Breakfast Ruined
Lifting her head out of the water, Shadowmere stared down the length of her body at Saeana as she emerged from her hiding space, the end of her story coming with a heavy breath and tone of finality.
"And so I got out of the prison, and I found the Brotherhood and Lucien gave you to me and here we sit." Saeana's clothing made her look surprisingly innocent, the blue of her shirt a shade or two lighter than her skin and the sleeves ending at her elbows made her look almost childlike.
"What happened to the other guard?" Shadowmere asked quietly, already suspecting the answer. "Gaylord or whatever his name was?" Pulling a comb out of her pack, Saeana untied the yarn holding her little braids together.
"Glenroy, he's dead," she said bluntly, running the comb through her wet, tousled, mahogany hair. "That last attack that got the Emperor got him too." Though she knew that Saeana disliked the guard, Shadowmere saw an expression of almost pitiful sorrow on her friend's face. She was, however, unmoved.
"So you didn't think that fulfilling the Emperor's last words might be slightly more important than joining the Dark Brotherhood?" Saeana glared over at Shadowmere as she combed out her hair.
"I needed money," she hissed, annoyed by having to explain herself further. "I wanted to hunt down the Emperor's murderers," she said, wadding up her wet clothes and tossing them close to the fire. "And in the process I made a damn good living as a murderer myself." Shadowmere rolled her eyes, gently squeezing her hair and wringing the water from the hair trickling through her fists.
"Yeah, I knew that much," she said, taking the bit of sinew she had wrapped around her wrist and wrapping her hair into a bun for the second time that day. "But you're a paper pusher now, there's plenty of time for you to do something that's actually worthwhile." Saeana said nothing, busying herself with putting on her boots and evidently trying to ignore what Shadowmere was saying. "So why haven't we been more worthwhile?" she asked, wiping the moisture from the back of her neck with her hand. Saeana looked over with her with bittersweet red eyes for just a moment before looking away in what Shadowmere could only assume was guilt.
"I'm not that kind of a person," she said shortly, dislodging her soaked top out of the damp ball of clothing shaking the wrinkles loose and draping it over a sun-warmed rock. "I do better when I only have to work for myself, defend myself and leave the rest of the world alone. Doing something like what you and the Emperor want, having that level of decency toward other people is for someone born to it; it doesn't work for someone like me." Shadowmere felt her stomach curl into a fist at Saeana's words, while her comrade calmly smoothed out the garment hanging on the rock only by the texture of the granite and fibers of which the shirt consisted. "Morality is something I can live without." Saeana leaned against the rock on both hands, almost as though she was awaiting Shadowmere's reaction, for which she didn't have to wait long.
Out of the rage that set her blood boiling, Shadowmere stood up, walked over to Saeana and, unable to hold back her disgust, turned her around and slapped her across the face as hard as she could, knowing it would likely lead to another brawl. The blow caused Saeana's head to jerk to the side, leaving her eyes staring at the ground to her right. Despite the severity of their previous physical altercation, Saeana's most recent statement had made Shadowmere angrier than before.
"I know how hard decency is," she snarled, barely within hearing, bracing herself for Saeana's inevitable backlash, but unwilling to keep her tirade in check. "I spent thirty years learning how hard it is, feeling how hard it is to live with morality. And even though I wasn't born to it, I changed, because I learned that I don't want to be remembered as someone who hated the world and was hated in turn. And now, Azura help me, I don't want to have wasted those years because you don't think it's something you feel like doing. Between the two of us, you have no business saying how tough it is to be a good person." To no one's greater surprise than Shadowmere's, Saeana didn't make any move toward retaliation. She simply continued to gaze at the ground, her jaw tensed, and her flushing cheek making the fingernail scratches bleed anew.
"Why should it be me who has to change?" The authenticity of Saeana's question was compounded by the almost naive tone of her voice, and Shadowmere couldn't help but scoff in disbelief.
"Because you're the one who was asked to," she retorted sharply. "I'm no more devoted to the empire than you are, but you were asked to fulfill the last request of The Emperor." Shadowmere was hardly patriotic, but it bothered her when people shirked their responsibilities, whether to king, country or something else entirely. Negligence on one person's behalf meant someone else had to pick up the slack and in this case it would likely be her. It was a simple enough job, but it wasn't hers to do. "And you just have to take a damned necklace to monk in Chorrol; it barely qualifies as a lengthy errand, much less an existential dilemma," she said with exasperation as she noticed the pores on her arms weeping crimson.
"I'll do this thing in my own time," Saeana snapped, snatching her wet pants off the ground, her eyes narrowing at Shadowmere who gave a smart-ass smirk. "I don't need you hounding me to do things that don't concern you in the least." Shadowmere scoffed and put her hands on her hips. "It's like talking to a teenager."
