The high elf, Valie, had not died well. What had been done to her was indescribable, and blood was everywhere. The torture table where her body had been restrained was almost completely red, as was the floor around it. Clearly, the Falmer knew very little of mercy, but plenty about torture.
We cleared the room with brutal efficiency; taking down the handful of Falmer that had been prowling about in the room. On a table near Valie's body were lumps of flesh that had clearly been harvested from the gory bones of another, unknown humanoid. Someone else from the team had been butchered like a cow by the Falmer. I tried not to look too closely at a nearby tanning rack, which had been stretched with skin that was in the process of being tanned. It was not animal skin.
J'darr made the mistake of looking at it for long enough to get a proper eye full. He made a very sick-sounding noise before bolting for the other side of the room. I wished he had managed to hold it down, because the sound of him vomiting triggered my own reaction. I raced over to join him.
Both of us leaned against one another, just taking comfort in the contact of a fellow person. I passed a canteen to him so we could both rinse out our mouths.
Serana looked downright green when we lurched out of our corner to rejoin her. I could tell she was still managing to hold on to her own breakfast, if only by a thread.
We did a somewhat hasty search of the room, and I found a pack leaning against the wall a short distance from poor Valie's body. A single health potion had been taken out and set on the ground next to the pack. A quick check inside revealed an Imperial Officer's helmet, a few septims, and an unlit torch. Recognition jolted through me; this would be Sulla's pack, the one that went missing with Valie and Endrast. The Falmer had taken it, and it lay where it had been dropped.
After checking the room over, I found a place where a low-cooking fire burned. I was able to identify cooked mushrooms and a few fish, which I gathered up to supplement our own foodstuffs. I ignored whatever I couldn't identify, not wanting to eat something or… someone I shouldn't.
We made our way to the far end of the room, only to find another dead Falmer with a sword wound through its chest.
I came to a dead stop, "I didn't kill this one."
The other two paused, eyeing the body.
"Could it be Sulla or Umana?" Serana asked hesitantly.
"Could be," J'darr agreed, but chose not to take any deep breaths of the fetid air to see if he could identify the scents.
"But… we killed several of the damned things. Sulla and Umana? They didn't do anything?" My voice was flat and incredulous. "They saw the dead body of one of their companions, and didn't punish her murderers?"
We all shared a long look. I already had a bad impression of Sulla, but I wasn't thinking very charitably about Umana either, at this point.
Grimly the three of us left that room, with its gruesome contents, behind and found ourselves on yet more ramps leading down. A few quick, brutal fights led us to the bottom of the shaft. The bodies of the Falmer who had been sent off the ramps lay where they had fallen, rather worse for wear after their plummet down the shaft. There were also a lot more bodies than I could remember fighting. We were still clearly on Sulla and Umana's tails.
Suddenly, Serana's face turned grim. "Chaurus," she breathed.
Turning to look where she had pointed, I spotted the dead body of the thing that had to have laid all those eggs on the level above. Creatures just like this one had supplied the Falmer with building supplies and the raw material for the armor they wore.
If someone were to take a cockroach, cross it with an earwig, and then make it grow to the size of a small cow, you would have a Chaurus. The thing had long mandibles, and its entire body was made out of overlapping segments of black chiton. Black pincers lay at its back end as well, which no doubt could be used to grip and hold a victim, allowing the insect to turn around and dispatch its captive. Peering a bit closer, I noted a viscous black liquid had oozed from its maw and formed a pool beneath its slack head. My mind flicked back to poor Endrast's final written words; I bet I knew where the poison came from too. Green ichor pooled beneath the giant insect's body, and oozed from wounds that had been inflicted by another pair of swords.
It was missing several legs, crippling the creature so that it could be killed by a sword thrust at the base of its head.
We skirted the corpse nervously, before coming to a door. Slipping inside, we found ourselves in a place that looked more like a workroom. The room had been divided in half by metal grates. Down one side, stone tables and chairs were pushed against the wall, designating workstations for the Dwemer in centuries past. Down the other, I spotted three stone pressure plates set on the floor.
"Hold up," I hissed, gesturing at the others to freeze.
My eyes darted, looking for the signs of the trap I knew were there. Sure enough, I pointed up to the ceiling. Long bars of metal that had been sharpened to a slicing tip lay against the ceiling.
"Let's step carefully around these-" I started to warn them, but was cut off by a querulous but wordless snarl.
My eyes shot to the far end of the room. To my surprise, I saw a Falmer at the other end… silhouetted by a dropped torch that still burned. Umana and Sulla had been through here, having closed the door in the blind creature's face only moments ago.
The Falmer turned toward us and began to prowl in our direction, lip curled in a vicious expression.
I heard the creak of the bowstring, but I forestalled J'darr with a hand. Giving him an evil smile, I let the Falmer prowl closer… closer… closer. Then I stomped on the nearest pressure plate and leaped back.
There was a click and with a loud whang, the bars swung down from the ceiling with brutal force. If I had been standing at the first trigger, it would have swung down into my face and chest. Slightly farther back, the Falmer received a clubbing to the back of its skull with three hard, sharp bars of metal. The blow resulted in a wet crunching noise that was almost lost in the clattering bang of the bars reaching the end of their swing. The trap then slowly swung back up to the ceiling and reset itself. The Falmer sprawled forward and did not move again.
"Lasirah, if you ever become angry with this one, J'darr politely requests that you simply tell him to go away," the Khajiit said meekly.
"Likewise," came Serana's agreement.
"Deal," I said amicably.