The spheres had been guarding a set of massive Dwemer doors. Dale took a few deep breaths before pushing them open. If there had been Centurions guarding the door to a simple lift, there could be almost anything behind these.
He stepped through, crouched and ready to defend against attack, but none came. He stood atop stairs leading down to a laboratory of some sort. He descended the stairs to find himself between two large, raised platforms topped with unfamiliar – but clearly Dwemer – mechanisms. There were three stations around the periphery of the room – furnaces, or perhaps crafting areas. Most arresting, though, was the item directly ahead of him at the far side of the room. He couldn’t name it, but it filled him with an overpowering sense of wrongness.
Above a stone-rimmed metal platform was a support frame, much like the ones housing inactive Centurions. Centered inside the frame and just above this pedestal was – an object, red in color and of an irregular shape.
Dale cautiously approached the object to get a better look at it, and recoiled. It looked almost moist, as if it was organic. Several dynamo cores embedded in it pulsed with power; on each side of the object three nozzles holding soul gems pointed inward. A very large soul gem embedded beneath the red object pointed up at it. He had no idea what he was seeing. What he did know was that shivers of revulsion ran up his back.
I don’t know what in Oblivion that thing is but maybe something else in here will enlighten me.
Dale wandered about the laboratory, exploring. On a table near the frame he found a brittle, folded piece of parchment which he picked up and gingerly opened. It was both unsurprising and awe-inspiring to find a full page of Dwemer text.
So Dalaran was right – there is a Dwemer lab here.
Another parchment on the table had three large ink blotches with two-word inscriptions above and below. Dale couldn’t read this text either, but he could tell that the first word of each was the same. He looked around the room again. The workstations were placed in roughly the same configuration as the blotches on this paper, one on one side of the red construct and two on the other side.
Alright. Whatever these are, that’s what’s represented in this note. What are they, anyway?
Dale approached the nearest station and flinched at both its sight and its smell. On a platform beneath the dome were several skeletons in a pool of blood, with some sort of pulsing energy in the center. He frowned. Dalaran had thought the Dwemer journal described experiments to transfer life energy from one being to another.
If he was right…
Dale turned to the second workstation. This one contained not only simple bones, but also some mostly-decomposed bodies splayed out across the flat surface and draped onto the floor. It was beginning to look as though Dalaran’s translation had been correct.
Another pair of tables held pieces and parts of derelict metal constructs. Of more interest, though, was a set of sketches. The first depicted an oval containing a being with four arms – or arms overlaid in two positions – standing before a backdrop of flame. Below the oval were two intersecting lines with a large hammer beneath each. Centered under the hammers was a sketch of the red construct, with two “nozzles” pointing at it from either side.
The second, larger sketch had the same elements, but with some differences. There was more detail on the figure, and no flames behind it. There were lines – supports, perhaps – connecting the red construct to the oval above it. There were only two additional images: one hammer on the left and one nozzle on the right. Dale frowned, and peered more closely at the second sketch. Something about it triggered a memory.
It was another day from his childhood when he and his mother had been working in the vegetable patch. She told the story – as best she knew it – of Lord Kagrenac, the great Dwemer Tonal Architect, who had developed tools to harvest the power of the Heart of Lorkhan. There was Wraithguard, a gauntlet allowing the user to wield the other two tools. Those were a hammer – Sunder, used to harvest a specific amount of power – and Keening, the blade that allowed the wielder to flay and focus the power produced. She hadn’t been especially clear on all the details, because each race in Tamriel had a different notion of what the “Heart of Lorkhan” really was; but as he leaned over the second drawing here on the table he realized what he was seeing.
The Dwemer tried to build a mechanical Heart, once. This isn’t a nozzle. It’s a blade! It’s supposed to represent Keening!
He turned once again to look at the moist, red construct suspended in its frame and shook his head.
But this isn’t the Heart of Lorkhan, and it’s not the mechanical one built by Sotha Sil. And if those nozzles are supposed to be replicas of Keening why are there so many of them?
What else did Dalaran say about that old journal? They were trying experiments on vampires?
With growing dread, Dale crossed the room to look at what else was there. He found an alchemy station, with dishes full of vampire dust, ectoplasm, and other materials. Potions filled several metallic bookshelves, but he was certain they would be stale, maybe even dangerous after the eons that had passed since they were brewed. And then there was possibly the most grotesque thing he’d ever witnessed. A large stone basin was half filled with blood – congealed but somehow not dried – and with decomposing bodies. On the nearest table to it was a basin with more congealed blood and rotting body parts – meat and hearts.
