XIV
The Midden
One day later
Drevis Neloren had planned as best he could.
It had taken Brelyna a whole half-day to procure every single ounce of dwarven oil in the College's stores, along with every single taproot and bloom of dragon's tongue. The rest of that day had been devoted to preparing the ingredients.
Normally, when combined, these three components could be brewed into a potion that fortified the imbiber's skill in illusion magic as long as it was in the system. But Drevis knew he would have to spend much more time than simple potions allowed. No, he needed something that lasted for much longer—and was more efficient as well.
And so it was that Phinis, J'zargo, Tolfdir, and Brelyna had each brought in a brass brazier, while Drevis had ground up all the ingredients Brelyna had helped to gather into one fine powder. Over the past day, the dwarven oil had sufficiently dried enough under Brelyna's watchful care to where this substance no longer coagulated, but had instead separated into a coarse, sand-like material. This powder would then be burned, and the chamber where Drevis now sat would be sealed off to keep the smoke from escaping. For it was this smoke—tinged with traces of its base components—that would allow Drevis to properly examine Solyn's handsome payment to Winterhold.
While the oil was drying, Tolfdir, Phinis, and J'zargo had assisted him in transforming a large section of the floor into a powerful scrye. A large rune—flowing, intricate, and in every way unlike the spiky glyphs that characterized most magic runes—had been inscribed on the stone surface.
It was in this rune that Drevis now sat cross-legged, as he had been for the past hour, while the other four prepared for the lengthy session. The two dozen guards that Arch-Mage Grimnir had loaned from Calcelmo stood against the wall in absolute silence—not even the most skeptical of them would dare raise his voice, lest he interrupt this monumentally important task.
"I will say to you again—this will take some time," Drevis was advising them, eyes closed. "You are all certain that your personal affairs are in order until we are done? Once we begin the scrye, I will not be able to stop—and the better part of today will likely be spent here. I must also be allowed to have complete and total concentration. It will be up to you," he said to the guards, "to divert any and all distractions away from the scrye. Understood?"
The guards saluted him. "Very well," Drevis said, apparently satisfied. "Light the braziers."
His four assistants did as they were told. The braziers had already been filled with enough powder to make a full day's worth of smoke to enhance Drevis' scrying abilities. A simple burst of mage-fire from each of them now set this mixture alight, and it gave off a smell that was initially sweet, but came off as very acrid, and sour enough to curl a Nord's nose hairs. Within minutes, the chamber would be filled with this smoke.
Until then, Drevis waited.
Somewhere in the Rift
The next morning
"Remind me again," an annoyed and thoroughly out-of-breath Cosette asked, as she and the two elves turned off the road in a more southerly direction, "why we couldn't have just found this place before we went all the way out to Arkngthamz?"
"For one thing, we didn't even know it existed at all, never mind where." Vinye told her. "But Katria also mentioned that these bits of Aetherium were the key to the Forge. That says to me there's no other way inside without all four shards."
"And of course, those shards just had to be scattered to the four winds, didn't they?" Cosette huffed. "Is it just me, or did the dwarves make a living out of being colossal pains in the arse to everyone they met?"
Nobody answered her. The reason why was soon apparent: a stone arch was rising into view before the mages, and it lay next to a small pavilion with a raised barricade on one side. All of them were carved in the characteristic geometric designs of the Dwemer.
"That's the Forge?" Vinye asked in disbelief. "There's no way it's that easy."
Cosette felt her breath catch in her mouth when she saw a body slumped against the arch: a bandit, judging by the rough appearance of the furs that served as his armor. There were several others spread out across the ruin, and the Breton could see several tents erected. They must have been camped out here, she decided.
Malys had hurried ahead, and was already examining the nearest body. She gingerly poked a finger down his throat. "No blood," she said, almost to herself. She gathered some ice onto her fingers, forming a small blade that she used to slit the robber's neck. A reddish-brown substance, almost like dirt, spilled out from the wound.
"The blood's all coagulated—drier than a bone," Malys told them. "These bandits have been dead for days. Maybe even longer."
"One of them must have gotten too greedy for his own good," Cosette said. Lowlifes like these would do anything to put one more septim in their pockets—even if it meant killing their own mates.
"I don't think so." All three mages jumped at the sound of the familiar voice, and Cosette looked up to see Katria's ghost descending from a set of wooden stairs that led to one of the higher sections of the ruin.
"There's no blood on any of their weapons at all, not even dried," Katria explained, her translucent face grave with worry. "This wasn't just some squabble that turned ugly. Someone else killed them, and very quickly, too—before they had a chance to bring their weapons to bear. I'd say it was over in a matter of seconds."
"You think someone beat us here?" Cosette asked her.
"Not unless there's a second set of Aetherium shards forged exactly like the ones you found," Katria said, before her face fell. "They didn't get—!"
"No, nobody stole them," Cosette said hurriedly, producing the assembled Aetherium key from her satchel.
Katria breathed a sigh of relief. "Phew. All right—let me show you the next step." She bade the mages follow her, and the ghost of the Nord led them up the stairs to a circular pavilion. Cosette saw a globelike shape fixed on a dais in the center of the stone platform.
Katria pointed out a toothed circular shape below the fixture. "See the gap in the center? The hole in the middle looks about the right size as the assembled key. If I wasn't already dead, I'd bet my life that might be our keyhole."
"One way to find out." Cosette stepped forward—only to be rebuffed by Malys, who threw out her hand so suddenly that she caught the Breton full in the stomach. "W-What was that for?" she coughed.
Malys pointed downward to … apparently nothing. However, "There's some kind of rune running all around this platform," she said. "I don't know if you can see it—but my eyes can, plain as day. Someone was definitely here—a wizard, too. That's probably why all those bandits died without a mark on their body."
Well, that's not ominous, Cosette thought. "What kind of rune is it? Explosive?"
The vampire shook her head. "No. A rune this big, any detonation would be too diluted to be lethal. And the runes don't look to me like any elemental trap at all—what's more, there's a second circle of runes inside this one." Her face reflected everyone's confusion. "I can't really say what this is—I've never seen anything like it before."
Cosette fetched a bulging sack of food from nearby—lettuce, she thought apropos of nothing. I hate lettuce. "Then you might want to stand back." Before any of the mages could stop her, she heaved the sack onto the platform, where it fell with a wet crunching noise that nevertheless made everyone jump.
Nothing happened.
Cosette made a "humph" noise, and Vinye, who had thrown up a ward at the moment of impact, relaxed. "Well, if that was any sort of trap, that sack would have set it off," she said. "I'd say we're clear now, Malys. But if you still want to hang back, that's fine with me."
Ultimately, however, none of them kept their distance—though Malys, who was still obviously wary of the rune under her feet, took rather longer to cross over to the astrolabe than the others. Only when she had reached the other side did she relax.
Producing the key once more, Cosette fed the assembled shards into the round depression under the instrument, and instantly she knew something had happened. The circular slice of Aetherium fit inside perfectly, and the gear immediately sunk an inch into the stone column with a gentle click. Then, there was a rumbling noise from deep below them—too small to be an earthquake, but just loud enough to be noticeable to their ears.
Other than that, though, there was no apparent effect, and the mages looked to Katria for an explanation.
The ghost looked deep in thought. "Try … taking it out?" she finally offered.
There was no retrieving the shards now, Cosette could see—they fit together so perfectly that the gaps between them looked almost invisible. There was, however, a groove outside the device that held them in that was just wide enough for the mages' fingers to slip in. Carefully, all three of them pried out the gear-shaped device, and passed it along to Malys.
