Sorry for the long wait. It seems being constantly mentally exhausted is not good for one's ability to write. Luckily, the nearby town opened up a new library, which is great for writing. A big thank you to xTRESTWHOx and NaanContributor for sticking by and encouraging me to keep trying.
Chapter 94: By a Thread
15th of Sun's Dawn
After what felt like an eternity of riding, Ruby, Lydia, and Serana were approaching the location of Alftand astride their mounts. Ruby was giving Arvak some time out in the sun, Serana had summoned a Coldflame Atronach in horse form, and Lydia simply had her common steed. They were mainly going by old records passed onto them from Winterhold, but it all indicated that Alftand was a short distance north of the Wayward Pass, situated between Windhelm and Dawnstar, near the border of the two holds. Part of the ruin had been spotted as they came down the mountain toward it, though the snow and ice helped to hide it soon after. Eventually, the three came upon an abandoned camp near a few Dwemer buildings poking up out of the ice and two half-destroyed wooden structures that looked moderately aged, if not ancient.
"Looks like this is the spot," Serana said as she dismounted and dismissed her summon.
"Yeah. Let's see if we can find the entrance," Ruby replied as she did the same, heading toward the tallest Dwemer structure, which had a recently built wood and rope ramp attached to it. Lydia, meanwhile, found a suitable stone column to use as a makeshift hitching post, tying her horse to it before rejoining her thane.
Serana, for her part, began silently searching the old encampment. There were a few old bedrolls and lean-tos, most left within the dilapidated buildings which would have offered additional protection against the weather. There were also a few collapsed tents, and something halfway under one of them caught her eye, convincing her to sweep aside the snow covering it with a telekinetic push. She almost yelped at the sight, but quickly caught herself and merely jumped back, catching the eye of the housecarl.
"What is it?" Lydia asked as she walked over, but her eyes gave her the answer. "Oh."
While the vampire grimaced, the mortal woman crouched and tapped the body with a gloved finger.
"He's… Well, I think it was a he. They're completely frostbitten," Lydia observed, taking a closer look at the frozen corpse. "Looks like they got stuck, and…I guess they froze here."
Serana couldn't help but sigh and shake her head. She didn't know this person, but the thought of freezing to death was not a pleasant one, and she could only hope that they didn't suffer by the end. Before she could say anything else, she heard the crunching of snow approaching them, heralding Ruby's arrival.
"No go on that tower thing," Ruby announced to them as she walked over from the building. "Tried the sphere, but it didn't… Oh, uh…" Ruby trailed off as she spied the corpse.
"We can see about doing something for the body later," Lydia figured as she straightened up from her examination. "Their friends might have planned to come back for them if they managed to leave. If not, a shallow burial is better than nothing."
Serana pulled the tent back over the body to hide it, and they started looking around for more clues. A few loose sheets of paper were found within a box of other belongings, and the vampire looked through them quickly before reading them over thoroughly.
"Ah, so we know who was here, at least," she announced, getting the attention of her fellows. "Appears to be an expedition led by this Sulla Trebatius person. This is most of the manifest."
Her eyes narrowed slightly, and she added, "Doesn't sound like the nicest guy, going by his personal rants in here."
"What'd they say?" Ruby asked out of genuine curiosity.
"Seemed paranoid of someone 'stealing his discovery'. I can't say it doesn't happen, but there are ways to ensure you're historically credited that don't include shooing professionals away from whatever you're working on." Serana folded the papers and stashed them into her satchel before looking around. "Okay, there was a mention of a- Ah, here!"
The other two looked to where Serana indicated and saw a set of bridges and ramps along the outside of the glacier leading downward. There were a couple of Dwemer buildings there as well, although it seemed to be the edge of the ancient city as well as the massive ice formation.
"Should be a fissure down here. Might lead inside if this Sulla was correct."
"Right," Ruby responded with a nod. "Let's go ahead and get the others."
The two mortals and one vampire reappeared within Gauldur's Refuge, and the girls went to the recreation room where they half-expected everyone else to be. At the moment, only Blake was there, reading with some scattered, scribbled-on papers at her spot on the table.
"Have you reached the Khajiit massacre yet?" Lydia asked, snapping Blake out of her fugue.
"Uh, no. Not quite," the Faunus answered as she set a bookmark to keep her place. "Kinda dreading having to…write that part."
"Wait, what Khajiit massacre?" Ruby asked, mild distress in her voice.
"Song of Pelinal stuff," Blake told her while getting up and stretching. "We make it to the Dwemer place?" she quickly changed the subject.
Ruby frowned at the avoidance of the topic, and Serana nodded.
"Yep," the vampire answered as some clanging sounded from down the hallway. "Well, I guess the others are in the workshop."
"Let's go get them before they exhaust themselves," Blake said before leading the charge.
"Seriously though," Ruby pushed, "what was the Khajiit massacre? Did Pelinal kill a bunch of Khajiit?"
"Yes. He mistook them for elves," Lydia shortly explained. "It's little more than an anecdote in the Song of Pelinal."
"...Every time I learn more about this guy, I like him even less."
"Don't say that around any Imperials. It might be as bad as insulting Ysgramor around the Companions."
"He had issues, too," Ruby pointed out before throwing up her hands. "Lots of Tamriel's early big figures were bad like that! Why don't more people look up to Katarina or Prince Attrebus?"
"Less mythologization," Weiss answered them from the room where she and Yang were working on the horse-like vamidium, pieces carefully placed on a work desk and freshly drawn schematics of what they had observed so far in taking it apart pinned to the wall above it.
"Oh, that's what you've been doing?" Ruby asked while coming in to take a look as well. She pointed at a glittering crystal set on a work desk. "Is that the power source?"
"I think that's a converter," Yang answered before pointing toward a spherical gyro with a Soul Gem set in its gyroscopic center. "That might be the actual power source. It stopped doing anything when I took it out. …Though that could mean they're actually the opposite if the transmission goes the other way around, now that I think about it. We'll have to figure that out."
"Huh, neat." Ruby then blinked. "Wait, are they powered by…souls?"
"Nah," Yang answered while standing up and wiping her hands on an old rag to get some of the oil off of them. "Me and Weiss looked it over. It's empty."
"I have some theories, but we'd have to put the vamidium back together if I want to test them," Weiss explained. "My best guess is that it has something to do with Dwemer tonal magic. Rather than carrying soul energy, the gem may be holding a resonant tone that…does something. Sorry, but little is understood about Tonal Architecture. The best that most sources have on any of it is that the Dwemer used particular tools to create the tones, and those tones created effects. Like making metal completely resistant to corrosion."
"Huh, well, we are going into some big Dwemer ruins," Ruby reminded her with a grin. "Maybe we'll find some more info."
"Blackreach is a bit more than a Dwemer ruin," Lydia reminded the Dragonborn. "While we don't know too much, we do know it's a massive cavern. Some say it takes up the entirety of the underground of western Skyrim."
