I do not own Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Oddly enough, I'm hating this Fiction more and more as I continually re-read it. You'd think it would grow on me, but... nope, just starting to dislike it even more than I did when I was in the process of writing it.
Huh. I wonder why that is.
Reviewer Responses:
Guen: We'll see what happens between Brynjolf and Ziris. I think future events might end up pulling them together again.
Guest: Thank youuuuuuuu, friendship! Here's the next.
Manu: Amazing? Huh, I don't know if I'd use that word, but thank you, nonetheless. And, yes, I think you'll find that the truth is going to be reveal very shortly. Cross your fingers that everything turns out okay.
P: Thanks! I imagine that it's something only super good thieves are bless with, or people who were born to be thieves, like Ziris.
JD98: Thank you! Happy to see you join the party! Keep coming back for more!
Chapter 14: Snow Veil Sanctum and the Aftermath
Snow Veil Sanctum was certainly what Ziris thought a Nordic ruin should look like, at least on the surface. The stone circle of the walls of the surface building rose ominously over the snow, black against the white.
Mercer stopped a bit away from the shape in the distance, and stared at it. Ziris glanced between him, and it.
"What?" she finally asked.
"Memories," he said dismissively with a sharp shake of his head. "Let's go."
Ziris followed him across the snowy plain to the ruin, and then down a set of steps leading to a door that, unsurprisingly, was closed, and locked.
Mercer snorted when Ziris shoved against it, and then he shouldered her out of the way. "These doors look imposing," he started, reaching into a pouch on his belt and withdrawing something, "but they're actually fairly simple to open if you know what you're doing."
Since Mercer knew what he was doing, he had the door open within thirty seconds, and, together, they slid into the ruin.
For the first part of their expedition, sunlight and fresh air were able to reach them through small circles in the ceiling, but as they approached a staircase leading deeper into the ruin, Ziris got the sinking sensation that natural lighting and air that wasn't completely stale would no longer be a luxury afforded to them.
Mercer hesitated at the top of the stairs, and peered down into the darkness that swallowed the bottom of them. He then sniffed, and leaned over, neatly plucking an already lit candle from the wall, and handing it to her.
"Keep that low," he told her. "It might be the only source of light we have as we get deeper."
Ziris nodded submissively, and then followed after him as he crept down the stairs, making sure to keep the candle visible, but out of the open air as much as possible.
They made it through several chambers that looked as though they were just waiting to burst with draugr, and Ziris's nose wrinkled from the smell as they entered a tomb-like area, where coffins were stacked upon one another from floor to ceiling. She hadn't been able to smell the draugr in her vision, but now she knew it smelled exactly what it should have smelled like.
Dead, rotten flesh.
Mercer was the picture perfect thief as he crept through the tomb and it's many pathways made by the stacks of coffins. He crouched so low to the ground, and so close to the shadows that Ziris would have lost sight of him had it not been for how closely she was following after him with the candle.
He also seemed to sense exactly where the traps that were waiting for them lay, and he warned her of them as they neared them, muttering things like "Pressure plates" and "Tripwire" every few chambers.
Ziris was glad she was with him, but she imagined that he could have easily handled at least this part of the journey on his own.
The fight with Karliah… that would be a different story, she imagined.
After passing through a room that had looked to have been some kind of throne hall at one point, Mercer stopped for the first time since the stairs.
Ziris glanced forward through the darkened doorway ahead of them, and then at him.
"What is it?"
"Karliah's close," he muttered under his breath. "I can feel it."
Hearing this, Ziris felt her pulse quicken. She turned her gaze back to the darkness ahead of them, and she grinned.
"What do you say we go in there and end this, then?" she suggested.
Beside her, Mercer snorted what Ziris imagined was agreement, and he started forward again. Ziris followed.
They entered a long hallway that was already lit up by braziers on either side, and Mercer rose from his crouch.
Ziris set the candle down and did the same, glancing at the images on one side of the corridor.
As Mercer made his way to the large door at the other end, she approached the wall, and touched the carvings there with her fingertips.
The carvings depicted a group of three, that were covered head to toe in armor or capes or something. All three were crouched at the feet of a goddess like figure. She had her arms outspread, and was wearing a cloak of her own, a hood drawn up over her head. Sitting on her arms and hands were birds, and more were carved flying around her.
Ziris frowned, gazing at the goddess, feeling certain she'd seen a similar figure somewhere else. In the back of her mind, something whispered in an odd language, and her vision flashed with an image of a statue of the same goddess on the wall. From the statue came a ghost like version of the woman herself, along with a flock of birds.
Nightingales.
