion wouldn't go down easy, though; it planted one of its armored feet right on the other insect, crushing it into a purplish-black mass of sticky pulp.
The Falmer chief swung Sunder at the centurion, and Vinye braced herself for the inevitable—but the golem used its halberd arm to block his swing. The snow elf went with the movement though—perhaps more by accident than design, and struck the automaton as it wound back to make another punch. Sunder crumpled the golden golem like it was matchwood, and the centurion was blasted into a thousand pieces by whatever arcane magic the artifact had been imbued with, crumpling against the other end of the chamber and exploding into flames.
That left the chief, his subordinate, and that ugly insectoid "pet." Three against one, Vinye thought. Not good odds.
Falinesti had offered worse.
The monsters charged—all but the chieftain, who held back with his fanged mouth curled in a sneer. Typical—letting his underlings do the dirty work, Vinye thought as she let fly with her lightning.
Both bolts hit the insect—one in its hideous mouth, the other on its underbelly—and with a final, dying shriek, it simply exploded, bursting into a thick mush filled with shards of chitin and acidic venom. The other Falmer turned to look at the grisly spectacle—and Vinye promptly burned a clean hole through his hairless head.
The Falmer chieftain snarled at her as his subordinate gurgled and died, and he hefted Sunder in his hand. Vinye tapped into her innate Altmer abilities, and felt a tingling sensation as her body began to glow blue.
Then the Falmer charged, and hurled Sunder aloft, swinging it downward like a thunderbolt. Thinking quickly, Vinye pulled out the Bosmer's elven dagger; there was a gap halfway up the spine of the blade made for catching enemy weapons and parrying them. With both hands, she thrust it at Sunder—
—and the handle of the ancient hammer caught in the gap, trapping the two elves together. The Falmer shrieked as he realized his error, and tried to break free, but Vinye was holding on with all her might. She couldn't use any of her spells, else the hammer might fall—and so would she. They were well and truly deadlocked.
Or so the Falmer thought.
As her strength began to wane, and Sunder drew closer to her skull, Vinye's thoughts went to Falinesti, of that massacre she'd perpetuated—of her father, unrecognizable among all the other bodies he himself had helped to slaughter—and she felt her hackles rise as fury took hold of her once again. But this fury was more controlled; Vinye had grown since that night in Valenwood, and her talent at the arcane arts had grown as well. Instead of pushing that fury out of her, she let it spread over her body, letting all her hatred focus on the Falmer before her.
Her hair rose all over her body—her neck, her arms, her head, everywhere—and slowly but surely, she began to push back. Lightning curled over her arms, coiling around her chest, surrounding her entire body in rippling blue energy. The snow elf snarled as realization washed over him—at exactly the same time as the lightning did.
"Break this," Vinye growled, and clenched her hands as tight as she could.
If he had only let go, the Falmer would have survived for that much longer. But his simple mind was too focused on eradicating the outsider before him—and keeping his precious hammer in his claws. Doing one would have involved forgoing the other—but the Falmer had mentally regressed too far to be able to seek an alternative solution.
He died thus, screaming in agonized fury all the while as Vinye roasted him alive with her lightning. When at last he expired with a final choking gasp, he finally released Sunder from his hands, and tumbled dead in front of the Altmer, sizzling like a freshly cooked side of meat.
Victorious, Vinye wrenched the dagger from the artifact, taking extreme care not to damage either. She turned Sunder over in her hand, admiring the intricate workmanship that had gone into its construction. The crystal faces of the hammer were flawlessly formed—a single chip off the main body would have sold for far more than even the biggest, most perfect diamond in all of Tamriel. The handle was pure ebony, and the golden metal was perfectly smooth and polished in spite of its previous owner.
Beautiful, she thought.
She searched around the ruined chamber, grabbing a few strips of the cleanest linen she could find. After securely wrapping Sunder in them, Vinye reverently placed the artifact in her pack, and proceeded across the bridge. Hopefully there would be a lift on the other side—she would much prefer not to have to backtrack all the way as with Rkund.
But Raldbthar had one last surprise in store for her.
The chamber led into what Vinye assumed must have been some kind of marketplace, once her feeling of wonderment had subsided. Treasure was everywhere; ingots of gold and silver—even of ebony—and a scattering of rings, amulets, and jeweled crowns were placed on gilded shelves. Some of them glowed green and blue with various enchantments. Vinye swept them all into her pack, thinking she might study those enchantments, and perhaps even apply them to more of the jewelry.
A strange glint of color caught her eye suddenly, from a branching hallway behind and to her right. Frowning, Vinye moved down its length, approaching the pedestal at the end where the light was coming from.
It was some kind of mineral, she could see; a glimmering aquamarine color, like the Abacean off Firsthold in a summer midday. Expertly carved, too—the half-circular edge of the outside was geometrically perfect, and many of the grooves cut into the mineral were thinner than her fingernail. The craftsmanship that went toward this little thing must have been more than the merpower that created Sunder.
This bore closer research; Vinye slid this into her pack as well and turned away.
The opposite hallway contained a lift that presumably led back to the surface, but between it and Vinye was a square spiral staircase that led further down still, and Vinye decided to check that out before taking the lift.
It was only a short way down, and revealed only a small, unremarkable hallway before ending in a set of golden double doors. Vinye pushed them open.
And she stared.