"That does not seem feasible," Weiss countered. "A system of caves, maybe, but an entire cavity that large? It would collapse under its own weight. I even doubt the veracity of anyone knowing if a system goes on for that long."
Lydia frowned then declared, "Weiss, I would never question your intelligence. You are learned and an excellent mage."
The heiress was caught off-guard by the sudden compliment, a mild blush on her cheeks. "Oh, well, thank you, I-"
"But you don't know everything," Lydia cut back in. "And you can be arrogant at times."
Weiss' jaw hung at that, and the other three girls looked at the housecarl in shock.
"Lyd!" Ruby admonished her. "That was uncalled for!"
"Maybe, but we are about to travel to the most unknown place in Skyrim, if not Tamriel. We can't let ourselves grow complacent." She turned her attention back to the vampire. "Weiss, don't take my words as an insult. I really mean it when I say you're smart. Smarter than I could've ever been, schooling or not. But I've heard tales about Blackreach since I was a child whereas you only heard it mentioned mere months ago. People have gone down there just to turn tail and stumble back beaten and bloodied upon reaching its edge. Veteran soldiers and adventurers have cracked trying to explore its depths. Countless more simply never returned. This is no mere cave. I just want you to understand that."
Weiss grimaced as she put her hands to her hips and nodded. "I hear you. Don't take my words as underestimating this venture. We've seen what 'normal' caves can sometimes hold in this land. I can't imagine this one being any gentler."
"Okay, awkward respect stuff aside, we should all get ready," Yang butted in. "I wanna get this grease off of me, and you wanna get that splunking stuff ready, right?"
"Ah, yes, our spelunking gear," Weiss said as she recalled the items she had gathered in preparation for their trip underground. "I'll get it all set near the entrance, so we can pop in and grab it as soon as we reach the caves."
As Weiss and Yang went down the halls to prepare, Serana and Blake following them respectively, Ruby looked back at her housecarl with an annoyed glare.
"I'm not apologizing," Lydia quickly stated.
"Don't you think that was a bit rude?" Ruby asked while giving her housecarl a half-lidded glare.
"It wasn't wrong." The Nord woman crossed her arms. "I could have been more tactful, I suppose, but we are practically at the door for this and we need to take it seriously."
"Lydia, Weiss is taking it seriously," Ruby pointed out. "She's probably taking it the most seriously out of all of us. You don't have to get on her case."
"Yes, I…" Lydia sighed, dropping her arms as though deflating. "I don't think you really understand what this is like. Any of you. You've faced and fought and even defeated legends, but Blackreach is no mere legend. It's a place that swallows and spawns them. It's all very real, and you all are just treating it like…like…"
"Like any other th-thing they've faced?"
Both women looked to see that Gillie had appeared at the entrance to the workshop, the vampire girl seeming to shrink in on herself under their gaze.
"Sorry, I just… I was going to start on lunch, a-a-and I w-was wondering…what you might wa-nt, so… I kinda heard that. S-s-... Sorry."
"No, it's okay," Ruby waved her worries off.
"B-but, I do…think you'll be all right," she added. "Lydia…is right that you shouldn't let your…guard down, but you've all… Well, you've slain dragons and Vampire Lords. I don't know what Blackreach is like, but…can't be much worse."
Ruby let loose a breath that fluttered her bangs a little.
"I hope not. But, even if it does, we'll face it. Like you said, we've fought some pretty bad stuff before."
Gillie nodded a small smile on her face at that.
"Speaking of, we should go get ready." Ruby made to start walking but then paused. "What's for lunch, by the way?"
"Weiss, I somehow washed myself completely clean of the closest thing to motor oil in this world and ate a pretty filling lunch," Yang pointed out while looking over the vampire's work. "How are you still organizing all this stuff?"
"I'm trying to make sure it's all in proper order," Weiss told her, rearranging the leather harnesses and coils of rope. "We'd need to strap on the harnesses before taking up the ropes, then we grab the climbing axes, then-"
"Weiss, I'm sure we don't need it so we can be ready in five seconds or less," Blake said, reaching down and helping her straighten out the current set she was on before helping her up. "You've done good."
"Right, well, okay." Weiss sighed and looked back to her team. "So, we're heading in now?"
"Yep. Serana found the entrance to Altland before we came in," Ruby confirmed.
"Alftand," Weiss corrected her. "Let's go, then."
"I'll wait here with Gillie, if you guys don't mind," Serana said to the girls. "Not trying to get out of doing things, but it might be a tight fit, and five's more than a crowd as it is."
"Eh, fair enough. You're not exactly combat-focused," Yang noted.
"Especially not against those Dwemer golems," she agreed. "I'll see if I can't get that extra space for a garden set up while you're all hacking through the dead Dwarves' city."
"All right then, everybody going," Ruby said while taking the Gauldur Amulet and walking to the eye symbol etched into the main room's center, "hands on me."
Moments later, the five women disappeared from the Oblivion pocket realm and appeared in the midst of the beginnings of a snowstorm in Skyrim.
"Couldn't have brought us inside, sis?" Yang asked while tucking her hands under her arms.
"Sorry! Don't want to risk doing it in a tight space. Still don't know if this thing telefrags people," Ruby said while passing the amulet over to Weiss.
"Not something we want to find out, really," the heiress added before they made their way down the wooden ramp and across a bridge.
"Did this place… Did they build this in a glacier?" Blake asked with incredulity as they went down a set of crudely made stairs imposed over the ice.
"I have a hard time picturing that," Weiss answered. "More likely, the glacier formed or moved in after the Dwemer vanished."
"You'd think they'd have something to prevent that," Yang threw in.
"Maybe they do, but it's a system needing activation rather than something more automatic." Weiss rubbed her chin in thought. "After all, glaciers aren't exactly known for moving fast."
The girls looked at an intricately carved wall as they passed it by and followed another rope and board bridge into a crevice in the glacier Serana had identified from the documents and a quick search. The wind blew against the entrance, making a howling noise as it partially pushed into the ice cavern. Inside, most things were either ice or wood brought in from outside. An ice ceiling was held up by wooden beams set against the ice walls and ice floor with some spaces boarded over, likely to prevent accidents. A cart had been flipped over near some crates, likely containing the supplies the explorers depended on to survive, as well as a handful of spare beams.
"Where're the guys who brought this stuff?" Yang asked no one in particular.
"Either further in, or they've left and moved on," Weiss answered, picking up a piece of Dwemer metal set atop one of the crates to look it over. "Going by the notes Serana found, some independent actors wanted to explore this place. Not sure what exactly he's after, but we should be cautious."
"Did he sound like a bad guy?" Ruby asked.
"Not exactly, but… Well, we can never be too certain. Plus, we have no idea how long they've been down here if they haven't left yet."
Saying that, Weiss paused as they came upon an exposed column, similarly carved to the wall outside. Next to it was a barrel with a candle lantern set atop it and a thin notebook pinned under the light source.
