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We found J'darr hunched over his brother's body. "Where is it? I know you were trying to keep it for yourself J'zhar... You always try to keep it for yourself!"
By offering food we were able to gradually get the story out of the Khajiit between pleas for skooma. He barely acknowledged us otherwise. His hands pawed through J'zhar's pockets over and over again. His body quaked with addictive withdrawal.
The expedition to Alftand had begun with seven people. Shortly after finding an entrance into the city a storm hit, forcing them into the ruins. After that, things went from bad to worse. The addict mumbled about machines that killed and blind creatures in the dark. We left J'darr with his brother and pressed on.
The cities of the Deep Folk pierce the landscape of Morrowind, Skyrim, Highrock, and Hammerfell. For generations they traded and warred with one another and with the races of Mer and Men that lived upon the surface. Sometime in the 7th century of the First Era however, the Dwemer disappeared during a war with the ancestors of the Dunmer. Scholars debate endlessly on how and why this apparent extinction occurred, but precious little evidence remains to establish any single theory. There is no sign of a gradual decline in their culture or of a natural disaster like a plague. They left no descendants like the Ayleids did among the Bosmer in Cyrodiil and Valenwood. A populous, functioning society one day, gone the next.
But their cities and factories remain even 3000 years later. What is more, within these ruins may be found still working examples of Dwemer technology. I confess there is a certain fascination to the Dwemer ruins. There is nothing like it made in Tamriel today. Great, many-bladed fans are spun by the steam arising from fissures in the depths. These fans then move machines like a water wheel turns a sawmill. From those wheels thin cables of copper snake to glass tubes. These tubes produce an unending green light that guided us deeper and deeper into the ruins.
Without Red and Blue to guide us, we would have become hopelessly lost. Dwarven ruins favor right angles and spacious halls, but their layout is far from linear and the builders' logic was not always apparent. In the areas with the loudest machine noise, it was not uncommon to find apartments. Crypts abutted boileries and workshops. The two mages had explored other such cities in Skyrim however, and were able to guide us on what seemed the right path most of the time.
And everywhere were the signs of paranoia and violence. I am not as well versed in Dwemer lore as Septimus Singus or Calcelmo of Markarth, but I have my own theory of what caused the Dwemer's disappearance: They made too many enemies. In every hall was some instrument of death. Pressure plates triggered the appearance of spinning blades from the floor to clear trespassers away. Steam and phosphorus hot enough to melt skin jetted into the long hallways. How could any society long endure under threats so omnipresent that individual rooms inside homes needed to be fortified?
The ubiquitous defenses and traps paled in comparison to the Dwemer automatons. Small multi-legged units skittered throughout the halls. They would attack only if we came too close and instead worked futilely to repair the subterranean mansions against the perditions of time. Not even Dwarven engineering could hold a glacier at bay for millennia.
Other machines were less benign. The Dwemer had invented a type of fighting machine that traveled quickly in the shape of a large sphere. In this form it would travel down the halls or through a series of access pipes that all the smaller machines could use to travel through the city. When the machine detected us, it would unfold into a roughly human-shaped robot armed with a crossbow for one "hand" and a long sword for the other. Deepest in the ruins towering Centurion animunculi waited for us. These were near the pinnacle of Dwemer war machines; only one of legend was bigger. Armed with hammers and pneumatic blades, they could have dominated armies of lesser foes in their master's day.
The Dwemer were gone however, and their victims were the only living things stalking the halls. I was underwhelmed by my first sight of the scrawny, hunchbacked, goblin-like Falmer. They were feral certainly, but hardly threatening. The five of us had found a great chasm with a spiraling ramp leading down. I was in front with Blue and Red behind me. As we walked down, I saw my first glimpse of a snow-elf at the bottom of the pit. I was about to speak when Blue's voice echoed through my head.
"Don't make a sound," Blue said to me in a telepathic whisper. "Snow-elves," he explained seeing the angry expression on my face as I turned to him. He had been good the last few days about not invading our privacy. "Their senses of hearing and smell are sharp enough that they don't need to see you."
I once again peered over the edge of the stone ramp. Five of them were shambling around at the bottom of the pit some twenty feet below us. Among the ruined elves were a few large black insects. "And the bugs?" I asked silently. Perhaps Blue could hear my thoughts.
"Chaurus," Blue told me. "The Falmer raise them for meat and use their chitin to make weapons and armor. They're dangerous animals. Give me that look all you like. You won't be laughing when one spits venom in your face from the other side of the cavern."
We crept on, eventually reaching the bottom of the shaft where those wretched elves eked out an existence. The din of machine noise echoed faintly far above. Heeding Blue's advice, I led us well around the Falmer. Everything was going smoothly until one of their giant chaurus pets skittered over to us and hissed the alarm. The blind elves drew their chitin swords and axes and rushed us with throaty howls.