A shelf near the basin held the most appalling thing of all: a great many flasks of the type commonly used for blood potions. These were each carefully labeled. Volkihar Blood Sample. Vraseth Blood Sample. Whet-Fang Blood Sample. Cyrodiil Vampire Blood Sample. And there were more: dusty, probably rancid samples from nearly every vampire clan Dale had ever heard of and a few more besides. With each flask he examined, Dale grew more distressed and angry. He took a few samples to show Agryn, later on.
Dalaran had been right. They were doing experiments on vampires, trying to capture their life essence somehow.
And then what? How does any of it make sense? What was it going to be used for?
“It doesn’t really matter, does it?” he mused aloud. “It doesn’t seem to be working now.”
He turned back toward the exit, climbed up to the observation platform on his left, and flipped the switch on it. He heard a mechanical click, but absolutely nothing changed in the chamber.
“Huh. It really doesn’t work. Unless…” He trotted across to the other observation platform and threw its switch. This time there was a longer mechanical sound, almost as though someone had opened a steam valve. He looked around the room for the source of the noise and gasped.
One by one, the three domes began to glow. He ran to the nearest of the domes and saw that beneath each was a sphere of power, red tinged with purple, reminiscent of the spell the Argonian vampire’s red daggers had generated. He contemplated the room for another moment before returning to the first observation deck.
I probably shouldn’t try this but I have to see what happens. I can’t just return to Agryn and say “it does something but I don’t know what.”
He flipped the switch and waited. The same mechanical noise he’d heard first was followed by a faint whooshing, as though air was being blown in from somewhere high above. Then there was the loud, distinct squealing of gears somewhere out of sight. Nothing appeared to happen at first. Dale returned to the floor, looking from one of the domes after another and realizing that the spheres of energy were fading. Then his gaze fell on the “heart.”
It had begun to glow, the red aura surrounding it growing more prominent by the second as the three domes faded once more. A shudder ran up Dale’s spine once again and he waited, nervously, for anything at all to happen.
It was quiet. The only activity was the pulsing of energies around the construct. There were no further mechanical noises. His nervousness began to change to annoyance.
Well there must be something changing. This has to mean something.
Without really giving it much more thought Dale strode forward to examine the heart. There had to be something happening around it that he didn’t see from a distance. His instincts told him to look on its far side, and he reached up to see whether it might be rotated in place.
As he touched the machine there was a quiet ringing sound. A moment later, his vision went red, as it did after a feeding. But after a feeding the flush of fresh blood to his eyes was brief and transparent. This was red. Completely red. He couldn’t even see the machine in front of him. At the same time he felt an enormous surge of power flooding into him, almost overpowering in its magnitude, threatening to explode him from within. He felt stronger, healthier, and almost unstoppable. And he cried out in dismay.
He’d felt something like this before, particularly if he’d defeated a strong opponent: sometimes he seemed to consume some of their skills, as well. It was a heady sensation, knowing you were more than you’d been a moment before. This, though – this was orders of magnitude greater. He practically vibrated with the immensity of it.
When his vision cleared, Dale saw that the heart was as it had been when he entered the chamber. Only the dynamos embedded on either side flickered with residual energies. He ran to each of the domes in turn and saw that yes, they all were once again dormant but for a tiny flicker of energy just above the corpses. His mouth drooped open in dismay.
The domes extracted the remaining energy from these corpses and stored it in the “heart.”
And then the heart transferred it to me.
Dale dropped to his knees on the floor in front of the heart, shaking, trying to comprehend what had just happened to him.
He’d been taken by surprise. But not just that. He’d been surprised in the worst possible way. He hadn’t asked for the small glimmer of vital energy these poor dead people still contained. It made him want to be sick. And the blood of many other vampires, here on the shelves, told of countless instances of killings – torture, most likely, given the tendency for many vampires to simply dissolve into dust upon their final death. No, these people had been drained of their blood while still animate.
What am I going to do? What can I do? Is there anything at all I can do – or am I cursed to carry the strength of these dead vampires in me forever?
I’ve done nothing to deserve this strength, this power. This burden.
He knelt there with his head down for a moment, fuming and shuddering, thinking of the poor tortured souls in Rannveig’s Fast and how vile Sild had been. At least these vampires’ life force wasn’t something he had taken purposefully, the way Sild did. At least he hadn’t been the one to torture them. But he felt violated. Cursed.