"Can't have been long," Blake noted as she saw the pair of burning candles in the lantern, almost gone but still casting their illumination.
Weiss picked up the lantern and took out the notebook from beneath it before flipping to the last page to be written on.
"'We tried to get through the glacier at the top, but we couldn't find any way into that tower parapet. Yag spotted a fissure in the glacial wall and construction of a catwalk was finished just in time for a storm to hit. At first we thought to wait it out, but it has only gotten worse. A shift in the glacier took out several of the new laborers.
"'I ordered everyone to quickly move as much of the supplies as we could into the fissure and we managed to get most of it. One of the hands decided he wasn't going to listen and tried to make it out through the storm, but got blown off the catwalk by the wind.
"'Looks like we are well and truly stuck in here. But for all that I feel even more driven that I should be the one to uncover the mysteries of this ruin. I'm tired of all the credit for my work going to the Mages or the Legion. It will be my name that goes down in the history books for this discovery.'
"
As Weiss read out the journal entry, the others investigated a nearby abandoned campfire spot (kept off the ice thanks to large stone blocks), some cooking gear, and a few more supply crates.
"Looks like they were here for at least a few days," Yang said as she looked over the extinguished embers and charred logs. "They must have made sure to put the fires out. Can't imagine you want them burning too hot inside of a glacier."
Blake started to search the next section but paused when she laid eyes upon it. "Gods," she muttered.
"What- Oh," Ruby murmured as she saw what her teammate had seen. The other two came up and spotted it as well.
In the next 'room', there had been another 'camp' set up, with a firepit, supplies, and bedrolls, but also surrounding the area were scattered patches of dark red ice.
"Blood," Weiss said as she walked up and observed the scene. "Frozen. It had to have been hours ago, at least. Given the candles and…this, I don't think the expedition left of their own accord." After looking about for any more signs, Weiss paused and bent near one of the abandoned bedrolls to unfold it and reveal a hidden object. "Someone left their lute here."
"Weiss, this is hardly the time or place," Yang chided her teammate, who, in response, lifted up the musical instrument she had found. "Oh, huh, haha, my bad."
"Guys, I hear something," Blake announced, getting everyone's attention. "There's someone still alive down here. I almost didn't hear them through all this ice."
"Think it's whoever did this?" Ruby asked.
"No way to tell without finding them first," the Faunus answered. "I can't quite make it out, but it sounds like they're talking. Let's go find them."
The team made their way from the bloody scene, heading further down into the glacier, coming across a few more frozen splatters of blood, including one spread over the side of a Dwemer wall. Just past there, the five could all clearly hear a male voice.
"Where is it? I know you were trying to keep it for yourself, J'zhar. You always try to keep it for yourself!"
"Sounds Khajiity," Lydia quietly observed. "And…not all there."
"No! There's got to be more Skooma. Shut up! Shut up! Don't lie to me J'zhar! You hid it! You always try to steal it from me!"
"Oh, well that's just perfect," Weiss groaned as they walked by the wooden wall where they heard the man ranting to himself. "Our only lead is a deranged addict."
"Shouldn't we help him?" Ruby asked.
"Probably need to wait for him to cool off. Sounds angry," Blake pointed out while looking toward something beyond what any of them could see. "He's…pacing. He'll wear himself out, eventually, then we can approach without worrying about him hurting himself."
"In the meantime, there's more area we can search," Weiss added, gesturing down the path. It began to level off, with stone columns in the center and walls beginning to be shown, no longer completely covered in ice, along with some of an arched ceiling. Heading further in, they saw a large pipe and a few vents, one of which had hot, moist air blowing out of it.
"That thing's still working," Yang mused at the sight.
"And it's melting some of the ice," Lydia pointed out, a hand gesturing to the icicles formed from the ice being melted and refreezing as it dripped down. A puddle had formed below them, a few chunks of ice floating in it. "Watch your step."
"Especially there," Blake said while pointing down the hall to their left.
Another pipe, this one running along the ceiling, had broken at some point, and water was leaking out and running down the incline near it. The girls followed the path further in, stopping when they came across a partly dismantled and dented Dwemer spider automaton between two piles of rubble and a larger broken-off pipe that any one of them could have conceivably crawled into.
"Do you think this has anything to do with the attack?" Ruby asked.
"If it did, it doesn't have any of the signs," Blake said while looking it over. "No blood. Then again, these weren't really made for fighting. More likely, they ran into it and destroyed it when it tried to fight them off. Whoever they are is another question."
The hallway led them into a chamber where two chutes had been set, now blocked by a pile of rocks and rubble in one and stacks of barrels at the other. The team scattered about to investigate the place, with Weiss coming up to the table where two broken Dwarven spiders were set along with several rolls of parchment, stacks of notes, inkwells, and a notebook. Weiss lifted the book up and looked at one of the newest pages, reading about Sulla's recent discovery.
"A magical focus…makes perfect sense, actually. And with a steam boiler at the core… It leaves a lot of other questions, but it would explain all the steam everywhere all the time."
"What're you sayin' there, Weiss?" Yang asked her, looking away from the set of vertical bars that currently closed them off from the room next door.
"Just found some research notes. Might help us with…our own…"
'Huh, that was strange. I thought I just saw something moving beyond the barred door. It looked vaguely humanoid. I wonder if it could be an undiscovered automaton. I'm going to move my bedroll down here to see if I can catch another glimpse of it. This is all so exciting!'
"Vaguely…humanoid?" Weiss wondered aloud. The closest to humanoid she knew the Dwemer constructs to get was the spheres, which were made for battle. But they also tended to have crossbows, so the bars wouldn't have stopped them from attacking.
"This over here would be hell to get through," Yang explained as she walked away from the barred-off area. "Might look like steel from a few steps away, but it's still Dwemer metal. I could bend a way through, but it'd probably take me a while and a lot of effort, and there might be something that'll let us through somewhere else."
"That does tend to be the pattern," Blake noted while leafing through another book that Weiss had seen on the other end of the table. "Guy was reading Calcemo's stuff. The elf might be a stuffy wizard, but he knows a good bit about the Dwemer, so he was picking good sources to go by."
"I saw that mentioned in his journal entries here," Weiss concurred. "Might be some hints as to how our vamidium project could progress."
"Long as he's doing it right," Yang figured with a shrug.
Before the three could dig much further, Ruby and Lydia returned from the connected hallway.
"Guys, good news and bad news. Good news, this looks like the way forward."
"And what's bad?" Weiss asked.
"Uh, we found that guy who was ranting," she said before letting out a low groan, "and…someone else."
'Someone else' turned out to be the ranting Khajiit's brother. Ruby had almost thought him dead, but the catman was merely deeply comatose. The ranting one, J'darr, had thought Ruby and Lydia were thieves and attacked. He was easily disarmed and rendered unconscious by the housecarl following a swift punch and a chokehold, but Ruby had become instantly concerned about him and the other Khajiit. She had figured J'darr to be out of his drug-addled mind, so she held no real animosity for him. The other, who they figured to be the J'zhar he yelled about, she worried was dead or dying. So, if anything, finding both were still alive was better than she feared.
