Scamps and Spells
Their nameless fears only intensified as the two competitors stood in the foyer of the menacing tower. Shadowmere had gotten used to seeing at night, but there was something different about the darkness that now surrounded them; it was as though she was looking through a red lens that tinged everything a terrifying crimson and impaired her ability to see altogether.
Beyond the foyer was the only room visible on this floor of the tower, empty with the exception of a burning orange jet of light, complete with the muted roar and clanging sound of an oblivion gate. It was surrounded by a bony rail, perhaps to keep the more simple of the daedric servants from falling into the beam.
"Should I cast a Light spell?" Saeana's voice, though timid and uncharacteristically soft, still managed to make Shadowmere jump.
"No," she murmured, after she had made certain she hadn't soiled her armor. "If we can't see them, they probably can't see us either and even if they can, casting the spell would draw their attention." She was already a little uneasy about speak so much without knowing whence an attack could come.
"Good thought," Saeana mumbled in return. Keeping her hand wrapped around the hilt of her sword, Shadowmere tried to force her eyes to adjust to the strange darkness and obscurity in order to find something that would give them some kind of advantage. The first thing she noticed was a dark doorway to her left that led down a dark corridor. As they stood now, there was some trivial amount of light shining on them that served no purpose except to illuminate their positions. Grabbing Saeana's wrist, she dragged her into the dark cavernous hall, her first objective taken care of. The circular hall that ran around the circumference of the enormous room wasn't as dark as Shadowmere had first thought. Though covered in patches of darkness, the walls were riddled with archways allowing for access all around the room.
Now she set her sights, however blind they might be, on finding the enemy she knew was there. The problem was that she couldn't tell if the movements she saw were real or just her eyes playing tricks on her. The air itself seemed to move in strange spirals or whorls, just like when she was overly tired and saw bizarre things in the shadows.
"The fact that I'm overly tired now doesn't help." Though true, the thought didn't help as she continued to scan the darkness for proof of what she saw. A movement by the rail around the flaring beam that shot up the middle of the spire gave her a small degree of hope as she crept closer to the nearest arch to get a better look. Squinting to force her eyes to focus, she was relieved to see that this time, there was actually something to see. The blazing form of a flame atronach was just barely visible in this fiery world, but it WAS visible. Not wanting to tip her hand, she motioned to Saeana to nock an arrow and pointed out where she ought to aim. Without so much as a breath, Saeana let the projectile fly, as silent as death itself.
As the arrow took down the atronach, the angry roar of a dremora caught both women completely off-guard.
"Damn it," she hissed, pulling her sword from its baldric and prepared her stance to absorb what would no doubt be a tremendous hit.
"Crawl on your belly!" the man-like creature snarled, already so close that Shadowmere could see the acid green of his sclera, and smell the rot from his blackened and cracked teeth.
"You first!" she yelled back, severing the foul head from the body before she even had time to think about what she was doing. Without even a second to celebrate her victory, a screeching clannfear barreled toward her, its beaked mouth drooling and its claws caked with dirt and blood. With only enough time to jam her shield between the two of them, Shadowmere hid behind it and absorbed the impact of the green, scaled creature against her forearm. She used the shield to shove the beast away and swung with her sword, managing to land a glancing blow on the clannfear's stomach. It recoiled, giving another ear-rending scream and giving Saeana an opportunity to drive two arrows into its skull and crown.
"Eight to seven," Saeana boasted.
"Bullshit!" Shadowmere said quickly, her temper flaring once again. "You can't take credit for something I already hit!" Saeana rolled her eyes and crouched beside the clannfear.
"One little cut on a clannfear's tummy doesn't count as a kill," she retorted, jerking her arrows out of the creature and waving the bloodied tips at Shadowmere. "It was the two arrows I shot that took it down." Shadowmere felt her temper rise again.
"Oh, so I'm a bird flusher, is that it?" It wasn't a horse, but a hunting dog wasn't exactly a more flattering comparison.
"Almighty Azura, you're a sore sport," Saeana huffed, standing up and moving carefully around the corpses. Her hair seemed to gleam like an ember in the red light of the room as she skulked around the circumference of the round room.
"Only when you cheat," Shadowmere muttered, mimicking Saeana's movements, searching for any signs of life that had yet to be eradicated.