The goddess floated before her statue, smiling at Ziris, and then she raised one hand to her lips, and pressed a finger against them. She wanted Ziris to stay quiet.
It was then that the figures connected in her head, and Ziris, quite literally, jumped out of the vision.
Nocturnal!
"Ziris!" She jumped when Mercer's voice hissed at her from down the hall, and she hurried towards where he was, glancing back at the carving only once.
She found him standing in front of the door, and he nodded towards it.
"I think Karliah might be on the other side," he murmured. "Be on your guard."
Ziris nodded, and Mercer turned the pick he had shoved in the odd keyhole of the door one final time. The lock clicked, and the door rumbled, slowly lowering itself down into the ground. Mercer quickly withdrew his pick and put it back in the pouch on his belt.
Ziris waited until the door was fully down, and then she took a cautionary step forward, in order to get a better look around the cavernous room on the other side.
Instead, a sharp tug went through her side, and she looked down in time to see that an arrow had struck her just below her last rib. She carefully pulled it out, arrowhead and all, just as she felt her legs start to give away.
"Archer!" she exclaimed, and managed to dive behind a rock before she lost all feeling in her lower half. The tingling traveled up her body into her chest, her arms, and then into her neck and head. She lay on the ground, unable to move, and feeling as though a mammoth was sitting on top of her.
Her eyelids felt very heavy, and she struggled to keep them open.
"Karliah!"
Mercer's voice echoed darkly around the room, sounding like thunder. Ziris saw through blurry vision as he stepped within her line of sight.
"Come out and fight!" he went on.
"I'd have to be a fool to cross blades with you," a voice responded, and Ziris saw another arrow fly, and strike the stone where Mercer had stood a moment before. He'd moved without her seeing it.
"You've gotten sloppy," he growled. "Hit the wrong target."
Ziris saw a dark shape step in front of Mercer, just out of his reach. She assumed the shape was Karliah, and let her eyes droop a bit further.
"Did you not learn before that it's dangerous to drag people who trust you into situations like this?" Karliah asked Mercer. "It only ends poorly for everyone involved, with death and heartache. I would have thought you'd like to avoid such things, after how hard it was the first time."
"There wouldn't have been a first time, if Gallus had known enough to keep his mouth shut," Mercer snarled.
"You know he couldn't!" Karliah exclaimed, sounding pained. "We took oaths, Mercer! You may have been impartial to them, but Gallus was not! He acted in the way he knew was right, and you killed him for it."
Mercer killed Gallus.
"He already had you, and the Guild," Mercer rumbled. "All he had to do was look the other way."
"While you bled the Guild we loved dry?"
"The Guild you loved," Mercer corrected dryly. "You were never delusioned enough to believe I cared for it, were you?"
Mercer never cared for the Guild.
Karliah didn't respond, and there was the sound of two blades being drawn.
"That's what I thought," Mercer said lowly. "Come, then, Karliah, and I'll reunite you with your precious Gallus."
"No." There was a flash, and Karliah disappeared. "I refuse to fight you. Not today."
"Karliah!" he shouted, but there was no response.
Ziris lay helplessly on the floor as she listened to him slide at least one of his weapons away, and then she heard him approach where she was. He crouched down beside her, and pressed a finger against her neck. Searching for a pulse.
She imagined that there wasn't one, not at this point. Everything was beginning to fade, and she imagined that she was dying. That was the only explanation for the lack of feeling, the lack of everything.
"Not gone yet," Mercer murmured, "but almost." He let out a snort, and his fingers left her neck. "I don't know why I brought you along," he growled. "You've just complicated things further, something I knew you were going to do from the first moment I saw you."
Ziris felt the cool metal of a blade touch her throat. By the Divines, he's going to stab me, she thought vacantly.
"I should have left you to be arrested," Mercer continued. Was that regret she heard in his voice? "I needed a distraction, though, and taking you on… it was a promise of one." The blade moved lower, until it rested between her breasts. "Karliah will not take you too," he told her. "Farewell, little raven."
Gallus called Karliah his little nightingale.
The blade sank in, and Ziris went limp, the small light that remained fading for good. She fell into the shadows.
Eternity hurt a lot more than Ziris imagined it would. The area where Mercer had stabbed her seemed to burn, almost, and she wondered whether or not she'd be suffering from the wound for the rest of forever, for all the thievery she'd done.
The darkness itself was just as cold as she'd thought it would be. It was a sharp contrast to the burning of her wound, although it didn't relieve the pain whatsoever. It fact, it only made the rest of her body hurt, and made her feel sluggish, even though she was merely floating through nothing.