The real conundrum came with trying to figure out what to do with the Khajiit afterward. Leaving them on their own in their conditions was dooming them to slow deaths, perhaps slower for the more mobile one, but still near-certain all the same. Healing and giving them treatment would only do so much, and waiting until they were ready to move on their own would consume an inordinate amount of time, to say nothing of helping them reach civilization. Then there was the matter of the potential belligerence they could bring about, especially if J'darr continued going through withdrawals. The team couldn't afford to backtrack for every lost soul they came across, especially if a large expedition had gone down towards Blackreach as they suspected.
Ultimately, it was Serana who came up with a rather unorthodox solution to their predicament.
"You made a dungeon," Ruby quietly noted with a flat tone upon seeing the section of their extradimensional base that the vampire princess had conjured, after taking all the facts into consideration.
"Well…" Serana began, "I prefer to think of them as holding cells. We're doing a short-term holding and just for the violent one, right?"
"Like a drunk tank? …I suppose," Ruby admitted, still not quite sure what to think of it.
"Well, our only other real option was to strap him down," Weiss noted as she more closely inspected the newly installed dungeon. "And that…would not go over well, either. At least, in a cell like this, he has a decent freedom of movement."
"What about the brother?" Blake pointed out. "He's not in good condition at the moment, but with that…healing hat thing, he should be okay after a few hours, right?"
"I would hope that he would behave, but if not, Serana should be more than able to handle him, and I actually have something for that," Weiss revealed as she led the others back into the hall, stopping just before entering the main atrium lab. "Observe."
Magicka focused in Weiss' hands as she moved them in a near-unseen pattern. Rock began growing out of the walls, both meeting and melding into a single piece that then separated with a slight seam, save for a few connecting hinges to the walls on one side. On the opposite edge of the slab, a handle grew out and a hole formed above it. Weiss then held out a hand and a key appeared.
"There," she proudly declared. "We have a new door to keep wandering guests from stumbling into our more dangerous things on accident."
Yang whistled in admiration. "Conjurers sure can do a lot in their pocket dimensions."
"You actually made a working lock and key with magic?" Blake asked in interest, picking over the flat slab.
"That I did," Weiss confirmed as she tugged at the door, showing that it was firmly in place, then used the key to audibly unlock the barrier, pulling it open easily afterward. "It took some practice, but I think I can start making more complicated knobs soon. If I can figure out metal alloys, then I can start installing brass and bronze fixtures."
"Well, you've got iron down," Serana noted as her fellow vampire passed her the key. "So you're not too far away in that regard."
"That transmutation spell Ruby found definitely gave me some ideas. The specific one was for silver and gold, but it should work just as well when it comes to tin, copper, and aluminum."
"Right, right," Serana said while nodding in agreement. "Well, if anyone can figure it out, it'll be you. Now then, you girls should probably get going. I'll stay here and look after our guests."
"Just be sure to call us if you need any help," Ruby reminded Serana as Weiss conjured a few more keys into being, one for each of them.
"And make sure J'zhar keeps his medi-cap on," Yang added. "Not sure how soon he'll heal, but I'm like, ninety-nine percent sure that if he doesn't keep it on for at least two days, the internal bleeding will start back up."
"How did you come up with that, anyway?" Lydia asked the blonde, who shrugged.
"Well, it just kinda felt…obvious?" Yang answered while scratching the top of her head. "Enchanting is putting a sort of magic spell into an item, healing is a spell. I just thought, 'Enchanting something with healing magic will heal somebody,' and here we are."
"I'm certain there's a step in her method she just managed to ram her head through, magically speaking," Weiss put in. "But the result speaks for itself. He's in stable condition. If you and Gilly keep an eye on him, I'm certain he'll recover."
"No worries. Just have to convince him that the two vampires aren't imprisoning him for devious reasons."
Further exploration of the ancient Dwemer complex revealed mostly just rooms of stone, pipes, and pistons. A handful of mechanical spiders were about, but they seemed to ignore the young women in favor of repairing damaged portions of the ruins. Some hallways had collapsed, whether from the passage of time, structural failure, or some other calamity was unknown, and the occasional busted pipe needed the worker bots' attention. Weiss made to take some notes, but there wasn't much being done that was news to any of them.
"Well, they do use that artificial lightning magic as a welding tool, but that's just confirmation of what I already suspected," the heiress noted as she watched an automaton fix the split in a steam pipe, sparks flying in all directions, while she and her team kept their distance. So long as they all remained at least twenty paces away, it would continue on with that until it was finished, then disappear into one of the nearby chutes.
"My question is: where are they getting all the materials?" Yang posed. "There can only be so much of this Dwemer metal available."
"Unless there's some sort of automated system producing it," Weiss suggested, but Yang shook her head.
"That would still need the baser materials to form it from."
"Perhaps there are mining drones?"
"Whoof! Now we're getting into some Von Huemann territory," Yang joked while brushing back some of her hair. But before she could continue the conversation, she paused and then sniffed at the air, picking up an odd scent. The group had just entered a hallway that appeared to have sets of barracks on either side, but Yang was drawn to one, where she found a blue and purple piece of equipment.
"Chaurus chitin," she told the rest of the women while showing them the shield constructed from the insect shell. Ruby took it in hand and looked it over while Yang found another piece, this one in the shape of a helmet with no eyeholes, likely made from the head of one of the beasts given the dead eyes that dotted the top of it.
Lydia voiced their shared conclusion, "Falmer have been here."
"Certainly looks like it," Blake said while searching for other traces through the hallway and barrack rooms. "Explains all the signs of struggle we've come across."
"We haven't seen any other hints of Falmer before this," Weiss contemplated. "They must have been a ranging party and stumbled upon the group. Both would have been caught off-guard, but the Falmer party would have been awake and prepared whereas those workers might have been asleep or relaxing."
"No, more than that. The Falmer would have been made aware thanks to the few researchers further down and in the beginnings of the Dwemer ruins," Ruby countered, then closed her eyes and visualized the locations in her mind while setting the chitin shield down on a stone bed. "They would have stumbled on those first few, killed or captured them, and then they would have followed the trail to the rest of them. At that point, they would have known there were enemies and been able to prepare against a larger number. The Khajiit brothers were down another tunnel, and that might have been why they weren't found."
"Makes sense," Yang concurred while bagging away the helm, figuring it could be an interesting collection piece or perhaps be sold as a rare curiosity. "Bad news for everyone involved."
"Everyone?" Lydia asked, not quite certain whom the werewolf was referring to.
"Bad for us, for those explorers, and for the Falmer," the blonde listed off before sighing. "We're going to have to try and rescue those guys, assuming they're still alive, but since we're going into Blackreach, I get the feeling we're also going to run into a Falmer settlement."