"Hey, it's not like the game is over," Saeana reminded her, ducking into an alcove across the room from the one in which they'd hidden. "You've got plenty of time to try and beat me." Shadowmere blew a puff of air at a tendril of hair that had escaped its braided confines. It pissed her off when Saeana bragged about her own success under the guise of offering encouragement.
"Brag if you're going to brag, don't pretend you're doing me a favor." Running her fingers over the walls, she sought any sort of imperfection her eyes could no longer make out; there had to be a door around here somewhere. "Here," Saeana said, her voice muffled from the alcove. "I found a way out." "Of course she found it," Shadowmere thought spitefully. She wasn't sure why she was in such a bad mood, but it could only work to their advantage considering the daedra they would certainly encounter.
Creeping with the feet of cats, they carefully made their way through the door into another darkened hallway with even less light than the first room.
"Good gods," Saeana whispered from somewhere in the void. "I can't even find my fingers!" Reaching for Saeana, Shadowmere managed to find her shoulder and held on to it while she stretched her hand back, feeling for the door through which they had come. Once located, she ran her fingers over the door and along the wall, pulling Saeana behind her as she groped her way away from the door. She didn't get far before a surprise incline caused Shadowmere to trip and thus take Saeana down with her.
"What the-?" she whispered in anger and shock as she tumbled to the floor. She had intended to keep speaking but was cut off when Saeana landed on top of her, forcing the breath from her lungs and further exacerbating the pain and swelling in her breast. She bit her lip to keep from screaming and tossed off Saeana, who landed by her side with a small "oof." Shadowmere rolled over to her and put her head beside Saeana's ear.
"What do you have against my boobs?" she asked in a harsh whisper, trying to keep from saying anything too loud. "They never did anything to you!"
"Why do you insist on throwing me around?" Saeana retorted just as quietly, groaning softly as she pushed herself upright. "Let's table that for now," she replied to herself, before Shadowmere could speak. "And let's crawl up, instead of trying to trip our way up."
"Alright," Shadowmere agreed, gingerly rubbing her throbbing chest. "As long as you leave my knockers alone."
"Agreed," Saeana sighed, already on her knees. Lumbering like two bear cubs, the two women blindly crawled up a never ending acclivity. Shadowmere found this exceptionally distasteful, her back holding a grudge for all the tomfoolery in which she had engaged for the past two days. Still, it didn't seem as though there was much choice in the matter. They couldn't see well enough to walk upright, and they still had to get to the top of the tower somehow. This was where the dickhead had said his friend was and so this was where they had to be.
Just when she was certain they'd never see the light of day again, a burning glow somewhere above them caught Shadowmere's eyes. She nudged Saeana with her elbow and gestured toward the top. Gradually they made their way up to the cusp of the incline and peered over the edge. Hoping to keep her body hidden, she watched for any hint of movement from the ambient darkness as she struggled to keep from sliding down the precipice.
"You see anything?" she whispered to Saeana, after her own initial glances proved fruitless.
"No," Saeana murmured as she slid down the incline, clawing at the floor with her fingernails to help keep from sliding.
"Alright," Shadowmere said, crawling into the room and getting to her feet. "Keep an eye out." Saeana gave a curt nod and found the wall with her left hand. A clanging "thunk" echoed over and over, adding an unnecessarily ominous knell to the silence, the sound coming closer as Shadowmere calmly walked the area of the space. Hoping for the best, her sight not yet optimal for the lack of light, she allowed her fingers to creep along the wall as though they were prisoners escaping their cell. Without warning, the unwary jailbirds were countered with thick bars that pulsed like a knife plunged into a still beating heart.
With the hair on the back of her neck standing on end, Shadowmere used her hands to examine the rusting metal, still pulsing under her palms; following them to their ends, she found the topmost one came to a point which she discovered with her right hand while her left continued to stand at the opposite end of the spike. Dropping her hands as a set, she had intended to see how far the bars went, but that changed when she found a decidedly un-metal, un-spiked object skewered on them. The skin was decaying and sagging from its bones, the cheese-like lumps nearly making Shadowmere throw up where she stood. From the small size, long ears and piggish nose, she could tell it was a scamp and while the texture of the rotting flesh was disgusting, Shadowmere was relieved that it still had enough shape for its nature to be discerned and that it wasn't human, elven or of the beastfolk.
