Harald tsk’d and shook his head, looking at the downed Centurion. They’d been trying to unlock the gate to a lift; but it involved kinetic resonators suspended along the very tall ceilings, connected to a network of steam pipes. Shooting any of the blue resonators activated valves arrayed on a platform just in front of them. But when Harald chose incorrectly, Dwemer constructs had roared to life.
Ulkarin snorted. “It’s a wonder that the dwarves weren’t all deaf with all this steam and metal banging about.”
“True. But now we can focus on getting the gate open without worrying about it.” With that, he fired two shots in quick succession – one at the far right side and one at the center left. The first resonator raised and illuminated twelve pipes but the second raised six, four of which turned yellow before they all deactivated. Harald hadn’t considered that there might be more Dwemer machines waiting for them but there were. For the next few minutes they fought down two of the much quicker – and therefore more deadly – spheres.
When they were finished, Ulkarin shook his head. “No more guesswork, Harald. Or we’ll all be deaf – or dead.”
Kalaman cleared his throat. “I don’t believe we will need to employ guesswork. I’ve been keeping track of the numbers of valves each resonator controls.”
“And?”
“I believe that the nearest to us on the left and the farthest away on the right add up to the requisite number of valves without exceeding it.”
“Alright then,” Harald said, quietly admiring the Archmage’s clever resourcefulness. “Let’s see if you’re right.”
It was hard not to be anxious while waiting for all the valves to rise, and Harald kept his sword at the ready just in case. But Kalaman’s bureaucratic counting skills had served them well, and the gate swung open. The lift took them down to a narrow stone walkway suspended in the fog beneath a roof of luminescent stone, with huge volumes of water plunging loudly into the depths.
“Wow,” Harald breathed.
“Blackreach,” Kalaman murmured.
“What?” Ulkarin asked.
“The great subterranean expanse beneath Skyrim that was once home to the Dwemer. It’s possible that this is – or was – simply another part of it. In any event, I would expect to see Falmer.”
“Great.”
And the waterfalls are going to cover any sounds they might make, Harald thought. He’d have given a fortune for a moment of quiet at this point, so that he could think. Instead, he pushed forward down the bridge.
The ramps, of necessity, stretched between wider support pillars, still solid after who knew how many eons. At the first of these, two spiders burst out to attack. Harald grimaced, but took down one of them with a massive sword blow while the others chased the second spider up and around an unprotected ramp leading to a full structure. Harald ran to catch up to them but was greeted by a pair of spheres. He blocked one, but lurched forward, off-balance, as the other struck him from behind. There was an explosion of magic followed by soothing warmth, and he was astonished to see Reamonn beating on the sphere with his spiked club. Reamonn’s spell – the small sun he’d seen earlier – was a healing ray, and it made the difference between life and death for Harald.
While Reamonn finished off the spheres, Harald ran ahead to the gated structure above. He found several damaged pieces of Daedric gear on the floor and scooped them up into his pack, frowning. In one corner was a cage, a control button in front of it and something on the floor inside. He lowered the bars and stepped into the cage, gasping. He’d found a body.
Once, long ago, Harald and his mother had been in Riften visiting Qara’s family, along with Dardeh and Roggi. The men were sitting before the fire, drinking mead, or ale, or something – Harald had been far too young to know the difference. He was sitting quietly with a book when the older men’s voices began to get louder and more raucous, and Roggi, laughing, had taunted Brynjolf.
“Since you really went to Oblivion, Bryn, describe a Dremora for me.”
All of them had laughed, but Brynjolf, with his innate story-telling skills, had woven a slightly-drunken but horrifying tale of multiple Dremora attacking him on a stony bridge, barely above a sea of lava. Dark-skinned, they were, but not dark like a Redguard or a Dunmer. These were reddish but with an almost charred hue, and after he’d defeated them he’d harvested inhumanly large, bright-red hearts from each. Brynjolf might have been laughing, but Harald had heard the barely-disguised terror lurking just under the surface of his brogue, and he’d never forgotten the story.
Shor’s bones. This is a Dremora.
Harald retreated from the cage and raised the bars once more. He had no doubt that the damaged pieces of gear in his pack had belonged to the creature lying in the cage. He also wanted to avoid showing this to anyone else.