"Is that bad? I understand that they're not something to be trifled with, but-"
"Lyd, I'm sure we can pummel any number of Falmer six ways to Sunday, but I don't mean a camp. A settlement. Like a town," Yang interrupted. The Nord was considering her words, but the younger woman decided to hammer home the point further. "As in, a full population. Men, women, children, citizens, soldiers, and all the infrastructure you could expect."
At that, Lydia looked at her with understanding.
"Oh."
"Yeah. Oh," Yang huffed, more at the situation presenting itself than the conversation.
"We can still sneak around it," Blake offered. "We've done it before. And this time, no villains stringing us along."
"Yeah, that's true," Yang admitted with a mild shrug.
With a new sense of apprehension, they continued onwards, the hallway expanding to make room for a large series of pistons and tangled pipes. At first, they headed up the path that went over, but then Weiss and Yang both stopped as they caught a scent in the air.
"Blood," Weiss quickly answered when her companions looked at them.
"Elf. Male. Maybe a Bosmer," Yang added, beginning to track the smell like a bloodhound.
The trail led them back and under the pipes into what looked like a maintenance area. Blood spatters were found, old but not yet rotten or dried, and at the end of the tunnel of pipes and stone was a body with an arrow deeply embedded in its shoulder and a note set across from it with a piece of charcoal weighing it down.
Weiss lifted the note and read the shaky writing aloud.
"'The eyeless creatures took us in our sleep. I don't know what happened to the Khajiit brothers, we never saw them in the cell. I managed to pick the lock and we made a break for it, but got split up. Sulla yelled something about not leaving without finding what he came here for and Umana chased after him.
Yag and I tried for the top of the cave shaft, but one of the ramps was broken. Without hesitation, she grabbed me by the scruff of my tunic, threw me atop the ledge, and told me to run.
And I did. I didn't even look back. I just ran like a coward. I could hear her fighting them and I just had to get away. I didn't even notice the arrow in my shoulder till I hid here.
Those metal creatures are still all around me and I'm too terrified to even move.
Eight Divines, please just take me now.'
"
"Well, if it wasn't confirmed before…" Yang muttered while looking over the elf's corpse. "Pierced an artery by the look of it. Damn! He almost made it."
"He mentioned metal creatures," Ruby pointed out. "So, some of the defenses are back online?"
"Yeah, there's a sphere rolling around nearby," Blake informed her, her feline ears twitching. "Probably patrolling… And a spider's welding some pipe right above us."
"Let's try to get through without breaking too many," Ruby told them. "Leave as much as we can to dissuade the Falmer from coming through here again."
"What are we going to do if we run into any Falmer?" her housecarl asked her.
"Just…" Ruby sighed. "Try to do our best."
"Freaking deathtraps," Yang griped as she stumbled away from where the spinning blade had chased her.
"There has to be an off switch for that sort of thing," Weiss figured.
"Yeah, besides jumping over or outrunning it., Yang remarked, then looked down and behind herself to check her skirt. Thankfully, nothing seemed cut.
"Uh, guys, we've got another gate," Ruby announced back to the rest of the team, drawing their attention.
As they caught up with the young leader, they quickly saw the gate in question. Thick bars of yellow Dwemer metal were hung from the ceiling and crossed with more every foot or so, leaving barely enough room between them for someone with thin arms to reach through, if that. The bottom fit neatly into an indention in the floor, almost looking like it was connected rather than slotted in.
"So…where's the lever?" Yang asked.
"I looked around. I don't think there is one," Ruby answered, causing her sister to sigh and rub the back of her head in resignation.
"Well, there's gotta be some way through here," she muttered to herself. Yang then grabbed one of the bars and tried to shake it, but the gate did not so much as wiggle.
"Maybe we should backtrack," Ruby suggested.
"The only other possible ways are blocked up by stones or that gate near the abandoned camp," Blake recalled. "And those blocked paths are probably just more rooms and workshops."
"Meaning we've got to muscle through either way," Yang declared as she lowered herself into a powerlifting squat and took hold of the lower part of the gate. With some effort, she began pulling it up, reaching under the gate to get a better grip.
Suddenly, several small pistons that had been resting started moving. Yang's slow opening of the gate was stopped before she had pulled it up by half a foot, and then she felt it pushing back.
"Crap, crap, crap," she muttered as it pressed down harder and harder. She had to give up her grip beneath when it started to threaten her fingers, and then the gate was firmly closed back. A hiss of steam from above let them know what kind of mechanics went into such a system, and Yang growled in frustration before kicking the metal barrier.
"Can't say I expected that," Weiss mused while rubbing her chin.
"Now what?" the blonde groaned.
"There has to be something," Ruby said while crossing her arms. "A puzzle. A button. A key… Oh!"
Ruby picked through her bag and pulled out the Attunement Sphere before holding it up to the gate. She felt something in her mind, but it was fuzzy and questioning. Some deeper part of her felt like she was being asked a question in a language she didn't know nor could hear.
"Uh, a password?" she awkwardly suggested after a moment.
Weiss sighed and put her hands on her hips while looking the gate over. "This is vexing. You'd think that Septimus would have known about something like this getting in the way."
Blake, for her part, had noticed a chute nearby and decided to try something. She pulled out the Control Rod and activated Backpack before putting on the disorienting goggles that let her see from the automaton's sensors. Focusing through the rod, she directed the Dwarven spider to the chute. She half-expected having to finagle Backpack into it, but the construct seemed to have the motions for entering and traveling through the chutes pre-programmed into it. After thinking about it for more than a second, she supposed that made perfect sense given what Dwarven spiders were originally designed to do. With a thought, she directed towards the other side of the gate, and the spider made the necessary motions to slide through and exit, surprising the others who had been looking at the source of their dilemma.
"Whoa!" Yang cried out, instinctively raising her arms defensively before looking back at her girlfriend. "Oh, almost forgot about that thing. Whatchu doin'?"
"Seeing if I can find anything on the other side," Blake answered, directing the spider to move around and turn toward different points of interest. "Not seeing anything to work with here… Wait, there's some…valves. Okay, let me try this."
The robot reached out and began turning several of the valves. Blake wasn't sure which if any of them were connected to the door, but she figured trying them all in both directions wouldn't do any harm. After a few turns, the sounds of several pistons speeding up pointed to something else going on.
"Okay, not the desired effect..." Weiss said while looking at the rapidly firing pistons and steam exhaust.
"Wait, I have an idea!" Yang quickly declared before going to one of the pistons and pressing her hands up against it, preventing it from moving. The device struggled against her, and the blonde braced herself and leaned into it. "More steam, Blake!"
The Faunus was unsure what exactly her girlfriend was planning but went along with it. She had Backpack turn each valve as far as it would go, even as pipes began to shake and rattle. Suddenly, there was a loud pop as one of them gave in from down the hall they'd come from, steam billowing out in a hiss.
"All right, start turning them back," Yang directed as she went back to the gate.
