Fortunately, Sinderion didn't argue. Nils led him out of the wrecked living quarters, and onward to the rest of the ruin. With all three doors in this corridor cleared, there was nowhere to go but ahead.
The corridor continued around a left turn, then a short ramp downwards, then a right turn to a segment with a grated floor and machinery running underneath. Then there was another pair of doors, which opened up to the next big room. Thankfully, nothing attacked them on the way.
This room looked like some sort of general workspace, with stone tables and shelves set up along the left and right walls, and a big open floor in the middle. There was a staircase running up the back wall, from left to right, leading to a balcony above. And directly beneath it was another pair of double doors. The whole thing was lit up by a row of hanging ceiling lights in ornate metal frames, in addition to the usual along the walls.
It occurred to Nils that this entire place so far had been impressively well-lit. Usually, Dwemer ruins had at least one area that was dim or shadowy or at least in a little bit of disrepair. But not here. This ruin was pristine. There could've been people working here yesterday, for how clean it all was.
Except there hadn't been. No one had even set foot in here for centuries. The actual workers had made sure of that.
"I have no idea what this room is," Sinderion said blankly.
"Well, let's keep going," Nils replied. He still had his sword out, though it was down by his side now. "I'm going to check the balcony, then we can go through the doors."
"I'll… stay here, then."
"Suit yourself." He left the Altmer standing there in the middle of the room. Which was fine, because there weren't any automaton ports visible on the walls. Presumably, he could avoid getting himself killed for thirty seconds while Nils looked up here.
As he climbed the staircase, he found himself rather expecting a spider worker to jump out at him as soon as he got to the top. But that didn't happen. There was nothing up here but a whole big tangle of pipes and pistons and gears. It wasn't even clear if they were powering anything, but he took the time to walk amid them all anyway.
Halfway across the balcony, directly above the door beneath, there was a small cylindrical column on the floor before the railing. A single bright cyan-topped button was on top. Nils pressed it obligingly, and heard a metallic sliding noise beneath his feet.
"It's open," Sinderion called up. He was just standing there in the middle of the room, waiting expectantly. It'd probably been less than thirty seconds, too.
Nils waved and nodded then started back towards the staircase. That was when the spider worker popped out and attacked him.
Honestly, he wasn't even sure where it came from. It must've been from farther down the row of machinery. But by the time he heard it coming, it was already jumping up at him from behind. He did the only thing he could think of, and ducked.
The spider ended up bouncing off his shoulder. Nils felt the weight of the automaton hit him, the pointed claws and legs scraping and scrabbling over his hauberk, as his downward motion carried him onto his left hand. The spider tumbled the rest of the way off of him, and landed legs-first on the floor in front of his face.
For a fraction of a second, Nils and the spider were just staring at each other. His sword was pinned to the ground by his own left hand. And the spider's pincers were already up. In another fraction of a second, it could have those pincers right in his eyes. This wasn't really the best position to start a fight in.
Not helping matters was that this one had a shock aura in its gyro, just like the last two. Nils was not in the mood to get hit by that thing again.
He ended up blocking the spider's second jump with his right hand. There was no real strike to it, he just let the thing collide with his open palm, and let its pincers try to bite into the enchanted metal. Then he grabbed onto the front of the thing and slammed it down into the floor.
If he'd wanted to, he probably could've just kept smashing this thing into the floor until it broke apart. But he wasn't in the mood to get hit with all that lightning again, so instead he spun back onto his feet and hurled the spider straight down over the edge of the balcony. It landed sideways on the floor below with a satisfying crunch.
As Nils headed for the stairs back down, he called out, "Hey, Sinderion, take care of that, would you?"
He was answered by the sound of a fire spell discharging. Sinderion was clearly aware of what to do about this.
By the time he got back to the bottom, the spider had burst apart in its characteristic shower of lightning, right in the middle of the floor, nowhere near anyone. Sinderion was all the way back by the entrance doors. And there was nothing left of the spider itself but a scattered blackened metal wreck. That was satisfactory.
And the exit doorway was open. There was another short corridor beyond, with another left turn to some unseen area.
