Chapter 43: Chanticleer, p2
Gold plume and silver plume, comb of coral gay / 'Tis he packs off the night and gloom, and summons home the day — Katharine Tynan Hinkson

"It's no problem getting the cargo to Tel Windstad. The people there should be able to handle transport from there to Darkfall Cave," the Captain traced the route with her finger as she said this. Curtis had sent a note to Serjo Revyn's secretary, Ser Dana, in Windhelm, and her reply had been to pass on his request to Captain Meris-Felix.

Well, that was settled. The SS Pearl would do another "prospect" trip in Skyrim, sailing between Windhelm and Solitude, stopping at Winterhold and Dawnstar along the way. Her ship would need some work done and her crew needed rest to be ready for this second trip through arctic waters.

One month. Curtis had to have his cargo ready in four weeks.

Next, scavenging parts from Skytemple. Arniel Ganes was heartbroken about it, but now that the sleep chamber and the related equipment were no longer needed, they could be repurposed. Skytemple may be the future site of a teleport station, but the components were needed at the Vale now for development to even begin. The nearby Dwemer ruins in that half of Skyrim were rubble or so thoroughly looted that no usable equipment remained.

There was Nchuand-Zel, but Agrund, who was from Nchuand-Zel, said the primary industry there had been mining and heavy equipment. If earth-moving equipment was wanted, that was the city to go to. It was unlikely to have the delicate precision stuff used in teleport technology.

Aside from shopping, there were more people to visit and apologize to. His departure in the middle of a school year had been disruptive, and he needed to transfer or shut down projects. Then there was a trip to Windhelm because King Ulfric had stuff he wanted to discuss, and Curtis had to find a way to respectfully decline.

Not on his to-do list was making up with Colette. Pretty much everyone said to leave her alone, and that included Slitter and Joric.

X—X—X—X—X—X—X

King Ulfric just wanted to look him over and see if he could be of further use to them. Curtis declined any crafting job for military application. And about creating indoor plumbing for the Palace of Kings, he convinced the king that that was an undertaking requiring months of planning and years, if not decades, of major earth-moving projects because Windhelm was an ancient city built over multiple underground substructures.

He talked the king into hiring the Argonian team to first map underground Windhelm and the surrounding area. At least Ulfric comprehended that retro-plumbing an ancient city was more time-consuming and expensive than laying in water and sewage foundations before building a city.

…

A pair of Telvanni mages had sent multiple requests to meet with him to talk business possibilities. Curtis declined the dozens of requests he got weekly from unknowns. This pair, however, came with Serjo Revyn's recommendation. This was an important piece of House Mora politics. The Adrevanni Clan was willing to acknowledge Little House Mora's existence and power, and Adrevanni acknowledgment would be the start of Great House Telvanni's recognition. He agreed to a quick meeting in Windhelm.

Like the Morrowind game, Little House Mora would need acknowledgment by a minimum of two Great Houses to become an officially recognized house. Great House Redoran acknowledged House Mora. Serjo Sadri was working on Great House Sadras via Clan Dareano, and Serjos Helsette and Severus, Great House Telvanni via Clan Adrevanni.

Curtis was meeting with brothers Alveru and Andstar of Clan Adrevanni. They were interested in copying Winterhold's breakwater project and crafting school. After Red Year, the Adrevanni islands have been constantly swamped by decades of after-tremors beneath the water. The Clan had preserved most of its lands and dependents with exhausting use of magic. The tremors had decreased in the last two decades enough that the Clan felt it was stable enough to rebuild what was destroyed.

The brothers believed the being done at Winterhold was what the family needed, a practical, non-magical barrier to protect harbors and villages. As their territories recovered, this attracted the avaricious eyes of ambitious power climbers. The brothers had confessed to him that the Adrevanni were near exhausted magically. They would likely lose territories if forced to continually use magic to fend off challengers and natural disasters. It was unlikely their clan father, Master Neloth of Tel Naga and Tel Mythrin, would rush back from Solstheim to join in any battle until it became clear that his family was about to lose everything. In that case, the brothers pitied family members still alive to face the clan father's wrath.