As her eyes began to adjust to the darkness, she wandered through the room, abandoning the wall after her encounter with the throbbing spikes and the putrefying scamp, and trusting her instinct to guide her. All the shadows in the room seemed to dance, though she knew it was just her eyes trying to make sense of the lack of visual input. She remembered what Hannibal had told her about shadows, and how he had given her a name based on what he had said; "…cast according to the light…" he had said. There was no light here, so there were no shadows. When the thought crossed her mind, she realized with a sudden wave of dismay that what she was seeing were actual living creatures and one was walking right in front of her.
It wasn't a terrible creature, just another scamp, but it was full grown and as unaware of her presence as she had been of its until a few seconds before she walked into it. Cursing her poor nocturnal vision, Shadowmere realized she couldn't unsheathe her sword without the sound stripping her of the only viable advantage she had at the moment. Knowing this could be more difficult than she intended, she quickly wrapped her arm around the beasts neck and with the other hand, grabbed one of its pig-like ears and jerked as hard as she could. To her surprise and satisfaction, the scamp's neck broke with strikingly little effort. Its full weight was not quite as pleasant a surprise as the sudden deadweight nearly ripped off her arms at the shoulders.
"Damn, damn, damn!" she thought, doing a frantic one-legged dance to keep from crashing to the ground again. She managed to lay down the body without causing an undue ruckus and stood up straight, her back cracking softly in relief.
Just when she thought she was out of the woods, another shadow dancing nearby caught her attention, this one almost directly in Saeana's path; the path she saw only with the tips of her fingers. "Bugger," she thought, knowing that in order to take down the scamp, in the same manner in which she had disposed of the first, she would almost certainly have to push her friend out of the way. If Saeana couldn't see what was so violently touching her, she was very likely to fight back. Vigorously. "She'd probably end up hitting my girls again." Though thought of taking another blow to her twice violated bosom was enough to keep her from carrying out that plan.
Flying by the seat of her pants, Shadowmere crept toward Saeana and, without laying a finger on her, managed to steal one of her arrows from the quiver on her back. Acting quickly, she stepped behind the scamp and in one motion, covered the beast's Orc-like maw with one hand and jabbed the arrow into its neck, making the blood shoot from the wound like the invisible arc of a shot from Saeana's bow. Gasping with sudden pain, the scamp clamped down its jaws on Shadowmere's hand and clawed at her arm with its unseen claws.
"Gff!" The words couldn't even fully form in her brain with how quickly the teeth and claws reached her brain. Clenching her own jaw, she refused to cry out as her hand served as the only gag to catch the creature's shrieks and her arm as the only restraint that kept its claws from lashing at Saeana, who still wandered around the room like one of the blind Moth Priests. "Die, damn you!" She desperately stabbed at the scamps head, the obsidian headed arrow finding its way into the its temple and Shadowmere shoved it in as far as she could.
When the scamp stopped fighting, Shadowmere once again gingerly laid down the beast and immediately cradled her arm and hand firmly against her chest. "Shit," she muttered. She could feel the blood puddling in her palm and spilling through her fingers, a gruesome miniature of the waterfall where she'd spent most of the summer. Giving a quick glance around, she didn't see any more lightless shadows and felt safe making her presence known to Saeana.
"Saean-" Before she could even get out the last syllable of her name, Saeana let out a yelp and her silhouette seemed to climb the walls as she jerked around. Despite the horrific pain in her arm, Shadowmere couldn't help but laugh at her friend's fright.
"Don't DO that!" Saeana exclaimed, hushing her voice as she stumbled her way toward Shadowmere. "What's going on?"
"Did you bring any torches?" she asked, knowing she needed to see her wound to assess the true damage to her limb, though she didn't need to see her hand to appreciate the pain emanating from it.
"No, I didn't pack any."
"Cast a Light spell," Shadowmere said through gritted teeth, the subtle sound of the trickling blood spattering on the floor just barely audible.
"But there could be-"
"There's not," Shadowmere interrupted her protesting sharply, the throbbing in her palm making her entire arm shake. "Just cast the spell." With that, a sea green circle wrapped itself around Saeana, who stood a yard or so away from Shadowmere, and eventually covered the entire room with its surreal glow. "Do you have any healing potions?" she asked, sitting down and trying not to think about what she might be sitting on. No longer having to stumble, Saeana was quickly at Shadowmere's side, her eyes wide and her jaw slackened a little.
"Almighty Azura," Saeana murmured, aghast at the sight of Shadowmere's gnawed arm. "When did that happen?" She dropped the bag and her bow from her shoulder and knelt beside Shadowmere, who feigned indifference.