She was incredibly certain she was dead, so it was a shocking surprise when she opened her eyes, and found herself gazing up at the canvas ceiling of a tent.
Ziris blinked several times, aware only of the pain in her chest for a few moments. When she collected her thoughts, however, she realized that she was lying on the ground, on top of a sleeping mat. A thin blanket covered her to her chest. The top part of her currais had been cut away, and beneath the thin fabric of her tunic, she recognized the hideous outline of a bandage, wrapped tightly around the region between her breasts, and her shoulders in order to keep it in place.
Her first thought: I should definitely be dead.
Her second thought: Why… aren't I?
She forced her head to turn to her right. She spotted another sleeping mat nearby, as well as the promising glow of a potion bottle.
She carefully reached for it, wincing at the fire that shot through her chest. She let out a relieved breath when her hand closed around the neck of the bottle, and she laid back down with a sharp exhale. Uncorking the bottle, she swallowed the entirety of the health potion, then tossed it to the side as a cooling sensation washed through her, settling between her breasts.
Ziris closed her eyes again, and tried to remember anything she could.
Only one thing stood out.
Mercer killed Gallus.
She should have known. After those visions she'd seen, of the two of them and of a wounded, dying Gallus. She should have been able to guess, to realize that Mercer had been lying to her, to everyone, for a quarter of a century.
Damn him, she thought sourly. Lying bastard.
And then, her throat constricted, and she felt the sting of tears behind her closed eyes. One slid free.
Stupid idiot.
The sad thing was that she didn't know if she was referring to Mercer, or herself.
She imagined he was back with the Guild by now, or perhaps chasing after Karliah somewhere in the wilderness. She didn't know if she cared, exactly. What she did care about was whether or not the Guild would just… blindly accept him back within the fold, even with her gone, and no one knowing what had happened. She imagined the story Mercer would tell them, or had already told them, about how Karliah had shot her.
He'll probably blame my death on her, too.
She frowned.
My death. He thinks I'm dead. I'm not. Oh…
She swallowed.
Damn.
If Mercer had returned to the Guild, Ziris wouldn't be able to. He'd kill her for certain, even if the others believed her when she told them what he actually happened. She didn't doubt that Mercer would be able to get to her even before she could reach the cistern, or the Flagon.
I can't go back, not while he lives.
The thought was grim. Mercer, her mentor, had tried to kill her, and would kill her, now that she knew who he was, and what he had done. Her mentor, the one who'd taught her to be the best thief she could be.
Did he care about me at all?
He'd told her that he'd needed a distraction after he'd killed Gallus, and Karliah had gotten away. He'd said that she was supposed to be that distraction. Maybe she'd never become more than that, despite it all.
Oddly enough, Ziris wasn't exactly fuming with anger. She knew that she should be, but she wasn't. She didn't want to go running after Mercer to get her revenge on him, and she didn't know why.
"You're awake."
Ziris's eyes opened at the faintly familiar voice, and she forced herself to sit up.
Karliah was standing just inside the tent, looking slightly wary. Ziris glanced around for a weapon, but she saw none, and she saw that Karliah was weaponless as well. Clearly, there wouldn't be a fight, nor was one necessary.
"My name is Karliah."
"I know." Karliah didn't seemed surprised. "Are you the one that…?"
"Yes," Karliah replied, stepping further into the tent. "You're lucky my arrow was not meant to kill. The paralysis poison that it was laced with slowed your heart, and kept you alive long enough for me to get potions inside you, and bandage your wound." She gestured to Ziris's armor. "I apologize for cutting it open."
"It's fine," Ziris said, watching her closely. The Dunmer looked exhausted. She wore armor that matched that of the Thieves Guild, but was a slightly different shade. She reached into one of the larger pouches and produced a water skin, which she held out to Ziris. She took it, and allowed herself a long drink.
"You have been asleep for two days," Karliah told her. "I had hoped to be gone by now, but I didn't know how you'd do on your own, and I felt it my duty to stay with you."
"Why'd you shoot me?" Ziris questioned, and Karliah exhaled.
"My arrow was not meant for you."
"No, I understand that," Ziris said, "but I've heard from more than one source that you're an expert marksman." Karliah shifted a bit, uncomfortable. "I doubt you shot me on accident."
"I made a decision to get you out of the way, and it saved your life," Karliah said simply. "That's all there is to it."
Ziris gazed at her for a moment, and then she looked downwards. "Where'd Mercer go?"
"Back to the Guild, I imagine."
"And you'll go after him?"
"I must," Karliah said. Ziris sighed, and the dark elf tilted her head. "He tried to kill you."
