A/N: A bit of a break, but here is the second chapter 2.5K words, so a nice short one just to keep things going, but not so long as it gets boring by the end. I will try to pick up the pace in a couple of weeks, but at the minute I'm a bit swamped, moving house, family dying, Uni wants work in for several different subjects all at the same time, etc.
Anywho, please enjoy this latest installment;
Chapter 2.
The only path down from Highbridge was a long, stone staircase that zig-zagged down the mountainside and although it was wide enough for three horses to walk abreast of each other, to a tired man it was treacherous. Seifer slipped twice on the way down before it became too dark to continue and he was forced to find somewhere to shelter for the night. There were, luckily, guard alcoves every few hundred meters and he was able to locate one without much trouble. Having neither flint, not tinder the night was long, cold and dark. But hardly lonely. The high-elf had yet to stir, but she was a warm body and in the coldness of the mountain's night he would take anything he could get.
Pressing himself deeper into the alcove and away from the wind, he cradled the unconscious woman with her back to his chest. The narrow scrap of fabric which was all that remained of his cloak, he wrapped around his neck and remained sleepless and shivering throughout the night. First light brought with it a drizzle, the culmination of the inclement weather they'd been suffering, and Seifer cursed it to the nine. Rain was fine on its own, but he was weary, hungry and cold, weighted down with a near-dead elf and had more than half the mountainside to go. He did not need the situation to be any more slippery than it already was.
He continued his descent for another half a day, until the sun would have been high in the sky had it been at all visible, before deciding he needed to rest again. His body was aching in places he didn't even know could ache. The usually pleasant twinges produced by his training regime were a far cry from the stomach-churning shrieks his muscles delivered every time he descended another step. Finding another alcove, Seifer slid the high-elf from his shoulder and deposited her a little roughly on the damp ground, before laying down beside her and stretching his legs out into the rain. Joints clicked and popped and the muscles strained to stretch out fully, but upon allowing himself to relax, he promptly fell asleep.
Some hours later he awoke, stiff and, if anything, even more achy than before, but he felt a little better and the rain had stopped while he was sleeping. The sky was still overcast and grey, but the air smelt a lot better. He struggled into a sitting position and peered outside. Now that the mist which accompanied the rain had gone, he could see the spire of the Capital again. It appeared a lot closer now. On his hands and knees, Seifer approached the edge of the stairs and peered over it. The ground was a lot closer than it had been yesterday evening, but they still had a lot further to go. They weren't even half way there.
Sitting back and tentatively attempting a stretch, Seifer looked over his shoulder at the high-elf in the alcove. She was exactly as he'd left her before he fell asleep. Perhaps he was wasting his time, carrying her all this way, if she was just going to die anyway. Even though the thought of leaving her crossed his mind, he dismissed it. He had decided at the top of the stairs to save her, he wasn't about to run back on his own decision.
He struggled to his feet and retrieved his battle axe, stowing it on his belt, before bending once more to pick up the elf. She flopped over his shoulder and he tuned to face the stairs yet again.
Two and a half days of monotony later, he reached the bottom. Never had he been so glad to find grass under his feet and trees on either side. Besides which he was on a different side of the mountain to the one he had started out on. He could have kissed the ground. But he didn't, the bottom of a giant stone staircase was no place to stop and the path went off into the distance, following a river which meandered away through the forest, away from the waterfall and the mountain it sprang from.
He took one look at the path and decided against it, deciding instead to walk along beside it, a few meters into the treeline, just far enough to avoid anyone using the road, but still close enough to be able to follow the sound of the river. Some hours later, much to his delight, he came across a stream, a small estuary of the bigger river. He didn't know what they called it, but from the view at Highbridge, it would lead him straight to the Capital.
But that was for later. For now, it was time he had a rest. He dropped the elf from his shoulder, laying her down in the grassy surrounds of a nearby tree and root network then went straight to the stream. Tugging his helmet off, he laid it down and began pulling off his gauntlets. Once both were removed, he sank his fingers beneath the water's surface, revelling in the gentle way the water babbled around his fingers, caressing his poor, battered knuckles. It was like he had died and gone to Sovengarde.