But in doing so, they heard a second small click from below them, and the astrolabe began to spin. More importantly, though, the ground beneath them shook again—and much more violently this time. It was as though the ruins themselves were—Cosette gasped.
"What the—get back!" Katria had evidently come to the same conclusion. "Hurry!"
Malys nearly dropped the crest in her haste to stand clear, and the mages leapt off the plinth not a moment too soon—the very instant Malys' foot left the stone, the entire platform heaved upward as though it had been tossed by a hundred giants.
"Whoa … " Katria breathed, too engrossed to say anything further. The three mages were similarly lost for words.
It was several seconds before the platform—now merely the summit of an immense tower—finally halted its rise from the earth, and everyone managed to tear their eyes away from the sight to greet a second shock: this tower concealed a lift.
"It's true." Katria spoke only slightly above a whisper, and Cosette knew the gleam in her ghostly eye. The adventurer was now closer than she'd ever been to a secret she'd been chasing for Old Gods only knew how long.
"It's all true," Katria said again, and rushed for the lift. "Come on!" she called to the others, "let's check it out!"
The three mages hurried behind her, and the ghost—somehow; Cosette could never quite be sure how ghosts could interact with solid objects—pushed the lever with her foot. The ancient mechanism shrieked as gears—dormant for untold thousands of years, and oiled only with dust and time in all those centuries—began to turn, and the lift jumped downward.
Suddenly, Cosette got a very sharp jab in her chest from Vinye's elbow. Wincing at the blow, Cosette turned to complain, but Vinye had such a look of dread on her face that her rebuke died on her lips. The Breton glanced in Malys' direction, and deduced that the vampire had been elbowed in a similar way.
"What was that for?" Malys said harshly.
"Don't make any sudden moves—don't scream or anything," Vinye whispered, her voice nearly nonexistent over the reluctant machinery. "We have company."
Katria heard her, and was alert. "Who is it?"
"The trees," replied Vinye. "Far off, to the right. Look there."
Cosette did as she was told, and scanned the area Vinye had pointed out. Within a few moments she saw it: a lone figure, nearly a dark smear from the distance between them, but visible among the tree it was leaning against.
Katria saw it too, and frowned. "Who is that?" she asked them. "I don't know who that is, but I can feel … something from whoever it is, even from here."
"Something?" Cosette felt uneasy.
The ghost gulped. "Whatever it is, it's not normal—and it's older than any of us. A lot older."
Cosette had no idea what that meant. Perhaps Katria, as a spirit, could somehow gauge the life force of a living thing—how old or young it was, how much time it had left upon this world, and so on and so forth.
She took one more look at the figure, and then she and the rest of the adventurers sank beneath the surface of the earth. Cosette had no idea who that was, but it wasn't hard to guess who it might be. Only one person outside of Winterhold had ever shown any recurring interest in the three mages—and what they were after—keeping their distance, analyzing them from an invisible vantage point, and waiting until they were at their most vulnerable. Waiting for the right chance to strike.
Rolega.
The ride down the lift took much longer than anyone had anticipated, least of all Mistress Malys, who was only just now beginning to feel the shock of the sight vinye had shown her wear off.
"How deep are we?" wondered katria in amazement, as the gears kept on turning, kept on pulling them further down. "I've never gone this far into the earth before."
However, Mistress Malys only had one thing on Her mind—rolega the quiet was here. The strange thief had been tailing them yet again. It was even possible that she had been tracking the mages ever since Falkreath—up to when they'd escaped those Forsworn, and descended into Arkngthamz.
Was it even possible that she'd even followed them inside? Malys could not be sure. All She was certain about at this point was that rolega the quiet was starting to look like less and less than an ordinary thief. The Thieves Guild was a strange bunch, no matter which chapter. A rival organization, according to rumor, had wiped out the Guild's presence in Morrowind long before the Red Year. But Cyrodiil's was shrouded in myth, and it was said that one of their members was capable of rewriting history—something even the most learned of wizards could not do.
The Skyrim chapter … all that Malys knew of this was that for one thing, the guild had been recently restored to glory—and seemingly overnight at that. The other was that barenziah, the Dunmer queen of legend, had counted herself as part of its ranks. But barenziah's history was a muddy one—and too much of it was the result of rumor and rampant sensationalizing. As a result, no one knew if barenziah was simply a common thief before her accession, or if she'd been more than that. And if she wasn't—then what kind of power did the Thieves Guild of Skyrim possess?
Who was this thief?
For now, though, those were questions that would ultimately have to wait; the elevator was finally slowing down.
"Finally," katria sighed. "That took a lot longer than usual. Let's see what we can find," she told the mages, who once again let her take the lead.
They stepped out into a largely natural cave. There were signs that the Dwemer had been here, obviously—the most eminent being the carved stone sconces that dotted the cobblestone path on which they were walking. As they passed by them, fires leaped up in the sconces, as if beckoning them closer and closer to a wonderful and terrible sight. Like moths to a flame, Malys thought apropos of nothing.
"Amazing … " was all that katria could say as they entered a truly massive cavern that could have fit the entirety of the College—Midden, crumbling bridge and all—twice over. The space was partially sunken in deep water, fed by a great waterfall. Malys fired an ice spike into the abyss experimentally, checking to see how deep it was. The projectile was swallowed up by the water, and was lost to sight within seconds. If it shattered at the bottom, Malys didn't hear it. She gulped—She would have to watch Her footing.
"To think … no one's been here for four thousand years … " katria went on, still taking in the sights, twirling this way and that so her ghostly eyes could see every nook and cranny of the cave.
Their destination soon loomed ahead—a massive sculpture of carved stone and Dwarven metal. Several automatons, frozen forever in testimony to the expertise of the Dwemer architects, flanked the stairs upward like giant, silent guards. A single gate—tiny only in comparison with its surroundings, lay sealed before them—inviting them inside even further.
"No lock," katria observed, "and the door is shut tight." The specter's eyes drifted upward, and lit up suddenly when she saw a pair of familiar machines resting at the ready. "But those resonators up above it … yeah … I bet you anything they'd open it."
"No mess, no fuss?" asked Malys, raising an eyebrow at her—She wasn't likely to be forgetting what had happened in Arkngthamz any time soon.
"Not after what we've all been through," was katria's reply. "And I bet you lot didn't have a good time of it, either. The Dwemer aren't that cruel. Just hit the resonators, and they'll open the gates—I'm sure of it."
Malys shrugged, and before anyone could say anything, she'd fired off an ice storm in the gap between the two resonators. The mass of ice and cold air expanded, and hit both contraptions in their fanlike blades. They spun upward at the same time, and the gate swung open with a harsh scraping sound that left everyone, even katria, rubbing their ears in annoyance.
The path beyond was constantly sloping, and filled to the brim with machinery. Giant pistons, bigger than any of them, pushed back and forth with a near-constant hiss of steam. But what was more noticeable about it, at least to Malys, was the atmosphere of the place.
"The air here feels different," katria mused. "Can you all feel that? It's a lot warmer down here than any Dwarven ruin I've been in."
"It feels like I'm back in Elsweyr," commented vinye. "I went there when I was younger—before I ever got involved with the Thalmor." Perhaps it was a trick of the light, but Malys thought she saw her eyes mist over at the memory.
"It's more than that." On the other hand, cosette looked the definition of anxiety. "This place feels like Rkund."
Mistress Malys was surprised to hear that, and She soon realized cosette was right. The further down they trekked, the warmer it became. When they had explored the ruins of Rkund, and the Reliquary inside, She remembered tolfdir talking about how the Dwemer had possibly reached the point where they could dig down no further, because the heat of the place was simply so stifling. Was it the same case here, then, with this nameless ruin?
