"I don't like the look of this. Are you sure this is Morvunskar?"
"Yes," Niruin whispered back. "This is definitely Morvunskar."
We were on the outskirts of a ruined fort near Windhelm, and our breath was white and stand-offish against the black backdrop of the clear night sky. The two of us had dropped immediately into a crouch after coming within twenty meters of the fort, the air heavy with magic. The feeling is difficult to describe unless you've felt it for yourself. It was like walking into a warm tavern on a cold day and feeling that wall of heat as you stepped through the doorway, but the air didn't feel as heavy. Dense magic doesn't blanket you like heat does, and it can in no way be described as warm.
"Can you feel that?" I asked, rubbing my arms to try to get my goose bumps to disappear.
He nodded solemnly. "I haven't felt this much magic in the air in a long time. Maybe not even ever. And it feels… different; I can't tell if it's old or new. But it's powerful, that's for sure."
"There's no way this can be leftover magic," I said, unenthusiastically. "Right?" He said nothing. The thought of having to face the source of this sorcery was just as unappealing to him as it was to me. "I guess this means we should probably be prepared to face something powerful. Hostile, most likely."
He nodded again and licked his dry lips in anticipation. Neither of us moved for a long, dragging second. I shivered slightly, still trying to get used to the unsettling amount of magic in the air.
"This must be some kind of sick joke," I stalled. "I wouldn't get married in there if the High King himself was waiting for me at the altar. This makes no sense."
"It makes sense to me."
"Well, please, then," I deadpanned. "Enlighten me."
He looked at me slyly out of the corner of his eye, the slightest curve to his lips. "You realize Witchmist Grove is where you met your fiancée, right?"
"Ex-fiancée," I corrected him.
"You also realize that the only population of Witchmist Grove are hagravens?"
I groaned and buried my face in my hands. "Nooo. Don't tell me that. Let's just… Maybe… I think maybe Ysolda's getting back at me for threatening her. She probably lied to us," I said with more conviction than I felt.
He shrugged, and drew his bow. "You're the one who asked me to enlighten you."
I followed suit, shifting my sack of belongings that I had tied to my belt to a spot where it wouldn't bump against the back of my knees. "You knew I would ask. You're a conniving bastard, you know that?"
"Of course," he grinned. "Now let's go. I'm freezing my butt off out here."
Morvunskar was surprisingly and unnervingly deserted as we crept through the courtyard. Bows out and arrows nocked, we fell into a familiar routine as we moved cautiously forward through the snow, our steps and breathing in sync. We did a quick and thorough perimeter check, and when we found nothing, we grudgingly made our way to the only entrance we could find that wasn't blocked by crumbling rocks. Wordlessly we opened the door, skin prickling and hair standing on edge.
The inside of the fort was even bigger than I thought it would be, and much better preserved than the outside, though much more damp. Water dripped from the ceilings and pooled on the stony floor. Moss and lichen had taken over whole sections of wall, and peaked out between cracks in the rocks. A few braziers were lit, confirming that we most definitely were not alone, but still there was no sign of anyone.
"I don't like the look of this," I said.
"You've said that already."
"But I don't."
"It is odd that we haven't seen anyone," Niruin admitted. "They must be deeper inside Morvunskar."
I nudged an empty wine bottle with my toe. "Let's split up. You search those doors to the right, I'll search this one going to the basement."
He agreed, but neither of us took more than a few steps before I stopped him and called him back to where I stood at the top of a staircase leading down to a set of doors, identical to the entrance.
"Feel that?" I whispered.
"It's definitely coming from there."
Both of us shifted nervously, waiting for the other to make a move. Finally, unable to bear all the thoughts of could-bes and what-ifs going through my mind anymore, I drew my bow once again.
"After you, Lightfoot."
"Yeah, yeah," I grumbled, and I walked through the door.
It opened with only the smallest of squeaks that could have belonged to a mouse, and we followed a short hallway to the top of another flight of curving stairs. Surveying the area, I realized at once that Morvunskar was not only bigger than I thought, but much, much, bigger than I thought. The room we entered could hardly be described as a room. A cavern would only barely cover the basics, but my vocabulary failed me, so a cavern it was.
The curving stairs led downwards into the cavern that was maybe a dozen times larger than the Cistern. Pillars that put even some of the largest trees in Skyrim to shame stood proudly in their defiance of time, looking down on their comrades who had long ago crumbled. To the very right, another two sets of stairs chiseled into the rock lead up to a platform built into the wall at about the same level as we currently stood where an abandoned throne sat next to a fairly new alchemy table. Using the table was a man dressed in long black robes that swept the floor as he rocked back and forth on his feet. To the left, twenty other mages in similar attire mingled and went about their business.
However, none of that was what held my attention for in the corner of the platform, hovering ever so slightly in the air, was something that looked like an enormous, silver cat's eye. It hummed silently, the air around it reverberating and shimmering like the air above a hot fire. If the black-clad mage at the alchemy table was aware of it, he gave no sign.
I didn't know how, but I knew as soon as I set my sights on it that it was a portal. To where? That was another question entirely.
I guess we've found the source of all this magic, I thought dimly.
I exchanged a look with Niruin, and made a cautionary signal. He nodded, but grabbed my arm as I was about to move, and whispered into my ear.
"Who exactly is Sam?" he said, pulling back and fixing me with a serious stare. I stared back unflinchingly for several moments before shrugging as nonchalantly as I could.
To be honest, the question had been bothering me too. Before, I had just assumed that Sam was an unassuming bar hopper with a talent for getting in just as much trouble as I did. However, just as I knew the strange orb-like thing was a portal, I also knew that Sam couldn't be anywhere but through it. That knowledge, let alone how I had come to acquire it, led to too many questions that I didn't want to deal with at the moment.