We’re frightened enough as it is. And I don’t even want to consider what it might mean unless it’s absolutely necessary.
Harald ran back to meet the others, then led them up to and across the platform and another bridge. Ahead was an intersection; to their left was a gate that no amount of persuasion would open. The other branch took them to a steep set of stairs leading up to a remarkable construct: a face of Dwemer metal, pipes extending from either side like arms bent at the elbows, with one beam of bright blue light emanating from its top. One eye socket was empty, the pipework on that side of the face having ruptured, tossing the jeweled eye to the floor.
“What on Nirn were these dwarves experimenting with?” Ulkarin exclaimed. “I really hope they didn’t touch nothin’ Daedric. You don’t pay me enough for that bollocks.”
“I sure don’t,” Harald murmured, knowing full well what he’d just seen and touched. But his curiosity was piqued and he had a visceral need to find out what this thing in front of them actually was. He reached out toward the construct and spoke quietly.
“What are you, anyway? And why do I feel as though you’re alive somehow?”
There was a hiss of steam. A sphere of swirling, reddish-purple energy appeared before the construct’s “chest” and a deep, mechanical voice spoke.
“Animate being f-found. Sentience deduced. C-carrier of a large soul. What is your directive, m-m-master?”
“By the gods!” Harald said, jumping back a pace and nearly colliding with Kalaman, who had stepped up beside him.
“What have we here, I wonder?” the Archmage said. “It’s clearly a construct of some kind, but what is its function?”
“How would I know?” Harald squeaked. Then he took a deep breath and shook his head. “Sorry, I don’t mean to be short. I’ve just never seen anything like this before!”
“It appears to want your input, young sir. Perhaps you should speak to it further.” Kalaman seemed, as usual, unruffled.
Harald nodded, and stepped forward again, clearing his throat. “Can you understand me?” he asked.
He heard the whirring of gears and more steam hissing. “W-welcome master. It has been three thousand, seven hundred eighty-two years since your last log. What tasks would you have me un-undertake?”
Harald’s mind spun for a moment until he spotted Raemonn, standing apart from them, at the foot of the stairs. That was the hint he’d needed. They were there looking for something that had been stolen – and within recent memory.
“Have you had any other visitors lately?”
The machine whirred and clicked and the voice began to speak, its tone and volume changing as it went, almost as though reading and responding to reports from other constructs.
“Aside from the subjects below, there is no other sentient being within the facility. I will check for tampering since my time of hibernation.
“CENTURIONS: ORIGINAL STRUCTURE REMAINS UNMOLESTED. MICRO-SERVING AUTOMATONS: ORIGINAL STRUCTURE REMAINS UNMOLESTED. INTER-PLANE GATE PLATFORM: -WARNING- GATE COMPROMISED DURING HIBERNATION. -WARNING- BREACH OCCURRED FIVE NIRN CYCLES PRIOR TO CURRENT EVENTS.
“Gate mechanics for the portal can only be operated b-by self-aware biologicals.
“RELAYING ARCANE FOOTAGE FROM CENTURION.
“Biological possessed black item.
“DISCERNING ITEM’S FUNCTION AND AGENT’S AGENDA.
“Item seems to be worn on the hand. Agent’s motive is unknown.”
“The gauntlets!” Reamonn exclaimed. “Five years ago. That’s why my scrying told me to go deeper! It must be!”
Harald nodded and looked back up at the metallic face. “Could you open that portal? We need that item.”
There was a pause, and then the voice continued. “Extremely hazardous materials will be encountered through your expedition into Subject Realm #137. Are you sure you want to continue?”
I don’t have a clue what in Oblivion ‘Subject Realm #137’ signifies but that’s what we’ve come here for, so I guess so.
“Yes. Open it, please.”
The construct answered without hesitation. “A-as you wish M-master. Power needs to be supplied toward gate platform for operation. F-find energy director below. B-beware of subjects.”
“Great,” Ulkarin muttered. “We have to search for something else before we get to search for the gauntlets some more, yes?”
“That would be my assumption,” Kalaman said. “Given that this entire place is steam-powered, I expect that we need to find a way to supply the gate platform with steam.”
Harald nodded. He was intensely grateful for Kalaman’s superior knowledge, experience, and insight. Some day I’m going to repay him for all this. I don’t know how but I will. “Let’s go, then,” he said, leading them back to the now-opened gate beyond the intersection.
