The two of them stared at one another for a few seconds. There was barely any sound in this cave. All Nils heard was the faint, distant crackle of the campfire outside. But as he stopped and listened, he also detected something else. A tiny, barely audible constant noise. It felt familiar somehow.

And going by what he had found in that box outside, he didn't have to guess what it was. He was sure he'd be hearing more of it soon.

Still, Sinderion had asked him for his name. This wasn't the time to get distracted.

"Nils Valericus," he said, before pointing with his right hand at the great metal doors beside them. "I don't suppose you know what's behind there?"

"No, I'm sorry," Sinderion shook his head slowly. "Well, there's a small corridor, but it's essentially empty. The next set of doors is jammed shut. These bandits seemed to think I could help. When I couldn't, they left me here, apparently expecting me to somehow change my mind on the matter."

Nils hadn't come here to explore a ruin. But now that he was here, and having this described to him, his curiosity was beginning to mount. This wouldn't be the first Dwemer ruin he'd explored, and he doubted it would be the scariest. He gave the doors another glance. "Are you an archaeologist, Sinderion?"

"Alchemist, actually. I have some knowledge of the Dwemer and their workings, but not enough for this place. Certainly not enough for those bandits."

"Any idea what this ruin is called?"

Sinderion shook his head again. "The bandits certainly had no idea. We may be looking at an essentially untouched ruin, at least in recent times. Rare enough of an occasion, isn't it?"

"You know…" Nils chuckled under his breath. "I have some friends who would be absolutely livid at the notion of some scavenging bandits having first pick of a pristine Dwemer archaeology site. Hopefully, we can do better."

The Altmer's eyebrows went up. "You want to look inside?"

"What, don't you?"

"Well… I suppose it would be an opportunity to learn. But it will inevitably be risky. Few places are more dangerous than a Dwemer ruin."

"Uh huh." Nils walked over to the doors and swung them open.

Sure enough, on the other side was a short corridor of Dwemer stonework. Two bright white lamps were mounted on the walls, one to either side, right at the corridor's midpoint. A few bits of metal scrap were scattered around on the floor, no doubt leftovers from the bandits' pickings. And at the far end was another pair of doors, covered in scratches and dents but still closed tight.

Nils stepped inside cautiously. This corridor looked heavily weathered and crumbled, but it was still a stark contrast to the natural cave before it. And going by the lights, at least some of its machinery was still functional.

Behind him, Sinderion trailed in and followed at a distance. "No one's been able to get through those doors," he said. "It's not that they're locked. They're simply stuck in place."

"Uh huh," Nils said again. He walked up to the next pair of doors and gave them a cursory examination. Judging by the scrapes right along the crack between the two doors, someone had tried to pry them open, to no avail. And judging by the dents on either side, someone had tried breaking them down with some sort of hammer or such, with the same result.

Sinderion asked, "What exactly are you planning on—"

He responded by slamming his right fist into the doors. The impact traveled up his arm and nearly made him stagger back, but his solid metal knuckles left a sizable dent in the left edge of the right door. This would work. He gave it a couple more punches of the same strength, until the edge had deformed inwards enough to let him work his fingers through the gap. At that point, he braced one foot against the right door, and pulled.

There was an ear-splitting groan as the metal bent and deformed further. Nils couldn't believe how much this thing was resisting him. He gritted his teeth, took a breath, redoubled his efforts—eventually, he was able to work his left hand in too, and began pulling with both arms—and put every ounce of strength he had into forcing these doors open.

Needless to say, that was no small amount of strength. Eventually, the bottom third of the doors had bent so far out of shape—the left one forwards, the right one backwards—that he could probably crawl his way through. He let go and staggered back from the doors, panting heavily. Every muscle in his body was burning from that. His heart was pounding, his skin was sweaty… he couldn't believe how hard he'd had to work for this. But it had worked. There was a gap in the doors, and he could see the floor ahead through it. The tiles on the far side were much neater-looking, and just as well-lit.

"By the Nine," Sinderion murmured from behind him. "How did you do that?"

Nils dabbed some sweat from his forehead with his left sleeve, then cast a brief healing spell on himself to stave off the worst of the pain. "Well, first I punched the door a few times, then I pulled it open a bit."

"Uhm…"

"Strength." He held up his right hand and gave the fingers a flex. "Let's just say there's some ancient magic involved. The less I try and explain it beyond that, the better."