Besides, I thought. Pretty soon I'll have the answers anyways. …I hope.
The other Bosmer exhaled gently at my lack of response, but he quickly put on his mask of professionalism, signaled at me to lead on, and I set off down the stairs.
The plan was simple. Since there was no possible way the two of us could take on a whole cult of mages (I only barely managed to handle an old man and an injured woman, after all) we were going to sneak by all of them, and step through the portal without anyone noticing. We would all get what we wanted (whatever it is they wanted) and no one had to die.
At least, that was the plan until everything fell apart.
Which happened about thirty seconds into it.
We had uneventfully made our way down the curved staircase and we were about to climb the stairs leading to the portal when I got an uneasy feeling and signaled at Niruin to stop. He did, albeit with a little confusion.
Then, like candles, the braziers around the cavern were extinguished one by one. Confused exclamations resounded throughout the cavern, as we all watched the room grow darker until all the braziers were extinguished save for the two we were standing by, successfully putting us in the spotlight. There was a shocked lull, and I experienced the odd vertigo that comes with déjà vu.
"Intruders!" a shrill female voice cried, and the mages charged. They charged slowly at first because of the darkness, but they charged nonetheless. Many quickly summoned balls of light and others swathed their hands in flames.
"You have got to be kidding me," I muttered under my breath.
"Go!" Niruin shouted, shoving me none too gently. "Run!"
We fled. I unloaded an arrow into the mage who had been by an alchemy table, but he put up a ward and my arrow clattered to the ground. A second arrow whizzed by my ear from Niruin, and successfully pierced both the ward and the mage's abdomen.
And then they were on us. Like hungry wolfs, they fell upon us in a whirlwind of ice and fire and electricity. I felt hot and cold, and my skin tingled from the static in the air. We continued to back up the stairs, ducking and twisting and drawing and shooting.
"We need to make a run for it!" Niruin said.
"To your left," I simply warned, choosing not to reply to the obvious. He took a few deft steps to avoid an icicle, and shot another two arrows. In all, we had barely made a dent in their numbers, killing two and injuring two. The others advanced on us a bit more cautiously, aware now that they weren't dealing with simple amateurs, choosing to conserve their magicka.
"You're dead elves, you hear?" one of the mages snarled over the din of magic and arrow twangs. With our aerial advantage, we were keeping them at bay at the bottom of the steps, but our progress was slow.
I risked a glance backwards to see how much farther up the stairs we had to go, and felt a wave of relief when I saw that we were almost at the top. A few more steps and—
Niruin cried out suddenly and out of the corner of my eye I saw him get blown backwards up the last few steps. I was about to shout his name when I felt the electricity that had hit him jump from his body to mine. It connected with my right arm, which immediately went numb with a wet feeling that spread to my shoulder and part of my torso, shoving me hard into the wall just at my side.
I felt a little dazed, but I quickly shook it off, vaguely registering shouts of triumph over the buzzing in my ears. My arm worried me though. It didn't hurt like the time it had been burnt, but I couldn't move it properly. I was starting to get a vague feeling of pins and needles, which I think might have been a good thing, but it would do me no good at the moment.
Making a frustrated noise, I slung my bow onto my back, and leapt up the last few steps. Ducking low to avoid the invigorated blasts of magic, I slid to where Niruin lay motionless. Panic gripped me for a moment before I saw the slight up and down of his chest.
I pulled away his hood and tilted his head, feeling wet and sticky blood from somewhere behind his left ear, before I slapped his cheek a few times. I didn't have time to be nice.
"Come on, Niruin," I said urgently. "This isn't the time to sleeping. I need you to get up. Please. See? I even used the magic word. Just for you."
The word obviously wasn't that magic because he didn't move, and I made a worried check on the now-unhindered progress of the mages. They were cautious still, but they were half-way up. I chewed on my lip, and glanced at the portal humming a few feet away.
No time to worry about where it goes, I guess.
I grabbed his bow, which had fallen a few steps away and put it on my back along with mine. I snaked my good arm underneath and around the unconscious elf's chest and anchored my hold by grasping the straps of his cuirass, dragging him backwards towards the portal.
"Here goes everything," I grunted, shifting his weight and trying not to remember that the last time I said those words had been an eternity ago in the Bee and Barb with Sam.
The mages were on top of us again, and I saw a dozen icicles the length and width of my arms shoot through the air. I automatically twisted to avoid them, but the movement awkward and incomplete.
My heel caught on a large, mossy stone behind me, and I gasped trying to maintain my balance, but it was no use. Realizing that I couldn't salvage this situation, I pulled Niruin tighter to me in an effort to protect his head from the fall, and, wishing my other arm was in better shape so I could do the same, clenched my eyes shut in anticipation.
I felt the powerful magic shroud me like falling into a deep lake, and instinctively held my breath, both terrified and relieved at the same time.
Heart pumping at an impossibly fast rate, I submitted to the tumble, and hoping against all hope for the best, fell backwards into the portal.
Hello, everyone.
With this chapter up, there's only one chapter to go. Mayyybe two if I get wordy, but the point it that we're going into the final stretch of this story. Thank you all for reading and enduring my more than erratic update schedules over the past few years where I would go long, long months without a single chapter uploaded (has it really been over a yeara since I first published this? Haha, oops).
If you could drop a quick review for me in the box, you have no idea how much I would appreciate it. Whether it's a quick two words, or a lengthier comment, feedback from readers is the ultimate motivation.
Stay awesome, homies.