They turned a corner, and were greeted with a simple door made of solid Dwemer metal. But a shimmering haze surrounded it, and Malys had the impression that this was not the result of any spellwork or enchantment—but rather from the extreme heat of whatever was behind it. If anyone touched this as it was now, they would get severely burned at best—at worst, it would be like handling something that had been bathed in dragon fire.
"Don't open up the door," She cautioned the others. "Not yet. I want to try something."
Malys gathered some ice magic in her hands, and directed it at the lock of the door. There was no telling if it was locked at all, but even if it wasn't, then a steady application of Her frost should cool the immediate area down enough to where the door could be opened without any pain.
Hopefully.
Half a minute passed before Malys decided that She had applied enough, and before the door had a chance to warm up again, She forced open the door with a quick kick to the lock. The doors swung open—
—and very nearly swung back at them; a great blast of hot wind blew from the unsealed chamber before them, and everyone was forced to shield their eyes from the errant embers that flowed out of the room, carried by the wind.
When it had subsided, they uncovered their eyes, and stared at what awaited them—only to be simultaneously let down and confused: the chamber beyond, while evidently massive in size, was flooded to the rafters in thick clouds of scalding steam, trapped inside with nowhere to go for the past four millennia.
It would appear, thought Malys in Her annoyance, that this ruin was concealing its secrets to the bitter end.
But unsealing this room had done the trick—even now the clouds were thinning out a little, just enough to where a trip down a long flight of stairs revealed a massive Dwarven bust, placed over more pipes and pistons than any of them had ever seen in one place. What was even stranger to Malys was that it appeared to be spitting … lava?
katria held a hand over her eye as they got closer. "Is that … the Forge?" she asked, her expression showing confusion and curiosity in equal measure.
The four women tried to get closer, but the steam was still too oppressive, and Malys was just able to see the steam rising from a massive grating in the floor—under which yet more of the molten magma flowed—before it became too thick to even breathe.
"Ugh," coughed katria. "Let's clear out some of this steam so we can have a look. There should be a valve or two somewhere around here. Turn those, and the air should clear up."
The mages did as they were told—there were indeed a pair bright red valves connected to some of the pipes either side of the entrance. Malys turned one, while Vinye and Cosette turned the other; each proved difficult to activate, owing to the lack of use and maintenance over the centuries.
But the effect was immediate—within seconds, the steam began to drift upwards, revealing the chamber they were standing in to its fullest extent. And what a room it was, Malys thought in wonder—it was even larger than the massive cave they'd crossed to get in here! Half of it was covered in Dwarven ruins, while the other half was a natural cavern, submerged in more molten magma than she'd ever seen. It felt like She was standing inside Red Mountain, and the facilities that the dwarves had built within that volcano. The heat was incredible, and—being a vampire—not something She was entirely fond of.
It was the object in the center that held everyone's attention, however—a massive collection of pistons, boilers, and pipes that branched in every direction and high over their heads into unseen heights. The exact center of the contraption was hollow, and there was a slight blue glow from within—a stark contrast to the grays and golds that constantly dominated Dwarven ruins.
"Is this it?" katria was thunderstruck, and circled the mass of metal and stone with apprehension—but also a growing sense of excitement. "Did we seriously just find it?"
vinye could not tear her eyes from the contraption. "I think we did."
Malys couldn't help but laugh in her relief. "That was easier than I expected," She said. "Historically speaking, we've usually had to put up more of a fight to get as far as this."
Which, of course, was the perfect time for an ominous rumbling sound to start within the ruin. Then, much to the mages' shock, a scraping sound behind them revealed that the stairs were actually retracting into the floor, cutting off their only mode of escape.
"Malys?" cosette's doughy face was devoid of all emotion. "I'm going to kill you."
Malys was about to reply with a witty rebuke—until she heard the heavy plodding sound of very large footsteps.
They were coming from under the lava.
"Run."
Vinye had heard the footsteps, too, and automatically felt a cold sweat run down her back that the heat of the air could do nothing to mitigate. Of course the dwarves would booby-trap the valves, she'd realized only too late. Cosette's assumption of the Dwemer being a collective "pain in the arse" might have had some merit after all, she thought.
"Run!" she shouted again, and everyone scattered.
"Get up on the gantries!" Katria yelled, as the footsteps grew closer. She pointed to the platforms, where the valves they'd activated sat. "Spread out, buy us all some time!"
A loud rattling noise interrupted her, and Katria swore when she saw the source. "Spiders!" she shouted back at them, gesturing toward the large number of knee-high constructs that skittered toward them. "Don't worry, we can handle them," she confided. "Now come on!"
Before Vinye could even think to object, the ghost had nocked and loosed an arrow, and the spider nearest them was disabled before the elf could open her mouth. Swallowing her rebuke, Vinye followed suit, and took aim at another automaton. She fired off a bolt, and was rewarded with a sizzling burst that crippled a second spider, scattering gears and gyros every which way.
It was the start of a heated, bloodless battle that was unlike anything the adventurers had seen before.
Half a dozen spiders broke off from the main group, and now headed toward the platform on the left, where Cosette and Malys had taken shelter. The vampire had taken up a position behind Cosette, supporting her with healing magic while the Breton hurled firebolts at any spider within reach. Cosette had also summoned an atronach, which was tearing through its own group of animunculi as well with its own firebolts. It did not last long, though: the spiders seemed to realize that the flame atronach was a higher-priority target, and focused it down with pincers and spurts of lightning. Within seconds, the atronach was destroyed, taking two spiders with it in its death throes and damaging three more—which Cosette finished off with a pair of fireballs.
Vinye observed this behavior with some unease, even as she unleashed a burst of lightning that blew two more spiders apart at the same time. These automata were unusually smart for mere spiders—were they simply tougher? Or was it something more complex than—
"Spheres!" Katria's shout broke Vinye away from her observation. "On the upper level!"
As she saw the half-dozen sphere-men rolling down from opposing hallways towards them, Vinye understood: somehow, the automatons that guarded the Forge—or perhaps even the Forge itself—had sensed the strength of this atronach, and found it to be stronger than they had anticipated. Therefore, in order to deal with these stronger-than-anticipated intruders, a stronger response was necessary—hence, the sphere-men.
The first two were focused down by Vinye, who—after taking a quick draft from one of her few remaining potions—applied a half-dozen bolts to the joints of each animunculus—the hips and each shoulder—and disabling the automatons summarily. Cosette had summoned another atronach, and each engaged another sphere with a combination of melee and magic—Cosette with a Forsworn blade and a hand full of flames, while her summons had formed a crude blade of fire from each claw, and swiped at its opponent like a whirlwind. Neither automaton had expected to encounter such versatile opponents—and as a result, they were nothing but piles of scrap inside of a minute, steam belching from every joint, and forming rising clouds in the chamber as their parts settled on the giant grating.
It was only when those clouds had grown so large and dense that they obscured the Forge completely did Vinye know what was really going on, and she began to feel short of breath because of the choking steam. Katria, being ghostly and therefore not needing to breathe, soon realized the same thing.
"The steam!" she yelled to no one in particular. "Quick, shut it off!"
The spheres had been a diversion, Vinye now realized—the Forge had somehow counted on the mages taking the spheres more seriously than the spiders, and they had fallen for it. In the heat of the moment, they'd allowed a spider or two to slip behind them, and reactivate the valves that they'd just turned to clear the initial steam from the chamber. These spiders were soon discovered, and Katria used an arrow from Zephyr to knock one into the lava lake behind the Forge. Malys destroyed another with a quick burst of her strange vampire magic, and hurled its remains at a sphere that was about to draw and quarter her. The man-high construct shrieked in protest as the scattered components jammed its own workings, and Cosette quickly blasted it back with a fireball before the exploding animunculus could severely injure them both.