"It looks worse than it is," she said, not daring to open her clenched fist, knowing she would likely start a torrential hemorrhage if she did. "I saw some scamps walking around and didn't want you to get to them before me." That was partly true. Saeana scoffed and shook her head.
"So competitive," she muttered, digging through the bag. "I don't think I have any potions other than water," she said, pulling out a canteen and unscrewing the lid. "We can at least wash it out." Shadowmere shook her head.
"It can wait to be washed," she said firmly. In a land filled with lava, she wouldn't be the one to use their only drinking water on her boo-boos, no matter how grievous they might be. "Do you know any healing magic?" Saeana blew her lips and shrugged uselessly.
"Nothing strong enough to heal that," she admitted, clearly feeling as useless as her shrug. "That would need a professional healer or a couple of strong potions."
"It doesn't need to heal it, I just need the bleeding to stop," Shadowmere said quickly. It was going to be difficult to do anything with an injured hand, but if it was no longer bleeding, it would at least be easier or, if nothing else, less messy.
"I may be able to do that much," Saeana said, relief snaking through her words. Resting one hand on Shadowmere's gashed forearm, she made a gesture with the other hand that looked like she was snatching a bird out of the air and releasing it in the same motion. Before her eyes, Shadowmere's skin knitted itself back together, leaving several long scabs, but the bleeding stopped. "Open your hand," Saeana said, her skin looking unusually pale in the green light. "I have to touch it, otherwise I can't do anything."
"If I let go," Shadowmere said carefully, not sure how to phrase the statement so that Saeana wouldn't be spooked. "The guts of my hand may fall out." She couldn't find an apt way to say it, so she decided for the approach that left little to the imagination. Fortunately, Saeana's constitution was tougher than Shadowmere had given it credit for.
"Alright," she said, unfazed by her description. "Right when you open your hand I'll put mine on top. I'll keep the 'hand guts' in." Cautiously, she opened her palm and before she could even get another look at it, her friend had already covered it and made the bird catching motion again. As Saeana moved her hand, Shadowmere saw that, while it had some scabbing, the wound still oozed blood. She looked up, intending to chastise Saeana when she saw her friend was sitting back and had her head between her knees.
"You alright?" she asked, feeling slightly guilty for even thinking about complaining about the failed healing. Saeana nodded, not really lifting her head.
"If I overuse magicka I get really lightheaded," she said, her voice too faint for Shadowmere's liking. "I'll just wait a minute and I'll be fine. How's your hand?"
"It'll be fine," Shadowmere lied, pawing through her own bag. Pulling out a sock, she used the blade of Saeana's knife and slit the sides of the garment, leaving the toe intact and giving herself a piece of cloth that closely resembled a bandage. She wrapped it tightly around her palm and fingers before tying it around her wrist. That would at least keep her from bleeding all over Oblivion.
"You were born under the atronach, weren't you?" Shadowmere asked, turning her attentions to her friend, who seemed to be on the verge of keeling over.
"Yeah," she grunted, her voice sounding as faint as the rest of her looked.
"You can't regenerate your own magicka right?" Shadowmere asked, posing the question not only to get the information, but also to try and keep Saeana conscious.
"Yep." Shadowmere had been afraid of this; it wasn't that her friend was tired, it was that she lacked the willpower to move. It had happened once or twice before, but they had been fortunate enough to have potions on hand to combat Saeana's condition.
"So what are you going to do?" she asked, knowing they didn't have the luxury of artificial magicka regeneration this time.
"It just leaves me feeling weak," Saeana insisted, slumping down on her side and curling up in a ball. "If I can rest for a minute, then I can recover enough to keep walking."
"I really don't want to have to drag your sorry hide around Oblivion," Shadowmere said with adamance, putting her uninjured hand on her hip. "If you have to fight you're going to go down if they look at you funny, even if you feel good enough to walk."
"We don't have potions," Saeana reminded her, her eyes closed and barely summoning the will to open her lips. "And you don't use magicka. From where I sit we don't have a whole lot of options." In Shadowmere's mind, staying where they were wasn't a viable course either. With her willpower gone, it wasn't going to come back just by waiting; they would have to figure out how to get her back to her normal state.
"Do you have any scrolls?" She asked suddenly. "Preferably non-destructive?" It was a dangerous idea that burst into Shadowmere's head; an idea through which Saeana saw, despite her weakened state.