"That's a very poor excuse, you know," Sinderion said irritably.

"What if I told you I lost my right hand and some of my musculature to the decay of Corprus, and had to have them replaced with much stronger non-living artifices?"

A couple seconds went by. No reply.

Nils exhaled sharply in amusement. "That's what I thought."

The gap he'd pulled open was big enough to crawl through, but only barely. He had to unsling his pack and push it through first, then squeeze in after it. Fortunately, nothing seemed to be waiting to ambush him on the far side. It was simply more corridor, running a short distance before taking a sharp descent out of sight. The air in here was warmer than before, and a touch more humid. And in kind, there was that faint, distant hum in the air, which set Nils' nerves rather at ease when he recognized it—that was the sound of Dwemer machinery running. In his experience, the most dangerous Dwemer ruins of all were ones where the ambient machines were all dead.

He pushed himself back to his feet slowly, slinging his pack on once more on the way. It looked like the doors had been secured with a massively thick sliding series of metal bars, in an X shape radiating from the center and securing into the walls. The portion of the doors Nils had bent out of shape was all in the X's bottom triangle. There was a sturdy metal wheel in the middle to move all the bars at once, but it had forcibly bent back against the door and jammed in place.

This all explained quite a bit. Including why Nils hadn't been able to simply tear the doors off their hinges. He usually could do that.

Sinderion wriggled his way in after him, and joined his side in due order. He looked back at the doors for a second, and then shook his head. "Seems the Dwemer really didn't want any visitors. This doesn't bode well if we need to make a quick escape."

In response, Nils grabbed onto the bent wheel segment with his right hand, and pulled hard. He almost expected it to break clean off, but it just bent back instead. And he only had to bend it an inch or so outward before it was usable again. Once it was, he gave the wheel an experimental clockwise turn, and then another, and another, until he could open both doors with their proper handles. It looked like the wheel was attached to the right door, and moving the bars had allowed it to separate from the left. Sort of interesting. But still, the first corridor was right there before them, and the cave entrance beyond that.

"Well, that works, then," Sinderion said quietly.

Nils just smiled and walked on to the descending ramp.

It was a fairly long passage downward, running down between a few pairs of pillars to a much lower level. A few thick metal pipes ran along the edges of the ceiling, terminating at points where they merged into the walls. A few others protruded straight out from the walls at chest height, ending almost immediately with hinged hatches. Nothing too out of the ordinary here.

Predictably, as Nils began his descent, the nearest hatch swung open, and a Dwemer spider worker popped out and landed on the floor. This was the most common type of automaton the Dwemer had used. It was an ornate but rugged metal contraption, bout the size of a hunting dog, but lower and wider, and with quite a few more limbs. The forelimbs, in particular, ended with fearsome pincers, as useful for cleaving through flesh as repairing machinery. A gyroscopic array on the machine's back housed its guidance and cognitive centers, doubtlessly complete with a soul gem buried somewhere in there. The array was lit up with a field of shock magic, which was a little unusual, but not intolerable.

In any case, this spider worker was about to try to kill him, so there wasn't much time to study it in any real detail.

The instant it landed on the ground, the automaton started scuttling along the sloped floor towards the two intruders. When it got within six feet or so of Nils, it jumped up suddenly, lunging at him with limbs outstretched. It was fast, much faster than something so thick and heavy ought to have been. If it managed to strike him, his armor might not have been enough.

He met the spider midair with a ferocious punch from his right fist. There was a huge, crunching slam of metal breaking against metal… as the spider's casing caved in under his impact, sending its parts flying every which way.

And as they did, the spider's gyro array exploded in a shower of lightning. Nils was hit by it head-on. Some of it stung his arm and torso, and some of it went straight into his right hand.

As the metal components fell to the floor, Nils winced in discomfort and examined his hand. The joints weren't responding. He wasn't feeling anything but an eerie, numb tingling through the whole device. This happened a lot when it got hit by shock magic. It was actually rather like an automaton itself, this way. There wasn't much to do but wait.

"That was impressive," Sinderion murmured from behind him.

"Not quite impressive enough," Nils replied. He cast another healing spell on himself while he waited. Then, after perhaps ten seconds or so, he got impatient, gave his arm a forceful swing to put some feeling back in it, and continued down the ramp.