That just left the oppressive clouds of steam—which the mages soon discovered had an unexpected secondary effect: somehow, simply being inside those clouds was healing the automatons. It was not doing a complete job; Dwemer metal, while strong and sturdy, was far from living flesh, and the steam could not resurrect these animunculi perfectly.
By the time Vinye and Malys had managed to shut off one valve each, about two-thirds of the initial wave of machines had been reanimated—two spheres, and around ten spiders. Few of them were in perfect working order; some still belched steam from improperly secured joints, and a few could not move as fluidly as they had before.
"Watch out!" Katria warned them; one of the sphere-men had taken advantage of the mages' surprise to draw a bead on Malys, and Cosette shoved her aside an instant before the fiery bolt would have pierced the vampire's skull.
"Thanks," Malys barely had the chance to mumble. Any further response to her apology, however, was lost in the sounds of renewed battle.
Fire, ghostly arrows, and lightning from both sides soon filled the chamber—the pitch of the battle had reached a level of intensity that none of the mages had ever experienced before, not even in Arkngthamz. Everyone was forced to divide their focus between the valves of rejuvenating steam and the flood of automata that continued to advance towards them, trying again and again to activate them.
Cosette took down four spiders with twin fireballs, scattering dozens of small parts to the far reaches of the cavern. Malys physically threw a fifth away from one of the valves before it could activate the mechanism; Vinye's lightning disabled it, and knocked the protesting machine away from them, and into the molten pool. Not long after, the Altmer targeted three spiders and one of the two remaining sphere-men with more bolts; these, too, were reduced to scrap metal in short order.
Finally, Katria was using Zephyr to prove that it could be just as useful in melee as in archery—she whacked one spider over its crown, dislodging the pinkish gem that sat within and causing the spider to crumple harmlessly to the floor. Barely one second after, she'd shot a volley at another spider; something shrieked inside its casing and that spider fell to pieces too. Finally, Katria hefted Zephyr like a club—and with a Nordic war cry, she charged forward and hit the last sphere dead center in the chest, knocking it backward with a final blast of steam.
The four women breathed a collective sigh of relief as the echoes of battle gradually faded away—but it was not over yet. The footsteps they'd heard earlier, like very heavy metal on very solid stone, had resumed in the silence.
"What now?" Katria wondered, as she looked warily around the chamber.
Suddenly, there was a rushing noise from behind them—like something huge had breached the surface of the magma. Vinye looked back at the source of the sound, and immediately wished she hadn't—but the mere sight of it all lent wings to her flight, as though Auriel himself had picked her up by the shoulders.
Malys and Cosette saw it too as they hid behind a stone partition, similar to the one Vinye had ducked under now, and both their faces drained of all color. Next to Vinye, Katria looked back at them, and then to whatever was holding their collective attention, and Zephyr dropped to the stone floor at nearly the same speed that her jaw did.
"Oh, gods … " was all she could say at the colossal centurion that had emerged from under the lava, and still glowed from within as though the sun itself had been imprisoned inside its indestructible body. It was the most massive golem Vinye had ever seen—half as high again as the centurion they'd stared down in Arkngthamz.
And even with its incredible size, Vinye knew this centurion was special—it had to be, to guard something so precious, and not have any discernable support. There were no other spiders, not even sphere-men or wasps. Where then, the Altmer wondered, was the centurion's guarantee of survival?
Her answer came as the construct pulled its head back, and unleashed a devastating breath attack—but even as Vinye threw up a ward to deflect it, she knew that wouldn't be enough.
As she had correctly surmised, this automaton was indeed special.
To her and everyone else's absolute astonishment, the centurion was quite literally breathing fire—spewing an immense, nearly inexhaustible stream of flames so hot that they left foot-long scores in the stone, glowing red-hot from the intense heat. Vinye and the others just barely managed to get to safety with little more than smoldering robes.
"Unbelievable." Katria was aghast as she stared at this last obstacle. "That fire's so intense—we might as well be fighting a dragon!"
Vinye had to agree with that grim sentiment. But she had seen dragons before, and had stood closer to them than she was to the Forge. While she had no intention of ever fighting one, she also knew that what lay between them and the Forge was no dragon.
They could beat this—the only question left was how?
Cosette broke into a run suddenly, making her way to Vinye and Katria, strafing with firebolts all the while. The centurion answered with another massive gout of flame that came within inches of immolating the Breton as she dropped into a roll, catching herself mere inches from Vinye and looking rather annoyed, all things considered.
"Well, that thing's got some kind of fire cloak in its armor," she groaned. "My firebolts hit all the right joints—but they didn't even slow it down. Right now, Malys and I are worse than useless."
Even as she finished, though, a harsh grating noise came from the centurion, and all three turned to look at the mechanical monster. It was steaming slightly, more than it ought to—and Vinye saw the reason why as Malys sent a volley of ice spikes towards it. To everyone's surprise, the centurion stumbled as the icy missiles found their mark—but it was clear they weren't doing enough damage to punch through that thick armor. Vinye mentally congratulated Malys for finding a weakness in the centurion—but that wasn't the same as beating it outright.
They'd have to work together for this one.
And so, Vinye put together a plan. "Cosette," she began, "support us from the back. Let's hope your healing magic is up to scratch. Katria, you and I will draw its fire. Maybe we can soften this thing enough for Malys to land a killing blow."
The ghost shouldered her bow. "Got it."
Cosette wasn't so sure. "Maybe you forgot that Malys is a vampire?" she asked. "She's the most in danger out of all of us—if that fire so much as touches her, there won't be a Malys left!"
Vinye raised an eyebrow. "I'm glad to know you care so much about her," she said dryly, before her eyes hardened. "Now get going—we might not have a second shot at this."
Cosette didn't bother to stammer out a reply—Vinye had already leapt out from her hiding place, bombarding the centurion with bolts of lightning in much the same way Cosette just had. At the same time, Katria moved in the opposite direction, firing arrow after arrow at the mighty animunculus. The centurion turned to one target, then another, but could not decide which one to attack first.
"It's confused!" Vinye called out to the others. "Keep at it! Cosette—it's now or never!"
But as Cosette ran to take her place behind Malys, something shifted in the centurion's stance. The curved plates that formed its shoulders shifted aside and upward, and the furnace within the golem began to glow even hotter as the centurion drew back.
Vinye only just realized what it was about to do. "Everyone down!" she screamed.
Barely a second after they took cover, the centurion erupted in flames. Massive gouts of fire, one from the mouth and another from each shoulder, sprayed from vents built into the construct's face and shoulders. Vinye felt the blast of heat wash over the stone gantry where she had taken cover—and somehow, incredibly, the stone was feeling warmer, like it could melt any second!
Fighting a dragon, indeed, thought the elf. She hadn't felt flames this intense since that night in Falinesti.
It was a few seconds after the inferno died down that Vinye judged it safe to reappear. Katria had survived, though looked no less the worse for wear. It was Cosette and Malys that Vinye were worried about, however. Both women were huddled closely to each other, and for a terrifying split-second, Vinye feared them both dead. But then she saw the faint shimmer of a ward spell flicker from both hands, and she breathed a sigh of relief.
However, this still was an inconvenience—resorting to a ward meant Malys no longer had sufficient magic to take the centurion down. They would have to buy some time—and Vinye knew just how she could do that.