“That thing thought you were its damn Dwemer overlord!” Ulkarin said as they headed across the bridge to another lift.
Harald snorted. “I guess I do look a bit like a dwarf standing next to you and Kalaman, Tiny,” he said with a chuckle.
“Very funny. Make fun of a guy because he’s tall and then make him ruin his knees with crouching.”
“You’ll live.”
“I certainly hope so. I have five hundred gold burning a hole in my coin purse.”
Harald’s amusement ended as soon as the lift stopped. They were, thankfully, on solid ground at the bottom of the caverns. They were, unfortunately, not alone.
“The ‘subjects,’ I assume. Falmer,” Kalaman said, pointing across to where a familiar hut perched atop a stone pillar.
Harald once again marveled at the Falmers’ almost otherworldly hearing. In spite of being blind, the creature’s arrow found him and, once again, he felt the burning where it nicked him.
“Poison,” he grunted. He turned back toward the others, hoping for some cover, only to hear a snarl behind him and to feel the pain of a frost spell. A mage. Of course.
He turned back toward the ugly mage, trying to muster enough energy in his frost-weakened arm to bash the creature with his spiked shield. Behind him, he heard Kalaman shout “You’re dead!” and watched fireballs destroy the Falmer.
From the corner of his eye he saw the huge black battleaxe sweeping a horizontal arc. “This ends here,” Ulkarin said as his blow landed. Harald scrambled out of the way, out into the open, healing himself; Ulkarin stepped over the dead Falmer and leveled another brutal blow, this time on a chaurus that had skittered its way up to them. “Cheeky,” he said as he split the creature open.
Harald spotted another Falmer sneaking up behind Ulkarin. He sprinted ahead and ripped the beast open with his shield, as Ulkarin pulled out his bow and took on yet another, this one at a distance.
“You messed with the wrong Reachman,” he growled again.
Harald saw a flash of magical light and gasped as Kalaman, wielding a conjured sword, dashed forward to meet the Falmer head-on. “Your time is at its end!” he shouted, skewering the Falmer and then “sheathing” the magical blade with a flourish. Harald looked around and realized that once again he did not see Reamonn.
By all the gods, we’ve come down here and risked our necks on that man’s behalf, and he disappears during the fights! Where in Oblivion is he this time?
There was a moment to catch their breath, then, and yet Harald kept hearing the clattering of arrows striking stone nearby. He scanned side to side, trying to find the archer; finally the creature moved and Harald spotted it across a gap from them.
“There you are,” Ulkarin said, pulling out his bow and firing at the Falmer.
“Is that the best you can do?” Kalaman shouted at it. Harald grinned. Kalaman looked and behaved like an unassuming scholar most of the time, but he had a startling fierceness just under the surface. Harald was about to draw his own bow when there was a great explosion of magic. He turned to look at Kalaman, eyes wide.
“Soul trap,” Kalaman said, while not taking his eyes off the target across the way. “There was another one down below us.” A moment later, Ulkarin’s arrow ended the Falmer. They all descended to the roadway below.
“Where’s Reamonn?” Harald muttered.
“I don’t know, mate, but I’m beginning to wonder about that guy.”
“I’m glad it’s not just me, Tiny.”
Not far in front of them was a cluster of Dwemer buildings. The door to the nearest one burst open and a pair of Falmer ran out to attack. Harald tsk’d.
I’m tired of this.
He breathed deeply, leaned forward, and Shouted.
“SU- GRAH!”
His sword flew, his shield ripped, and he snarled in fury as he tore the two Falmer apart. He was aware of both Ulkarin and Kalaman voicing their own anger, but this time he wasn’t going to step back and wait for anyone else. These were his kills.
Once both Falmer lay still on the ground, Kalaman shushed him.
“Listen! I hear something.”
Harald did too. He tried to pinpoint the direction of the sound – a dry skittering noise, familiar and loathed – but Kalaman located it first. He pointed to the right, toward a building with a still-closed door.
“Chaurus,” Ulkarin sighed. “Alright, let’s go.”
There were two chaurus inside, but there were two warriors and a mage fighting them. It was a short battle, even though they all had to take a few moments to recover from chaurus poison afterward. Harald was just taking a sip of water when Kalaman pointed again.