Curtis remembered Master Neloth from the Morrowind game as ancient beyond belief and a pretty rude guy to deal with. He'd heard stories from the Solstheim people who'd come to Winterhold for work that the geezer was still arrogant and rude. But the descriptions of him weren't of some doddering old mummy. Curtis figured there was secret Telvanni magic to restore youth.

The brothers explained that the family hoped to make a formal marriage tie with the new House Mora, specifically, marry one of their own bloodline children with Revyn's daughter. Their clan father had adopted Lady Helsette as his bloodline heir, but there were some complications and uncertainties. Primary was that the Lady had no intention of forswearing her Hlaalu or Felix bloodlines, so Neloth informed her one of her children given to him would be satisfying. However, the rest of the family protested this outlander blood and their questionable magic skills. However, that was recently resolved after a week-long visit with Revyn at Tel Windstad.

Curtis asked the brothers their interests and learned Alveru was into industrial chemistry, and Andstar was fascinated with Dwemer fabrication methods. They shared their clan father's fascination with the Dwemer, although less about the Dwemer secrets of power and more about the mundane machinery.

Great. Curtis had a good feeling about these two, so he ran with it. If the brothers were willing to delay their journey to Solstheim, would they like to go with him to a Dwemer ruin just over the western border in the Pale? He could use their help on a shopping trip for soul gems and special tools. They eagerly accepted, and two days later, they were all at the Raldbthar lift located in the hills high above Lake Yorgrim. Curtis had also brought along Ilya, Arniel, and Elden.

Curtis had told the mages to dress for battle conditions. Still, the two seemed taken aback when Curtis and Ilya showed up in full Dwemer battle armor. Elden wore a custom version of Winterhold guardsman armor with the iron chainmail and plates replaced with Dwemer metal versions and had traded cow leather for netch leather. Arniel wore the steel-plated coat of the Dawnguard over his mage robes and a leather helmet fitted with a communications device. The Adrevanni mages' robes subtly shimmered with enchantments. Curtis was willing to bet they were using all those neat protection and buff spells available in the Morrowind game and not the limited, dumbed-down stuff in the basic Skyrim game.

Introductions were made, then Curtis opened the lift gate.

"You got that opened so easily," said Andstar. "How?"

"A special key to the underground city I'm about to show you."

"Ah, I recall Neloth mentioning some time ago special keys to Nchardak and his frustration at finding the other keys because of water flooding the ruins," said Alveru. "I wonder if he ever solved that problem yet?"

"Good luck to him then," said Curtis as he pulled the lever to put the platform in motion. "Welcome to Fal'Zhardum Din, or Blackreach, gentlemen."

The lift came down on a small area surrounded by a wide and shallow river of water rushing to a nearby dropoff of nearly ten stories to a lake below. To the left was the bottom of a series of walkways that rose up another two to three hundred feet to the bottom level of Raldbthar Deep Market.

He sent Arniel, Alveru, and Andstar to walk up the steep ramps to Raldbthar Deep Market, which was about a five-story climb. Arniel had the list of items to pull from storage. Curtis also lent the Adrevanni wizards his night-vision binoculars, figuring they'd enjoy the view of Blackreach once they'd made it to the top.

Meanwhile, he would dig for soul gems from the many nearby deposits. Ilya kept watch while Curtis mined the crystals with a sonic chisel recovered from Raldbthar's storerooms last time Curtis was here but never used because the repair bots didn't need it or its components to repair Skytemple. Agrund later found it and reconditioned it as part of his busy work. It was a handheld Dwemer version of a jackhammer that was quieter and easier on the user. Unlike a pickaxe that broke half as many crystals as it freed up, the sonic chisel broke the crystals along their natural fault lines. Elden gathered and sorted the crystals by their size. They even filled a few with the wild chaurus and chaurus hunters attracted by the noise their mining was making.