She checked her satchel, and grimaced. Only a handful of potions remained inside—and only one that could help her with replenishing her magicka. But it would have to do.
Vinye downed a mouthful of this concoction, then, and felt the sweetness of moon sugar trickle down her throat, followed by a sour note of jazbay. There was something else mixed in there, too—the petals of some wild flower, perhaps—and she felt her insides tingle, and brim with magicka.
She hoped this magicka would be enough—or that potion might well be her last meal.
Not wasting any time, Vinye reached out into Oblivion with her hand, constantly mindful of where everyone around her was—Malys, Cosette, Katria, and the centurion—and then, when enough energy had been gathered into her palm, she slammed it upon the floor, opening a sizzling portal wreathed in purple flame. The storm atronach, thus summoned, immediately commenced its assault on the animunculus with lightning and rock-hewn fists alike.
Now that her summons had been successfully conjured, and was distracting the centurion with equal success, Vinye now made her way over to Malys, and gave her the remainder of the potion she'd just drunk. "You'll need that," she told the vampire. "We've only got one shot at this—make it count."
Malys said nothing, but the look in her burning eyes was all the understanding Vinye needed. Without further ado, the vampire took the potion and drained the bottle, and stood up with some help from Cosette and Vinye.
"I can't just punch through that cloak," Malys confided. "I could make the biggest icicle in the world and it would still absorb the worst of it. But if I can hit the cloak from more than one direction, at exactly the same time … "
Vinye didn't have time to listen to strategies—that centurion could roast them all any minute. "Whatever you have in mind, Malys, do it!" she said, before bolting for a place to hide.
Her storm atronach chose that moment to dispel—the massive animunculus smashed its hammer across the chest, pulverizing the electrified daedra into powder. There was a loud bang, and the centurion staggered backward from the force of the atronach's detonation.
"Now, Malys!" screamed Vinye.
Without a moment's hesitation, Malys brought her hands together, gathering as much ice magic as she could spare inside her palms, and rotating it around a single point. Then, she released it; a freezing whirlwind erupted from her hands, rushing for the centurion, growing and expanding all the while until the golem was completely engulfed in the mass of ice and super-cold air.
But Malys wasn't done yet—she fired a few more ice spikes at the centurion for good measure, and they struck the Dwemer guardian's face, chest and left shoulder. For a moment, Vinye wasn't sure if they'd done anything—until she heard a loud cracking noise—like a rock being torn apart by brute force.
She looked back at the centurion, and was awestruck at the cracks spreading from where Malys' ice magic had impacted the metal. Vinye felt a great rush of respect for the vampire as she analyzed the sight: Malys' first attack had been specifically intended not for the centurion, but for the cloak of fire imbued into its armor. This cloak could only protect against a small number of attacks—like sword blades or arrows—at any given time, perhaps even one at a time. But multiple small attacks over a short period of time could weaken the cloak—and with a machine that had spent four thousand years hiding in lava, Vinye thought, there had to be some sort of structural weak spot as well.
Malys' ice magic had turned the entire centurion into one big weak spot. The ice spikes had just been the final nails in the centurion's proverbial coffin, and the Altmer couldn't resist a cheer as the massive construct crashed to the stone floor. Several components—frozen solid when once they'd been superhot—shattered on impact with a sound like a thousand shattering windows.
"We got him!" Katria whooped, holding Zephyr aloft in victory. "I … almost can't believe it! We did it—we actually did it!"
Malys and Cosette were completely lost in the heat of the moment, embracing each other like they'd had just come home from a long, long war, not even caring whether they were living or undead. Only Vinye remained stoic—and even then, it was for a given definition of the word; even her memories of Falinesti dared not dampen her elation at what they'd just accomplished.
They'd done it.
"There's only one thing left to do," Katria told them. "We have to prove that this actually works—that we really did just find the real Aetherium Forge."
"And how do we do that?" asked Malys.
"We forge something, of course!" Katria grinned. "We've got all the supplies we need—we could make a crown, a staff, a shield—anything we wanted!"
Cosette was looking around. "There's just one thing we need," she said. Her doughy face sagged in frustration. "We don't have a chip of Aetherium to our name. The dwarves didn't bother to leave any of that stuff around here." She kicked at a discarded gyro, punting it into the lava lake.
Vinye peered around the chamber, and saw that Cosette was right—there wasn't even a glimmer of blue-green to be found anywhere. There were shelves and chests that must have contained ingots of every material known to man or mer—but no Aetherium.
"Wait," Malys said. "We actually do have some—the crest we used to get in!"
Vinye's face brightened in recollection—Malys was right! Katria had mentioned that the shards used to put the crest together had been cut and refined from pure Aetherium.
The ghost was shimmering exceptionally brightly as Malys pulled out the crest and strode toward the forge, carrying it like a holy relic to an altar. "Go on," Katria urged them. "After everything we've done—after everything you've done—you should do the honors."
"Or, perhaps," said a very familiar voice, "you should leave that part to the professionals."
Before anyone could react in surprise, there was a loud crack like a horsewhip—and Katria screamed as her ghostly form was dispelled like a faint mist. Her cry echoed around the chamber for long after she had disappeared.
And now Vinye, Cosette, and Malys whirled around to see the stone staircase rising back into its proper formation—and they supported three bodyguards, each one armed to the teeth. In their midst was a grinning Dunmer who descended the stairs like he had all the time in the world, and was now peering at the three mages with the look of a cat who'd cornered a whole nest of mice.
"Very good, Katria—very good work from all of you," said Taron Dreth in mock congratulations. "Now, unless you want to suffer the same fate my former colleague did, you will surrender and turn the Aetherium over to me."
The Midden
A thick haze pervaded the chamber, obscuring the guards completely, and even Drevis was lost to view from his assistants. But the Dunmer had faith in them all; he knew they would all perform their respective tasks admirably.
He sniffed the smoky air, and finding it to his satisfaction, he finally opened his eyes. The effect was visible; as long as this smoke inhabited this space, Drevis could sense every last drop of magicka inside it, as a haze of light blue that filled the air around him. Occasionally, this blue haze would collect as small little pools, which Drevis knew to be the reserves of each of his assistants with his enhanced eyes. Even the guards sent by Calcelmo contained some measure of magicka—even the most ignorant of Nords still possessed an aptitude for casting spells, however miniscule.
But there was a source of magic that far outstripped them all, even Brelyna's—indeed, there were multiple sources, which was especially concerning—and Drevis had a suspicion that if these unexpected wellsprings of magicka were all collected together, they would eclipse even those of Arch-Mage Grimnir himself in terms of sheer quantity.
What alarmed him most, though, was that each of these anomalies appeared to be somewhere within Solyn's gold. Where, he could not say—something in the burlap was dampening his scrye: a ward of some description, perhaps an anti-scrying enchantment. Drevis swore under his breath; whoever this Solyn was, he'd anticipated that his payment would be closely scrutinized.
Nevertheless, he had found one thing he had been looking for, and he relayed his findings to his helpers.
"Those septims are imbued with magicka?" Tolfdir repeated. "Well, now—this is an unexpected development. Can you tell which ones are and which ones aren't?"
Drevis shook his head. "That's why I've called you all here. I anticipated this would be the case, but I'm still at a loss as to why we'd have to go this far. There's no other way—everyone here needs to open these bags, one at a time, so I can search inside, septim by septim. Opening these bags up ought to mitigate the enchantments Solyn placed on them, and so I should be better able to determine the nature of these coins, and the magicka they possess."