“There. A valve. I presume that opening it will restore some of the steam our Dwemer friend requires?”
Harald nodded. “Let me try.” The valve was dirty and partially corroded, and protested loudly. Harald was strong, though, and by leaning hard into it he was able to loosen it after a few tries. The satisfying sound of steam moving through pipes followed.
“OK, there’s one.”
They returned to the roadway and continued along it, searching for another valve or two. It became monotonous: every few steps forward they faced another Falmer, or another chaurus, or, in one instance, a Chaurus Hunter. Once Kalaman had downed that flying creature but before it was dead, Harald’s anger got the better of him. He snarled silently, raised one heavily-armored leg and squashed the insect under his boot.
“That was pathetic,” Kalaman snorted, sounding every bit the Altmer.
“Sorry. I’m tired of these things,” Harald replied. He was sure Kalaman had been referring to the chaurus, but it didn’t matter either way.
We’re looking for a relic for Raemonn and he’s disappeared. There’s a limit to my generosity and I think we’ve reached it.
The next valve was in an unlikely spot: not behind the next gated lift but outside it, in a Falmer encampment. Like the first valve, this one squealed and resisted, but not quite as vigorously; soon they heard the rush of steam.
By the time they opened the final steam valve, Harald was convinced that they’d seen every corner of this cavern. They’d rousted and defeated every moving thing in it, alive or mechanical. And yet, there was still no sign of Reamonn. Harald was exhausted and angry, but he led them back up from the cavern floor to stand before the Dwemer sentry again. If he could retrieve the gauntlets he would personally return them to the Priest in Arnima and at least take some satisfaction from that.
The bust was quiet, but steam pouring from the empty eye socket made Harald think it was still operational. He tapped on its “chest.”
“Are you still in there?”
The device answered instantly.
“STEAM HAS REACHED ALL NODES, SUFFICIENT CHARGE FOR GATE APERTURE. NEEDS ACTIVATION AT LOCAL SYSTEM RELAY.
‘All systems are primed for your traversal to Subject Realm 137. Activate the gate through accompanied device. May the gods fear the march of enlightenment.”
Harald looked back at his companions in confusion. “Do we know what device it’s talking about?”
Kalaman once again rubbed his chin. “I noticed several levers on the platform below us, but I believe they operate the crossbows mounted there. Still, there may be something in the area that I didn’t see while occupied with Falmer.”
Harald nodded and ran down the stairs to where the weapons overlooked a slightly lower platform. He tried the lever next to the first weapon and, as Kalaman had suggested, the crossbow fired into the fog. That’s when he gave a closer look to what lay there. An arch of steam pipes, like all the other interconnected pipes in this realm, was large but otherwise unremarkable. Nestled beneath that arch, though, was another: jagged, pointed and irregular, with heavy vines growing beside it.
He pointed. “Is that what I think it is?”
An unexpected voice answered him. “This gate. It’s the very same gate that became symbolic during the Oblivion crisis. What vile practices were the Dwemer involved in here?”
Harald frowned, staring down toward the gate and not turning to face the speaker. “Nice of you to show up again, Reamonn.”
Kalaman pointedly ignored the Missionary. “It certainly looks like one to me, Harald. I wonder if that’s our destination. It would make sense that those are the pipes to which we needed to restore steam.”
“Great,” Ulkarin said sourly. “Just great.”
“I doubt that the Oblivion gate is original to the facility,” Kalaman observed dryly.
“Well, something operates the steam. Let me keep looking,” Harald said, crossing to the second lever and throwing it open. As expected, it fired the second crossbow.
“Hmm.” He descended to the platform and slowly approached the gate, the heavy red vines, and the pile of something unfamiliar in front of it.
“I do hope you know what you’re doing,” Kalaman said.
Harald stopped short of the thing and gasped. “It’s… a spider! Or something like a spider. Look at this thing! It has… faces!”
“Oh my,” Kalaman said quietly. “I saw one of these earlier, when I was searching for Mortifayne’s amulet. It was there among the Witchmen’s alchemy ingredients and their… trophies.”
Harald frowned. “A spider and an Oblivion gate. I don’t like it. But I’m going to keep looking.”