They soon filled their bags and placed them near the lift. Curtis had also brought along a couple of fishing tools; the design blatantly ripped off the "pocket fisherman" toy from his old world. These were made from bonemold, and the lines were high-tensile silk. The cavefish were hungry and easy to catch. Most were bottom-feeding tripods, a few bettys, large tetras, and some small eels. If they walked along the river edges, they could also pick up some lungfish types waddling on thickened fin-feet.

He threw back a tiny tripod and rebaited his hook with guts from a larger, previously caught fish, and as he waited, he looked toward the central city of Blackreach. In the Game, it was called "Silent City." His people called it "Duumarkngfell" or City of Grace (the Heart). (1)

He had a sudden vision of a T-shirt with "I [heart] Blackreach" printed across the chest. Yeah, guess it was only funny to him.

The giant sun globe overhead was still there. So, the Dragonborn hadn't triggered the hidden boss sleeping in it. Curtis hadn't found out about that boss until half a decade later when he'd come across a YouTube video on "the hidden bosses of Skyrim." Apparently, shouting at the globe released the sleeping Dragon. How the people of Fal'Zhardum Din caught that Dragon was never explained, and none of his seven Dwemer were from Blackreach.

So many secrets in the Blackest Kingdom Reaches. Finding all the answers would be hard since this kingdom was full of Falmer and drugged-up slaves.

Street soldiers, the eyes and ears of the drug kings. Yeah, he got that. Your choice was to serve or be the next meal, and you knew how long it took for dinner to die before being served. And you were starving. The drugs eased the hunger and the horror. The longer you were useful, the longer you weren't hung on the hooks. No escape. They didn't take the chains off you until you were well and truly hooked on the drugs. Escape if you want. If you weren't caught by the Falmer, the wild chaurus would hunt you. The randomly-appearing machines rolling around would kill you if you crossed their paths. Eat as many of the drug mushrooms as you want. But because these weren't refined properly into drugs, it wouldn't do you any good, like chewing raw coca leaves for cocaine addiction. Avoid the bugs and the machines only to die in some dark hole, screaming agony from withdrawal.

The game world of Skyrim was a dungeon crawl, so all the real treasures of the Dwemer ruins were reduced to crass gold, gems, jewelry, and the occasional magical item. He wanted inside Duumarkngfell. He wanted to see if the knowledge resources and tools were intact.

He wanted to see if there were notes of the drug and/or genetic research done that subjugated the Falmer.

But Fal'Zhardum Din was a big place to search, and the knowledge might not be in books or scrolls but engraved on multiple microchips packed in data cubes the size of a softball. Just finding each cube was decades of work unless they were freakishly lucky.

He suddenly thought of Joric. The boy had confided to Curtis that his sister Idgrod and their cousin Yannig had switched identities so that Idgrod could study under Serjo Revyn. Curtis remembered her. Yannig, that pretty redhead who claimed to be from the Reach. So that was really Idgrod the Younger.

Why was that important now? Curtis couldn't pinpoint the exact words or conversation with Joric, something about… Joric's off-the-cuff remark that his sister had a talent for finding things when she put her mind to it, a skill Serjo Revyn was training her to hone. Joric had also mentioned that his sister had been entrusted to watch over him because she was the only one who could find him no matter where he ran to or hid.

No, that was just too… Was Idgrod the equivalent of a magical search engine? One of those supposed psych-somethings, the ones who could find lost items? Like her mother, except that she's had the benefit of training. Could it hurt to ask? Be great if she was, though.

"Planning a raid, ser?" asked Ilya.

"Yeah. Some good stuff in there, I'm certain of it," said Curtis. "But knowing it's in there isn't a guarantee I'll find it."

"Yes, yes," said Ilya. "But searching will be easier after first clearing out the enemies."