She started pulling it up again as Blake had her robot undo all the valve spinning it had already done. It still took Yang monumental effort to lift the gate, but this time, the pressure wasn't there to force it back shut. She managed to lift it up to her chest, allowing the rest of the team to duck through, including Blake when she removed her goggles. The blonde then followed them after the rest of her team all took hold of the weight for her from their side, dropping the heavy gate when she had passed through.
"Phew, it worked!" Yang said in relief as she wiped a layer of sweat from her forehead.
"Yang, not saying that was a bad idea," Ruby started up, poking at one of the valves, "but why didn't you wait and see if Blake could shut it all off?"
"I mean, I coulda, but now more maintenance bots are being distracted."
Yang gestured past the gate, showing the others that a handful of Dwarven spiders were responding to the sudden damage done to the pipe, quickly trying to patch it up.
"Oh, uh, okay," the Dragonborn muttered.
"I mean, I wasn't thinking it at the time, but now that you mention it, that might have worked."
"Or this lever," Weiss called from further ahead.
"I will not apologize for my genius," Yang quipped as they continued, passing a threshold that opened up into a massive cavern where several towers and interconnecting walkways awaited them.
Pipes ran from one wall to another, the ceiling, or the towers around them. Sets of gears spun, facilitating some unseen machinery. Pistons pumped and steam billowed out. Stone bridges dotted with ancient Dwemeri lanterns led from tower to tower in half circles, spirals, and the occasional straight shot. Some led to the machinery embedded in the stone walls of the cave, and it all continued down as far as the group could see.
"Whoa!" the werewolf called out before whistling in appreciation.
"Looks like a large building down there," Blake pointed out. "This might be the outer reaches of an underground city on the edge of Blackreach."
"The paths keep going down," Ruby noted. "Well, let's go. Keep an eye out for Falmer or survivors."
"Already smell one," Yang said, then grimaced slightly. "Not in the best shape, though."
After a short spiral that cut through one of the towers, they came across a collapsed ramp, but the drop wasn't too far for any of them. At the head of the rubble, however, an orc woman was lying in a puddle of blood. Yang hopped down first, checking the pulse of the orc and then shaking her head at the other four as they caught up.
"Poor gal went down swinging," she said, looking around them as she kicked aside a broken chitin axe, which clattered against a piece of shattered armor. "Most of this isn't hers, and they didn't pick up everything."
"Did they gather their own dead but leave her body?" Weiss asked.
"Might not have been dead when they retreated," Lydia noted. "She's got more wounds than I think a person could stand, but orcs are known for pushing past those limits, at least for a while. She might have been standing when they dragged their kin away, or perhaps they were scared to approach her directly even after she fell."
"Malacath should be proud of this girl," Yang declared as she stood up.
"We'll be back for her," Ruby concluded. While putting survivors away in the Refuge made perfect sense, collecting corpses could lead to a different sort of trouble, mostly in that they didn't have a place to store and preserve them.
The trails of stone bridges led them further and further down, through and around the towers. Sometimes, they could see Dwarven spiders working to repair some machinery, walls, or even cracked and broken paths. It gave the place a sense of still being alive, like there was someone behind all of this trying to keep up the systems in place, rather than the mindless momentum of the Dwemer's creations continuing on long past the disappearance of their makers. And spotted here and there were signs of Falmer presence; fences set up along the edges to help prevent accidentally walking off into the deadly drops to the bottom, sleeping tents left behind half-erected, and even some cooked mushrooms of various kinds near a Dwarven brazier.
A good distance down they entered a larger tower and came across several abandoned tents and a decent amount of what looked to be a camp, within what may have once been a workshop. Shelves were lined with items, including carved stones, several extra trinkets, an uninstalled ballista, spare pipe sections, and more. One of the shelves had a couple of the stone beds moved under it, and then the beds were topped with hot embers. The residue of cooked food was spotted, as well as a forgotten piece of something on a skewer.
Yang grabbed the charred food from the makeshift grill and smelled it more closely.
"Mushroom. Probably edible, but I wouldn't try it," she remarked while tossing it aside. "These guys weren't here for a short time; they were getting ready to set up for a long-term stay. Why would they have left all this behind?"
"I think the expedition might have spooked them more than we thought," Ruby figured as her interest was taken in by a Dwemer metal anvil next to the blazing forge. She wasn't sure what was fueling it, but it was hot. As much as she wanted to try her hand at using a Dwemer-crafted forge, they had far more pressing issues at hand. "Yag alone might have frightened them off. And if they took their dead and injured, they might have just up and fled all the way back home."
"Let's hope that hasn't stirred up a hornet's nest," Weiss grumbled.
Further down, the five women came into another room where a plethora of items had been spread across a table. Unlike most of the things they found after entering the ruin, they were not all the sort of things one would expect from either Dwemer or Falmer, but common items one might come across in Skyrim or Tamriel. Various necklaces, rings, clothing, tools, and even various alchemy ingredients like mountain flowers and bear claws were spread over the table's surface. On the other side of the room was a shaft with a lever next to it and some bloodstains leading up to it.
"I think this is an elevator," Blake said before pulling the lever that should call the transport. As gears turned, her ears flickered, and she was drawing a sword and dagger while facing a fenced-off corner of the room.
"Who's there?" she called out. The others were already on alert from her actions, but the small scampering sound only served to reinforce their stance.
Slowly, a yellow hand came into view, followed by an arm and then a frightened face. The shivering Altmer woman slowly stood up and pushed through, revealing the 'fencing' to be an almost seamless gate.
"Yo- you're from the surface," she said with a shaking voice, almost as if she was unable to believe it. "You…came to save us."
The five women's defensive stances were slowly dropped, with Ruby stowing away her weapon and approaching the woman in a tattered tunic.
"Yeah, we're here to help," she affirmed.
After calming down and getting a warm drink, the Altmer woman Valie explained what she could to the Huntresses and Housecarl. Everyone still standing had been processed by the Falmer who had captured them, with most of their items and certain textiles confiscated. Apparently, they had a thing for silk, fur, and cotton, liking the feel of them, but didn't care as much for wool, leather, and linen. She had witnessed Yag and Endrast's escape and had hoped for the best for the two, after the Falmer came back with several injured and two bodies.
Unfortunately, whatever 'mercy' the Falmer might have held for their injured prisoners disappeared. After the Falmer screeched at each other for a minute, anyone unable to walk was fed to the chaurus. While Valie was able to stand, she had a limp that she wasn't able to hide for long. One of the Falmer had pulled her away, saying something to the others as he took her to that dark corner.
"I thought I was going to die, or worse," she confided, draped in a blanket with a mug of hot milk held close to her chest. "It was a strange one. A tuft of hair on top of his head that…draped down. He…made a motion like to shush me and started…smashing his fist into his palm. I… I think I saw his eyes." The elf looked a little confused, as if not sure about what she was saying.
"That wouldn't be possible," Lydia interjected. "Falmer don't have eyes."
