~ Chapter 8 ~

Deadly Depths

Luz blinked. "Who?"

Eda stepped away and with a flick of the wrist, summoned the torch to her hand from the floor. "The Daedric Prince of hedonism and debauchery. He's certainly not the worst one - great for parties - but I don't like that he's interested in you."

"I'm great at parties," Luz said, following Eda further into the tomb. "But… why would he be interested in me?"

"Don't get ahead of yourself, kid," Eda said, bending down to rummage through a draugr corpse, pulling out a dirty gold coin from behind its teeth. "Sanguine and I go back a ways. My younger years. Learned far too late that Daedra Princes are easily bored things. He's hounded me for a while, showing up when it suited him and not a day otherwise. He wants something."

"Like the dragonstone?"

"Maybe. Not really something that would interest him, but if he wants to mess with some mortals…" Eda shrugged. "Who knows? The Princes you can trust are the ones who want you dead or have you wishing you were. All the rest want something."

"Like Dagon during the Oblivion Crisis?"

Luz could feel Eda roll her eyes. "Right. The Champion. You know, the bards embellish those stories, right?"

"So Sanguine just gave me a staff to mess with you?"

"That's a good guess," Eda said, turning around to face Luz. "Speaking of…" She held out her hand. "It's out of charge. Here, let me fix it. Might as well make use of it."

"So… it wasn't my own magic," Luz said, disappointment creeping in as she handed the staff to Eda. "Just the staff?"

"Afraid so, kid," Eda replied, handing Luz the torch and pulling a small crystal from her bag. "It won't be much, so don't use it unless I tell you to, but it's better than having a fancy stick."

She ran the crystal over the staff, up one side and down the other, a soft blue-white glow leeching into the wood until it glowed with warmth again, the crystal dissolving into the wood itself.

Eda handed the staff back to Luz with a kind smile. "Even so, for someone with no skill with magic, that must have been some serious light to knock the beast out. That's nothing to sniff at. Some of history's most storied mages couldn't cast some of the most novice spells, and only a handful have mastered any real number of them.

"When the Thalmor bent the Empire over the barrel, some of their demands 'standardized' magic and spells. Kept all the powerful stuff for themselves.

"But wild ones like me, and some others from the Second and Third eras, know how to craft spells. Make them our own. That's the true power of the Clever Craft."

Luz smiled as she took the staff back. "Thanks, Eda. But, Sanguine said I was a puddle. What did he mean?"

Eda turned back to the darkness of the tomb and pressed on, speaking over her shoulder. "Look, kid. First things first. Don't trust a Daedra. Ever. Any of them. The atronachs are okay, pretty straightforward. Task, contract, binding, summoning. But the higher up the food chain you go, the more complicated they get. Princes are never to be trusted - unless they are looking to kill you. A mortal life here or there is nearly meaningless to them.

"With that said, he has a point."

"But-"

"Without getting into the grit of it," Eda interrupted, sensing righteous confusion. "You cannot tap into your well of Magicka. Specifically, you can, but it's so minute that it would take the better part of you to light a candle."

"Why?"

"Cosmic joke most likely." Eda shrugged. "Just the stars you were born with. Nothing you can do about that. That's not to say you couldn't overcome it, but that takes years of arduous work, not to mention additional tools that would be cumbersome to enchant or make reliably.

"But, any spark can light a fire. Staves and scrolls are costly tools, but if you get good at making them and trapping the soul-stuff that keeps spirits tied to bodies, you could make a name for yourself."

"Wait, really?"

Eda looked over her shoulder. "Yeah, really. It's hard work though. Spells like that aren't easy to master with plentiful reserves, and you don't have more than a drop. If you're ready for many grueling years-"

"Yes!"

Eda cringed as Luz's voice echoed through the tomb, before turning on her with a clawed finger to her lips. "Azura's frosty tips, girl. Don't shout in a tomb."

Luz put her arms down slowly and grinned sheepishly. "Yes," she whispered.

Eda growled something that was drowned out by a groaning thud from down the hallway. "Stay behind me and if one of them comes for you, hit it with the torch. Their dusty bones don't like fire."

"I mean…" Luz started. "Just six of them seemed to give you some trouble…"

"Ha!" Eda snorted, tossing her staff into the air where it vanished in a glimmer of purple-blue light. "You'd just blinded me and were about to get attacked by a horde of them. I had some priorities. This time-" flames flickered under her nails. "It's on my terms."

"Wow," Luz said, stepping over the smoldering ashes of another draugr corpse, strolling through the remains of the scorching battle like it was a field of cornflowers, rather than the dank depths of a mountain barrow.

"That was a lot of fire."

Eda blew on her fingers, dispersing the smoke, a self-satisfied smirk on her lips. "And you were worried."