"Apparently you do, because it's not done yet and it's been almost a year since the Emperor was killed," she snapped in return, crouching beside the pond to wash her dirtied and scraped arms. "How much more of your 'own time' do you need to take?" Saeana let out a small shriek of frustration and threw her wet pants at the ground.
"I'll take as long as I need to take!" she snipped angrily, her hands clenched into fists at her sides, and the mist from the waterfall caught in her auburn hair with her azure skin made her look like a living inferno. "Look, an hour ago you had no idea I had the Amulet of Kings and you were perfectly happy to keep on living out here, making the world a better place by killing bandits and keeping ourselves out of it. We were happy here, and now you've ruined it!"
"How have I ruined it?" Shadowmere yelped, throwing her hands to the side and casting water droplets in every direction. "You're the one who didn't do the job when it should have been done! You ruined it, I just exposed it." Saeana fell silent for a moment, and Shadowmere returned to the debridement of her arms. There was something strange about the scrapes on her arms but she couldn't quite figure out what it was. She was unable to think too deeply on the subject when a sudden noise in the woods took all the energy of thought from her mind and rerouted it to her senses.
The still wet hair on the back of her neck stood up, her ears ached with a terrible, nameless sound searing through them, and her eyes burning as they sought the threat she could feel in every nerve in her body. The stink of sulfur and brimstone was so intense she could taste it on the back of her tongue and it made her want to plunge her head under the water to escape. Instead she turned around slowly, creeping toward the packs which laid unattended near the cooking fire. Keeping her eyes vigilant and pointed toward the woods, she moved the packs to pull her longsword from its hiding place and unsheathed it, Saeana noticing her sudden change in demeanor.
"What is it?" she murmured, their spat forgotten for the moment, retrieving her bow and quiver from where they hung on a broken-off branch nearby, her eyes now trailing Shadowmere's gaze.
"Something's here," she murmured, focusing her eyes over her left shoulder. "Something sounds…different…" she trailed off, her own voice distorting her ability to hear the world around her. Even before her time as a horse, Shadowmere had hypersensitive hearing; she disliked it a great deal of the time, as it was distracting and uncomfortable to experience, but at times like these it was too useful to curse.
What she heard wasn't something she could easily explain; it was like crushed glass being blown in the wind and cutting through the leaves and abrading the bark of the trees, or explosive powder igniting as it rushed past a cliff face and setting the particles in the air on fire. It was compounded by the sound of the said particles or bark and leaves screaming in agony as they were torn to pieces. Before she could relay any of this information to Saeana a far more obvious sound came out of the shrubs around the thinly clustered forest, the branches rustling as something moved behind them. As Saeana drew back the shot, Shadowmere caught sight of the cause of the noise, her breath clinging to her throat. "What the hell?" she breathed as the daedroth came into view. The hulking monstrosity growled almost lasciviously at the sight of their Elven flesh, marinating in the dewy dawn air, as drool flowed in torrents down its jaws.
Hesitating only a second, the creature charged toward where Shadowmere was crouched and with a mighty leap, bounded for her with its massive clawed arms spread wide, like a living bear trap. With a sound like the air had been stung, Shadowmere watched the lizard-monster lurch backwards with an arrow lodged in its snout, howling in pain. Seizing the opportunity, Shadowmere thrust her daedric longsword into the beast's throat and downward toward its loins. The skin of its abdomen opened up like macabre flower blooming, exposing the bowels within as she drew her knee up and thrust her bare foot against the left side of the daedroth's chest, sending it crashing to the ground. Catching her breath, she kicked the beast's scaled knee, leaving a series of scrapes on the top of her foot, as Saeana settled with circling the massive carcass, taking in every detail of the mangled monster.
"Where in the hell did that come from?" Saeana asked after a moment of silence, tucking the bow under her arm. "Daedroths don't just show up in Tamriel of their own accord." Though she knew little about the demonic creatures, Shadowmere did know that much. They were conjurers' pets for the most part; she and Saeana had taken on a few of them, but the corpses had always disappeared as soon as the pulses stopped, unlike the one that they had just slain. That, Shadowmere quickly realized, wasn't exactly a blessing.
"I don't know, but I wish it would go back," she said quickly, covering her nose with her elbow. With her sense of smell almost as sensitive as her hearing, the stench of rotten flesh and fecal matter from the daedroth's exposed bowels nearly made her gag. Darting toward the trees, she looked up taking a few deep breaths and trying to convince her stomach to not turn itself inside out. As the nausea diminished slightly, she caught sight of a tromped down path amidst the tall grasses and wide-spread trees that had likely been the course taken by the now dead daedroth. Letting out a sigh of frustration, she motioned down the path with her sword. "I'm going to guess it came from that way," she said, making eye contact with Saeana. Leaning forward to get a better look at the path, Saeana pulled her bow off of her arm once again and took an arrow from the quiver slung on her back.
