Return to Tamriel

Not knowing how much time was left before Saeana closed the gate, nor what would happen once the gate closed, Shadowmere worked quickly to open the cage door.

"Does that key open the cage door?" she asked the man inside. He shook his head, his body tensed and his eyes ticking like a metronome between her and the cage between them.

"Damned if I know for sure, but I have to assume not." He motioned toward the walls of the cage and Shadowmere saw that the cell consisted of four sections that opened out like a flower blooming and lacked any kind of a roof.

"Could you climb out?" she asked, getting another obvious answer out of the way.

"I'm only standing because I have no room to sit," Menien admitted shamefully. "The three of us have been jammed in here together forever." His statement seemed unpleasantly curious to Shadowmere; there was clearly only him in the cage.

"Who are the other two?" she inquired with reserved skepticism. Menien pointed at a ribcage and a skull lying on the floor of the cage, each with its own designated space.

"Lavinia and Onalee," he said, pointing to the ribcage and skull respectively. "The dremora killed them and-" The city guard opened his mouth a few times, but couldn't finish his statement and Shadowmere didn't want him to; her imagination was sharp enough that she could surmise how the women had met their fates.

"How do we get the cage open?" she asked, without the words to comfort the man, or say anything meaningful about the bones that held such importance to him.

"You don't. Only the dremora knew how the lock works."

"Buggeration!" she exclaimed, putting her hands on her hips and blowing hair out of her face. Looking for another way to the stranger out.

"Just go before your friend closes the gate and you're trapped in here!" he yelled, his eyes wide and desperate. She shook her head, frustration making her words and motions harsher than she meant them.

"If I come out of here without you, she's never going to let me live it down," Shadowmere responded tartly. "And I'm guessing your little guard friend would wedge his foot far enough up my ass to kick out my tonsils, so start looking for solutions instead of problems." His eyes lit up at the sound of her words, hope for the first time gleaming out.

"Ilend?"

"Yes."

"He's alive?"

"Mmhmm," she murmured, futilely yanking on the bars. The worn man looked around frantically, staring at the wrought iron bars of the cage.

"Can you cut through the bars?" he offered, suddenly more optimistic. "Your sword's Daedric, that stuff is pretty hardy, it might be able to cut through iron." Shadowmere shook her head.

"I've been killing the damn daedra all night, my sword is pretty worn," she said, moving closer to examine the bars more carefully. "But what's holding the bars together?" she asked, gingerly running her fingers over the "x" shaped weavings where the bars met. Menien simply shuddered.

"Bone." His voice sounded as though the single word was going to make him lurch. "Kvatch city guard bone to be exact." Though she knew the grim confession likely caused the man great pain, Shadowmere did all she could to ignore it at the moment; she was intent on getting him out the tower and back to Tamriel, and stopping to acknowledge the words would almost certainly be nothing short of agonizing.

"My sword probably has enough left to break bone," she said, a slight smile of relief on her face. "If we can get the hoops off, can you climb between the other bars?" Somehow surprised by her apparent indifference to the revelations he had just made, Menien simply nodded.

"I'll do what I have to do to get you out of here," he said. "I don't want anyone dying to save my sorry hide."

"I guess chivalry's not dead yet," Shadowmere muttered, trying to work her blade between the bone Xs. Sawing feverishly, Shadowmere's arms begin to burn even in the frigid temperature of the contrary world and her injured hand pounding. "Is it doing anything?" She asked, blowing some of the bone dust out of the crack.

"Yeah, now focus on cutting through the rest of them about that same distance," Menien said, pointing to the other joints. "If you can get far enough through them, I can probably break the hoop loose." The idea came as little relief to Shadowmere's aching body. "As weak as he is, I'm going to need to do most of that part too."

"How many hoops need to come off for you to get out?"

"Probably one more after this one," Menien said, his fists already tightened around the first iron hoop, preparing to break the hold. "They haven't fed me much, I can slip through easier." Sweat trickling down her back, Shadowmere worked the blade between each bone X and sawed half way through each one before moving on to the next. She tried to focus on the act itself and not think about the substance that she was cutting through, since the few thoughts about it that came across her mind were less than appealing.

Whose bones had these been? Were they the women Menien had mentioned, or others? Did they have families, or friends? What had they done to end up in this way? Had they simply been trying to protect themselves, their homes and their loved ones? Perhaps more importantly, how had Menien been the only one to survive his captivity? It was a question he had no doubt asked himself numerous times over the duration of his incarceration. Shadowmere shook her head, trying to shake the thoughts from her mind as she continued to desecrate the remains of the dead to save the living. "Thoughts like that certainly don't help," she thought, puffing up a sigh and blowing a sigh past her lips. As she worked, the morbid thoughts didn't come any slower, sending shivers up and down her sweat coated body.