"Yeah, about three rooms back," Luz said, picking up a dirty gold coin from an offering table before thinking better of it and putting it back in the bowl and righting it. "I've just been admiring the handiwork since."

"Still got that claw?"

"Lucan's?" Luz looked at the claw she held in one hand, wrapped in a now saturated-with-blood rag. "That poor guy."

"If the smug idiot hadn't been running through a trap-laden tomb," Eda said, wagging her finger. "He'd have seen the glaringly obvious spike-wall and the pressure stone."

"Yeah, but it had thrown him into the wall and hammered the claw into his chest."

"That's what you get for robbing a tomb," Eda said, fishing about in a burial urn and pulling out a few gold coins and a gemstone, blowing the ash off them. "Ooh, shiny."

"Eda," Luz said, reproachfully. "You just said-"

"But I know what I'm doing," Eda said, waving Luz away as she looked over a locked chest, then at the wall behind it. "Move behind that pillar would you?"

Luz groaned but obeyed. "I thought you wanted this over with quickly?"

There was a bit of muttering, then the sound of a knife cutting a cord, followed by the simultaneous scuffling of Eda ducking out of the way and the hissing rasp of metal on metal as several spikes shot out of the wall.

"You have to give these Nords credit," Eda said, gently prodding the spring-loaded trap away enough to lift the chest lid. "They knew how to make a long-lasting trap."

"Eda," Luz groaned again.

"Look, kid," Eda said, tossing the dusty art pieces back into the chest and pocketing the gold coins. "Balgruuf and Whats-his-name aren't going to be paying us for this little errand. Being free was the payment. But we still need to eat and make our way. This lot -" she waved her hands around at the interred bodies. "- Are not using this very real and very valuable gold. I'm not taking anything that I couldn't use without question.

"Mainly because the fence in Whiterun doesn't want to do business with me anymore, but that is beside the point."

"How do you do business with a fence?" Luz asked, frowning but following Eda once again as the two of them left the small alcove and back into one of the main chambers.

"Never you mind how, you aren't going to. Now shush a moment. I need to focus."

She closed her eyes and held out a hand. Misty blue light welled up in her palm and when she opened her eyes again, it flickered like fire being blown in a stiff breeze - though Luz couldn't feel anything.

"That way," Eda said, gesturing to an almost obscured doorway.

"What is that spell?" Luz asked as they pushed through the hefty, rusted door and into a long hallway, dark but for her torch, the murals leaping in the firelight.

"Wayfinding," Eda said. "You just focus on your desire and it directs you. Like a magical compass."

"Is that something I could learn without a scroll or a staff?"

"Maybe," Eda said, humming to herself. "It's not too intensive, magicka-wise, but does require a decent amount of focus. Channeled spells are hard for someone like you. They require a constant flow to be serviceable. But your magicka might not come back on its own."

"What do you mean?"

"I'd need to read up on my astromancy again, but from what I remember, those born under the Atronach have deep pools of magicka, but can't replenish their own wells themselves. At least quickly. Sleeping under starlight can do the trick, potions of concentrated magicka of course. But you were born under the cusp of the Tower as well. It would explain why your magicka is stunted, besides the lack of a simple education."

"So… I could cast a spell or two, but never be able to cast again?"

"I guess so."

Luz lapsed into silence as they came to the end of the hallway, facing a massive stone wall, inlaid with grooves and runes, and four golden embossments, each laid on a concentric circle.

The center circle, from which all the others radiated, carried the indentation of the dragon claw in her hand.

"Damn puzzle doors," Eda said. "Waste of time really."

"Why's that?"

"Go on," Eda said, waving Luz forward. "Look at the claw in your hand, then the door, and see if you can figure it out."

Luz placed her torch into a basin near the door, jumping as the oil caught and erupted in flame, consuming the rest of the torch as it settled back to a steady burn.

Smiling apologetically at Eda - who merely shook her head - Luz unwrapped the claw and turned it over in her hands, trying to wipe away the caked-on blood at the same time.

"It's got some images here."

"Yup."

Luz looked up at the door slab, then back at the palm of the claw. "Do I… just match them up?"

Eda nodded and shrugged. "Seems silly to have a key with the secret stamped on it, but eh."

"What if it's not about keeping people out," Luz said, turning the circles to match the pattern on the claw: bear, moth, owl. "But keeping something in?"

Eda cocked an eyebrow, opened her mouth to say something, then closed it again. "Huh. Never thought of it that way. Makes some kind of sense."

"I mean," Luz continued, placing the claw on the indentation, shoving into it with all hundred-pound of her body, then using the claw's 'ankle' to turn it. "Who in their right mind would have delved this far into a sacred tomb, desecrating it along the way, and also happen to have the key with you?"