"Good job," Nils called out, before beckoning for Sinderion to follow. "Let's keep going, the way's open."
The Altmer rejoined him after a few seconds. He seemed to be a little short on breath. "You put a great deal of faith just now in my command of destruction magic," he said, not unhappily.
Nils smiled. "You seem talented enough, especially for a self-described alchemist. I don't suppose you put that to use in combat very often."
"No, but I do believe I can see the appeal. Let's, uh… Let's proceed now, yes?"
"Well, there's certainly nothing stopping us."
The left turn in the corridor led to another pair of double doors. Nils readied his sword, as he had done previously, and used his right hand to push the doors open. At this point, he imagined, he wouldn't be surprised by anything he found on the other side.
And that turned out to be squarely wrong.
The room on the other side was a long, continuous space, like a far larger version of a corridor segment. The floor was lit up with two long rows of lights on waist-high stone columns, running just by the left and right walls, maybe a dozen or so for each. The ceiling was vaulted high above, and the left and right walls were spaced far apart. Around halfway down the room, there were two pairs of doors on these walls, one solid, one grated. And at the far end of the room, at the destination of this long space, was a single, massive circle of Dwemer metal.
Nils stepped inside slowly. He didn't understand entirely what he was looking at. The circle seemed to be set directly into the wall, its lowest point flush with the floor. It was something like thirty feet in diameter, and adorned not with the typical designs of Dwemer metalwork, but what seemed like an eight-spoked wheel of smooth metal bars, running from a raised metal hub to a reinforced rim where the circle met the stone wall around it.
This was a door. Quite possibly, it was the single largest door that Nils had seen in his life.
Then, the instant after that realization hit him, Sinderion asked what he had been about to think. "Why would they have a door down here that's even bigger than the front door?"
He didn't have an answer. He didn't want to, either.
Most of this room was entirely empty. No pipes, no gears. The noise of the machinery seemed to be mainly behind them now. But as Nils advanced through the room, he could see that this place wasn't quite devoid of contents. That grated door didn't have a whole room behind it. It was just a protective container for something within. Something large, and made of the same metal as all the other crafts here. He should have predicted this one.
Unfortunately, he realized just what he was dealing with the instant before it came to life. The grated doors swung open on their own. And once again, he was treated to a sudden surprise.
Nils had seen Dwemer centurions before. They followed a simple, predictable formula of limbs and struts and plating and weaponry. And they were just about the ideal automaton for the tenets of Dwemer design, being largely like a person in shape, and about twice as tall for size. This centurion… wasn't like those. It was unmistakable in its size, shape and stature—but its design was very different. Its casing was articulated and many-jointed and smooth-surfaced. And in place of the usual weapons for hands, it had actual articulated metal hands for hands. They simply happened to be carrying a gigantic hammer and a gigantic axe.
It was a truly impressive sight. It was also detaching from within its metal docking arch and stepping forward into the room. With every footfall, a huge, metallic thud reverberated through the floor. Right now, it was a little over thirty feet away from Nils, but that was about to change very quickly.
As it approached, Nils noticed that the centurion had a perfectly person-like face. All centurions did, but in this case, it was mounted on something resembling an actual neck and shoulders. If he hadn't known better, he honestly could've mistaken this thing for an actual—if oversized and exaggerated—person in heavy Dwemer armor.
"Let's go back," Sinderion said urgently, tugging on Nils' elbow in case he didn't get the point. "We can deal with this from a distance."
"No. These things are even more dangerous when they can't just try and hit you. Trust me." Nils held up his right hand in a reassuring gesture—probably made more reassuring by that hand being the big imposing metal one—and then returned his attention to the centurion. This was going to be interesting.
Once a person had fought even a single automaton, they'd fought all the automatons of that type. But this centurion was so obviously unlike any other, Nils was fairly certain he was back to the starting point. Still, that didn't change that this thing would relentlessly pursue them until—
His thoughts were interrupted by the centurion breaking into an all-out running charge straight at him. The thudding instantly turned to ear-splitting metallic booming. Nothing of that size should have been able to move that quickly. But there it was, doing it right before his eyes.
Sinderion promptly scurried off towards the entrance of the room.