He snapped his fingers once at Calcelmo's guards, and each one grasped a bulging bag of money. One by one, then, they would place an opened bag in the circle, while Drevis turned his enhanced vision on the coins within. From a physical standpoint, they appeared identical to an officially minted septim, bearing the visage of Tiber Septim on its obverse, with the phrases "THE EMPIRE IS LAW" and "THE LAW IS SACRED" written in exactly the places Drevis knew them to be, and on the reverse was the crest of Akatosh, ubiquitous throughout the Empire even in its waning days.
In fact, the very strangest thing Drevis could say about these coins was that their texture felt a little grittier than might be expected—but even this was easily justified by the long travel time; after all, carriages were certainly no cleaner than the ash-blasted inside of a silt strider. And this went without mentioning all the detritus that was collected inside a Dwarven ruin like Rkund. Drevis was honestly surprised that this first bag wasn't half full of dirt as well as all these coins.
Which only made him more confounded as to the nature of what he was dealing with. For there was very little magic to be found on this coin, in sharp contrast to the veritable nexus of raw power he had sensed earlier—and even this might be merely residual magic, soaked up from whatever else was inside these sacks.
This was a real mystery.
And that made Drevis Neloren all the more determined to solve it.
Vinye's jaw was set, tight and grim, as Taron and his henchmen spread outward like the pincers of a chaurus, trapping the mages against the magma lake.
"That's impossible," Cosette said, stupefied by the sight. "There were half a dozen Forsworn chasing after you! We thought you were dead!"
"Half a dozen Forsworn?" Taron laughed coldly. "Six backward barbarians against three trained bodyguards and a master wizard of Morrowind? I could hold my own against six hundred of their kind!"
"You don't look like you enjoyed it, Taron," Malys hissed, and Vinye thought the vampire had a point: Taron's bodyguards looked like they'd been through the mill. Their armor was scratched, dented, and black from mage-fire, and Taron himself had several bandages on his arms, and his robes were halfway to tatters.
"I knew that a band of Forsworn would be nothing compared to whatever might be waiting in Arkngthamz," Taron told them, "so I thought: why stick out my neck when I can have a few mages of Winterhold do it for me? All we had to do was give the Forsworn a merry chase, then lie low near the entrance to the ruins until we saw you leave. I'll admit I didn't expect all of you to make it out alive—but imagine my surprise to learn that dear Katria was still walking around." He sniffed. "Even in death, the bitch still hates me with all her heart and soul. Pitiful."
Cosette's Forsworn blades were in her hands within the blink of an eye, and Vinye's hands were wrapped in sparks. "Katria was ten times the scholar you ever were!" the high elf spat in her anger. "I've met snakes in the Synod Council that had more of a conscience than you!"
"There won't be a Synod Council when I'm done," gloated Taron. "That Aetherium in your hands will secure both House Redoran and the Mages Guild of Blacklight as unequaled in all of Tamriel. Once word gets out that I was the one who brought it back, every other guild of its kind on the continent will drive itself bankrupt trying to claim this treasure as their own."
"Unless we stop you!" came a voice from behind them. Vinye spared only the quickest of glances, but it was enough to see that Katria's ghost had reformed—and that she was very angry indeed with Taron.
She strung Zephyr with an arrow, and aimed it straight at the wizard. "I've wanted to see you dead for two years," she hissed at her former companion. "I wanted them to show me your body before I could be satisfied—before I could finally rest. But it looks like they'll have to get in line after all!"
They? Vinye wondered. She saw Malys furrow her brow in confusion, too.
Taron didn't look too rattled, in any case. "You are lucky you and your friends aren't part of House Redoran, Katria," he sneered at them. "We know how to deal with savages." He snapped his fingers, and one of his bodyguards tossed a loosely tied sack in their direction.
The mages stared in disgust as the contents rolled out of the burlap—because the contents were staring right back. Six tattooed Forsworn heads—four of which were still wearing crude headdresses of bone, fur, and feather—tumbled to the stone. The wounds no longer bled, but the exposed bits of spine were encrusted with blood and viscera.
Vinye's hackles rose, and she felt the room grow warm in a way that had nothing to do with the heat of the Forge or the magma; in her anger, she knew they were the same band of Forsworn that had attacked them near Arkngthamz. Two of the heads had similar tattoos to the ones Cosette wore … no, she thought belatedly, they were identical—
The Altmer's breath suddenly caught in her throat, and Vinye slowly turned around to face Cosette as she realized exactly whom those heads belonged to. The Breton was still as a statue; her twin swords had clattered to the floor, and she was staring wide-eyed at the faces of her mother and father.
"I want them disposed of," Taron was instructing his bodyguards. "Dump them in the magma if you must—no one can ever know what happened down here. And if that Aetherium suffers one little scratch—it'll be your heads, too."
The guards nodded, and unsheathed their weapons in unison—but Vinye was worried about something else entirely. Taron had no idea just what kind of repercussions his callous act of murder had set off in Cosette—and what he didn't know could very well—
" … kill … you … "
The room was getting hotter still—and Vinye, belatedly, realized that it wasn't because of her anger. Cosette was trembling in pure rage; mage-fire was flickering in her hands, and blistering heat was radiating off her body. The Breton's eyes glowed like coals, and Vinye was beginning to suspect she needed to step away from Cosette now—
"I'll kill you."
Even Malys looked scared by the sheer amount of venom in Cosette's voice, and both elves backed away slowly as the Culler's mage-fire now began to spread over her arms, her shoulders and her fiery hair, and even her whole body. The flames wrapped around her robes, licking at the superheated air that now seemed cool and refreshing by comparison, and transforming Cosette's appearance into something that was nothing short of demonic—
"I'll KILL YOU!"
And suddenly the chamber was filled with more mage-fire than Vinye had ever believed one person could produce. The echoes of Cosette's malediction were drowned out completely by the roaring inferno that she was generating from her hands—and directing straight at the treacherous Dunmer.
Hjolgeir, the Nord, leapt in front of the firestorm, shield raised high in an attempt to protect his employer, but Cosette was hopelessly out of control now. She was pouring every ounce of her fury into those flames, making them burn brighter and hotter than any other mage could hope to make them. The constant barrage of fire turned the banded iron of the shield into molten slag within seconds—and the armor of the bodyguard with it. Hjolgeir had no time to scream before he was incinerated.
"COWARD!" Cosette howled. She hurled a fireball at Taron; the searing blast reduced what little remained of Hjolgeir to a few smoldering embers. The Dunmer, however, managed to deflect it with a ward, though he was pushed back several feet in the process. That only made Cosette madder, and she launched another fireball with a war cry.
In the light of the inferno, Vinye saw Taron's red eyes shine with fear, and his screams of "Kill them! Kill them!" were those of a desperate elf, quickly lost in the noise of the mage-fire. His two remaining bodyguards, however, heard it well enough; they charged forward, and the battle was on.
It was a one-sided fight from the beginning. The mages were trapped between death by fire and death by the rapidly advancing sword—but there were several factors that Taron had clearly not accounted for. Cosette and her relation by blood to the Forsworn he had killed was one such major factor, and her unquenchable rage had already put the odds in the mages' favor. Another was Malys—even if Taron had suspected she was a vampire, there was no way he would have been able to plan for the unique bloodline of the Dunmer. Katria was yet another—that her echo continued to survive in this world had caught Taron off guard, Vinye knew, and the Nord's fury after the betrayal she had been through only added fuel to the fire.