I would not have credited such bent and deformed creatures with being able to move so skillfully and quickly. There was only just enough time to force Red and Blue against the wall and turn on the rushing elves. Lydia's shield splintered beneath the axes of two of the elves. Aela dropped her bow to draw her dagger and the short elven sword she had claimed from me in Solitude. Her graceful and lightning-fast dual wielding drove her attacker back with gashes where its eyes would be before turning on the two other chauri. My magical blade had little trouble dispatching the giant insect that alerted its masters, but I had serious trouble with the two Falmer assailing me. Though the elves' attacks were fast and powerful, they were not beyond my skill. On the other hand, I could not land a hit of my own. They could hear the humming of my glowing blade and soon learned its significance. After I connected a few glancing blows, they tracked its sound and parried my attacks like fencing masters sparring against a novice.
It was the mages that ended the stalemate in our favor. Red and Blue may claim not to like each other, but when they need to they make an excellent team. Red's fireballs were powerful but the noise of the flames made them easily dodged until Blue began using his talents for illusion to create false spells for the Falmer to dodge and wind up getting hit by Red's actual destructive spell. Soon enough five dead Falmer and three dead chauri lay at our feet.
"Good work," I tried to say but would up slurring as I discovered parts of my face going numb. Suspiciously, I picked up one of the elves' blades and ran my hand over it. The fleeting tingle in my fingertips confirmed my suspicion: the Falmer poisoned their blades. A few healing spells all around put us to rights, but nothing could be done for Lydia's shield and armor. They had been hacked apart by the creatures besetting her.
"These cities are filled with Dwemer armor and weapons, Lydia," Red offered, "We should find something before too long."
The five of us pressed on with our caution redoubled. We followed yet another wide and straight thoroughfare until it emptied out into a large natural cavern. The cathedral we saw within would have drawn faithful from all of Nirn if it existed on the surface. Tens of thousands would have been able to come here for worship on the large platform at the top of a flight of many broad steps. Two great centurion robots rested upright in their frames on either side of the steps leading up to the altar. The faintest smell of cooking meat could be detected. In the night vision granted by one of my spells, I saw a number of bent shadows moving silently around the area below the stairs.
We glided up the first stairwell, careful not to stumble and give ourselves away to the hateful elves in the dark. As we cleared the last step onto the centurions' platform some unseen trigger closed the gates behind us. A howling laughter came up from below as the hiss of steam began nearby. With a crash both colossal animunculi dropped a few inches to the floor from their cradles, strode forward, and belched jets of steam at us. Blue and I only just got our wards up in time to block the scalding mist. Red's return shots did little other than stagger one of them before the machines were on top of us.
We scattered like breaking glass when the centurions' pneumatic weapons lashed out at us. Red tried repeatedly to set herself for a more destructive spell, but each time one of the mechanical killers would move to smash her. Blue did not know or use many spells with significant destructive force, but as the fight went on I felt discrete tugs on my body as Dwemer weapons passed through the spaces I was pulled away from.
Aela and Lydia paired off against the centurion circling the fight to corral us toward its counterpart. Aela had taken her beast form and leapt high onto the shoulders of the brass-colored robot. Her supernatural claws and teeth tore the metal of the machine's neck like it was soft clay. The machine flailed to rid itself of the bestial assault. Brave Lydia swept in low about its legs, hacking furiously with both hands on her sword at the robot's knee joints. Artificial tendons and veins parted, slicking the area with oil. All strength went out of the automaton's leg and it crashed helpless to the ground where Lydia moved to help Aela to finish the thing off.
"Mages! Go for its face! Everything you can!" I commanded them. My Thu'um echoed through the cavern and loose stones fell from above, but the centurion only staggered and glowed hot in the wake of my fiery breath. Blasts of fire and ice began pelting the robot's head, doing little damage but concealing my movements. A quick cast of Stoneflesh and then I ran to its legs like Lydia. I had to swing my weightless blade like a lumberjack felling a tree to cut through the behemoth's servos and pistons. I dove clear as the centurion fell backwards. Then it was a mad rush for Aela, Lydia, and me to weave between the thrashing weapons and find a place to stab and tear with saber, blade, and claw.
The chattering of the Falmer below continued as I checked my party. Steam rose gently from the holes we made to bring the machines down. The three fighters among us were sodden and stank of the bitter tang of Dwemer oils. Aela was beginning to shed and her features were becoming more human as she let go of her wolf-form. Lydia was somehow upright despite the beatings she was receiving. Her once intact steel plate on leather resembled the scavenged draugr gear that Aela favored. She had given up her broken lime wood shield as useless. Yet her elven sword was sound and she was not seriously hurt. Red and Blue looked uninjured but their complexions were pallid with exhaustion.
"We're alright," Blue said to my unspoken question, "We can move."
"Is there going to be an issue with you two knowing about Aela's umm…talent?" I asked. They were taking it suspiciously in stride.
Ghent glanced at Morgan, "Would you believe we've seen a few things more fucked up than that?" the pyromancer said.
Behind the great altar at the top of the stairs we discovered the bodies of two humans. They had been two of the explorers the addict told us about. The Imperial man wore the armor of a legate but was of no interest compared to the Redguard woman he lost the fight with. Their bodies lay heaped around the goal we sought for so long in the machine and elf-haunted halls. At last on the cathedral's altar, at the deepest part of Alftand, was a metallic disk with an impression sized to the sphere Septimus gave me.
"Lydia, you just scored big time," I said, placing the sphere onto the altar.