"We should check it out," she said, with a modicum of fear in her voice. "If there are any more of these things we should take care of them before they make their way to the main roads." Shadowmere felt the corner of her mouth drawing up into an amused smirk; Saeana had said she didn't care about the rest of the world, but her actions indicated otherwise. She tried to keep her amusement hidden and not allow herself to comment on Saeana's apparent hypocrisy.
"Lead the way," Shadowmere said, making a graceful gesture of mock submission and allowing Saeana the right to take charge. Instead, her friend shook her head.
"If I'm further back I can surprise them from a distance," she said plainly. "If I hit them before they're expecting it, they won't be able to block my shot. You hunker down and when they come for me, jump out and skewer them." Shadowmere nodded, considering the matter carefully.
"If we're quiet about it, the others may never even know anything's wrong until they're lying in pieces," she murmured, thinking out loud. Saeana nodded with a grin, glad that her plan made sense to her. "Although we're operating on the assumption that there's going to be more of these ugly bastards to deal with," Shadowmere added.
"True, but we're not going to find out unless we get going," Saeana said, nocking an arrow and motioning toward the beaten down path. Shadowmere looked her over cautiously.
"You're not going to try and shoot me in the back, are you?" She hadn't forgotten that, prior to this incident, she and Saeana had been literally at one another's throats.
"Not when I still need you to help kill daedra," her friend said, her tone not lending a great amount of confidence to Shadowmere's feeling of personal safety. "So would you go already?" Wishing she had a mirror with which to watch her companion behind her, Shadowmere hesitantly started on the beaten track. Her bare, indigo feet were slightly cooled by the grass, was still cloaked in the morning dew, despite having been tromped down by the clumsy, homunculus feet of the daedroth. And while the grasses had suffered under the monster, the path was ideally constructed for hiding human and elven footprints, each blade of crushed grass acting like a spring. No sooner had her foot left the ground than every vestige of her step was erased leaving only the path laid by the daedroth.
Forgetting the phenomenon of her disappearing footprint, Shadowmere forced her mind to pay attention to the world around her. There was evidence of the beast's trek everywhere, broken branches, tree trunks gouged with deep claw marks, far deeper than any bear could make, and bits of scaly, shed skin littering the ground.
"You want some boots?" she said, gesturing toward a large piece. Saeana wrinkled her nose and scowled at the suggestion that she carry a trophy of the loathsome creature on her feet.
"Like I want Astral Vapors," she chimed, tossing it off the path with the end of her bow. "Thanks though." Shadowmere smiled to herself, but quickly refocused her mind on the task. The sound of specks of ground glass screaming past her ears and flagellating the trees was now almost unbearable, but it did help to keep her alert. She was able to catch a glimpse of something, many things actually, moving up ahead, and the disconcerting sight of what looked like a fire burning in the middle of a group of the woods. Ducking quickly behind a tree, Shadowmere motioned for Saeana to follow suit; habit assured her that her friend wouldn't hide too far from Shadowmere to be able to talk.
"Do you see them?" she whispered in a voice barely in range of hearing, motioning to Saeana, who had taken refuge behind a boulder neighboring Shadowmere's tree. Saeana gave a nod. "Can you get a clear shot from here?" This time, Saeana's response was negative, Shadowmere's shoulders drooping a little though she had suspected this might be the case. Further ahead, the tree line thinned and taking cover would be more difficult. But the cover they needed seemed be more of a detriment than an asset, as the thick foliage made it difficult for Saeana to find her target. If she couldn't hit her target, Shadowmere hiding in the underbrush for an ambush was useless.
"Can we try and get closer?" Saeana whispered, gesturing with her head toward their quarry. Shadowmere sighed, but nodded.
"I don't think we have much of a choice," she admitted, staying crouched down and creeping out from behind the thick bodied tree. "Just try and stay low, find a hiding spot and stay there until I'm in place. I'll cover you." Saeana gave no acknowledgement whether she had heard her or not, but snuck ahead of Shadowmere and moved with impressive silence through the tall grasses. Shadowmere's knees were unaccustomed to being bent and crouched for such a long time, and didn't keep that secret well. The dull ache seemed to precede her in each step, but the discomfort served only as a minor distraction as she kept one eye on Saeana and the other on what she suspected were daedra in the distance. As Saeana approached a small half-buried boulder, she pressed her back against it and motioned to Shadowmere that this would be her post. Shadowmere nodded and made a map in her head of the immediate area, pinpointing herself and Saeana within it, as she continued on toward the moving embers between the branches and grasses. As she slinked through the undergrowth, the throbbing in her knees became nigh on unbearable.
