"What did you do?" Lili seethed, trying her best to keep the impending flames subdued.
Onmund stammered, at a loss for words and still trying to register what had just happened.
"You set off a trap, you idiot!" She yelled, lunging forward and ripping the amulet from his motionless hand. How could he be so carless? Angrily, she shoved her way past him and placed the amulet back on the inlet pedestal. She waited for a few a few seconds before impatiently adjusting the relic. Nothing happened.
She spun on her heel, arms crossed, and glowered at him. "This is great. Good job, Onmund. You really showed me up this time."
"Oh, shut up." He managed through his red-faced embarrassment. "It's not like we're trapped in here forever. There's got to be a way out, or at worst we wait for someone to find us." He walked up and began rattling the rusty, thick iron bars.
"Stop that." She commanded nervously, glancing around in fear the cavern would collapse on them. The ancient ceiling remained intact and the rattling did nothing but make noise.
"We could try calling for help," he suggested meekly, letting go of the bars. The look on his face told her he hated that idea just as much as her.
"We can figure this out." She sighed, refraining from looking at the surrounding bars. There was only about ten square feet of room, all enclosed by iron and the stone wall. If there was a key to releasing the trap, she decided it must be on the stone wall that caused the problem.
Bending down, she examined the pedestal in the wall, looking for a lever or switch to reset the mechanism. Her slender hands grasped something.
"Onmund, some light if you will." The Nord obliged and she did her best to peer at the strange, stony object. Looking somewhere in between a rock and a lever, she decided to pull it, hoping the odds were in her favor. The rock crumbled from the wall, scattering silty residue all over her arm and shooting dust up her nose. Pulling back with a slight cough and setting the rock aside, she saw this assumed lever was actually a piece of the wall.
Well that didn't work.
She looked back to the Nord, trying to figure out what to suggest next, when a sudden wave of energy and light flashed around the inlet. Jumping back reflexively, she looked to Onmund and saw he was wearing the amulet, a surprised smile on his face.
"You put it on?" she asked, half incredulous and jealous. "We have no idea what it can do!" She looked back at the swirling wall, biting her lip in both worry and thought.
"The amulet is connected to that magick," Onmund said, stepping towards the inlet and running his hands over the runic grooves.
"Yes, I gathered that." She spat. Stepping away from him with her arms crossed.
"I wonder what effect casting a spell would have."
"Are you suggesting blasting the wall?"
"I guess I am." He replied, cracking his knuckles for dramatic affect.
She snorted slightly and suppressed a smile. "Normally I would inform you how brash and barbaric a solution like that would be, but drastic times call for drastic measures." She prayed this wouldn't cause any further traps, like poison arrows or saws, to go off.
"Alright," Onmund announced, bringing his hands together. Blue energy began to surge between them. "Stand back." Thrusting his palms forward, he shot a thousand freezing pellets at the wall, glazing it over with large ice spikes and shattering it into oblivion.
Lili's eyes grew wide as the wall crumbled, revealing a dark, decrepit tunnel on the other side. "How about that…" she whispered in awe, walking past an equally surprised Onmund and peering down the ancient, abandoned tunnel. An eager smile spread across her face. More like a secret tunnel.
"Hey, it worked!" Onmund said, drawing her attention away from the mystical and back to reality. "The bars retracted."
"Oh, good." She said, glancing at their easily won freedom. "Why do think it was sealed off?"
"I'm not sure." He replied uneasily. "Perhaps we should go tell Tolfdir, or Arniel."
Lili ignored him, edging towards the dark tunnel's mouth. "What do you think is down there?" Disregarding Onmund's protests, she sent a candle light spell hurtling down the hall. It was met with a disturbing bark.
A creature came charging through the darkness, eerily pale in the unnatural light with a set of soulless blue eyes. It bared its blackened teeth with an illegible war cry, rotten flesh falling in strips off of its bony face.
The two adepts simultaneously screamed. Reacting, Lili jumped back and shot forward a storm of fire, enveloping the hall in flames and incinerating the mindless creature into a pile of stinking ash.