And finally, all four of them had just emerged from a crumbling Dwarven ruin that could have killed them at any time. Inside, they had fought more animunculi and more Falmer than any such place ought to have—and they had survived. Adding in the automatons that had guarded this Forge, all four women were still on the climax of an adrenaline high that walked hand-in-hand with the feeling that they could now take on anything the Divines could throw at them.
Putting all that into consideration, the fight very nearly ended as swiftly as it had begun.
Malys wasted no time in leaping for Kemal with a snarl before he could bring his broadsword to bear. Wide, razor-thin shards of ice solidified over the vampire's hands, and she used these to draw and quarter the guard before sinking her fangs into his neck, draining the luckless, armless Redguard dry before shoving his withered husk against a wall.
Katria, meanwhile, used Zephyr like a sword to block the charges of the Breton, Dorian; whether because of its own spectral nature, or the dwarven construction that it had borne in life, the bow was withstanding every slash and thrust that Dorian made. Then Katria spun off to one side of the bodyguard and disarmed him, leaving Vinye wide open to finish him off—which she promptly did with a few bolts of lightning and a kick to his back. Dorian overbalanced, and fell on the ramp, sliding downward into the molten maw. He clawed and screamed like a man possessed, but the smooth-cut stone would have none of his argument, and Dorian was consumed by the magma within moments.
All this happened in a matter of seconds—and it took marginally less time for Taron's expression to change from desperate to downright furious. As he looked at the remains of what had once been his bought-and-paid-for retinue, and saw Vinye, Malys, an angry Katria, and an even angrier Cosette turn their weapons and magic to bear on him, a scowl creased his ashen face, and his hands blazed with silver light.
"You would dare to fight a Dunmer?" he shouted. As all four women launched their assault simultaneously, he erected a ward with both his hands—Vinye knew that, as was the case with magickal attacks, magickal defenses could also be strengthened, by using both hands to cast the ward. But she still doubted that four attacks could be stopped by one simple ward.
And then all four attacks were stopped by Taron's simple ward.
But even as Vinye closed her jaw from the shock, she noticed Taron wasn't just stopping the attacks. As she looked on, Taron's ward was changing, warping and wrapping around itself to encase fire, ice, lightning, and even Katria's arrow in the shimmering construct, compressing them all into a rippling sphere. Then the entire mass began rotating around that arrow, faster and faster, sharpening into a single blazing, swirling point that was aimed right at them.
Vinye swore under her breath. Taron was a cheat to the end; he was turning their own spells against them!
Then Taron released the ward, and the supercharged missile of magicka radiated out from his hands, straight for the mages. There was no way in Oblivion that all four of them could generate a large enough ward to deflect it all.
"Move!" Vinye yelled, and everyone ducked out of the way of Taron's attack, and the conglomerate of energy sailed into the molten rock. There was a massive explosion, followed by an expanding sphere of magma that came within inches of melting the stone floor under their feet. The heat was incredible.
"Bastard!" Katria spat, and loosed another arrow. Taron threw up another ward, but this one was much more short-lived; almost as soon as it had been generated, the ward was shattered, and only by ducking the arrow did Taron save his life. Unfortunately, this put him right in the path of Malys, who looked hellbent on inflicting actions upon the Dunmer that Vinye suspected might be classified as war crimes by even the Thalmor.
But Cosette would have none of it. She could no longer recognize friend from foe, so all-consuming was her fury. "Get away from him!" the Breton screeched at the vampire. "He's mine! All mine!"
"You've been a bad boy, Taron Dreth," hissed Malys, licking her lips in pleasure as she bore down upon the dark elf. One of her hands formed a long, wicked blade of ice over it, and the other gathered some restorative magic that Vinye knew wasn't going to be for her.
She wasn't going to kill Taron, the high elf realized … she was going to toy with him—as only a vampire who'd once made a living out of pleasure and pain truly could.
Before Cosette could say anything, Malys pounced on her traitorous kinsman, opening deep, long wounds from wrist to elbow on each arm, and a third along the spine that wasn't nearly as deep, but still made Taron roar in pain and drop to the floor.
"Damn you, Malys!" Cosette swore at the vampire. "I want to kill him!"
"Oh, I'm not going to kill him." The way that Malys purred the words sent cold shivers down Vinye's neck, even with the molten lake behind her. "I'm just going to make him bleed for me … over and over and over again."
Even as she spoke the words, Malys was healing Taron's extensive wounds, sealing the gashes and restoring the blood that had spattered the floor. The Dunmer wizard was initially confused, but upon discovering what Malys had done, he leapt to his feet defiantly.
"You'll wish you'd left me for dead, you filthy s'wit!" Taron roared. He launched a fireball at the vampire, but his fury made his movements easy enough for even Vinye to predict. For the heightened senses and awareness of a vampire like Malys, it was child's play to dodge Taron's attacks.
Malys leapt in close again, and sent Taron flying to the stairs with a brutal kick to the waist that made Vinye cringe and caused blood to dribble from the wizard's mouth.
"Mercy … " the Altmer barely heard Taron cough through the blood. That was quick, she thought, with a mix of smugness and surprise at Malys' physical strength. "I yield to you, fetcher—I yield!"
"Malys, you've done enough!" cried Cosette. "Now let me end his miserable excuse for a life already—and if you don't get back, you'll be joining him, too!"
Unfortunately, neither of the two would get the chance to fulfill their desires. Some sixth sense of Vinye's was tingling, and she knew that something was coming their way.
Something very bad.
The next thing she knew, Vinye's entire world turned a burning, choking reddish-brown, swirling with a thousand drab colors and ten thousand rushing sounds, and all sense of direction Vinye had had was lost within moments. She heard a scream from a distance that could have been measured in either feet or miles—it was impossible to tell for certain. And whatever this was stung her eyes, too—it hurt just to keep them open, and finally her eyes and throat were so irritated that Vinye squeezed them shut on instinct and began coughing incessantly.
How long this went on, the high elf could not tell. By the time she was well enough to stop coughing and open her eyes back up, the blinding mass of brown had disappeared as swiftly as it had come—and Taron Dreth was dead as the proverbial doornail. His ashy face was tinged with blue, and his eyes bugged in terror—telltale signs to Vinye that he had been suffocated. Some kind of fine, reddish-brown powder leaked from his mouth, not unlike dirt, and Vinye wondered if that was his own blood—coagulated just like the bandits topside, solidifying in his throat and choking him to death.
She decided to test this hypothesis, and slowly withdrew Septimus' machine from her rucksack. She'd yet to collect any Dunmer blood for the old wizard's experiment, and she wasn't keen on using Malys' blood, vampire or no. But the machine, to her slight surprise, did not activate when held next to Taron's mouth—if this was indeed his blood, and not remnants of whatever was inside that cloud, Vinye thought, apparently the extractor could not steal it.
Then she moved it toward his arms, and she jumped in shock as the hollow cords snaked out of their sockets and bored into the dead flesh. This made everything seem doubly unreal to Vinye—she would have been shocked enough to find that all of Taron's blood had solidified in those few scant seconds, simply because a spell like that was incredibly inhumane and indiscriminant. A small effort of will was the only thing that had kept the same thing from happening to her—and everyone else in the room, no doubt.
This effort of will, likewise, was possibly how only a small part of the dark elf's body had been affected by this spell—while the clouds had filled the entire chamber, they'd only been concentrated in a particular location—the mouth and throat of Taron Dreth. Something about this scared Vinye even more than the arbitrary nature of the spell.
This level of manipulation … it's beyond master-level, she thought. That's for sure.
And now, that sixth sense in her mind was ringing an alarm bell again, and her head jerked upward at the entrance to the Forge. The stairs were still in their rightful place—but there was a figure descending them, clad in dark robes that went down to the boots.