"Come on Shad," she chanted to herself. "Toughen up, stop acting your age." Though in appearance she was still a very young woman, Shadowmere knew how old she was. Despite the fact that Dunmer lived for hundreds of years, fifty years of abusing joints could still catch up with a person. It made her feel unnecessarily and inconveniently old. It was discouraging to see Saeana, who was the same age as her body, able to move freely and without pain, while Shadowmere had to acknowledge that something as simple as crawling might not be possible. "Don't be stupid," she scolded herself, trying to squeeze her thoughts out of her head through her ears. "It's not like I need a walking stick or can't open a jar; it's just bad knees. If Saeana had been a horse for thirty years, she probably wouldn't move so well either."
Unable to continue her trek on two legs, however convincing her self-assurance, she begrudgingly assumed the position in which she had been posed for more than half her life. She was so focused on her aching joints, she hardly noticed the sky above her turning from a scowling grey to a foul orange. Skulking through the grass on her hands and knees, she managed to alternate her focus from the moving figures ahead of her and maintain the knowledge of where Saeana was hidden. Drawing closer to the targets, she instinctively dropped to her belly and began shimmying, careful to not disturb the graceful stalks of grass around her, determined to not give away her position.
"Well well," an unnaturally gravelly voice made the air scowl and Shadowmere's stomach churn. Things hadn't gone according to her intentions. The pointed metal digging into the nape of her neck didn't give her any feelings of security either. "A pathetic denizen of the mortal realm, coming to the feet of the daedra as a suppliant." She didn't need his revelation of his identity to know what it was standing over her. As far as she knew, only one type of daedra wielded weapons and spoke intelligently with such an unnatural tone; the dremora. "Have you come to entreat us for mercy? Or do you seek a quick death, knowing what it means now that the barriers have been breached?" Despite the fact that she should have been terrified by her imminent demise, Shadowmere found the creature's speech annoying enough to distract from the fear.
"Do you always talk this much?" she boldly asked, lifting her eyes to see the massive humanoid daedra's void black face curl into a deeper scowl than the one with which it had been born. "No wonder people beg for death when you're around; they can't stand listening to you." The beast-man dug his weapon deeper into her neck, though Shadowmere had no regrets about her comments. "If I'm going, I'm going with my mind cleared," she reasoned, even as she felt a trickle of blood drizzle down her neck from the blade piercing her skin.
"Insolent mortal whelp!" the dremora howled in its baritone shriek. "You will learn your place!" Though the blade withdrew from her skin, its absence gave no comfort to Shadowmere; especially when she saw the dremora's shadow change. Though every fiber of her being urged her to do otherwise, she forced her eyes to stay open and watched as the beast raised its weapon, a longsword as black as the daedra's skin, and moved to bring it down on her neck. Before he could even lower the blade, the dremora was staggered by an arrow that had flown so quickly through the air, Shadowmere hadn't heard it.
Instantly losing interest in her, the dremora grabbed the shaft of the arrow and broke it off from where it lodged in his shoulder and charged toward the trees where Saeana was hidden. Knowing her friend was expecting her to cut the monster down before he even got close, Shadowmere clung to his leg, trying to conjure a new plan. To her surprise, the dremora flung her easily across the ground as he walked, and it was clear that she would lose her strength to hold on before he would be impeded by her. As he dragged her on her bare belly across the forest floor, seemingly unfazed by her weight, she did the only thing she could think of. Wincing preemptively, she bared her teeth and bit down on the dremora's thick muscled ankle as hard as she could. Like a mule stung by a bee, the demon howled and wheeled around, trying to shake her off his foot. No words, just a bestial howl with the same tone as nails on a chalkboard; it made Shadowmere want to pierce her eardrums with an ice pick. Still, she kept her teeth clenched around the beast's leg, knowing she was doing what she had to do in order to keep her friend safe.
"Release me!" it demanded, shaking his leg violently, apparently not thinking that his sword would do the trick, which was obviously to Shadowmere's advantage.
"Not on your life," she taunted through her tightly clamped teeth. The muscles in the leg tensed and spasmed so wildly that it felt as though her teeth might be ripped from her gums, but still she held her jaw firm. Suddenly, they relaxed, easing the strain on her mouth, but she didn't dare release her hold on the ankle, even as the body to which it was attached slumped to the ground.
"You BIT a dremora?!" Lifting her eyes, Shadowmere saw Saeana standing over her, her hand on her hip, looking down with no small amount of disgust. "This is what you're doing to protect me?!" Using her finger to help disengage her teeth from the immortal flesh, Shadowmere managed to sit upright.
"I was being resourceful, if you must know," she said, hacking out a spittle laced with perversely dark blood. "Thanks for taking him down as fast as you did," she offered quickly, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand and looking down to inspect the long scrapes on her belly where she had been dragged. Saeana scoffed, crouching down next to her.
"If I'd known you were holding on with your teeth, I would have tried to make it faster," she said, looking quickly over her shoulder. "Aren't you worried about what diseases that thing might have?" Shadowmere hadn't been worried at all.