She fell back, heart racing, and looked at Onmund. His hand was on his chest as he tried to steady his breathing, eyes wide and gaping. Then a string of laughter poured from his mouth and he bent over, hands on his knees.
"Oh my gosh," he laughed, wiping his eyes. "Remind me to never play a prank on you. Don't want to wind up like draugr over there."
"Stop laughing." She said through her teeth, righting herself and smoothing her ruffled cloak. Why wouldn't her heart stop racing. She took deep breaths, trying to calm herself. This is what she'd been training for. She had to keep herself composed. "You were just as startled."
"Yeah, startled isn't the word I would use." Onmund mused, finally regaining control. He came up beside her, looking down the tunnel with the wonder she previously wore on her face. "Still want to see what's down there?"
"Yes." She said, fighting her shaky breaths. "But…let's report back to Tolfdir first."
XXX
"This is amazing!" Tolfdir declared, a wide smile on his aged face. He turned in the tunnel, attempting to take every inch of their find in. Lili and Onmund stood behind him, impatiently waiting for their supervisor to continue forward.
Lili sighed regretfully. True, they did the right thing as students, but as a researcher…this was going to take forever. She tried peering past the professor and down the narrow passage. They still hadn't made it to the end of the secret tunnel.
"And you said a draugr appeared?" Tolfdir continued with a merry laugh, walking slowly with a hand on the wall, the other held forward and grasping an oiled torch. "We have no idea what to expect here!" Lili huffed irritably. It sounded like the crazy Nord wanted to run into more of those creatures.
Finally, they reached a four way room with tomb stones covering each of the doors. There was an archaic altar in its center that rested on a stone dais, surrounded by stubs of burnt out candles. Tolfdir lit the ancient wicks and the room flickered to life. A strange presence washed over them, like a wave of cold water had rushed over their bodies. The feeling chilled Lili to the bone and made her head spin.
"How strange," Tolfdir murmured, grasping the altar and touching his forehead. He turned and looked at the two agitated adepts. "Be on your guard."
XXX
"Professor," Onmund whispered, feeling slightly woozy, "you feel it too?" A strange blue light filled the room, and Onmund felt a heavy force wash over him. Tolfdir remained still and unresponsive, so he went up to the old Nord and hesitantly placed a hand on his shoulder. The man was like stone and eyes still as glass.
Recoiling, he looked to Lili calling for her help, but she remained just as before, arms crossed and face in a cool frown. Her statuesque form was now truly a statue.
Panicked, he backed into the altar, shouting for help and trying to think of a spell that could unfreeze his companions.
"I hope you know what you are doing with that frost spell."
Onmund jumped, nearly knocking the frozen professor down. He was horrified as his body phased right through him. Any scream he was about to give was silence by the sudden apparition of a ghostly, robed elf.
"Hold, mage," the ghost bellowed, its voice echoing from a distance beyond the realm of Skyrim. "And listen well. You have set in motion a chain of events that cannot be stopped."
Onmund righted himself, blinking at the ghost. Though he was scared out of his wits, he couldn't help but feel agitated by the specter's condescending tone.
"What do you want?" he forced himself to say. He was startled by the own wavering, otherworldliness of his voice. It was like they were speaking on a different plane.
"Judgement has not been passed, as you had no way of knowing." The apparition continued, ignoring his question. "But judgement will be passed on your actions to come, and how you deal with the dangers ahead of you."
"Judgement?" he demanded, looking around the room in slight panic. "Dangers? What on earth are you talking about?"
"This warning was passed to you because the Psijic order believes in you. You mage, and you alone, have the potential to prevent disaster. Take great care, and know that the order is watching."
The force lifted as the specter uttered these last words and dissipated into oblivion. Onmund felt himself able to stand and breathe normally again, and looked to his now mobile comrades for answers.
"I swear I felt something rather strange just then…" Tolfdir breathed, coming back to life. He looked from the stoic Lili to the bewildered Onmund. "What just happened?"