Curtis's cocky grin faded as he turned away to again contemplate the globe high above. The Dumac part of him was calculating the power in the number of centurions standing idle in their charging stations. Fal'Zhardum Din had fallen easily because the Dwemer had all been sucked out of existence before the Falmer rebellion had reached here. The hordes had invaded an empty land with all its resources intact. The signs of ancient combat were from battles with the low-level security bots and not the large war machines. The centurions and other battlebots stayed immobile without any activation orders. The control center, of course, would be somewhere in the labyrinth of the Heart.

This group of Falmer had time to develop slavery and slave controls. It was tempting to rush the dream time experiments over here, but no. The priority was the Vale. Blackreach could wait for now.

He tapped on his comm unit. "Arniel, I'm on my way up. You finding everything?"

"Halfway through the list, Curtis. Most of what's left are things I've never heard of before. Spark plugs? Variable speed controllers? Diodes?"

"Yeah. Sorry. I didn't know better words for those. We're on our way up. Caught some fish to add to our dinner. How are our guests doing? They behaving themselves?"

"Behaving as well as children let loose in their first candy shop. But they've kept their questions to a minimum and let me work in relative peace.

Curtis hauled his ass up the ramps, grumbling all the way. He wanted to slap the original designers for not including handrails to help with the climbing. Dumac's memories of personal transport machines had scuttlers, robotic spiders one sat in and were good for traveling on uneven ground and climbing, and — yes! — Segway-type scooters. He should look for those in the storerooms.

He clarified some of the items on the list, made rough sketches where necessary, and added the scooters and scuttle-bots. He also changed the grouping. Arniel and Elden would stay here and continue gathering things on the list. He would take the Adrevanni brothers and Ilya with him. They would be checking out the War Quarters, a building that was an empty shell in the Game but should have some interesting stuff in real life just by its name. Dwemer didn't name things frivolously or whimsically. And by that, he knew it wasn't a game shop or video arcade. The building, fortunately, was nearby, so that should minimize encounters with the locals.

But there were a lot more Falmer roaming about than in the Game. Organized, too, hunting in pairs or groups. Some even had their seeing-eye slaves along. That was a problem when the slaves babbled about walking centurions. The Adrevanni were able to cast strong chameleon and sanctuary spells, keeping them unnoticed or boosting their ability to dodge attacks.

They got to the War Quarters. Unlocked, as most places were when the inhabitants got abruptly yanked out of existence. There was a family group of a dozen here. The Adrevanni quickly cast calm and charm spells. Curtis and Ilya quickly herded the pacified Falmer into what looked like a conference room, threw a sleep gas bomb in, and shut the door.

Curtis looked into the cooking pot. Ugh. Mushroom and chaurus soup. Alveru plucked out a hatchling chaurus, which did look like a black jumbo mutant shrimp, shelled it, and ate it. "Not bad," he pronounced. "Tastes like a scutter swamp crab. It would be better poached in saltwater. I don't care for the taste of those mushrooms, though." He frowned and touched his eyes.

"What's wrong?" asked Andstar.

"Something in the soup. For a moment, I had trouble focusing my eyes."

"Don't eat any mushroom down here. Remember, that's how the Dwemer blinded the Falmer," warned Curtis.

War Quarters. Right. The armaments were locked behind aluminum oxynitride panels, or "transparent aluminum," so the Falmer never knew the dangerous things surrounding them. Most weapons were axes, swords, spears, and maces that glowed with enchantments. Some seemed to be specialized tools, then others he suspected were types of bombs. The was a wall of brittle parchments behind glass. Most seemed to be notices and security schedules at each of the districts of Mzinchaleft, Raldbthar, and Alftand. A note of a retirement party. A sheet about the policy changes being made to vacation schedules. Orders to increase overland patrols because of escalating hostilities and banditry by the Atmoran barbarians.

Was this a police station sans prison cells? Were the strange bedrooms just places for on-call officers to bunk in? He tried tapping into Dumac's memories. It was like noodling through mud to catch and bring up the memories. Yes, this was the central HQ for Blackreach security, and those bunking here on-call would be upper command. Dwemer didn't have day and night cycles; life was around the clock. This was a place concerned with military and security matters, internal and external. The conference room they'd shoved the Falmer into to sleep had walls covered with maps of the overland from Morrowind to Hammerfell.