He laid down flat on his belly and proceeded to wash his face, taking great pleasure in splashing the water across the back of his neck and scrubbing furiously on his skin until he was sure he would be bright red. But clean. Oh to be clean… The next thing was of course to drink. Listening carefully for any sounds of movement, he lowered his face to the surface and gently touched his lips to it, proceeding to suck up and swallow the water as though he was a fish who'd been beached for several hours.
Suddenly he was given reason to pause. A twig on the opposite bank of the river snapped and a moment later, a quiet splosh was heard. Something, a stone perhaps, had just fallen into the river. Utterly still, Seifer strained to hear anything else in the quiet. The birds were still chirping, but that didn't tell him much, they weren't bother by his presence at all, so why should another intruder be any different? He couldn't see anything. Holding his breath, he lifted his face from the water and risked raising it higher.
A coot and her babied nearly scared him out of his skin when they crashed noisily into the water on the opposite side, the mother calling noisily to her babies as they struggled in the twigs and reeds which lined the bank, chirping noisily back. But they didn't seem distressed. They didn't even seem out of sorts. It was a little late in the year for babies, he supposed, but then coots had babies all year round, if they could help it.
Adequately rehydrated and scrubbed, he sat back on his haunches to enjoy the forest quiet. Almost four whole days had passed since the battle atop Highbridge, but still it felt like it was only yesterday. The quiet was eerie in comparison, as though the battle had taken place in a separate world.
He peered over his shoulder at the prone figure behind him. He should probably try to get her to drink some water. Or clean her wounds at the very least. Stifling a groan as he stood, he dug his hands under her shoulders and knees, hefting her up into his weary arms, before turning and returning to the stream. Going down on one knee, he supported her shoulders with one hand and allowed her legs to drop onto the grass. His hand came away bloody. The wounds she had on her legs were likely to have been sustained by the falling rocks in the last moments of the battle; it was unlikely that she would allow any Dremora close enough to make a chop at her legs.
Gently, he pulled open the collar of her armour and scooped up some water to drizzle over the blood encrusted there. It wiped away easily and revealed unbroken skin. On the right side of her face there was a similar concoction of dried blood and mountain fragments, glued there and set like cement. Seifer dabbed at this more carefully with the water, allowing the water to simply run over it rather than attempting to wipe it away. Head wounds always bled like fury and he didn't want to dislodge anything which might cause another leak. With this is mind, he picked a few pieces of the mountain free and gently cleaned the rest of her face, running the pads of his two middle fingers over the skin, clearing away dust, grime and ash.
The slopes of her face weren't as harsh as those of many of the elves he had come across before; high cheek-bones and slanted eyebrows, almost condescending even in unconsciousness, but with full cheeks and full, red lips, thick lashes and a petite, feminine nose. If he weren't so inclined to turn his nose up at her based simply on her race, he might even have called her attractive.
Her wrists, he noticed were bloody as well, the fabric of her sleeves gone stiff, like board with the dried blood. He lifted one up and pulled the fabric open. Magic wounds if ever he'd seen some. Magic had a habit of doing that. It was an energy to be harnessed, but controlled. It had to be kept tightly controlled because if it got out of control it could destroy the user. The Mages College in Winterhold was built with run-off pipes through the walls so that the blood and body parts could simply be washed out into the sea. He'd lost count of how many novices he'd seen explode from the effort of casting an effective ward spell.
Keeping an ear open for any strange noises, Seifer busied himself with removing her gauntlet from her left hand and setting it on the grass beside his own. It was impossibly light. He had never cared for elven armour. Being a man of Markarth, he preferred Nordic steel over elven quackery. The weight was reassuring.
When he came to her right hand, there was no gauntlet, only a ring around her middle-finger keeping her sleeve attached to her arm. He pulled it off to roll back the sleeve. And nearly dropped her in the river in shock.
The very moment he took the ring from her finger, her image changed, features softening even further, hair shining gold and not red, body scaling down by an eighth, or maybe even a sixth, becoming – if at all possible – even more delicate in his big hands. Rather than elven, she now looked human, maybe even Nordic and if not, a Breton.