XXX
Lili stood tall and stiff, jaw clenched and arms crossed tighter than even she believed possible. Onmund's relation of the vision from the Psijic had been astonishing news indeed, but it should have been her to receive the honor. She had worked her entire life to get this far, devoted every hour to studying and training, working to master every school of magick, and being dragged across distant lands to study new teachings. It had just been dumb luck the farm boy put the relic on and completed the action of destroying the wall. Dumb, brute driven luck. She let a long hiss rush from her pointy nose.
"But the Psijics have no connections to these ruins." Tolfdir contemplated, rubbing his grey beard. "No one has seen anyone from their order in a long time. Why would they choose to contact you here and now?"
"Like I said," Onmund explained, dark circles under his eyes, "it stated that I set something into motion."
"Something's down here." Lili interrupted, tired of being cast to the side while the professor marveled over the ask-questions-later Nord. They looked at her, suddenly remembering she was in the room. "Well, the order member said you put something into motion. And what did you do besides picking up that amulet and opening this secret passage? Something powerful was hidden down here, and because of your actions it is going to be freed."
"You think it's a creature?" Tolfdir asked, perplexed.
"No, not a creature." Lili corrected, letting her arms fall. "But a power, a force that these ruins were to contain. But whatever it is, we need to make sure it does not fall into the wrong hands, or I'm sure we'll be seeing the dangers and judgment the Psijic spoke of."
"So in other words," Onmund growled, "Don't let you and the Thalmor touch it."
Her face grew red and she clenched her recently relaxed fists. "My kind is who should have it. We have eons of knowledge from studying magick, skills that have been honed into our blood. No one else is better suited to care for whatever lies in these ruins than the Altmer."
"You mean Thalmor." Onmund spat.
Lili growled, resisting the urge to claw the boy's face, but her rage was subdued by the professor. "Let's not worry about this just yet." He said, a smug smile on his old face. "I think it would be best to first find this power before deciding who claims it. And Lilidaale, my dear, this is a college excavation, so whatever knowledge lies here will be brought and studied in Winterhold first."
"Yes, professor." She managed through clenched teeth, refusing to look at the Nordic boy. He wore that relic so pompously, thought himself better than all of them, felt justified in his prejudice due to the Psijics gracing him with their presence. She could barely stand being in the room, let alone the same ruins, while he acted like this. But leaving now would mean accepting defeat in whatever this contest was, and she was equally curious to find this lost power.
"Perhaps we should try looking in these coffins," Tolfdir said, mostly to himself, breaking her demurred thoughts. He wondered past the two adepts, hand on his chin in thought, and went to place his palms on the tomb parallel to the entrance.
If he had gone one step further he would have been crushed for the enwalled tomb busted open and came crashing to the ground, sending up a spray of dirt. They all jumped back as a restless draugr rushed through the cloud of dust.
Lili lit her hands, fire bolts so concentrated they were pure white flames, and was about to sear a hole straight through the monster's head when a wall of ice suddenly rushed before her, freezing the draugr mid stride. Recoiling from the magic that almost damaged her, she looked with shock at the caster, only to see Onmund, slightly hunched with frosty smoke swirling from his hands, panting with wicked smile on his face.
She flared her nostrils in displeasure but refrained from yelling for Tolfdir's sake.
"Onmund!" Tolfdir declared proudly, walking up and kicking the draugr in the side. It shattered in a pile of ice, clearly frozen to the bone. "That was remarkable!"
"I never casted a spell like that before." He admitted, trying to pull himself together. "It greatly drained, but that's the strongest ice spell I've ever cast."
"The amulet…" Tolfdir murmured. He walked up to the tired, yet pleased, Nord, and examined the relic. "It must be enchanted far beyond a simple booby trap. It's made you stronger."
Lili ground her teeth, invidiously flicking her eyes towards the relic and its thick Nord owner. He shouldn't even be wearing it, and to have Tolfdir practically encouraging this behavior…did he really expect the college would let him keep the relic for himself? So what if the Psijic order felt compelled to contact him; he did not have the right to parade around wearing it as some kind of hero. And, after all, she'd been the one to find it. She'd done all the work. He was just stupid enough to pick an unknown relic up and put it on.
It wasn't just unfair—it wasn't right.