And the beds weren't just for sleeping.

He left Ilya watching over the Adrevanni, who were rapidly sketching the weapons and making notes and went to a room with a large, single bed. The Game labeled this the commander's bedroom. Once the door was closed, it became soundproof. This room was for meditation and distance communication. He lay down and tried to get as comfortable as he could on a stone slab while still in full armor. He concentrated on The Sound of Silence.

*Hello?* Irdal and Drilira. Curtis had the impression they'd been talking, and he'd just butted in.

*Huh. You guys can actually hear me? I'm currently in Fal'Zhardum Din.*

*Hello?* Jalen, butted in, a few seconds delayed. *Excuse me, but this was a general broadcast. Were you trying to reach us? Is there trouble?*

*No, no. Just surprised. Usually, I get jack when I meditate. Maybe being here is doing me some good. Right now, I'm not feeling the headache I usually get when talking this way.*

*Wonderful!* [Irdal]

*Whoops. Spoke too soon. Now it's twinging. Gotta sign off.*

He stared up into the blackness, feeling uncertain. If it wasn't for the lash of pain right down the middle of his brain, he'd think this was one of those REM skimming dream conversations. As he had told them, Dunmer didn't quite have the same wiring as Dwemer. And Dumac had been an average-powered sender and receiver in his own life. All his Dwemer in the Vale were strong senders and receivers. Had to be for the experimental program. Even among the Dwemer, this was not a common ability. Those with the ability often got fast-tracked to positions of authority.

A quick sip of a healing potion dulled the pain. "Hey, how's it going, Ilya?"

"I think I'll need my spear to pry them out of here, or we shove them into another room with a sleep bomb and carry them out," she replied, amused. "Do you plan to take any of the weapons out of here?"

"Naw, just wanted to confirm contents. I would like to come back here in the future with more knowledgeable help. I don't recognize some of the tools or weapons. I can't recall any similar types used in Vvardenfell. Right now, they're all safely locked up. Speaking of which, we do need to leave before the Falmer start waking up."

"We'll have to fight either way," said Ilya laconically. "Seems somebody noticed us despite their spells. There's quite a large group lurking outside."

The exit plan was simple; he and Ilya would go out first and draw all the attention. Their armor broke chitin weapons. They fended off iron and steel weapons with construction digging bars. These tools were meant for digging, breaking rock, and maneuvering heavy objects, but they could be mistaken for two-tined spears. As a weapon, it was formidable. The tines were sharp, and the other end was a wedge for lifting and chiseling and could break rocks. Bones, too, if desired. And while Curtis and Ilya fought, Alveru and Andstar ambushed the Falmer and slaves with fear and route spells, driving them away.

Curtis watched enviously as Alveru and Andstar levitated up to the Deep Market storerooms to fetch Arniel, Elden, and the accumulated items. Damn, that was handy magic. Telvanni secret. He wondered if he and the other Dwemer could make an anti-grav/propulsion pack as a future project.

X—X—X—X—X—X—X

We wandered the darkness. We made ourselves small, nearer to the ground to hurt less if our heads knocked against things. We heard two voices making sounds we did not understand. A female and a male. They spoke in rhythm.

We heard flames, felt its warmth, tasted its smoke. The air moved, carrying their mingling scents. They moved around together. Doing something. Their steps in rhythm with their voices.

We should have attacked; they were Others. Others who came upon us, hurting us, killing us. But this was the time of terror. The time we fight hard not to go to because we are helpless and nothing is familiar, but always fail. Exhaustion overcomes us, and we fall.

It was the first hearing. We would come to know them. She was Hope and Music; he was Sadness and Silence.

— Book of Dreams, Sanctuary of Jhunal

(1) Another of my non-canon liberties. No other name was given to that central city except "Silent Ruin."

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