Rolega? Vinye wondered, putting a hand under her eyes to block off the glowing magma from the grating below. The light was poor around the stairs; whoever it was, his or her face was completely obscured in shadow. But all three of them had remembered seeing the Nord thief before their descent into the ruins—at least, that was what they had thought. There had been some considerable distance between them—going by that, it could be anyone. And yet no one else had taken the time to stalk them from Whiterun to Falkreath and all the way here.
And then the figure's eyes flashed. A trick of the light, Vinye thought, as whoever this new arrival was crossed the room between then. But the glow in the eyes did not fade away; no, it almost seemed to be getting stronger—
And suddenly, Vinye knew. The figure coming towards them wasn't Rolega.
It was Solyn.
Mistress Malys felt an uncharacteristic chill descend down Her spine as She watched Solyn float towards them, his arm still raised after how easily he had dispatched taron dreth. The wizard's robe was rather long, and covered his boots, but he moved so fluidly and so very little that there was no way he was walking normally.
"Who are you?" katria had already nocked an arrow on Zephyr. "What do you want?"
The burning gaze of Solyn glanced in the direction of the ghost, as if he was pleasantly surprised to know that the ghost was there. Then he flicked his wrist; there was a noise like thunder, and a rush of wind—and katria was dispelled again with a cry of shock.
"katria, no!" vinye cried out. The high elf's sparking hands went straight for Solyn—though she did not release any magic yet.
The glow of Solyn's hand changed, meanwhile, and cosette cried out in surprise now as her rucksack strained at the seams; Volendrung burst from her pack suddenly, and it sailed towards Solyn as if guided by strings.
"Give that back!" Malys yelled.
"That elf was mine, fair and square—you had no right to steal my kill, Solyn!" stormed the breton as Solyn took hold of the massive hammer.
Solyn merely raised an eyebrow in her direction. Now he directed his hand at the Forge, and it was Malys' turn to be shocked as the crest of pure, refined Aetherium was telekinetically yanked from her grip—and again right into his palm. Solyn looked over the artifact, mumbling to himself under his breath, all the while wearing the face of a man who had lost a piece of iron ore but stumbled on an entire mine of ebony in the process.
He smiled at them. "Thank you for your gift," he finally spoke—and then he raised his hand at the mages.
There was no warning, no other sign of his attack; one moment, he was shrouded in more of the thick brown clouds that had killed taron. The miasma spread throughout the chamber in an instant; the air became hot, choking—and horribly familiar to Malys, as this was nearly the exact same air She remembered having to breathe two hundred years ago, in that mass exodus from Suran … from Vvardenfell.
Ash, She realized. Solyn could control ash with his magic. There was something strange about that—but She never got the chance to think further on it.
The next moment, Malys cried out as a brief, searing pain flashed over Her skin, and Her limbs suddenly locked together. Her arms became rigid and unmoving, and Her legs refused to budge an inch. And then, in the time it took to blink, the clouds of ash had retreated—leaving behind a vampire encased in a shell of caustic ash.
I'm trapped!
This was not normal ash, Malys was sure—somehow She was still able to stand, but even with Her strength, She could not move. She was not alone, either; as She looked out of the corner of Her eye, She saw vinye and cosette were also encased in a thin coating of ash as well. Both of them were trapped like rats.
"Paralysis … spell," She heard vinye grunt. That explained it, then; Solyn's ash must be infused with alteration magic, binding it together so strongly that most victims were helpless—they couldn't move, they couldn't fight.
And trapped so far below ground, they couldn't expect any assistance to come, never mind shout for help.
They were alone.
As Malys realized their predicament, She noticed the face of Solyn. Dark elves were naturally resistant to fire—though Malys, being a vampire, was much less so—but the sheer heat of the magma behind them was making them both perspire. And as She looked closer, She could see that the sweat on Solyn's skin was darker than the rest of him; it was a dark, ashy gray color, and ran down his flesh in rivulets, leaving behind …
… What in the world?!
The liquid dripped from the wizard's face, spattering on the stone, darker still than the floor on which they all stood.
That's not sweat, She realized. That's dye. Solyn dyed his whole body—it was just a disguise! But … why?
The magma flared up suddenly, and for a moment Solyn's face was illuminated under his hood, and Malys saw that his skin was no longer gray, but a bright, deep gold—almost as bright and gold as his eyes.
And She understood.
No … how? How is that possible! They've all changed—they're all gone!
But there was no denying the sight She was seeing—there was no trick in the book that could fool Malys' vampiric vision. And yet …
"You're a Chimer!" She whispered, shaking Her head in disbelief as far as the ash would allow Her. "How can you be a Chimer?!"
Solyn threw back his hood, revealing a bald golden head, with deep golden lips—no longer the ashy gray of before—that were split in a smile.
"Almsivi—the Tribunal of old—became greedy with power," he boomed. His deep, gravelly voice became magnified tenfold as it echoed off the carved walls. "They coveted Kagrenac's Tools, and used their power with the Heart of Lorkhan to become gods. But in so doing, they betrayed their friend Nerevar, and the Chimer became tainted—transformed into the Dunmer. All of them were converted."
His smile grew wider. "Save for myself."
"But how?" Solyn's words had made Malys even more confused. "Why weren't you changed with the rest of us? Azura cursed every single Chimer in Tamriel—why didn't she curse you?!"
"Isn't it obvious?" Solyn was still grinning; the shadows on his face from the molten lake made it look rather sinister. "I wasn't in Tamriel when she cursed us. Or, more to the point … I wasn't anywhere on Nirn at all."
Malys was stunned. What?!
"I was in the Outer Realms—a separate space, where neither the Daedra nor the Divines can ever spread their influence. My master sent me there, and I was to return to Mundus only in the event of his death."
The Outer Realms? Mistress Malys felt that chill in Her spine slowly returning, despite her paralysis. She knew nothing about these Outer Realms—it was the first time She'd heard of them, surely. What Malys did recognize was the phrase "neither Daedra nor Divine." It was familiar to Her, somehow, and she racked her brains for an explanation.
" … Sealed where neither Daedra nor Divine shall ever tread … "
Of course! She remembered—arniel gane! She remembered the words that the shade of the breton, bound to grimnir's beck and call, had spoken to her that day. Until now, She had written them off as nonsense, the ramblings of a student who was ghostly at best. Now, though, Malys was beginning to wonder if arniel had known of this from the beginning—whether he had known of everything that Solyn had just told Her.
What else had he said? "Thus the lost house survives … "
The lost house … Oh no.
"Who are you?" Malys asked. Her voice shook with sudden fear, and though She tried to conceal it with bravado, the vampire had already felt Her eyes contract with a terror She had not experienced for two hundred years—not since Her first encounter with the undead, or even on the run from the fury of the Red Mountain.
The lost house survives.
The Chimer's burning eyes flashed. "My name is Solyn … Dagoth Solyn."
A/N: OKAY SO I may have lied when I said this chapter would be "tons shorter" than the last one. Maybe I ought to try my hand at one-shots sometime, just to try and make myself write smaller chapters.
ANYWAY
The big reveal. I imagine a few of you had already seen this coming—with or without the "secret message" I put in the title picture. For those of you who haven't, there should be a working link to a larger, higher-res image of the same on my profile. Check it out, if you so desire.
Right—I'm all tapped out for now (turns out this is what happens when you post upwards of twenty, thirty thousand words in under a month). So I'll likely take a short break, and start focusing on classwork and other such pursuits. But I won't be leaving off here—this is where things start to get really dicey.
Thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoy! - K