The most immense cavern she had ever seen was spread out before her; so massive it could have swallowed an entire hold of Skyrim. So high was the ceiling that the greenish-blue clouds inside swallowed it up completely. Giant glowing mushrooms, hundreds of feet tall, dotted the cave, and tiny spores floated all around her like underground snow. The silhouettes of countless Dwemer towers completed the spectacle, surrounded by rocks that glowed eerie shades of green, purple, and blue.
My gods …
Vinye moved her mouth, but nothing came out. There were simply no words to describe the sheer magnificence of her eyes were seeing. Falmer, Falinesti, and Sunder were all dispelled, replaced by this awesome sight. The sights of Skyrim had been lost forever to her. She could live to be a thousand, and she doubted anything would quite eclipse the strange beauty of this place.
After what felt like hours, she tottered along the Dwemer road on numb legs, taking in the vista of the massive waterfall that it spanned. But with every sight she saw, two more seemed to take her place. She would need years, if not decades, to study this cave in its entirety.
When all this is done, she vowed, I know where I'm going.
I could fill an entire library on this place. Both the Synod and the College of Whispers would be begging me to come back!
Eventually, she discovered a winding column of carved rock connecting the ceiling with the cavern floor, and she could see the lever to a lift inside when she drew closer. Reluctantly, she pulled the lever, and felt the platform heave upwards with a groan.
Vinye wanted nothing more than to stay inside that cave forever, but her mind—while sorely tempted—was set nonetheless. And so it was that, when she finally emerged in the snow of Skyrim an hour later, the sun glinting off the snow and blinding her eyes after spending so long in darkness, she set back on her way to Winterhold. It was close enough, she thought, that she might have some time to drop off her things and change into some new robes before heading to Whiterun and reuniting with Malys and Cosette.
Those two are not going to believe what I found down there …
WInterhold
It was nighttime the next day when Vinye finally arrived back at the College. In that time, she had thought up what she hoped was a suitable name for her new elven dagger. Vinye had never put that much stock in naming things in her youth; sentimental value of an object had always been second to its functionality in her mind. Nevertheless, she felt confident that "Kinsbane" would be a suitable name; it had defeated one of the most powerful relics of the deep elves, along with the snow elf that had possessed it.
She strapped Kinsbane to her belt. Now that the dagger had a name, perhaps she ought to give a unique enchantment. A shock enchantment was first and foremost in her thoughts; it was straightforward, but also a little simpler than she felt it ought to be. After all, this was a very personal weapon for her, and—
"Ah! You are back so soon?"
Vinye jumped to see J'zargo coming out of the Hall of the Elements, clutching a very ancient spellbook in his paws—no doubt containing more mysteries of Aetherius just waiting to be unraveled.
"Urag has been asking for you all day," the Khajiit informed her. "He seemed very excited about something, this one thought."
Vinye's heart rose—had her research borne fruit already? "Is he still there?"
"J'zargo is not so sure he ever sleeps," he muttered. He coughed suddenly, waving his paw over his nose. "Ugh—where have you been for the past three days, Khajiit would like to know? This one stinks of the Falmer!"
Vinye cringed—she'd forgotten how sensitive Khajiit senses were. She hurriedly apologized and made her way inside before J'zargo could ask any more questions.
She entered the Arcaneum an hour later, a fresh change of robes over her shoulders and her pack freshly emptied of everything inside besides her books, Sunder, and that strange crystal.
Urag was waiting for her, scowling as always. "J'zargo told me to come see you," she informed him, keeping her voice down. Other scholars were present inside, and she was sworn to secrecy about the nature of her research.
Apparently Urag shared the same opinion; he pushed over a slip of parchment to Vinye without a word, and went back to his book with a supremely unconcerned grunt once the Altmer had taken it in her hands.
Vinye opened the letter and began to skim over its contents. The farther her eyes traveled down the page, the more pronounced her frown became. She read it again, more slowly this time.
And then she read it again.
Suddenly, she was dashing out of the Arcaneum as fast as she could go, white-faced in a mixture of confusion and horror, mind racing at top speed. Urag's shouts rang through the library, but didn't register in her ears at all.
She felt her legs carrying her out of the Hall of the Elements, and out of the College, all the way out into Winterhold, towards the carriage outside the Frozen Hearth. She leaped on board with a burst of strength that nearly sent her flying headlong into the half-terrified driver.
"Whiterun—now!" she panted, too exhausted to give him an apology. She practically threw her entire purse at him in her haste. "Step on it!" she screamed.
She barely had time to grasp the handrail before the horse lurched from a standstill into a breakneck gallop, heading south for Whiterun Hold.
This changes everything, Vinye thought as she glanced once more at the letter's contents. Auri-El, help me if I'm too late—and help Whiterun as well.
Because if I'm right, there might not be a Whiterun for much longer …
A/N: Nope, no "Next chapter" cliffhanger this time. Muahahaha. Also, writing flashbacks is weird—or maybe I'm just that bad at writing. Or both.
Some recent developments: I have an upcoming job interview coming up. If I end up landing this, it's going to fill up what little of my fall schedule hasn't already been taken by my college classes. So it's very likely that updates for Second Seed will be even less frequent than I anticipated in the months to come.
Anyway, I hope y'all are having a pleasant summer. Wish me luck, and as always, thanks for reading! - K