"Daedra don't get sick, do they?" she asked, less as a question and more as a reminder to her friend. "They're immortal." Simultaneously, they looked over at the dead thing on the ground; supposedly "immortal." "Too bad we can't ask him." Saeana shook her head and rolled her eyes.
"Even if he was alive, you couldn't ask him; your teeth would still be too stuck in his leg." Shadowmere chortled a little as Saeana gave a halfhearted smile. "We shouldn't lurk around; we have more of his buddies to kill." Shadowmere nodded, knowing her friend was right, even if her knees begged to differ.
"Give me a minute to make peace with my legs," she said, massaging her knees, which were now indented by her crawl on the grass and scraped from the distance she had been dragged.
"Yeah," Saeana said, moving along the ground with frustrating grace. "Don't crawl on the ground, it makes you easier to hear."
"I can't help it, my knees don't work like they should."
"Keep your body low and only bend your knees if absolutely necessary," Saeana said, demonstrating the position before assuming her previous position. "And quit whining. You sound like an old biddy." Shadowmere rolled her eyes, Saeana already putting too much distance between them to refute her comment.
"Bitchy little clannfear runt," she muttered under her breath, getting to her feet and lowering her body over her knees, looking up and trying to walk normally. "Feels like I'm a cat in heat," she thought, glancing at how far her backside stuck out as she walked. She begrudgingly had to acknowledge that her knees did feel better and she was much quieter, but she disliked how exposed it made her feel. Only too glad to press her back against the rough bark of a large tree, she looked back at where Saeana had positioned herself and gave a thumbs up with her left hand, her right on the hilt of her sword. Looking around the tree she caught sight of the group of daedra, now fully visible through the gaps in the branches. Two daedroths, a fully grown clannfear, and a spider daedra were meandering around an open patch in the woods. She looked back toward Saeana, watching her take aim with her bow. As the arrow rushed past her, Shadowmere jerked her head around and watched as it landed in the clannfear's crown, knocking the creature off of its feet. It let out a cry like a door creaking and claws scratching on glass as it got to its feet and charged into the woods.
Waiting until the beast had just passed her, Shadowmere burst out from behind the tree and swung her arm down as hard as she could, hacking the creature in half. As the remains shook posthumously, one half independent of the other, Shadowmere stabbed the green, clawed and beaked daedra through the skull, making sure it was well and truly dead. Hurrying backwards, she motioned for Saeana to repeat her attack. "That was surprisingly easy," she admitted to herself, not holding her hopes for an encore too closely to her heart.
Tucking her knees under her, she heard the air yip as another arrow flew past and the sound of it embedding itself in the flesh of another daedroth, like a snake embedding its fangs. To Shadowmere's intense horror, the sound of two of the ghastly creatures bellowing shook the branches and their charge made the ground rattle beneath them. "Damn it, why can't things just be simple?" she griped, watching as Saeana nocked two arrows and let them fly, angled such that each managed to strike a different target. The first struck the daedroth, for which Saeana had originally aimed, between the eyes. While a fatal injury for anything less, Shadowmere knew that the creature's natural armor protected it from such a hit. The second arrow hit the second daedroth in the snout, making it reel and bellow angrily.
Using what little opportunity she had been given, Shadowmere leapt out of her hiding place and jumped on the back of the second daedroth. The rough skin abrading the sensitive skin on her thighs Shadowmere held on to the beast's spines with one hand and drove her sword into its neck. As the daedroth tumbled to the ground, Shadowmere fell off its back and rolled to the side, being careful to not fall on her own sword. Scrambling to her feet, she charged toward the other one that Saeana was now being forced to take on alone. While she was impressed by the skill her friend possessed, able to back away from the beast and continue to fire her arrows with almost mechanical accuracy and fluidity, keeping her eyes focused on the daedra in front of her, Shadowmere knew that Saeana would eventually trip and bring the predator upon her.
Running as fast as she could, she jumped on the creature's back as she had the first, but as her hands made contact with the scales, the beast shrugged her off just as easily as if she had been a coat thrown on its shoulders. It continued to relentlessly pursue Saeana, who had managed to put at least a little more distance between herself and the daedroth. Desperate, Shadowmere drove her sword through the beast's tail, effectively staking it to the ground. Giving a mighty roar, the daedroth charged forward, tearing open its tail and bending Shadowmere's sword. But the creature had now been left off balance from the absence of part of its tail, and stumbled left and right like a Nord sailor on shore leave. Shadowmere pulled her sword from the ground and shook the remains of the tail from it, cringing a little at the sight of the viscera flying left and right. Rushing toward the drunken looking creature, she hacked at it with her ruined sword, desperate to distract it from her friend. When the blade lodged in the creature's shoulder, she finally gained its attention.