Nils, for his part, just sighed and gave his sword an idle warm-up twirl. The centurion would be on top of him in about three seconds. That was when the fun would begin.
The centurion's opening move was an outward, head-height swing with the axe in its right hand. At the same time, Nils leapt down and rolled on his shoulder, right beneath the thing's right arm, past its side. He heard the axe rush through the air where he'd been a split second before. Both of them had just gone right by the other without even touching.
Already, this was new. The limbs of a centurion weren't supposed to be flexible enough to make horizontal strikes. This thing had seemingly the range of motion of an actual person. It was also still probably powerful enough to crush Nils flat in a single blow, so he got back on his feet just as quickly as he'd gone off them.
He had to admit, he was a little nervous right now. But he could think about that later.
The centurion had run straight past him. Now it stopped and turned nimbly around on a gigantic heel, before approaching again at a more measured pace. Its first surprise strike hadn't worked. Now it was settling in for a protracted fight. This was exactly how a person would have acted. It was unsettling to see.
But maybe Nils could put that to the test.
He didn't wait for it to attack. Right before it would've gotten within weapon's reach, he lunged in with an upward stab of his sword, right at the overlapping plates of the centurion's torso. He figured maybe he could wedge the blade in there, maybe break something underneath. But the centurion jumped backwards suddenly, leaving the blade to just barely touch its armor, and replied with a fast jab with the butt of its axe.
That was predictable. Nils was already moving back to evade the blow. It went through the air without ever touching him. But he wasn't watching the axe. He was watching the hammer. The centurion had just tried to disorient him with a quick strike, and now it was going to follow up with a much more lethal one.
And sure enough, the centurion was bringing its hammer back for a huge overhead blow. Nils saw it coming nearly a whole second in advance. The centurion stepped forward with its left foot, putting its momentum into the motion, and brought its hammer right down upon him. All he had to do was twist away to the side, and the huge metal head of the weapon smashed into the stone floor before his feet.
The centurion had just overextended itself. Now it was Nils' turn to reply.
Whoever had given this thing actual functioning hands, they must have done it with some purpose in mind. And more likely than not, they were thickly armored enough to ignore a blow from any ordinary weapon. But Nils wasn't armed with an ordinary weapon. He closed his right hand into a fist, then with every ounce of strength he could put into it, threw a single, massive punch right into the centurion's left thumb.
The thumb's thin metal joints crumpled and cracked under his knuckles. It was left hanging loosely from its socket. And before the centurion could even react, Nils had grabbed onto the damaged appendage, and twisted it away with all the same strength as before. He ended up tearing the thing right off.
Without even bothering to look, Nils ducked downwards suddenly. The centurion's axe swung through the air above his head an instant later. He'd just known. As he righted himself, he withdrew to a short distance away, before the centurion could attack him again.
But its options were suddenly limited. It raised its left hand to try to bring its hammer up, and the metal haft fell out from its fingers. The weapon clattered loudly on the cracked stone it'd struck just seconds before. People couldn't hold things in their hands without working thumbs. It was just as true for this automaton.
That was one weapon down. Now Nils just had to worry about the axe.
The centurion wasted no time in resuming the combat. It closed in with two huge thudding steps, and made a driving, upward strike with the pointed tip of the axe. That was easy to dodge. Nils turned aside and lashed out with his sword at the centurion's wrist. It was probably even more vulnerable than the digits. His sword blade hit the back of its hand, and started to slide up into the protective plating of the wrist joint.
He had just enough time to see the centurion's four-fingered left fist coming in at his chest.
It hit him harder than anything had ever hit him before. For a moment, all sensation left his body, and the sights and sounds around him stopped making sense. Then the moment passed, and it all caught up with him. He couldn't breathe. His chest was so full of agony. He couldn't tell what was broken, but things had definitely broken. It felt like the front of his ribcage had been sent straight through the back.
And he was weightless. That was odd.
The floor hit his back with nearly as much force as the first impact. He skidded five, ten feet over the stone tiles, his chain hauberk scraping hard the whole way, until he eventually came to a halt. His ears were ringing, his lungs weren't answering. His throat wasn't answering. He turned his head and spat a mouthful of warm saltiness on the floor. Everything was coated in that stuff. And he still couldn't breathe.