"They technically do have eyes," Weiss corrected her. "Though you normally can't see them. They would be shut away behind their fused eyelids. But…are you saying this one…could see?"
Valie nodded, then stopped and said, "Well, it seemed like he could. He kept turning his head to me and the others, pounding his fist into his hand over and over."
"He was tricking the others," Weiss figured, her interest in the subject having grown beyond what she had expected thanks to these small details. "Making them think-" Her stomach lurched, and she had to clear her throat to cover the sudden gag that tried to rise up. "He wanted them to think he'd killed you, obviously."
"But why?" Serana asked, hand to her chin in thought. "That Falmer risked a lot saving one elf."
"I can't ascertain the motives of a being I've never met nor know anything specific about," Weiss started, "but we can't rule out the possibility that Valie was just lucky to have caught the attention of an…empathetic Falmer."
The concept was a foreign one, even to the four Huntresses, but with their fresher perspectives, it was easier to acknowledge the possibility. Serana seemed to accept it as well, having grown up in the times when the last vestiges of Falmer civilization were being chased down or away by the Nords. While not the friendliest outlook, her specific kingdom had no real run-ins with the Snow Elves since before her grandfather's reign. Lydia seemed to have the hardest time accepting the information, but she voiced no further objection to the idea.
"Let's just count our blessings," Blake said. "We'll have to, once we head back out."
"You're going all the way down there?" Valie asked, looking at the warrior women with a mote of fear mixed in with admiration. "Please, save the others if you can. I don't want to imagine what might happen to them."
"We'll do our best," Ruby assured her. "You can wait here until we can get you somewhere safe. Let the Khajiit brothers know everything's all right when they wake up."
"I will. Thank you."
With that, the five gathered together and teleported back out to the Dwarven ruin. The elevator had arrived, and so they entered and pulled the lever at its center.
"We have to be pretty deep by now," Ruby noted before the lift started taking them up. "Wait, what?"
"Oh, come on!" Yang griped as she put her fist to her hips and glared upwards.
"What's going on?" Lydia asked.
Blake let out a mirthless laugh as she realized what her girlfriend was complaining about. A few minutes later, they arrived at the top and exited the elevator, with Yang marching ahead and staring at something around the corner. The other four caught up with her and saw a lever, a set of Dwemer metal bars, and a familiar-looking room.
"I knew I should have just forced through," the blonde complained before pulling the lever and opening up the way between the first room of the ruin they had found and the elevator.
The real way down had actually been through another door in the room that, between the elevator and the survivor, the team had overlooked. Through it, they went the last little way down to the bottom of the cave and into a building, where a stairway led them even further down and past some traps laid by both Dwemer and Falmer. Exiting from the other side found the girls in another cave with Dwemeri construction about, including several examples of what appeared to be houses and a gate.
"Okay, we have got to be close," Ruby said. "Actually, we might be there."
"No," Lydia disagreed. "If we were in Blackreach, there'd be no question about it. We're just close to passing through an outer defense."
As they trekked onward, Weiss made note of some strange blue rocks among the rubble. She grabbed one for a sample, recalling seeing something with a familiar sheen at least once before. Perhaps it had something to do with the forging of the Dwemer's favored alloy?
All thoughts like that were interrupted, however, by the sound of hissing steam and clanking heavy machinery. A Dwemer centurion, with an axe blade for one hand and hammer for the other, had stepped out of its resting area and turned to face the girls. Hot steam billowed forth from it, but Lydia was already prepared for it, summoning her Semblance to block the scalding hot vapors.
"Spread out!" Ruby called before leaping up and dashing as a cloud of petals to the other side.
Her teammates immediately complied with her orders, with Lydia drawing the centurion's attention as the others increased their distance. Weiss was already forming glyphs with her Semblance through which streams of fire, ice, and lightning were shot towards their opponent. Were it any living creature, it would've reacted in pain, but the Dwemer automaton powered through the disparate forces as it simply charged toward Lydia and swung its hammer arm. The housecarl blocked the blow with her shield, but the mass was still great enough to send her flying back and rolling down the stairs.
"Oof!" Lydia grunted as she came to a stop against the far stone wall. Thanks to her years of training, natural Nord endurance, and her Aura, she was able to quickly recover and spring to her feet where she saw the rest of Team RWBY were already engaging the centurion.
Ruby and Yang were fighting the automaton in an intense close-quarters battle, Yang igniting her fists with lightning magic and then proceeding to punch the centurion's legs hard enough to make it stumble. Ruby, meanwhile, was mostly a blur of red rose petals that flew throughout the room, occasionally reappearing to deflect a blow or knock the centurion back with a swing of her ebony-blade scythe into its head, causing horrible grinding screeches with every gouge cut into the thick metal. Weiss, meanwhile, continued attacking the machine from afar with destruction magic amplified by the power of her Semblance, and Blake was but a mere shadow in her Nightingale armor as she fired armor-piercing arrows into the joints.
But while it was never in doubt that Team RWBY was winning this fight, from her position it was also clear that the centurion was not going down easy. While Lydia was confident that, no matter what it did, the centurion would lose the battle, the odds of her thane and her friends getting injured increased exponentially the more time was allowed to pass. She struggled to find a way to end this fight quickly, her grip hardening on her sword's hilt.
Then a thought occurred, one born from an experience years before when she had to deal with mammoth poachers in her days as a Whiterun guard.
"Blake, I have an idea," Lydia announced, and like a cold wind, she could feel Blake emerge from the shadows beside her. "Do you have roping arrows?"
"Yes?"
Without missing a beat, Lydia pulled out some rope from her satchel and handed it to the faunus, explaining, "Use this rope and shoot them between the centurion's arms and legs. We'll trip it up then go for the kill. It'll be easier that way."
"Smart," Blake admitted as she immediately began tying strands of rope to her arrows, with Lydia doing the same.
Once both women had enough, they ran up the stairs then around the centurion, careful to avoid Weiss' magic blasts and the intense melee taking up the center of the terrace. Running as fast as they could while flanking the automaton from opposite sides, they drew rope arrows on their bowstrings and let them loose, Blake's forming a black, misty contrail as the magic of the Nightingale bow asserted itself. The first two went right between the centurion's legs, the Aura-reinforced arrows embedding in the stone walls, followed by the next pair flying under the machine's swinging arms as the archers started circling it with the trailing rope ends in hand.
On the third volley, Ruby and Yang realized what was going on and started actively working to corral the centurion into the trap, with Weiss further pinning it down with solid ice glyphs. Sparks and steam were flying, making the area feel like a sauna as the heat rose despite the cave's prior chill, but the warriors ignored it and channeled Aura to keep the cords from burning or snapping. Soon there was a messy web of thick ropes tangled around the centurion, and when Yang grabbed a double fistful of them at once and pulled, they went taut and snagged the knees and elbows of the centurion, binding its arms and legs together. It tottered precariously but didn't quite fall over, at least until Blake threw her kusarigama up to wrap around the metal crest of its helmet before she and Lydia gave the ribbon a heave.