"Point taken," Eda said, raising her voice over the grinding of stones, as the stone arches ground away into the floor, leaving the passage beyond to be poorly lit by the leaping shadows of the oil basin.

"You don't happen to have another one, huh?" Luz asked, hooking her thumb toward the flames.

"Time for a lesson," Eda said. She waved her hand and, Luz noticed for the first time, her lips parted for a mere whisper. Eda's staff willed itself from that same purple-blue smoke and fell into her hand. "Staff use."

Luz couldn't stop herself from squeaking and hastily unshouldered her own staff.

"Clearly," Eda said, motioning for Luz to stand opposite her. "You are able to activate its innate magic, though I'm guessing you don't quite know how."

"I mean," Luz started, but Eda stopped her.

"I don't need another demonstration. Still seeing spots from the last one. The point is, like many novices before you, you might know the terms of invocation, but not the why."

Luz paused then nodded. "Okay. Show me."

Eda held her staff above her head, then brought it down with a crack, a flare of fire running up its length to flicker at the top, small but bright. "Many consider a staff to be a symbol of magehood, but most mages use them like any other - a brutish cudgel when you'd overextended yourself.

"A staff might only have the enchantment laid upon it, it can still focus other magic through it, if you know how."

"How?" Luz whispered, but Eda ignored her.

Instead, the witch kanted her staff toward the hallway and Luz saw her free hand move, a whispered word, and then the flickering flame at the head of her staff molded itself into a ball of orange mage-light, drifting from her staff to hover a bit above her head.

Luz felt her eyes get very wide.

"Now," Eda said, gesturing to Luz. "I'm not expecting you to do that. Not yet. But a staff is more than its enchantment. You can use it's reserve of magicka to power a spell you know. It still needs something from you - there's no way around that - but it might take some of the strain off of you.

"I'm guessing Sanguine didn't actually teach you to use that staff of magelight? Just left you to fend for yourself."

"Against a wolf, yeah."

Eda cocked an eyebrow but remained focused. "A spell is made up of intent, the will to invoke it and the knowledge to bend the magic into the form you intend." She counted off four fingers. "Staffs-"

"Staves."

"Don't interrupt. Staves, take on the effort of three of those, but you still need 'intent.'"

"Aren't intent and intend the same thing?"

"We aren't going anywhere fast with this, kid."

"Sorry."

Eda cleared her throat and continued. "The intent of the spell is what you want it to do. Staves are only able to do one spell - technically - so you just have to tell it to do the one thing it knows how to do. That's the form you intend. See?"

"No, but I'll think about it."

Eda sighed. "Get your staff ready. Intent is the 'trigger' of a spell. Most of the spell work is done up here." She tapped her temple. "Your intent needs to be clear but, again, staves can take some of the heavy lifting here.

"You have a staff of magelight. It can really only do the one thing. So your intent only needs to be as simple as it is. Cast your spell, keep it small."

"Oh." Luz was taken aback. "It's really that easy?"

"It gets harder," Eda said, grinning. "It's 'easy' because you have something doing all the work for you. Remember. Keep your intent clear, your emotions level. If you want to produce something consistent, you have to be consistent."

"Okay," Luz said, shaking out her arms and wrapping her fingers around the shaft of the staff. She took a breath and spoke loudly - but not too loudly.

"Light."

The amber crystal at the head of the staff glimmered and a shine of white light blossomed, floating up and around her head.

Reaching out to cradle it in her hand, Luz looked over to see Eda smiling. "Good?"

"Good." Eda gestured to the passageway. "Now we have light. Follow me, stay alert, and remember - intent is key to spellwork. It doesn't matter what the staff is capable of. It will do what it is enchanted to do. It is you, the mage, that ascribes how much of its power is used. As you unintentionally discovered."

"Oh, right," Luz said, thinking back to the wereowl-Eda and her burst of light.

She followed Eda through the opening and onto the rough-hewn stone. There was a sudden rustling and a series of squeaks, and the ceiling came alive with a swarm of bats, disturbed by the pair's lights.

They whirled about for a moment then flew off, further into the tunnel, towards a distant and dim silver gleam of moonlight.

"Could you understand them?" Luz asked, watching her footing on the dirt - and slimeier portions of 'dirt'.

"Huh? Why?"

"I was just curious," Luz said, shrugging. "I've always liked bats and snakes and spiders, bees and things. I'd love to learn how to talk with them, like you do."

"Oh," Eda said, grinning. "I can't say I'm surprised after knowing you for a week, but I don't imagine that's all that common for a young Imperial girl."

"No, not really," Luz said, laughing a bit more forcefully than usual. "But Papi always liked nature. Guess I got that from him."

"Far be it for me to pry," Eda said, waving her hand dismissively. "I'll try, but it's a magical knack, one that takes years to learn."