Above the second crossbow was a stone deck, likely for watching whatever was designed to happen beneath the metal arch. On a hunch, Harald trotted up to that deck, spotting a large junction of pipes, a grill, and a lever. He threw the lever and gasped. Red-hued energy exploded in all directions from the Gate in a huge shock wave. Harald ran to the edge and looked over to find the Oblivion Gate alive, energy roiling in its center like an infernal soup.
“By Shor’s bones, do we need to go into that?” They all stood silently for an endless moment before he sighed. “I think we do, and I surely have no desire to do so. But we’ve come this far. We may as well finish the job.”
“Are you certain, young sir?” Kalaman asked softly. “We’re under no real obligation.”
Harald snorted. “I promised I’d get the gauntlets if I could.”
“Yeah, but you didn’t promise to leave Nirn to do it,” Ulkarin said.
Harald stared again at the red abyss. If I had died fighting a Falmer, Tiny and Kalaman could have handled getting me back to Windhelm. If I die in there, nobody will ever know what happened to me. Not Mother, not Father, not Qara. There won’t even be a body to recover.
But what kind of a leader would I be if I abandoned a promise just because it looked hopeless? Father took on the whole Empire for what he believed in, and that’s why people like Galmar followed him.
“I’m going in,” he announced quietly. “I won’t hold it against anyone who doesn’t want to risk coming along.”
For a moment after stepping through the gate he saw nothing, but heard a sound like the distorted wailing of a soul in distress. When his vision cleared, he gasped. He was standing on wildly tilting Dwemer ramps hovering above a crimson sea.
Blood. It’s blood. The stones are splattered with blood. And this thing in front of me is… a ribcage?
“Do you feel that?”
Harald jumped at Ulkarin’s question, but then breathed a sigh of relief that he wasn’t alone in this strange place. “I feel something, for certain.”
“And that, my friend,” Kalaman added, “looks like a gigantic replica of a grisly creature I met in the Witchmen’s caves. Blood-spattered bones. An unearthly monster. This one is ten times its size, but at least it’s not moving.”
Ulkarin coughed. “Gods! This whole place reeks! Where are we?”
“A pocket dimension of Oblivion, I would say,” Kalaman said calmly. “Probably belonging to Namira, judging by the blood and decay and the spider we saw outside.”
“We gotta find a way out of here, mate.”
“We will,” Harald said. “Hang on.”
Harald looked around. There were only a few places they could go, here, a few Dwemer platforms, and based on what the sentry had said one of them must contain the gauntlets.
The first ramp he explored led only into the sea of blood. He shook his head and returned to the center, turning left onto a path that then curled back on itself and up, ending at a tower blocked by gigantic red tendrils.
“Fire,” Kalaman said. “I encountered these before, as well. They will recoil from fire.”
“Be my guest,” Harald said, allowing the mage whose specialty was fire to clear their path.
What lay beyond the roots was one of the strangest things Harald had ever seen. Heavy chains suspended in the middle of a rough chamber of red tendrils held a body, burned or decayed or maybe both. He shuddered. This must have been a terrible death. He stepped forward, reluctantly, and took a closer look. The corpse wore gauntlets, gleaming black with golden symbols etched onto their outer surfaces.
“I’d say this guy’s been there just about five years,” Ulkarin said.
“Yes, and those must be the gauntlets,” Kalaman added. “Not only are they beautiful but I feel their magic enchantment. A real prize for the aspiring thief. A shame he came to such a grisly end.”
Harald wanted to hold his nose, but he needed both hands to remove the gauntlets. He gritted his teeth and took hold of them, shuddering as they slipped from the corpse with a loud, meaty squelch. He had all he could do not to gag.
“Alright, we have them. Let’s get out of here. It’s a long way back to Arnima.”
As he stepped clear there was a howl, like that of a wolf. Harald drew his sword, prepared for a fight, and retraced his steps back toward the Gate with his companions close behind. When he reached the bottom, though, something stepped out from the shadows to block their passage.
It was like nothing he’d ever seen: red, hairless, with long fingers and toes ending in claws. It had spikes on its back. Its head – if that’s what the lump atop its oddly-shaped body could be called – was topped with long, upright ears and a “mouth” like a starfish’s, with things extending from it, four of them, something like…
Arms? Are those hands?
The creature spoke. Its voice was soft and hoarse, barely understandable.