"There's no way in hell that I'm letting you cast spells at me," Saeana said, though weak she was still staunch. "If you hurt me, there's no way for you to heal me."
"I'm not brain-dead Saeana," she said, clinging to her desperate scheme. "But you have scrolls?" Saeana sighed, though it could have just been a breath to restore her waning resolve.
"Yes," she grumbled, nuzzling her face into her elbow. "But I don't want you to use them on me." Shadowmere made a motion with her uninjured right hand, demanding the scrolls.
"Let me see them," she ordered. Saeana sighed again and shoved the bag toward her. With one hand she dug through the worn sack until she came up with several rolls of parchment, the arcane language practically hurling themselves off of the page. Shadowmere's plan, while desperate, was incredibly simple; though Saeana couldn't regenerate her own magicka, she had a chance of absorbing spells or magical attacks that were cast at her. "Where did you get these?" Shadowmere asked, rifling through the crushed tubes and selecting the ones that looked the most benign. She didn't want to cast harmful spells at her friend, so she chose carefully.
"The dremora had them," she mumbled. "What do you have?"
"Voice of rapture, voice of dread, river walk," Shadowmere said, reading off what she could make out of the runes on the page. "The others are all pretty heinous sounding."
"Yeah, because 'voice of dread' has such a cozy feel to it." Saeana sighed, lifting her head. "But they do sound like the least dangerous of the bunch. Alright, give it a try."
"Alright." Unrolling the first scroll, Shadowmere squinted in the dim light and struggled to read the unusual words.
"Vox ecstasis," she said, hoping she didn't have to do anything else. As the magical energy circled around her, Saeana's eyes lit up, her energy apparently returned and smiled at Shadowmere with sickening adoration. Somehow, Shadowmere wasn't convinced that her casting had done the job. "Did I do something wrong?" Shadowmere asked with eyebrows raised; Saeana didn't smile like this unless she was drunk.
"I don't think you could do anything wrong," she said, leaning her chin on her hand and grinning with glowing, glassy eyes. "You're just awesome." Raising her eyebrow, Shadowmere sought a solution as she watched the parchment in her hands disintegrate before her eyes, as all scrolls did once the invocation had been spoken. Voice of Rapture spells were intended to captivate the minds of those at whom it was cast so that they would be easier to command, so if the spell worked properly, the caster would become an object of adoration in the eyes of the one on whom it was cast. "You have pretty hair," Saeana said, apparently under the intoxicating influence of the spell.
"Thank you," she said carefully, not wanting to engage her any more than was necessary, considering her apparent infatuation. "Tell me if I did something wrong with the spell." Saeana chortled, looking a little tired as she continued to stare at Shadowmere with doe eyes the color of fresh strawberries, her chin still resting in her hand.
"You pronounced the V," she said, her mouth moving like a bubbling viscous brew. "With scrolls, you always pronounce V like a 'wuh'. Your lips should look like a fish's lips. Wuh-wuh-wuh…" Saeana continued to make the fish face in silence as she stared rapt at Shadowmere.
"Alright, dually noted," she said while Saeana did her best slaughterfish impression. Trying to ignore the absurd countenance beaming back at her, she unfurling another scroll.
"I know I'm hit by the spell," Saeana started between fish puckers. "But since you mispronounced it, I'm not under the full effect. It won't last very long."
"Well that's good to know." Saeana started giggling like a thirteen year old girl who had just seen a unicorn.
"I want to tell you how much I like you," she blabbered suddenly, sitting up straighter.
"Tell me about it later," Shadowmere said, shaking out her selected scroll. "Vox formidinis," she murmured, making sure to follow Saeana's advice. As the energy pulsed, it was clear that Shadowmere's efforts didn't help as much as she had hoped. Saeana's adoring, slackened face suddenly contorted, her eyes widening as she opened her mouth as wide as she could and screamed loud enough that Shadowmere dropped her fist of scrolls and clamped her hands over her apiculate ears. "What did I do now?" she yelled, desperate to be heard over Saeana's unrestrained howl.
"Nothing!" Saeana screamed, her shaking voice now wrenched with sobs. "It's working perfectly! Cast something else!" Shadowmere had known her friend's chances of absorbing a spell were just as good as her not absorbing a spell, but two out of three seemed to indicate the odds weren't in their favor. Still she picked up the last scroll she had sifted out, and unrolled it with surprisingly shaking fingers.