I’m sure there has to be a reason for me to have this power, but how will I know what I need to do with it? I’ll continue to do what the Listener demands, of course, and I’ll do whatever Agryn asks within reason – but…
I guess the best I can do is – the best I can do.
He glanced around the chamber once more, marveling at the insane brilliance that was this mechanism. Had the Dwemer who envisioned this process been a vampire? It seemed likely. He had to admire the mind that could even imagine how such a thing could be done.
But now I have to go back and tell the Sovrena what I learned about Dalaran’s research. She asked me to do that, and if I don’t report back it will be hanging over my head forever.
He grimaced and rose to his feet, not relishing yet another trip through the sewers. Then he noticed a set of doors between the more closely-spaced of the extractors – for that was obviously what they were. It was worth opening the doors if for no other reason than to have explored the whole place.
Once again, as he stepped through, the world went black. He fought down his panic. Once again he’d been surprised and once again he hated it desperately. But it lasted only a moment before light returned, and he found himself standing before Dwemer doors in the niche he’d visited before, behind the waterfall.
So that’s how it works. It’s a one-way portal from inside! No wonder I couldn’t open it earlier.
He’d promised himself no more cold showers. In spite of that promise, Dale stepped gratefully into the icy-cold waterfall, letting it wash away the worst of the sewer stench if not the feeling of utter revulsion he had for himself at this moment. It wasn’t my fault, he thought. I need to remember that. I had no idea what was going to happen.
Ah but I could have left the control switches alone, yes? I could have resisted the temptation to touch the damnable heart, yes? I could have returned here in the same state I left, if only a bit more suspicious about the Sovrena’s intentions. But here I am, so much more powerful than I was when I left. I don’t know how much, or what the implications of this are, but I do know I’m not the same man who first went into those sewers not long ago.
The problem was that no amount of worrying was going to change a single thing about his current situation. So he stepped forward, shook himself off as best he could, and then made his way carefully down from the old, broken lift to the streets of Coldhaven. He wasn’t sure what time it was but the Sovrena would see him. Of that he was certain – even if he had to pick Nasaris up by the collar and threaten him to get through the door.
Surprisingly, there was nobody in the audience chamber of the Sovrena’s tower when he reached it. He had no real way to tell time here in Coldhaven’s perpetual gloom, though, and he didn’t know how much time might have passed while he was in the laboratory far under their feet. He walked through the curtain on the chamber’s far side, fully expecting to need to flex a muscle or two to get to Tamara’s quarters; to his surprise, the lone guard outside her door waved a hand at it with a wordless grunt.
Apparently I’m expected. Very well.
Tamara stood directly in the doorway to her inner chamber, blocking his progress and wearing an expression he could not interpret. Her bronze eyes glittered with some emotion he couldn’t fathom. There was something about her whole demeanor that made him wonder anxiously whether she’d discovered his earlier trip to this room. But he’d been exceptionally careful to read her journal without moving it and to close it without disturbing any dust that might have betrayed a change in its position. No, he decided. She doesn’t mistrust me. She’s just uncommonly anxious to find out what I’ve learned.
“Sovrena Tamara, I’m here with news.”
“I should hope so. There’s no other reason for you to be here, is there?”
Dale managed a smile and a chuckle, although amused was possibly the very remotest thing he was at that moment. “I was right about Dalaran’s last unexplored location. I found an entire Dwemer lab hidden here beneath Coldhaven.” He paused for a moment when an especially bittersweet thought occurred to him. “What a shame that he couldn’t have seen it himself, to know that all his research was correct.”
Tamara’s eyes narrowed for a moment before widening in apparent shock. “I can’t believe it! How could the founders have missed an entire Dwemer complex when Coldhaven was being excavated and built?”
Dale fought to suppress a frown. Her behavior was painfully reminiscent of his own technique as an assassin. He always made certain to be shocked and surprised, even horrified that someone had been murdered.
He shook his head. “It’s a very long way down and even the entrance to the lift is hidden. There’s a waterfall blocking it and there were Centurions guarding it. It’s not exactly the kind of place anyone would have stumbled upon.”
She nodded. “I’m not sure I’m ready to share this information with the citizens of Coldhaven yet. I have to understand the risks this discovery may pose, first.”
That statement was unsettling. How did she know there might be risks other than the potential for the lift to fail?
“I would appreciate your discretion as well,” she continued. “Tell no one for now. Give me the details of what you discovered, please.”
Alarm bells were beginning to ring in Dale’s head. She didn’t want anyone to know about Theseus’ research, either, not until she was ready to use it herself. I don’t like this but I don’t have a good excuse not to tell her what I found. I fear what her response will be but I can’t hide it from her.