"I promise I won't let you down, Eda. Witches stick together."

"I'd hardly call you a witch," Eda said, turning to look at the young woman and pausing.

A bright smile that reached the eyes, short brown hair mussed and covered in spider webs, robes muddy and bloody, getting worse towards well-worn boots.

Eda suddenly felt a pang of memory, a feeling that she was looking at a much younger self.

The sound of water caught her ear, and she turned back to the shower of moonlight, now catching a mist of water from an underground waterfall.

"Whoa," Luz said.

"Azura's Twilight," Eda murmured. "Must look like this."

The room - more of a natural hollow in the mountain - was amazing. A fissure in the roof let in a stream of moonlight, illuminating a massive stone dais and crafted wall, itself embellished with reliefs of dragons and ancient Nords.

In the center, set off to the side so as to catch the center of the light, lay a black tomb, gleaming with a hint of frost in the chill air.

"Ready to bother a dead guy?" Eda asked, snorting out a laugh.

"You think he's going to be mad about it?" Luz asked, following Eda up the small path and stone steps of the dais. "As in 'come out swinging' mad?"

"Probably," Eda said. "But I have a feeling that won't be an issue." She waved her hand and Luz saw a brief glimmer of orange light on the floor in front of the tomb slab.

"Stand back, kid," she said, casting another spell that seemed to turn her skin to pale marble, followed by a whirl of her staff even as her other hand gripped the air and drew a shimmering sword of purple flame from nothing. "This will be a show."

She slammed her staff on the ground three times, even as Luz ran back behind some rocks, waving the magelight away, dissipating it.

There was silence as the slams echoed back and down the cavern, with the small waterfall filling in the stillness.

"Oi," Eda yelled, bristling. "Wake up, you layabout."

There was a crack like thunder and the top of the tomb exploded, flying back and over the dais edge. Two skeletal arms, wrapped in blackened iron and rusted steel followed it, gripping the edges of the tomb and hauling a huge man upright.

At least, what was left of him.

His jaw hung loose, held in place with a bare strip of mummified flesh, sunken eyes blazing with cold fire, the moldy beard half fallen out, all of it encased in a horned helmet. The desiccated chest did not move as a growling, echoing scrape of a voice bubbled up from the corpse.

"Volaan. Dir vola-" He swung his legs over the edge of the tomb, heavy booted feet landing on the glimmer of magic Eda had placed.

He was cut off by the column of fire that tore through him with the screaming hiss of cooking meat falling into a fire.

"Volaan this, you bag of bones," Eda said, whipping her staff around, sending a stream of fire into the draugr before the flames had a chance to die down.

There was a roar from within the torrent, and the draugr hurled itself through the fire, clawed hands reaching for Eda.

The witch turned him aside with her ethereal blade, back peddling while still pouring more fire into him, sending him stumbling into the wall with a crash.

"Qiilaan us dilon, mar lir," it growled, pulling out a shield from its back and a mace from its side, turning into the flames to put the shield between it and Eda. It sucked in a breath - a terrible sound that dug into Luz's core.

"Fus…Roh-"

"Eda, look out!"

A stone crashed into the draugr's head, sending it stumbling once more, the air cracking and rumbling with disrupted magic.

"Luz! Get down," Eda snapped, pulling her staff back, a building charge of flame leaping to her command.

Luz, standing on the rocks, another two in hand, couldn't move fast enough before the fireball caught the draugr in the chest and another explosion tore through the air, buffeting her.

She felt heat wash over her, a pricking at her skin, and when she uncovered her eyes she saw the draugr - now aflame from the inside - rounding on Eda, charging through the embers, mace high.

She acted more than she thought.

Her staff was in her hand - more than its enchantment - and she leveled it at the draugr.

"Hey, bone-bag!"

The mace came down, catching the summoned blade and forcing Eda to the ground, even as the undead looked up, the icy-blue dead-light of his eyes pinning her to the spot.

But the spell was already in her mind, its effect in her hands.

A beam of light poured from the staff, filling his face even as Eda's staff cracked into his head, sending him wide.

Luz was running, slipping and catching herself on the stones, staff aglow again as she rammed it into the draugr like a spear, falling back from the recoil of the impact.

He fell to one knee again, but planted his hand on it, claws scraping the stone.

"Aav dilon, mir lir," it said, raising its head. "Fus…"

"Oh-no-you-don't," Luz said, grabbing the mace that had fallen from the draugr's hand in both of hers, twisting back with it and unleashing all her inconsiderable might.

Her hands stung and the helmet rang and a crash of frost coated the side of the draugr's head as it left its body, sailing through the air to land in the hands of a man in black robes.

Sanguine smiled as the light faded from the draugr's eyes. "Well done, Little Light. Go on. Claim your prize."