Up behind him, Sinderion asked, "I have a question for you. If it's all right to ask. Um…"

"Go ahead," Nils said, keeping his eyes on the remaining hatches.

"What's your race? You look like you're half-Dunmer, but I don't want to assume about the rest."

Even though the Altmer couldn't see it, Nils still raised an eyebrow. "Half-Dunmer, half-Imperial. My last name didn't do it for you?"

"… Didn't want to assume," Sinderion mumbled.

"Or the hair?" Like many Dunmer, Nils' hair was all black, but like many Imperials, it was also very wavy. Since it went down nearly to his shoulders, there was plenty of opportunity for people to see that.

In any case, Sinderion didn't reply.

About three-quarters of the way down, another hatch opened, and a spider jumped out and started scuttling on towards Nils. Like the last one, it had a visible field of shock magic in its gyro assembly. And like the last one, it jumped straight at him without a moment wasted.

Nils ducked aside as the spider launched up, grabbed its legs in his right hand, swung it past himself, and hurled it into the wall. It hit with the top of its frame, crashing loudly before dropping to the floor in a metallic mess. The gyro assembly had crumpled in on itself. And the stone slab of the wall was cracked where it'd been struck.

The spider was still trying to come back to him, so he walked over and plunged his sword into its top. Now the explosion of shock magic came. He held his right hand well out of the way for it, and silently endured the painful shower of lightning on his left side instead.

Sinderion was gaping silently at him. Nothing new there.

Nils continued down the ramp without a word. On the way, he swapped hands briefly for his sword so he could cast a healing spell. That shock had left him tingling and aching all over, even with his various resistances. It took a good few seconds of casting for the sensations to all subside.

At the bottom, the corridor continued straight ahead, with three large doors on the right wall, and a sizable assembly of gears and pistons on the left. It wasn't clear what exactly they were there for, but they were definitely all running. Upon closer examination, the farthest set of doors looked to be already ajar, which was odd. Typically, these were always kept closed. Beyond all the doors, the corridor turned left, and continued out of sight.

He stopped long enough for Sinderion to catch up with him, and then said, "Stay close. We'll take these one at a time."

The Altmer frowned uncomfortably. "Are you sure? It really seems wiser to let you take these automatons on as you do. I would likely only get in the way."

"Maybe, but if I leave you alone, you might get targeted by some automatons yourself. Just stay with me. You'll be fine."

The first pair of doors opened up without any trouble. No locks on this one. No locks. That word was bouncing around inside Nils' head. Locks. Something always annoyed him about having to deal with those. Maybe it was because having Wraithguard for a hand made it impossible to effectively pick them.

Then again, Wraithguard basically was a giant lockpick. He had such a great time opening things with it.

The room on the far side of these doors was very spacious, with a high ceiling and distant walls. It was pretty much entirely filled with rows and rows of metal shelves, from floor to ceiling, anchored between both with thick metal posts. The shelves actually had ladders against them, which he'd never seen before. The ladders were even attached to sliding rails at the top, to let them move easily from end to end.

"Impressive," Sinderion said.

"Mmm." Nils nodded absently and began walking around the perimeter of the room. As per usual in Dwemer ruins, the shelves were full of assorted scrap. Pieces of disconnected machinery, big decorative struts, stacks and stacks of metal ingots, assorted chests and boxes. He wasn't terribly interested in trying to open any of them right then.

If nothing else, he was busy watching for automatons. Those things had a nasty habit of attacking when people were busy.

Sinderion followed him the whole way around. The shelves didn't display anything new or unusual from the different angles. No surprise there. This was obviously just a standard storage room. More surprising, though, was the total lack of automatons. None on the floor, none in the walls. Their only company was the noise of the machinery running all through the ruin.

Once they made the full trip back to the doors, Sinderion said, "I've never seen a Dwemer storehouse of this size. I didn't even realize that they built them this large."

"Well, anything's possible," Nils shrugged. "This room is secure, and that's what matters. Let's keep going."

He shut the doors after them as they exited. Mainly, that was so that if any automatons went in there while they weren't looking, they'd have a fair warning. Even though automatons could easily open doors, they weren't exactly great about closing them afterward.

The next pair of doors was a fair bit of walking ahead. Nils approached them at a brisk striding pace. Then he stopped in front of them and looked to his Altmer companion, eyebrows raised. It was a nonverbal question: Are you ready for this one? After a couple seconds, he got a silent, reluctant nod of confirmation in response. Good enough.