His hands were empty. Without even thinking, he opened his left hand and started casting a healing spell. The pain immediately started to recede, thankfully. But then his thoughts began to return to him, and he realized what was going on.
The centurion was a good twenty feet away. It had punched him so hard that he'd ended up all the way over here. And it was holding his glass sword in its upturned left hand, adjusting for the missing thumb. It looked like a tiny little dagger, for this thing's size. What was it planning to do with that?
Then it laid the tip of the sword on the floor, and brought its axe blade down on it. There was an ear-splitting crack, and the two halves of his weapon fell to the ground one after another.
Nils began to push himself back up to a seated posture. He was having trouble doing anything more, even with his healing spell still going. It was a strange, not quite pleasant sensation, where he could feel his ribs knitting themselves back together inside his chest. But he needed to move, and he wasn't moving.
The centurion took a step forward and lowered its arms. It was preparing for something—Nils knew what it was preparing for. This was why he hadn't wanted to engage this thing from afar. It was even deadlier at a distance.
It was about to blast him with a jet of steam. He could see the vents on either collar, where the scalding attack was going to come from. A bitter taste rose in the back of Nils' throat, above all the saltiness. This was going to hurt.
The steam came billowing out all at once, in a massive hissing flood of near-opaque whiteness, all straight at him. It rushed over the floor, rushed through the air, filled his field of vision. And then it stopped.
There was a strange, prolonged noise behind him. Nils twisted around to see its source.
It was Sinderion. He was standing there perfectly calmly, one hand outstretched, with an orange aura glowing in his palm. He'd just halted the entire jet of steam midair.
"Keep at it," the Altmer said, before letting the spell end.
The steam dissipated instantly into the air. Nils felt a gentle humid warmth over him as it breezed on by. And just as he began to see the centurion's form again, he heard the thudding noise of its footsteps resuming. It walked into view with its axe still in hand.
That was enough healing magic. Nils pushed himself back to his feet. This fight had to end now.
He'd made a grievous mistake, letting this centurion strike him like that. He'd assumed the exact thing he'd told himself he wouldn't—that he was fighting an automaton like any other, and that he could use the same tactics as usual. A regular automaton wouldn't bother trying to use a limb whose attached weapon had been disabled. This one was intelligent enough to just use its fist instead.
He couldn't afford to make a mistake like that again. This time, as he closed in to melee range, Nils was preparing himself for anything and everything.
Accordingly, as the centurion approached him with its gigantic axe, Nils reached behind his back with his right hand, and drew another weapon from his belt.
It was just an ebony dagger. Nothing special, really. Nothing that anyone in their right mind would use against a machine like this. It was just something Nils had kept with him over the years. And it was about to make a world of difference.
The centurion started in with a quick, jabbing strike with its damaged fist. Doubtless, it planned to follow that up with a swing from its axe. But that never happened. Nils dodged to the outside of the strike, then grabbed onto the giant metal forearm with his left hand, and pulled himself straight up into the air.
It was such a fast ascent that the centurion didn't even have time to pull its arm back. Nils brought his left foot up and used it to boost off the metal surface as he went, and felt it drop away from beneath him in the process. Already, it was trying to step away from him, to put some distance between them for a renewed attack. But it was far too late for that. He lunged forwards, grabbed onto the automaton's collar just above the steam vents, and vaulted sideways over its shoulder.
And on the way, he turned midair and slid the blade of his ebony dagger into the gap between the plates of the centurion's back and neck.
He didn't need a sharp blade right now. He only needed a sturdy lever.
There was a loud, sharp, percussive noise of popping metal from inside the centurion's torso. As Nils swung around and braced his feet against the centurion's back, he felt the plating give and fall outward by an inch or so. That was good enough. He flipped the dagger sideways in his hand, grabbed onto the edge of the plate with his metal fingertips, put his left hand on the back of the thing's shoulder, and pulled with all of his might.
In the same instant, the centurion jumped backwards and tipped itself over. Nils didn't get to see whether he'd pulled enough first. He had to let go and jump off now—he couldn't even tell in what direction—and try to hit the ground at a good angle, before this machine hit the floor with him underneath.