"Come get me, you ugly bastard!" Shadowmere yelled, forgetting there were more daedra deeper in the woods. Snarling and slobbering all over its massive teeth, the daedroth swung at her with its filth-laden claws. She managed to duck under the beast's elbow and dodged its blows, while it continued to flail wildly, and ripped the sword out of the its arm and drove the bent blade into its back. A sudden breeze past her cheek, sounding something like a mosquito, rushed toward the daedroth and embedded itself in its eye. The arrow proved to be the straw that broke the camel's back, the beast letting out a howl and falling limp to its knees and forward onto its snout.
Wheeling around, Shadowmere, still clutching her face, scowled at Saeana, who was still lowering her bow.
"Cutting it a little close, aren't you?" she snapped, rubbing her cheek where the arrow had rushed past. "You almost hit m-" Abruptly, Shadowmere found herself unable to speak, unable to move, unable to even blink her eyes. With her stomach in her toes and her hand frozen on her cheek, she felt herself tipping forward, powerless to break her fall.
"Not again," she cringed, the feeling of having her entire body paralyzed unpleasantly familiar. It brought back all the odious memories of when she had been made into a horse. The smell of the dead horse's blood trickling down the ground around her, the look in her eyes when Shadowmere had slit her throat, the sound of Hannibal's voice as the creature he loved so dearly died before his eyes. It was like a nightmare for all of her senses.
She crashed to the ground like a glass figurine falling off of a mantel, the hand covering her cheek protecting her face from injury, though the rest of her almost bare body had virtually no protection. Lying paralyzed on the blood-soaked ground, Shadowmere did her best to keep from panicking, though the memories flooding her mind made that task nearly impossible. "I'm in my own body, and Saeana's here, she saw what happened, she has some magic," she counseled herself. She managed to calm herself, even as she caught sight of a tiny spider daedra showing its fangs, stained red with her blood, in a boastful, macabre grin. "You little horse's ass," she thought, unable to speak her mind. As she wished fiercely for the ability to kill with a thought, Shadowmere was taken aback by the sight of Saeana's foot striking the spiderling and punting it far out of sight.
"The venom will wear off in a minute," her friend assured her, kneeling and thoughtfully tucking a length of Shadowmere's obsidian tresses behind her ear. "You're welcome by the way. And I'll ignore your little tantrum about my arrow." Though she very much wanted to ream out her friend, Shadowmere said nothing, even as the feeling started to return to her face and fingertips. Moving her lips to spread the feeling from her mouth to her cheeks, she curled her fingers into fists and managed to push herself upright. "You're bleeding," Saeana observed, gesturing toward her forehead. Clumsily putting a hand to her face, Shadowmere found that in fact she was bleeding from a split lip and a scrape on her brow ridge.
"Great," she muttered, wiping her hand on her bare leg. "Well, if there's a spiderling, there has to be a mother somewhere," she said, getting awkwardly to her feet, her knees wobbling like a newborn foal's. Her feet still tingling and largely insensate, she felt her body struggling to make up the difference as she tried to keep her balance.
"I know," Saeana said, holding onto her elbow to keep her from falling. "And she knows where we are, even if we don't see her." Glancing around the area, Shadowmere was surprised that she didn't see the tell tale waving grass and hear the enormous spider rushing toward them. Without warning, a force strong enough to slam them both to the ground assaulted them from behind. Shadowmere didn't have time to scream or even grunt in surprise before she found herself face down in the dirt once again.
"You bitch!" Shadowmere yelped, looking behind her to see the spider daedra hissing madly at them as she leapt toward Saeana's leg. Her outburst surprised the creature just enough that she could kick the spider square in the jaw, stunning it while Saeana managed to land a single arrow in its forehead. Dazed and bleeding, the daedra staggered backwards and grabbed at the arrow, while Shadowmere delivered another punishing kick to the creature's face, bloodying it and knocking it to the ground. Jumping up, she drove her feet down on the spider's skull, feeling it crack under her calloused heel.
"That's disgusting," Saeana grimaced, looking sallow and woozy. Shadowmere rolled her eyes, dismissing her repugnance.
"My sword is broken, I have to improvise," she sighed, trying to excuse her brutal action, even as she rubbed her foot against the ground to get the matter off of it. "Are you going to take stuff from these things or what?" Though clearly nauseated, Saeana set about taking pieces of the dead daedra, pulling loose teeth from the daedroths and squeezing the venom and silk from the spider, then cutting the heart from the dremora, and the claws from the clannfear. As much as her own actions repulsed Saeana, that was as much as Saeana's sickened Shadowmere. She knew the specimens were valuable and that Saeana was right to take them when the opportunity arose, but Shadowmere still found the practice disgusting.