Then as he opened the doors, his Altmer companion threw on a layer of mage armor. That was better.

This room was completely unlike the last. It was a perfectly cubical chamber, completely crammed full of pipes all around the walls, crossing through the air at all different heights, all around a big grated block of machinery in the middle. Not good. The visibility in here was even worse than in the last room. Nils raised his sword as he entered.

Which turned out to be a good idea, because the moment he walked in, an automaton popped out of the wall right behind him.

This one was a Dwemer sphere. It was an actual literal sphere of metal plates when it started, about the diameter of a storage barrel's thickest portion. It rolled down a wide vertical track from its iris hatch on the wall, and when it reached the floor, its pretense of being a sphere promptly vanished. The plates unfolded into an eerily person-shaped and person-sized machine, complete with a half-masked vague elongated likeness of a face. It was equipped with a sword and a crossbow in place of hands, and rolling on two sphere-segment wheels in place of feet.

And yet it still had two legs. Nils didn't understand Dwemer design priorities sometimes.

The sphere was already just a few feet away from him. There was no need to spend time on the approach. The very moment the sphere began to unfold, Nils was already upon it, bringing his sword down hard in both hands, right on the sphere's crossbow arm. At this angle, his blade wasn't quite able to shear through the hardened metal of the crossbow's body, but it did sever the metal cable that served as the bowstring. One weapon down, one to go.

Now it was the sphere's turn. The instant it had risen to its full height, it lunged in with its sword, making a driving upward strike, to stab beneath Nils' ribcage. The strike came from a mile away. It was pretty much effortless to counter. Nils responded with an outward parry, deflecting the blade out past his left side. The sphere ended its lunge right in front of his face.

Nils' right hand came up before he was even done with his parry. There wasn't much to it. He grabbed the inner strut of the sphere's sword-bearing forearm, where it connected to the elbow, and then yanked back with his whole torso. The entire strut tore away in a big metal tangle, leaving the elbow connected on only one side. Just the continuing pressure from his sword was enough to make the whole lower arm fall off. It landed on the floor very unceremoniously.

Both weapons were gone. The sphere stood in place, moving its arms uselessly, apparently unsure of what to do next. Nils helpfully supplied the answer by twisting back around and delivering a forceful stab up under the sphere's metal chest—the exact same strike that the sphere had attempted on him. His blade drove through the upper chest joint beneath, and jammed into some sensitive machinery inside. The sphere immediately went limp, and fell sideways off his sword, landing on the ground in a one-armed heap.

Suddenly, a lightning spell discharged behind him. The sound was instantly recognizable. Out of where reflex, Nils whirled around sword-first—only to find Sinderion standing ready with a shock spell aura in both hands, and another sphere over by the left wall of the room.

"Watch out," Nils said. "Those crossbows can shoot through just about anything."

"I know that," Sinderion snapped. As if on cue, the sphere aimed its crossbow at him, and he jumped aside in an evasive move. His timing was surprisingly good. The metal-tipped bolt went right through the air where he'd been a quarter-second ago.

In that time, Nils had already run half the distance to the sphere. It never had time to reload its crossbow. It tried to use its sword instead, and Nils was ready for that. He darted right in right beneath its lunging strike, raising his hand and deflecting the metal blade up over his shoulder. As he came back up behind, he slid his hand down the weapon's length, and grabbed onto the sphere's forearm.

From there, it only took one strike. With his right hand, he jerked outward, yanking the whole sphere along with it. And with his left hand, he gave his sword a vicious chop into the sphere's single little column of a waist.

The glass edge wasn't quite enough to cut the thing in half. But it bit so deeply into the metal, rupturing every internal structure on the way, that it didn't even matter. He wrenched his blade back out with a forceful shove. The sphere hit the ground at a bizarre, twisted angle.

Then he looked around for a moment, let out a quiet sigh, and walked on back towards Sinderion. "I'm not sure there's much of note in this room," he said. "It's obviously keeping this place running, but that's not saying much."

The Altmer dismissed his lightning spell and lowered his hands slowly. "So, uh… Has anyone ever told you that you're actually a bit terrifying?"

"No, it's never happened," Nils said flatly.

"You do seem to have a talent for destroying these things, though. Is that fair to say? Is that… because you haven't really been injured by them yet, even. Most people would have ended up dead from the first spider alone."