Nils ended up landing flat on his belly. An instant later, he heard and felt a huge, crashing crumbling impact behind him as the centurion landed on its back. And then a moment after that, a huge, thick, gently curved plate of Dwemer metal slid across the floor and stopped right next to him. He could see the bent and broken attachment points on its concave upper face. That was nice. It'd all happened so quickly, he hadn't even been able to tell if it had worked.
But the fight was still on, so he pulled himself up onto his feet, and turned around to face his opponent yet again. And the very moment he laid eyes on it, he realized that he needed to correct himself. No, the fight wasn't on now. The fight was very much over and done with.
The centurion was completely motionless. Its arms were out to either side, the axe loosely resting in its right hand. Its legs were flat on the floor, still extended from the jump a moment ago. Its head was tilted back, no longer able to hold up its own weight. And its torso was suspended a few inches above the floor. Nils could see the base of one of the waist-high lamp-bearing stone columns underneath. If it'd been producing light before, it wasn't anymore.
His dagger was probably still somewhere in there. For some reason, he didn't want to try retrieving it right then.
Some amount of time must have passed without him noticing, because seemingly out of nowhere, Sinderion appeared at his side and asked, "Are you all right?"
"I think so," Nils nodded absently. He cast a brief healing spell on himself just to be sure. "That was… I hope we don't have to fight any more of these. Those were my only blades."
"Plenty more lamp posts to go, though," the Altmer said mildly.
Nils nodded again. He still wasn't entirely paying attention. "Yes, I'll… I'll honor and remember this lamp's sacrifice forever. Uh… Right. Mind if we go back and get some more things?"
And by that he meant a replacement weapon. He backtracked through the corridors at a brisk walking pace, all the way back to the living quarters, where he'd seen all the weapons and armor strewn about. It felt nothing short of disturbing to be picking through the remains of a fight like this one, but necessity was what it was, and he quickly settled on a one-handed war axe from beside one of the empty assortments of armor.
Only then could they resume their expedition properly. Nils re-entered the final room, and was greeted with the sight of the ruined centurion, still flat and motionless on its back. And beyond it was the gigantic circular door on the room's far end, just waiting for him to reach it. But he wasn't going to pay attention to it just yet. He hadn't quite finished with the rest of this room.
There were two other obvious things for them to look at—the doors the centurion had emerged from, and the doors opposite them. Nils headed over to investigate, one doorway after the other. Even from a distance, it was clear that there wasn't much to see from the first. The space on the other side was only large enough for the centurion's docking arch, where it had lain dormant until its very recent activation. There was about a yard of clearance around all sides of the arch, presumably to allow engineers to work on the automaton while it was in here, but beyond that was nothing but stone walls.
The other doorway, however, was obviously meant to go someplace. Nils opened it with his new weapon up and ready. But it was immediately obvious that there was nothing to fight. There was a fairly short corridor on the other side, which was mostly filled with broken stone rubble, spilling out from a pair of grated doors at the far end. The unobstructed floor space only extended about ten feet in.
He knew what this was. And it made sense. Or at least, it made as much sense as the barred door up at the top entrance. This was the same idea.
Sinderion came up by him and said, "Well, that's certainly new. This place has been quite low on rubble. What do you suppose happened here?"
"This was a Dwemer lift shaft," Nils said. And he could say that without even a trace of uncertainty. "They must've caved it in themselves, before the fighting started. The corresponding exit on the surface is probably long gone as well."
"That is quite the… thing," Sinderion mumbled. It was hard to blame him for being at a loss right now. Nils had seen plenty of vertical shafts like this in Dwemer ruins before. They were immensely sturdy things, to the point where they routinely outlasted the very machinery they were meant to contain. To cave one in entirely would have been a spectacularly difficult task.
But there was nothing to do but leave the corridor and return to the main room. There was that one final matter to deal with. The one that had been staring at them since the moment they had arrived in here.