He looked from the woman in his arms to the ring dangling from her sleeve and back again. What did the mages call this sort of thing? A glamour? There was no doubt in his mind that it was the ring which made her appear the way she had and if he were to put it on he was sure that he would take on an elfish appearance. Of course he knew better than to go putting on magic rings, but he couldn't deny that he was curious. He tugged the ring from her sleeve and held it tentatively in his palm. If this was the source of the glamour then it was possible that this was the source of the rest of her magical abilities. She would be far less dangerous to him without it; not that she was much of a threat now anyway with her wrists blown open and veins flapping in the wind, but one could never be too cautious. She was crazy enough to blow her wrists open, she was probably crazy enough to try to blast him even in her current state.
The ring went in his pocket for safe-keeping.
Decidedly more curious, Seifer laid her down flat on the bank, allowing her wrist to dangle into the water and be rinsed clean by the stream and began to look the rest of her over. Most of her armour looked like standard paladin's armour, magically inclined but robust enough to take a direct hit, nothing out of the ordinary. He pulled back layers, searched about in the collar of her bilaud, dragged out her pockets and lining the contents – warding and healing potions mainly – up on the grass. He was searching for anything else strange or different, some more jewellery perhaps, a totem which could alter or enhance or direct some power or affinity.
The only thing he managed to find was an ivory carving of a mammoth with its trunk held high in the air. A mammoth with its trunk in the air was a good luck charm in Skyrim. What were this woman's origins if she had one of these?
Picking her wrist out of the water he held it to his mouth, tasting a good amount of her blood and swirling the irony tang around on his tongue. Elfish blood was foul tasting stuff, blue normally and horribly bitter. This blood was red and metallic with a slightly bitter tinge, but nothing he would call unpleasant. It was a little like Ginseng Tea, or over-cooked horker meat. Unsure of what to make of that, he took the wrist away and looked back down at her face.
Only to find that both her eyes were open and looking right at him, no doubt roused by the coolness of the water. "Not dead yet then." He said to the kingfisher blue eyes. They were unfocused and barely open, but she squirmed at the sound of his voice and made a valiant attempt to raise her head from its current, hung position. But in the end she was still too weak and could do nothing more than squirm until her eyes fell shut again and consciousness left her.
As disappointing as that reaction to his question was, it was gratifying none the less to know that his efforts had not been in vain and she was indeed alive.
He cleaned her wounds a while longer, before tearing off her sleeves and using them to bandage her wrists. Securely wrapped up, he picked her up again and hoisted her once more over his shoulder, crouching to retrieve their gear. It would soon be evening and time for them to bed down for the night. He needed to find a secure location they could preferably hole themselves up in so she wouldn't be the only one having a full night's sleep.
The light of dawn began to trickle in through the bracken barricade and it teased her eyes open once more. Groggy and in pain, she didn't bother trying to move. Her legs were curled up to her chest and her arms pinned by her sides. With her right temple upon the ground it wasn't the most comfortable position to sleep in, but if she tried to rectify this position she would disturb the other body in the darkness. That of the Nord if the armour told her anything. He had saved her from the rubble, apparently cleaned and dressed her wounds and was now keeping her warm in the muddy little pit he had dug for them to sleep in.
Tree roots crowded above them and the dirt beneath her head was cool and damp. She could just about make out the muddy swipes on his armour and on the back of his head, clotting the hair together in straggly lumps. She shivered. Even though she was sharing the space with a warm body, the very air held a chill. Her breath clouded in front of her face, curling steamy tendrils.
Closing her eyes again, she waited to drift off. Hoping that by the time he woke her again with his predictably noisy and undignified exit from the hole, the feeling would be gone.
A/N: The first night alone ;) What did you think? Am I moving to fast? Hahaha
But seriously, what did you think? If anyone finds any mistakes in it, please tell me so I can alter it, but other than that, I would love to hear your opinions, what I did well, what I did poorly, anything really...
-Lapin