"Flumen ambulans," she said quickly. In a flash, Shadowmere watched as Saeana's indigo skin glowed a bright fuchsia, indicating that her body had inhaled the magic instead of letting it crash over her like a wave. The purple crept along her body until her skin was no longer pale and she didn't look nearly as weak. With some presence of mind, Saeana moved as if to capture and release another bird, casting another spell on herself. Knowing it was likely a dispel hex, Shadowmere could only watch as her friend shuddered once and then continued to scream. "What's wrong with you?" Shadowmere asked, already with some idea. Some of the spells Saeana knew were fairly strong, but mysticism wasn't her strong suit, so her Dispel wasn't strong enough to eliminate the full effect of the spell cast on her.
"I'm scared!" she shrieked, covering her face. "Shadowmere I'm scared!" As annoying as she found her friend's wails, Shadowmere felt bad that the spell was affecting her so badly, especially since it had been her idea to cast it.
"It's alright, hold on to me," she said as gently as she could manage, gathering Saeana under her arm like a mother bird covering her hatchlings with her wing. Like a bizarre mating insect, they circled the room once again, waiting out the remainder of the spell. With each step Saeana whimpered, as though each footfall was an attempt on her life. Though her ribs were sore with how tight Saeana was holding her, Shadowmere didn't say a word and, despite the terror that shook the woman in her arms, Shadowmere began to find her friend's temporary condition mildly amusing. Amidst her whimpers, Saeana let out a scream.
"What the hell is that?" she yelled, holding her arm out as far from her body as she could, her appendage shaking violently.
"What's what?" Shadowmere asked, looking for a spider or some bug crawling on Saeana's forearm. "I don't see anything."
"At the end of my arm!" she insisted, her voice high and tight with horror. Looking over her friend's hand, Shadowmere had to bite her lip to keep from laughing.
"That's your hand," she tried to calm her, only to find that Saeana's fear hadn't waned.
"What about the things at the end?" Shadowmere bit down on her lip harder.
"Fingers." Saeana calmed down a little at her reassurance, and they were able to continue their ungainly stroll around the room. Then, once again, she let out a screech and practically leapt into Shadowmere's arms.
"There's things on the floor!" Saeana briefly released Shadowmere to run around the dimly lit room, kicking her legs with as if to throw off whatever it was that attacked her from the floor. Shadowmere felt her ears pop with how hard she tried to keep her composure. The irony and idiocy of the situation was too much to withstand; because she had tried to protect her friend, the same friend was now driven out of her mind with irrational fear. If Saeana had been afraid of the creatures around them, or the fact that they were in a demonic plane of existence, Shadowmere would have been able to understand her panic, and would certainly be less likely to laugh at her. But Saeana paid no attention to the dead scamps on the floor, nor the blood that stained their weapons and clothes and if she even noticed where they were, she said nothing.
"Those are your feet," Shadowmere said, watching the frenetic dance and hoping her teeth didn't explode from her restraint. This answer, despite her self-control, didn't satisfy Saeana, who still kicked her legs this way and that.
"They're trying to eat my legs!" Shadowmere covered an escaping laugh with a cough as she put her hands on Saeana's shoulders and held on to her, as if to act as a shield for her.
"Those are your boots." Again a relieved pause before Saeana began screaming again and clawing at her head.
"Something's-!"
"Your hair hon," Shadowmere reassured her with a sigh. Finally, after about fifteen minutes of walking around the room, Saeana began to come around, much to Shadowmere's relief. She released her hold on Shadowmere's ribs and stood up straight.
"You alright?" Shadowmere asked, hoping her amusement wasn't obvious. Saeana's face relaxed and promptly flushed with embarrassment, her antics still fresh in her mind.
"Yeah. Let's get out of here," Saeana said, tucking her hair behind her ear. "I'm ready to get home." With the light spell slowly fading, Shadowmere managed to locate the door and they pushed their way through it, confronted immediately with another incline, leading up to unfathomable heights and overlooking the staggering distance from where they were to where they had been.
"You've got to be kidding me," Shadowmere muttered with venom in her words as she craned her neck to try and see the top.
"Damn it," Saeana said, shaking her head and pulling out her bow. "Alright let's go. Those daedra won't kill themselves." As she pulled out her sword and gripped it with her uninjured hand, Shadowmere charged up the incline, with eyes adjusted to the darkness and determined to end some lives.