“The Dwemer experimented on – how can I put it – extracting life force from one being and transferring it to another. It was a reasonable experiment, too, based on replicating the mechanisms used on the Heart of Lorkhan. It’s really a rather stunning setup down there.”
Her eyes began glittering again. “That doesn’t sound like any Dwemer research I’ve heard of before. Perhaps they were a fringe faction.”
Dale’s mind started clamoring. She’d just contradicted herself.
“I thought you had spoken to Dalaran about the rumors of research on vampires, and that you were surprised that he was pursuing them. Isn’t that what you told me?”
Her eyes flickered again, a moment of surprise and dismay that she’d made such a sloppy mistake. It was only the tiniest moment though, and she covered her dismay by shaking her head and pretending she hadn’t really heard his question.
“Hmm, we’ll have to research their activities for ourselves.”
“I don’t know that you’ll want to…”
“I’ll send Nasaris there at once,” she declared. “Perhaps we’ll find information to strengthen our city.”
Dale felt hot bands of raw anger tightening around his head. He knew he should keep quiet, but he could pretend no longer.
“Nasaris? You’ll send him to look now that I’ve cleared the way, so that he can report back to you? Or will he have an unfortunate accident the way Dalaran and Theseus had, so that when it’s time to reveal the discoveries the Dwemer made it will be you, the great Sovrena Tamara, who is the only one clever enough to save her people from the terrible, imagined threats from above?”
Dale knew that the threats weren’t entirely imaginary, and so did Tamara. He was fairly certain, though, that she didn’t know about the Dawnguard assassin who had attacked Madi in her home. And that was beside the point. She was using him, and had used the others, for her own ends.
“How dare you?” Tamara sputtered. “Accuse me of – what, of sending Dalaran to his death?”
Dale bared his fangs.
“Possibly, yes. I am certain that you killed Theseus. How terrible it was that he was experimenting on his own kind!” he said in mock dismay. “How terrible! And yet how convenient that nobody else knew where that fantastic knowledge to make Bloodglass weapons came from, and nobody was around to tell your grateful citizens otherwise?”
Tamara was practically sputtering now, and her stance told him that she was going to do something drastic very shortly. And yet, he couldn’t quite stop speaking.
“Dalaran went searching for something that would make Coldhaven more powerful. And oh dear, how distressed you were when he didn’t come back from the mission even though you knew exactly where he had gone.”
“I was distressed!” she protested in a harsh whisper.
Dale snorted. “Oh yes. It might have been weeks before my arrival that he’d disappeared, or it might have been months, you told me. You didn’t know and didn’t seem overly concerned. But I was a willing and fairly intelligent body to take over the investigation – and don’t try to deny that you directed me to the sewers. You even had Dalaran’s key. You knew exactly what you were doing. You were using them, and you were using me, and you would use your closest advisor as a shield, too, if it suited you.”
He mentally prepared his body for a battle, even though he felt compelled to say one more thing.
“You won’t use Nasaris, Tamara, unpleasant a worm though he may be. And do you know why I am certain of that?”
She smirked, and put her hands on her hips. He had the tiniest moment of doubt, then, for she was a far more ancient vampire than he was. But it didn’t matter.
“Oh, do tell,” she said, dripping sarcasm.
“Because Dalaran was on the right track, following those tales. The Dwemer were experimenting on transferring life from one being to another, and they were using vampires to do it because vampires are largely immortal. Just imagine it! You could continue their research, transfer energy to yourself, and live forever!”
She grinned. She said nothing, but she didn’t have to. Dale knew he was right.
“But who wants to live forever, Tamara, if it means torturing your own kind to do it? Theseus did that and you were “forced” to remove him. Torture is torture, dear Sovrena. Abuse is abuse.”
“And now I’m forced to remove you, I see,” she said quietly.
“Oh no. Because, you see, the Dwemer succeeded. Let me show you.”
Dale drew the shadows in around himself and moved to block the Sovrena’s exit, drawing his bow at the same time. He fired one of his best arrows at her, catching her by surprise. She dropped all pretenses and bared her fangs, trying to find him, raising up one of the draugr from the floor outside her chamber, and hissing that it was his last mistake. Dale laughed and drew his blades, darting from side to side in his invisibility and slicing at her over and over again. She cast a powerful vampiric drain spell in his general direction, but as much life force as she drew from him – and it was a great deal – he had at least that much or more left in him thanks to the dead vampires whose power he had unwittingly absorbed.