"Weep, fettlekyn!" The unnatural voice surprised both women to the point where Shadowmere openly swore and Saeana dropped a fistful of teeth back into the daedroth's mouth. A dremora, one that they had certainly not seen before, was barreling toward them, swinging a mace and bearing the scowl characteristic of his kind. Bending backward to avoid the mace's reach, Shadowmere barely managed to pull herself upright before the weapon came after Saeana. Charging like a mad ram, she drove her shoulder into the demon's gut, slamming them both into a tree and making him grunt.
"Sae-!" Shadowmere gasped, the impact of their bodies against the trunk having knocked the wind out of her. "Do someth-ing!" Before Saeana could even react, the dremora reached down and wrapped his fingers around Shadowmere's throat.
"Shatter, weakling!" the beast man shouted, squeezing her neck as he lifted her off the ground, ignoring Saeana. Unwilling to submit to this fate, Shadowmere swung her body backwards and used the motion to swing her legs up and around the enormous armored bicep, locking her feet.
"Now…" she tried to shout, but she couldn't find the air to move her words. "…would be the time to do something!" That's what she would have said, hoping that Saeana would make something happen; anything. Keeping one knee twisted around the dremora's arm, she used her other leg to kick at his head, feeling each detail of his contorted face beneath her foot. Her head swimming amidst thoughts of death and the desire for life, she held on as tight as she could, though she felt her fingers weakening and losing their hold as the dremora's fingers dug deeper into her neck. Though she could feel the strength leaving her and a starry night sky was closing around her eyes while her lungs tore themselves to shreds in their desperate search for air, she kept kicking. Her consciousness becoming a memory, Shadowmere felt her morning's dream returning to her.
She was running, her hooves pounding the ethereal ground, the movement stirring shimmering clouds of iridescent dust. Though she couldn't see it, she knew something was smiling at her, calling her by a sound she didn't recognize; a name, a greeting, a curse, she didn't know which. She ran harder, the smile growing broader and the cloud of dust shimmering like a flawless diamond in the sun. Unable to breathe with the ferocity of her run, she found the light getting brighter. Shadowmere could almost feel the warmth of the beam when she felt as though she was about to surface after having been underwater for far too long, and the dream began to crumble.
Shooting upright, Shadowmere gasped deeper than she ever had before, clutching her throat where the dremora had held her and drinking in the sweet, heavy morning air.
"It's about time," Saeana said, holding her by her shoulders and a sigh of relief in her eyes. Unable to control herself, she wrapped her arms around Shadowmere and rested her head against her shoulder. "I was getting worried about you." She was like a little child greeting her mother when she came home. Shadowmere coughed, clearing her throat and massaging the skin, still indented with the beast's ragged nails, but spared a hand to wrap around her Saeana's arm that was locked around her front.
"How'd you take him down?" she asked, after a moment of comforting, her voice as haggard as an Argonian barmaid's, and looked for the corpse she knew had to be around somewhere. Releasing her hold across Shadowmere's chest, Saeana wordlessly reached down beside her knees and held up a smithing hammer, the rounded corners now cracked off and coated with blood that dripped off every edge and ran down the handle. Looking over the corpse, not ten feet away, Shadowmere was slightly repulsed; her friend had shown no mercy to the dremora, whose head now looked like a hunk of partially masticated meat. "Very resourceful," she said quietly, looking away in a hurry. Just as Shadowmere had before, Saeana had made a rather distasteful, but necessary, improvisation.
"How did we miss that one?" Saeana asked, lifting her head and tossing the hammer into the underbrush with disdain; the tool was now totally useless and even less pleasing to behold. "I only saw the four; the spider, the clannfear, and the two daedroths. Did you see it?" Shadowmere shook her head, the answer only raising more questions.
"I didn't see the first dremora either," Shadowmere murmured, still trying to catch her breath as she tried to iron the imprints out of her skin. "So how did they get here?"
"I don't know." Her friend merely shook her head, getting to her feet and extending her hand to her. "Can you get up?" Saeana looked toward her, surveying the damage the beast had inflicted. "We should go look where we first saw the others. Maybe there's a cave or something where they're hiding out." Shadowmere nodded, letting Saeana pull her to her feet. She motioned to all the carcasses lying strewn on the ground, just waiting for rot to set in.
"You get everything you wanted from those things?" she asked. Saeana nodded, not giving the bodies a second glance as they wandered into the forest and looked for anything out of place.
It only took a short walk for the two Dunmer women to come across what could only be an explanation; a colossal, lucent oval, framed by a dark structure constructed from a substance Shadowmere couldn't identify, stood in the middle of the clearing. To her surprise as she got closer to the edifice, a monument to the fallen daedra that were scattered around it, Shadowmere heard the sound she had first sensed when they started their march into the woods. She had all but forgotten it, subconsciously choosing to focus on killing before being killed instead of annoying sensory stimuli. Now though, she had to fight to keep from covering her ears to block out the low volume but high intensity sound. That sound; it was so unnatural that the air around her seemed to be trying to reject it. It was like the voice of the dremora, or the clannfear; it simply wasn't something that belonged in this world. "…now that the barriers have been breached…" The first dremora's words rang in Shadowmere's mind.