The Deadlands were a strange place; Shadowmere didn't know whether it was the cold feeding her fears, or her fears making her cold. Each slash she made, each cut, each crossed X she hacked through sent a bitter chill through her veins, but each look at Menien's worn and tired face made her all the more resolved to get him out of Mehrunes Dagon's corner of Oblivion.

Slicing through the last of the Xs, Shadowmere leaned back, putting her hands on her knees, gasping for air, though her lungs filled with frost and she exhaled smoke.

"This one ready?" Menien asked, gripping the hoop. Shadowmere simply nodded, feeling more worn out than she had since Hannibal had swum her across to the Arcane University. Menien jerked the metal, grunting as the metal refused to budge.

"Damn, that's tough," he said grunted, looking to Shadowmere, more than slightly discouraged. "I must have gotten soft in here."

"Do you need me to cut through more?" She wasn't sure that she could, but allowing herself to indulge that attitude was something she was certain she couldn't do.

"No, let me try again." Taking a breath, Menien shook the hoop, a clanging and shattering echoed through the tower as he managed to break it free. Letting it drop to the ground, he leaned back against the walls of the cage, out of breath from his exertion.

"You're back in," he panted, motioning for her to start sawing through the Xs again. The respite far too short for her taste, Shadowmere nonetheless started her efforts again. "What's your name?" The question caught her by surprise, making her lift her dark head and stare quizzically at Menien before she answered.

"Shadowmere." Each time someone asked her name, some small part of her rejoiced, like a little ember revived by a breath of air. The name made her a noun, not a random string of adjectives, as she had been for so long.

"Huh, I knew a man with a horse named Shadowmere once, never knew a person with that name." Menien was clearly trying to distract from the overwhelming situation, and she was grateful for the effort.

"What was his name?" she asked, already knowing the answer and trying to hide her amused smirk. "The man, I mean. You already said the horse's name."

"Hannibal Traven." Though she had been anticipating the answer, at the mere mention of his name, Shadowmere was overcome with a strange wave of emotion; Hannibal had been like a father to her, and a friend. Yet some part of her still held a grudge with him for what he had done to her, but his actions had almost certainly saved her life. "How can I feel so damn much and not be able to put a name to any part of it?"

"Mage's Guild, right?" She asked, even as she tried not to think about Hannibal.

"Yeah, you know him?"

"I've heard the name," she said, taking meticulous care with her word choice. "Too much, but I've heard it." Menien shook his head and scoffed.

"He'd walk from Anvil to Kvatch and back with that horse, damnedest thing I ever saw," he said, leaning his head back and closing his eyes. "Wouldn't ride it until a few months after he got it." Shadowmere chuckled under her breath, though she said nothing. " 'Couldn't ride it' is a more correct statement," she thought, moving to saw through another X. "He's head of the whole guild now, according to the Black Horse Courier," he added, preemptively gripping the second hoop. Shadowmere nodded, falling into a rhythm with her sword and her limbs, moving with the same perpetual motion of a pendulum, or breathing or a bird's beating wing. Something so natural and thoughtless that it became effortless, though she had yet to find the effortless part of this nauseatingly simple, yet difficult, work.

"Does he still have the horse?" she asked, the question asinine in and of itself, but it would be interesting to hear what the rumors of her existence were.

"Nah, he gave it away after he made head of the Anvil guild," he said, shaking his head. "I doubt the nag is still alive anyway. Hannibal said it was in its twenties when he got it and horses don't live that much longer from there."

"They can live to be older than that," she said, grinning to herself. "And who knows what mages do to their animals anyway? That mare could live to be older than both of us."

"How'd you know that?" he asked, looking at her oddly. "I don't think I mentioned that the horse was a mare." "Damn, damn, damn, damn, damn!" For each expletive, she mentally kicked herself for being so linguistically careless and tried to make herself think faster for an excuse, making her pause her work for a millisecond.

"I'm a woman and my name's Shadowmere," she said, and started sawing again, relieved when the thought came floating to the top of her thoughts like a like a bubble drifting toward the surface of a pond. "I'm naturally going to think anything with my name is female." Menien nodded, and Shadowmere mentally sighed, promising herself to not bait the conversations anymore.

"How's it coming?" he asked, mercifully getting off of the topic.

"Almost through," she murmured, trying to push aside her memories of Hannibal, her own foolishness, and thoughts of pendulums and birds and whose bones the Xs had been. She was almost all the way through and, with her hand bleeding through her makeshift bandage, she didn't want to be distracted when she was so close to her goal.