While Sinderion talked, Nils was walking around the perimeter of the room, just as he'd done for the last one. Fortunately, he wasn't seeing any more hatches for automatons. But it was important to be thorough. And naturally, Sinderion quickly took the hint and started following along.

As expected, there wasn't much to see. All of this machinery was still functional, still making its constant noise. They were back outside in less than a minute.

Once they were out, Nils replied, "It takes practice to handle Dwemer automatons. They don't fight like people do, and they're not vulnerable like people are. But once you know how to fight one of a type of automaton, you know how to fight them all. They don't exactly have a varied technique."

"All you have to do is get that first bit of practice in," Sinderion remarked.

"Exactly."

The third pair of doors seemed to be stuck just barely ajar. As Nils came closer, it quickly became apparent why—the door latch was broken. Both doors' inner edges were covered in semicircular dents, as though made with a hammer.

Locks. That word was coming back to him again. In this case, the lock clearly hadn't been enough.

Already, it was obvious that something here had gone amiss. But there was nothing to do but proceed. He held his sword up on guard, prepared himself in a ready stance, then stepped forward and kicked the doors open.

Everything in this room was in disarray. It might have been some kind of living space, once. Nils saw about a dozen stone shelves along the walls like the Dwemer used for beds, and there was a long table down the middle of the room. But beyond that, it was all wrecked. There were pieces of metal scrap all over the place. A spider worker's broken remains were strewn over the floor in front of him. Towards the back of the room, another pair of doors was hanging open, with more metallic items visible beyond.

Nils stepped inside slowly, carefully. This was bizarre. Everything before now had been in pristine condition, and this one room had been broken into and wrecked at some point. He wasn't sure what he was looking at.

Until he started to get a better look at the scrap metal scattered over the floor. It wasn't just scrap. In fact, barely any of it was. Nearly all of it consisted of complete, functional weapons and armor.

And then it hit him.

There had been Dwemer here, once. And they had jammed the entrance door shut. None of them had ever unjammed it, not until Nils and Sinderion had come along just tonight. But the Dwemer hadn't done it to lock people out. They'd done it to lock people in.

Nothing had gone wrong with the machinery. No external force had invaded them. For some reason, some insane reason, everyone here had slain each other.

"This is… different," Sinderion said quietly.

Nils didn't reply. He simply did the same thing as always, and began on a slow, careful walk around the perimeter of the room.

The floor in here truly was a mess. He had to struggle not to accidentally step in any of the debris. Only, it wasn't really debris, exactly. The Dwemer who'd lived here had been lavishly equipped with weapons and armor. More than that, it was all much smoother and more articulate than he was used to seeing from them. There were no visible rivets, no awkward struts. If someone had been wearing the armor, they would have looked equal parts elegant and fearsome.

That line of thought went on until he saw a helmet on the ground with an arrow stuck through the eyehole. The corresponding breastplate was only a foot or so away.

This wasn't answering anything. His mind was abuzz with possible explanations—political power struggles, Daedric meddling, frenzy poison accident, mind-affecting disease?—and he wasn't sure what to think of any of them. There was nothing to do but to keep looking.

The door at the back of the room seemed to lead to a washroom area. There was a single dagger sitting there in the middle of the otherwise-empty floor. Nils moved on quickly.

No more automatons came out at him in this room. He didn't even see any hatches for any of them. This must have been a safe space, once. No automatons, no experiments, just the security of peaceful living. Then everyone had put on their armor, picked up their weapons, and attacked each other until no survivors were left.

By the time he walked back out, Nils had given up on trying to think of anything. It just wasn't working. He wasn't exactly in disbelief of what he was seeing, but… everything felt a little unreal anyway. This was all much, much too big for him.

Probably, if he had any sense, he'd take this opportunity to head back up the way he came, and try to forget he'd ever seen this place. Something had happened here. And if he wasn't careful, it might happen to Sinderion and himself. At the very least, if he were to insist on exploring this place at some point, he might like to have someone with more knowledge of what to expect. Anything else would be a tremendous risk.

After all, it wasn't like he ever tried to deal with risky things in his life. That would be so unlike him.

Behind him, Sinderion asked, "What are we going to do now?"

Nils turned around and looked at the Altmer over his shoulder. A few seconds passed without any words spoken. Then he shrugged.

"Go deeper in, of course."