"He also turned me into the best thief in the Guild," Ziris replied softly.
"What do you mean?" Karliah asked, and Ziris told her what Mercer had done, taking her in and promising to teach her everything he knew, which he did over the years she'd been in the Guild, and since he'd killed Gallus. Karliah listened to this, her purple eyes fixed rather intently on Ziris, and when she was done, the Dunmer exhaled softly. "He never learned."
"Learned what?"
"That people who trust him do so indefinitely," Karliah murmured. "He doesn't understand how many hearts he breaks with his actions." She shook her head. "I am sorry you've suffered so much from what he's done."
"It's not exactly your fault," Ziris replied quietly. "There were plenty of times I could have accused him of something or other, and I never did, because I could only think about how he'd brought me into the Guild. I never… never let myself actually see him for who he was."
"He wasn't always like this," Karliah told her.
"No," Ziris agreed, remembering all the times that Mercer hadn't actually been angry with her. "I don't imagine he was."
They were quiet for some time, and then Karliah looked at her. "Are you hungry?"
"Not very," Ziris responded. "Why did Mercer kill Gallus?"
Karliah blinked, and turned her gaze downwards. "Mercer… broke an oath, that the three of us had made. He'd also been stealing from the Guild's coffers for several years. Gallus found about the first, and he had enough information to know about the second, and he knew that Mercer couldn't be trusted. He meant to confront him, ask him to pay for what he'd done, while they were on a job together." Karliah winced. "I followed them, and…"
"And Mercer killed Gallus," Ziris finished.
Karliah nodded tiredly. "I wanted to stop him, but I couldn't get to them in time. By the time Mercer had fled to the shadows, and I was able to reach Gallus, he was already dead."
"So Mercer didn't actually come after you the first time?" Ziris asked, wondering just how much Mercer had lied about.
"No, he did," Karliah responded. "Mercer and I always knew what we each were up to. He'd assumed I'd follow he and Gallus, and he waited to ambush me when I went to check on Gallus's body. I was only able to escape by hitting Mercer with the only poisoned arrow I had with me at the time."
"And you ran."
"He reached the Guild first," Karliah concluded. Her purple eyes went dark. "His lies forced me to stay away for twenty five years, unable to return home and tell everyone the truth."
"I don't think anyone actually got what they wanted from all this," Ziris said after a moment. "Mercer's going to have to leave the Guild, you lost Gallus, the Guild is probably going to be broke, if we don't find the goods that Mercer's stolen over the years… and… the one person I thought I could always trust turned out to be the biggest liar I've ever known." She laughed without any humor at all. "It's disgusting, isn't it?"
Karliah didn't respond, and Ziris glanced at her. "So, what's the plan?"
"The plan?" Karliah sighed. "I must go to the Guild, and find someone who will be willing to listen." She looked at Ziris. "You, however…"
"What?" Ziris asked, frowning when she saw the expression on her face.
"You will be in danger if you come back with me," Karliah answered. "I believe it may be safer if we travel separately, and if, when you reach Riften, you wait for me to fetch you, so you know it's safe."
"But -"
"If I fail, it would be your death," Karliah said firmly. "You and I both know Mercer well enough to understand that."
Ziris gazed at her a moment, and then she nodded, once. Karliah nodded back, and then the dark elf turned around to begin packing her things.
Ziris let her do this, and while she watched, she considered all that had transpired. Karliah believed that Ziris would be killed if she returned to the Guild without the backing of everyone else. Ziris knew that she was right, to some degree, but she couldn't help but wonder if, maybe, she was wrong. Mercer had tried to kill her, but would he try to do it again? Would he have the strength?
Ziris supposed it all depended on whether or not he'd actually formed a bond with her, the way she had thought he did. It would be a gamble, but Ziris knew that she did not want to run away, no matter what Karliah believed. That just… wasn't something Ziris could do, nor would she.
"You'll be all right, traveling alone?"
Ziris focused on Karliah, and saw a ghost of the affectionate, caring Dunmer she'd seen in her visions.
"Yes," she said, smiling. "I'll be just fine."
Karliah returned the smile. "If you're sure," she said, and then she rose, slinging her pack and her quiver of arrows over one shoulder. She picked up her bow, and glanced at Ziris. "Shadows hide you."
Ziris blinked, never having heard this before, but she quickly nodded to seem grateful.
Karliah ducked out of the tent, and Ziris carefully stood, exhaling a bit as she glanced around.
Well, she thought, reaching for her pack. Best I'd start with something to eat.
As of this chapter, we're near the end of page 125 of a 164 paged document, so...
Just a few more chapters, and then Ziris's tale will have run its course.