"Alright," she panted, dropping the sword. "Try this one." Taking a steeling breath, Menien tightened his hold on the hoop. Jerking as hard as his worn body could manage, he and Shadowmere were both disappointed when his act did nothing. Discouragement swept across Menien's face, any hope washed away like letters in the sand. "Let's try this together," Shadowmere said quickly, taking hold of the hoop with Menien. "One, two, three." They shook the hoop but ultimately couldn't jar it.

"Shadowmere, you've got to get out of here," Menien said, disappointment and fear in his eyes. "Your friend is going to get the stone soon and then you're going to be trapped here. I've made my peace with dy-"

"Shut it, Menien!" Shadowmere didn't mean to shout, but it was all she could do to keep her own desperation under control. "You're not going to die in here!" With words to match her resolve she now sought the actions to go along with them. She found a higher place to hold on Menien's cage and climbed until her feet were resting on the damaged hoop and, in an act of sheer hopelessness, she jumped up and landed as hard as she could on the hoop. Again she leapt in the air and came down heavily, feeling the bone give just a little. "Come on, come on," she said, jumping again and throwing all of her weight into the landing before leaping up again and repeating the process.

As the seconds seemed to fly by like water through a sieve, she kept jumping, almost madly, like a bewitched follower of Sheogorath, the madgod. Her feet throbbing and her lungs burning, Shadowmere was almost ready to give up, when she felt herself fall a little further than last time and didn't have the time to regain her balance and stop herself from falling backwards. Even as she hit the unnaturally hard floor, a feeling of surprise and relief flooded her body as the clang of the hoop being broken loose and tumbling down the stock of the cage resounded off the walls of the spire and crashed through her ears. It was one of the most beautiful sounds she had ever heard. "Okay…" she breathed, grabbing the vertical bars, pulling herself up and bending at the waist to catch her breath. "Get out of there." Menien didn't need to be told twice as he struggled up and tossed his leg over the lowest hoop and bent over to duck through the space they had made. Shadowmere didn't pay his actions much mind, as she sat drinking in the air as though it was the finest flin in all of Morrowind.

"Problem," Menien said tentatively. Glancing up, Shadowmere saw that Menien was caught between two of the upright supports of the cage, his shoulders and one leg through, but his hips and other leg still trapped inside the cage. Suddenly feeling a crush of time on her shoulders, Shadowmere grabbed him by the forearms, feeling him grip hers with vice-like strength as she tugged. "Hold on, my hip's caught," he said, trying to maneuver into a different position. A sudden roar of a fire being fanned with a bellows made both of them lurch with fear, the tower shaking badly.

"What the hell was that?" Shadowmere asked, a sinking feeling coming into her stomach as the tower swayed and Menien's hands gripped harder.

"If I had to guess, I'd say the lock to the sigil keep has been breached," Menien said, his face going white. "You're friend is almost ready to close the gate." Her skin crawling until it felt as though her ears would meet in the back of her head, Shadowmere grabbed Menien and pulled him as hard as she could, all but jerking him up and down as though she was birthing a calf, until she felt him come through with a scream.

"By the Gods!" he exclaimed, clutching her shoulders as he stumbled in pain, nearly taking both of them to the floor. "I think you broke my hip!" Struggling to stay upright, she scoffed at his assumed injury and focused on not winding up on her backside so soon after having gotten off of it.

"By Azura, how old are you? Eighty?" Not waiting for an answer, Shadowmere kept one of his arms over her shoulder, her hand wrapped around his belt and started running as fast as she could down the ramp. She threw the heavy door open, raced across the high bridge, without pausing to be afraid of its height, and down the levels of the tower, now thankfully free of its daedric denizens. Despite the deadweight she supported, she raced past the broken pillars and fighting plant that still lunged and lashed at Shadowmere and Menien. Already fighting exhaustion and pain as they passed the broken bridge, where Shadowmere had almost fallen to a fiery death, they were thrown about when a violent roar, like a thousand daedroths howling in a chorus, made the ground shake and the very air waiver while the pools of lava shook with ripples and the jagged stone alcoves started to shed layer after layer of their rocks.

"She's got it!" Menien screamed, his fear and desperation giving him the look of a blind man running alone through an unknown forest. "Your friend's got the stone! Get out of here!" Shadowmere paid no mind as she continued to run her almost hopeless marathon toward the gate back to Kvatch. "Like hell I will!" She protested to no one but herself and, despite Menien's protests and howls of pain, she gripped his belt tighter and hefted his arm around her shoulder and continued to haul him away from the world that was crumbling down around them.

"Come on Menien, we're almost there," she panted, running as they rapidly approached the gate. It wasn't as though he had a whole lot of say in the matter; the man was just trying to hold on and not trip her. As the very sky seemed to fall down on them, Shadowmere and Menien stumbled through the flaming portal, tumbling back into Tamriel, the gate falling to ruin behind them.