She fell backward into a corner and slumped down onto the floor as he stood over her and laughed, fading back into visibility. “You see? All of that power was given to me. I’m using it to keep Coldhaven safe from more of your lies. And by the way,” he said, dropping his voice to a whisper and leaning toward her ears, “I’m an assassin. I had no contract to kill you but I would have found a way to end you, regardless. You shouldn’t leave your journal out for other people to read.”
Then, just as her eyes widened in understanding and in fear, he plunged his short blade into her heart, twisting it to inflict as much damage as he could. He followed up by draining every last drop of blood from her body. The draugr that had reluctantly risen up to help Tamara collapsed into a pile of ashes in front of its open sarcophagus.
Then he started to shudder.
By the old gods and the new I have just killed the Sovrena. I need to get rid of her body. I need to dump her over the balcony so it will look like she fell.
No. I can’t do that, she’s riddled with blade marks and her neck has been touched by fangs. What will I do? The guard saw me come in and he’ll see me leave…
No. I’ll use Dalaran’s ring to leave. The guard will forget all about me. I’ll have to get new armor anyway. This is ruined.
He improvised as best he could, picking up the Sovrena’s body and taking it back into her quarters, looking around for some way to disguise her death for a time. He considered the coffin; but she was too limp and wouldn’t stand. Then his gaze fell on the desk, and the journal that had at last told him the truth – and the jeweled goblet beside it. He broke into a grin.
Poor Sovrena Tamara couldn’t resist sampling some of the exotic, rancid vampire blood from the Dwemer lab, could she? Even a vampire’s resistance to disease can’t protect against everything – can it?
He tried to put her into her chair, but she slumped over and fell to the floor quite convincingly, he thought. He took the jeweled goblet and dropped it near her hand; it obediently rolled into a likely spot. Then he pulled out one of the nastiest-looking flasks he’d brought up from the laboratory and placed it on her desk, uncorking it. It wasn’t a perfect setup but it was a reasonable enough scenario that people might just believe it for long enough that his presence here on this evening might be forgotten.
Then something else occurred to him, and once more he shuddered.
Those corpses had already been drained of most of their life energy when I flipped the switches. What would it be like to receive the full, extracted life force of the freshly-dead? Gods.
I’m glad you’ll never get a chance to try it, Tamara. It would have been a disaster.
And now I have to get out of here before anyone sees me, especially not that guard. Out of here and back home for a bit of a rest. Then I need to let Nazir know I completed the Listener’s task. Move, Dale.
He retrieved Dalaran’s ring from his pocket and slipped it on, willing himself to stay calm during the void of the trip to Lamae’s Rest. Once there, he stared out toward the city’s exit, trying to decide whether he should make a quick escape via the portal room. He’d had just about enough of portals for the moment, but a fast trip to Solitude might be worth the temporary discomfort. Maybe. His gaze drifted toward the city gates and the tower Agryn had seen that he had not.
Well there’s my answer. I’ll go out the long way, and I’ll stop to see what in the world that is.
Dale waited until patrolling guards had turned away and then dropped down over the edge of the plateau, landing atop one of the huge mushrooms below. From there it was a simple matter of timing to work his way over to the cavern wall and start moving quietly along the back edges of the Falmer encampment. He peered up as he pressed forward. It looked as though the bottom of the tower was just beyond the Falmer district.
He was right about that, he discovered when he reached the base of the massive stone spire. The problem, though, was that there were no doors, no cracks in the stone, no entrance of any kind. He stood, risking detection, and stared up at the tower again, frowning. There was definitely something up there, but he couldn’t tell what it was or how to get to it.
Damn it, now what? Maybe I should take the risk and ask about this tower at the Guarded Attire shop. They’re the closest to it; maybe they can tell me how to get in. At least I might possibly find out what is up there.
He used the tops of giant mushrooms to hop over the last of the Falmer huts, waiting until the nearest patrolling guard turned back toward the roadway. Then he dropped down and followed suit, hugging the walls of the cavern and then the walls of the shop.
He’d passed several more mushrooms and was picking his careful way through a bed of gleamblossoms when a distinctive grinding noise stopped him cold. He turned toward the wall and watched, astonished, as a portion of the wall simply disappeared, revealing something both familiar and completely unexpected. It was a doorway, filled by the ominous, brooding visage of a skull above dual blades and a woman crouching at the bottom. On the skull’s forehead was a black hand.
It was the doorway to a Dark Brotherhood sanctuary.