"What did you say the Emperor said before he died?" she murmured, looking over to Saeana, who stared in awe and terror at the abominable display. She remembered the words, but they were bouncing around her head, disjointed and meaningless.
"Close shut the jaws of Oblivion," Saeana breathed, unable to separate her gaze from the unholy vision. Shaking her head, Shadowmere struggled to make sense of the two statements. "…barriers have been breached…" "…close shut the jaws…" "…breached…" "…close…" There was a definite congruence, but Shadowmere just couldn't find the bridge between them.
"You think this is what he was talking about?" she offered, as Saeana closed her eyes, trying to take things in. Without a word, her friend turned and started walking back toward the camp, slinging her bow over her shoulder. Shadowmere didn't see a point in speaking up again; she knew Saeana had heard her, but she wasn't going to listen at the moment. Their new wounds were bleeding, but the old ones hadn't had time to heal.
The walk was quiet, the unnatural sound of the unnatural structure offered the only audible accompaniment to their trek. Shadowmere took the quiet time to examine her new injuries; at the moment, there was nothing from which she wouldn't recover. There was a small cut to her neck, from the first dremora's sword, the scrapes on her inner legs from her impromptu ride on the back of the daedroth, a slight split lip and bump to her right brow from her fall from the spiderling's bite and the marks on her throat where the last dremora had held her. All in all, an uncomfortable, but not overly painful encounter. She had found herself in far worse shape any given morning at Tavrel's house.
As they approached the camp, Shadowmere set herself beside the pond once more, dipping her hands in the water and bringing up a makeshift bowl into which she dunked her face. As she rubbed the cold, cathartic liquid over her neck, she caught sight of her indigo arms and the strange, scraped wounds she had somehow acquired in her fight with Saeana.
"Fine!" Saeana's exclamation was so sudden that it made Shadowmere jump, splashing herself with the icy water. "Fine, we're close enough to Chorrol that I really don't have an excuse to not go. At any rate, I don't want to stay here anymore." Shadowmere smiled to herself, her back to Saeana, as she washed her arms, satisfied with her success. It had only taken a fight with six denizens from a demonic plane and a near death experience for her to gain the upper hand. "Like candy from a baby."
"When do you want to leave?" she asked, intent on scrubbing the red off of her lapis skin, as though she was polishing a gem. It was strange; either there was dirt in her strangely painless wounds, or they had already begun to scab in tiny pin-pricks.
"I don't know," Saeana sighed, her voice sounding defeated as she slumped, presumably, against one of the boulders. "After breakfast I guess." It was her friend's mention of breakfast that brought a realization to Shadowmere's mind. Tentatively, she licked one of the residual red stains on her arm finding it wasn't blood, it was strawberry juice, and the "scabs" were seeds. Her mind beginning to reel, she scanned the ground fervently, her stomach grumbling with annoyance as she found that the bag of strawberries had been smashed in the fracas, and spread across the scuffled dirt, the juice bleeding through the thin bag.
"Oh crap," she muttered, hurrying back to the cooking pot that now boiled angrily on the fire. The water had steamed almost entirely from inside, leaving the sticky, burnt mass of rice congealed on the metal. Taking a spoon and Saeana's still damp pants that she had thrown down, she steadied the pot and tried to move the mass with the spoon, succeeding only in making the unappetizing meal even more so.
"So, Saeana?" she said hesitantly, not wanting to bring this up as well. As if the morning hadn't been draining enough, they now had to face the rest of it on an empty stomach.
"What?" her friend huffed, gathering the wet clothing scattered through the camp and giving her a look that said "shut your face before I break it in."
"How would you feel about leaving before breakfast?" Shadowmere asked, in meekest fear of Saeana doing exactly as her expression had dictated. Instead, Saeana's head dropped and her face seemed to send up a white flag.
"Rice burned?" she asked needlessly. "Burned" wasn't the word that first jumped to Shadowmere's mind when she looked at the pulverized mass of viscous grains, but certainly the bottom part was scorched.
"Let's call it that," she said hesitantly, scooping out a spoonful of the pulpy meal and throwing it on the fire, which crackled and hissed, trying to spit it out.
"So, if you had listened to me and not poured the rice in we would at least have breakfast now?" Saeana's voice was heavily laden with the most potent venom Shadowmere had ever heard.
"Yeah," she admitted with reluctance as she rolled her eyes. "So I guess we're tied for arguments then," she said, hoping to get her friend to smile. The comment fell like an adamantium netch.
"I'd rather you were right about the rice," Saeana sighed, her voice filled with defeat and exhaustion as she began breaking down the camp.