Now that it wasn't actively trying to kill them, Jane had a chance to finally get a good look at the moving statue. Even though she hadn't understood half of what he was saying, the thing that stood out the most to her was that he'd called the statue a Centurion.

Her grandfather loved telling stories of his adventuring days, and one of his favorites was the time he'd fought something he'd called a Centurion in some ruins. He'd stopped telling it after he'd gotten in trouble with a group of imperials who'd overheard and thought that he'd killed an actual centurion rather than the hulking metal giant he'd described.

He'd always wanted to know what made that thing tick. It was probably one of the reasons he was so obsessed with the ruins.

She sadly realized that he would have killed to be where she was now.

Jane traced the intricate patterns on it's leg with her hand, noting that the metal was warm, not scalding hot as she'd expected.

Jane was suddenly aware that Dok-Tor had stopped talking and was watching her examine the Centurion. She quickly pulled her hand away and walked through the gate that had opened when the Centurion stopped moving.

"We are over our heads here Sulla, we need to leave"

"Ok, I'll admit that the cave dwellers and that war machine was a bit of a set back, but I know that if we stick to it we can at least come out of it with a decent profit."

"KAOC SULLA! Why is it always about the profit with you!? Forget about the treasure for a minute! Everyone is DEAD!"

"Trust me here, when have I ever let you down before?"

Umana thought back to the many, many times Sulla had let her down. She remembered the time in Morrowind where they'd fought their way to Aleft on the rumor of treasure only to find three empty chests and few picked clean war machines and an angry ghost. The time he'd left her to fight a large horde of goblins and imps while he raided the ruins, only to later claim that he'd defeated them all single handed. the time he'd almost gotten her killed in a standoff with the College when he couldn't keep his xuth mouth shut. She remembered the draugr incident.

Umana wasn't sure why she hadn't realized how selfish her "friend" was before, but she supposed she had always known, even if she didn't openly acknowledge it.

Then again Sulla hadn't always been so Kaoc pigheaded. When they'd first started traveling together, he'd been a good man. Sure, he could be a bit self centered and a little naive, but he paid well and he knew when to back down when he needed to.

All of that changed when they made their first big discovery. Sulla had been in the game mainly for the sake of knowledge up until that point, but once he'd gotten a taste for gold, that started to change. Umana supposed that it was also around this time that she'd started thinking of him as her employer instead of her friend.

Thinking on it, Umana supposed that the only thing that had kept her from going back to being a regular sellsword was that the one thing that hadn't changed about him was that he still paid well.

"That's it Sulla, I'm done. Stay here if you want, but I'm going to find my way out of this Kaoc place."

"Umana, Please, you can't leave me here! Those things will tear me apart on my own!"

Looking at Sulla, Umana had a slight moment of weakness. For a minute she thought that she could see a flicker of the old Sulla in there for a moment.

"Come with me then! We may be over our heads, but it's not like the ruins are going anywhere! By the nine, if you're so focused on the treasure we can come back later when we are better prepared for whatever the oblivion is going on here. I'm sure that the college would be willing to send some mages to help us, they'd probably be more intrested in studying that thing in the ice than the gold anyway."

For a moment Umana thought that she had won him over, which was part of the reason she'd felt confident in mentioning the college. She now realized that was a mistake.

Sulla had held a grudge against the College of Winterhold ever since they'd rejected his attempts at joining them a few months after their first big discovery. That was probably part of the reason he'd been so dead set on finishing this expedition. Hadn't he told her on multiple occasions that he'd love to see the looks on those smug mages' faces when that "no-name Imperial spellsword from Morrowind" stole a major discovery right from under their noses.

Sulla's face hardened and he blocked her way with his sword.

"Do you really think that I'll just let you bring the College here to steal my treasure out from under me? After all that time and money I spent fighting them for the rights to excavate this place?"

"Trebatius you xuth fool! This isn't about politics anymore, this is about survival!"

"I'll move out of your way when I'm dead."

It was at that moment that something in Umana's mind snapped. For some reason this had been the final straw; not the ice creatures, not the war machines, not even the elf-like cave dwellers.

Suddenly the thousands of slights he'd made against her (great and small) came crashing down on her in full force and she was ready to rip the milk drinking Imperial's throat out.

She was getting ready to do just that when they heard a third, much calmer and friendlier voice ring out behind him.

"Um excuse me"

They turned to see a strange looking nord waving politely at them

"I don't mean to intrude on whatever is going on here, but it looks like you two could use some help?"

So I had originally intended to use the game dialogue for the encounter with Sulla and Umana, but Since I couldn't find it online (and I didn't feel like going to the trouble of downloading my copy of skyrim onto my brother's computer, creating a new save file, and replaying the entire game to get two lines of dialogue) I decided to come up with some myself.

The next chapter will mostly be the full encounter rather than the moments leading up to it, as well as some extra bits.

I'm hoping to get this story (as well as some of my other incomplete ones) finished by the end of this year. After that I'm probably going to focus on the sequel to this story, as well as a few fun one shots.

Hopefully I'll see you guys soon!