Like a felled tree, the centurion slowly toppled, some of the anchored arrows giving way from the weight of the construct before it hit the floor with a sound like a dropped church bell. Ruby took that moment to slash off the arms of the centurion, preventing it from pulling free. She then swung Crescent Rose upward through the centurion's chin and behind the center of its faceplate, then pulled back on it like a giant crowbar. With her own leverage added to the ribbon pullers', the head was ripped free of the torso, spraying her with hot, black oil.
"Bleugh! Blech! Ahh, I got some in my mouth! Ew!" Ruby complained as she jumped back, frantically spitting in an effort to expunge the contents of her mouth. The others, however, simply sighed in relief as the centurion finally keeled over and died, for lack of a better term.
"Good idea on the rope arrows," Yang remarked as Blake and Lydia started gathering them.
"Thanks, but it was Lydia's idea," Blake revealed.
"Really? That was straight out of Space Wars, how'd you come with it?" Yang asked, turning to the housecarl who was untying a rope from a broken arrow shaft.
"It was a tactic used by poachers against mammoths. They'd trip them up and go for the kill while they're defenseless," Lydia revealed. "Never used it myself whenever I went hunting, but I saw the aftermath far too often. It felt appropriate and useful here."
"That it was, Lyd. That it was," Yang agreed, giving the woman a respectful nod which Lydia returned.
Once the ropes were all gathered and Ruby wiped her face as clean of oil as she could, she looked over the felled machine and saw a strange slot upon its chest with something within it. Curious, she reached out and plucked the object, finding it to be a key with Dwemer writing etched into it.
"Uh, Weiss, what's this?" she asked her partner, who gingerly took the offered key and looked it over.
"It says… 'Alftand…Lift'?"
"Swear to Dibella and Hircine," Yang grumbled, brushing off her pauldrons.
"So they put the key on a centurion?"
"Can't imagine a much safer place for it," Weiss concluded, walking over to take a closer look at the other felled animunculus. "The Dwemer obviously had some sort of IFF. This one wasn't defeated by Falmer. Looks like it was hit with several lightning spells and something steel."
"What's an IFF?" Lydia asked, unfamiliar with the term.
Blinking her eyes, Weiss had to resist the urge to slap herself for forgetting that, even after all this time, there was no way Lydia would be able to understand all Remnant-born terminology, then explained, "Think of it as a signal that tells whether someone is friend or foe. In this case, Dwemer or non-Dwemer."
"Ah, I see. So it'll attack the foes but leave the friends unharmed."
"Exactly."
"Hey, we've got movement!" Blake warned the others, pointing towards the gate up a set of stairs.
Everyone quickly headed to where the Faunus directed them, prepared for another fight. They were surprised to see a Cyrodiilic man and Redguard woman in Imperial-style chainplate and Nordic plate armor respectively facing off against one another.
"Sulla," the woman attempted to plead with the man, "let's just get out of here. Hasn't there been enough death?"
"Oh, of course," the man sarcastically replied, his voice dripping with venom. "You're just waiting for me to turn my back so you can have all the glory for yourself!"
With a maddened yell, the man reached out and let loose a torrent of flame magic at the woman, who managed to bring up a wickedly spiked targe in time to hold off the worst of the attack. With whatever negotiations they may have had obviously ended, she responded with a swing of her steel waraxe. The man barely backed away in time to avoid being chopped into and swung his own sword before firing a lightning bolt. The blade was blocked, but the shield couldn't do the same against electricity. The Redguard woman cried out and was sent on the back foot, where Sulla continued to electrocute her with his magic.
The girls moved, and suddenly Yang had the man in a headlock while Blake put his sword arm into a hold, forcing him to drop the weapon with a squeeze of the wrist that elicited a cry of pain. Weiss stood between the two while Ruby was kneeling down to help the woman who had fallen to her knees.
"Wha- what?" she asked, looking around to see her opponent restrained and a number of people she hadn't seen before about them. "Who in Oblivion are you?"
"I'm Ruby," the girl introduced herself while offering a hand. "We're here to help."
The Redguard looked back at Sulla, who was about unconscious now thanks to Yang's efforts, despite him trying to burn her with magic. Blake had fished out some sleeping potion and applied it to a rag before holding it up to his face, just to help the process along. Weiss looked back and nodded at the two.
"Umana," the woman harrumphed before taking Ruby's hand and getting up to her feet. "Things have gone straight to Oblivion since those Falmer creatures attacked."
"Yeah, we've been finding the clues and survivors along the way," Ruby explained.
"Some people got out? Good." She released a heavy sigh. "Is the way back clear?"
"Oh don't worry. We've got something for that."
"Never gets old seeing people react to our pocket realm," Ruby mused after they returned from the Refuge.
"I believe this strange table's mechanism is important somehow," Lydia said while gesturing to a device in the middle of the room. Mostly made of stone and Dwemer metal, the device had three rings of metal around a center circle with three embedded crystals. Two were complete circles with one protruding somewhat and the other flat, with the third being only a quarter circle shape set between them. Overlapping the rings at the head of the table was a pedestal-like piece with a sphere-shaped hollow on the top.
"Oh, I get it." Ruby pulled out the Attunement Sphere and set it in the hollow. The sphere spun in its place and the rings, circles, and crystals did the same, shifting from being pressed together on one side to be more evenly spread and then tightening back again, only with the arrows etched on each ring now lining up. At the same time, the stone floor immediately around the table sank down to form a set of stairs leading below.
"How did the Falmer get through this?" Blake asked.
"Most likely, they scavenged up their own Attunement Spheres," Weiss answered. "Or maybe they've had them since the beginning?"
The five went down the stairs to find a set of doors before them. Strangely, blue light was coming through the seams of the doors, likely from the mushrooms that seemed endemic to the caves of Skyrim. Pushing the heavy doors open, the light grew brighter than they expected, making them flinch as their eyes became accustomed to light once again. As they stepped through, each of them was forced to look up and fight to keep their jaws from hitting the floor.
The grandeur of the cavern outshone any other they had ever seen before. In places, it was so far up, that they almost thought that they were looking up at the sky. The multitude of bioflorescent lifeforms nearly mimicked the stars, with only some rocky outlines and massive roots that almost appeared to be crystalline stalactites breaking that illusion. Glowing blue and green mushrooms towered over Dwemer buildings like trees, and chimes like musical notes floated up from every corner. A cobblestone path lay before them, leading to a nearby house that was merely the start of a neighborhood. And far in the distance, near-hidden by the glowing mist was the sight of a massive city, with a glowing yellow orb hanging above it, like the Dwemer had crafted their own sun to light the underground metropolis.
"This is… Holy…" Weiss started, unable to formulate the words to describe what she was feeling about the place they had found.
"Yes," Lydia agreed, her own awe tempered by the multitude of tales and stories that had come from this place as well as her own training. "We've made it to Blackreach."