Nils walked out and approached the last door at a firmly controlled pace. If he didn't watch himself, he'd probably end up stopping in place and just staring at this thing. Even now, he couldn't take his eyes off it. He wasn't even sure whether to call something so large a door at all. It might have been better described as a gate. And yet here it was, entirely indoors, right in the middle of the room's far wall. It was just waiting to be opened.
As he approached, the door towered ever higher above him. He tried to ignore the sheer size of the thing, and keep himself focused. There had to be a way to open it up. Even if the Dwemer had wanted this entire place sealed off, it couldn't have been designed without an opening mechanism, or else they wouldn't have bothered with the door at all. Yet it took him nearly the entire walk across the rest of the room to figure out what it operated on.
There were two metal panels on the wall, one to either side of the door. They were at around chest height, and not even particularly big. Much like the door itself, they were more reinforced than decorated, and they were securely in place. And even from a distance, Nils could see that each one had a button on it. A cyan-dot button, like the one he'd pressed earlier. No covers, no locks, just these two panels and these two buttons, and the entire door in between.
"Well, it's definitely good I have you with me, Sinderion," he said. "Or else we'd have to stop here."
There was no reply.
Nils looked over his shoulder. The Altmer was standing a good thirty feet back, just staring at the door with his jaw agape. Time to try again.
"Hey! Sinderion! Come here, I need you for this."
That seemed to do the trick. Sinderion snapped out of his reverie, and hurried right on over and asked, "What is it?"
"Take a look at those buttons." Nils pointed to them, one after the other, as he spoke. "I'm not seeing any locks on here. Just those. And I'm guessing they'll need to be pushed at the same time for this door to open."
"Makes sense," Sinderion nodded, before pausing and turning towards the door hesitantly. "Ah… Just to clarify… You are sure you want to do this, then? Open this?"
Nils shrugged. "Well, we're exploring this place, right? We'd better see it through." But then he paused as well. That wasn't really his answer. It wasn't nearly that was all on his mind.
He gave himself a few seconds to think it over. It didn't need any more time than that.
"So… we know the Dwemer here locked themselves in, and then all killed each other. And while most of the automatons have been normal enough, the Dwemer's own armor and weapons are completely different. And so was that centurion just now. I think they were doing something here. Working by some new set of rules. And there's no way that that's not connected to whatever's behind this door. We'd better find out what it is, before someone else comes along and decides to do the same."
Sinderion gazed at him silently for the whole thing. Then a few seconds went by where neither of them were talking. The hooded elf looked down at the floor for a moment, and looked back up with a sigh. "All right. Let's do it. I'll take the… left one, then."
The two of them parted and walked over to either side of the door without a word. Nils kept his left hand tightly on his new axe the whole time. There was one more thing that he could've said, but he hadn't, mainly for the sake of his companion's nerves.
And ironically, the one thing he'd withheld was the answer to Sinderion's very first question when they'd come in. Why would they have a door down here that was even bigger than the front door? It wasn't as though the second layer of security were that direly important. If it were, they would have fortified the front door just as immensely.
It was in the exact same fashion as the bent wheel on the front door, and the collapsed lift shaft. This great beast of a door wasn't designed to keep anything out. It was designed to keep something in. And if they weren't the ones to open it, someone else would be.
"On three," he said, not entirely feeling aware of his own voice. "One, two, three—"
He pressed the button with his right thumb, just as Sinderion made a similar motion. There was a firm metallic click-click as it depressed and released.
For a moment, nothing happened. Nils opened his mouth to ask if Sinderion hadn't done it on the right time.
A loud, deep, grinding rumble cut him off. It was coming from inside the walls, inside the doors, the sound of gigantic machinery engaging and starting to move. And as he watched, the eight metal spokes holding the door in place each slid inwards, one by one, withdrawing just enough into the hub to disengage from the rim. Then, with a massive, mounting hiss of hidden steam-powered mechanisms, the entire metal surface of the door shifted backward out of its frame, baring the inside of its great circular frame, complete with visible holes where the spokes had gone in.
And then, after a half-second's pause, the door began to rise up. Nils left the panel and walked slowly towards the middle of the circular entryway.
He wasn't sure entirely what was on the other side. But the moment the door had risen enough for him to see past it, he recognized one thing instantly—the space on the other side was pitch black.