“Here you are, the one to shatter this crimson cage and grant me freedom!”
“What are you?” Harald asked, able to form no more intelligent a statement than that.
“The liberator wants a name, a moniker for this transient form – well, you can call me Ambition. Pulled towards my wants with great force, a desire converged upon by gods, lords and men. That want is power! The corpse king rotting atop his spire needs a prince, and who better to take up that venerated role than Ambition. From this hideous pit emerges royalty who awaits his throne.”
Harald shuddered. What?
“Speak clearly, demon!” Kalaman commanded.
“Yes, strip away the artifice and cast away pretension. Forgive my joy, liberator. Becoming aware of a destiny rewritten has made me giddy.” The creature breathed heavily, almost greedily. “Yes, it has. Yes. It has.”
Harald glanced up and shuddered, seeing the gigantic skeleton and the suspended corpse. “What is that behind you?”
“Observe the child yet conceived behind, it gestates in the wanting womb – the very prison which bore me. Liberator, I wish you would kill this child, and remove the final hurdle to my rise. Yet harms directed are rendered hollow, aren’t they, mother? You covet your child with such fervor. The child is already named, would you believe that, Liberator? She has called it ‘Whisper.'”
“You make no sense. You want me to… kill something?”
“If we could only inflict death to the dead. To ease that contradiction would cease my struggle. Yet it cannot be. However! There is another who could be the object of your malice, an anchor to ambition: the bank of remembering, the Husk. If you see this husk – this frail, pathetic thing – kill it. Bring it low, tear it to pieces and I will be free, truly free.”
Harald’s head swam. “Should I free you, creature?”
“Your every inflection will be heard from here to the dying light, your image burned into my future dreams. We will meet again, liberator, and I will be pleased to see you. The worm will conquer the mountain as they say! Ha ha!”
“Gods,” Kalaman breathed, somewhere behind Harald. Before he could say more, the creature spoke again.
“Everything that is ugly, everything that is weak, will all be burned away. And you will join me in this growth. Where I had gone from scum to royalty, you will go from nomad to nobility. Then you and I will destroy the dark mother together! Goodness and beauty will prevail! Farewell, intrepid friend.”
Then, before any of them could react, the creature scuttled away and disappeared through the gate.
Harald stood for a moment, shuddering, not understanding what he had just seen and heard. Behind him he heard Ulkarin trying to suppress a gag, and Kalaman clearing his throat.
“We seem to have found Subject 137,” the Archmage said. “Beyond that I do not understand. But I do know that voice, and that phrase – ‘the worm shall conquer the mountain.’ I encountered it once before.”
“And? What did it want?” Ulkarin asked.
“Something about royalty, nobility,” Kalaman said. “I’m not certain. What I suspect is that this is some Daedric being or other and it’s trying to influence the mortal realm through the noble class.”
“Mortifayne,” Ulkarin said.
Harald couldn’t stop shuddering long enough to answer. “And you shall go from nomad to nobility,” the thing said. Does it know who I am? Does it want something else of me?
He started back for the gate, waving toward it weakly without speaking. The others followed, silent.
Reamonn met them in the landing between the Gate and the automated weapons.
“What in Oblivion was that?”
Harald didn’t bother trying to conceal his disgust. “You saw the demon run out of the gate, I take it?”
“It was definitely something. Demon or not it was downright sinister looking. I had feared the worst for you.”
“But not enough to come check on our well-being,” Harald snapped.
“I have not the courage to face such beasts, friend. I was hiding away behind the manifold contraptions, eager to be gone.”
Harald sighed. “Well it wasn’t hostile, in any event. Just… wordy.”
“You spoke with it?”
“It spoke of freedom, and wants,” Kalaman said. “It was difficult to understand, since we lack its context.”
Reamonn shook his head. “The priests advise those haunted by accursed spirits to shield their ears, to avoid becoming entangled in their plots. Though you seem to retain sanity.” He chuckled. “Not even the temptations of Oblivion can sway you!”
“There wasn’t much to be tempted by in there,” Ulkarin said flatly.
Harald just stared. Raemonn laughed – a nervous laugh, to Harald’s ears.
“This has been an enthralling experience, friend,” Raemonn said. “Fraught with terrors and perils but exciting nonetheless.”
“Like you’d know,” Ulkarin muttered.
“We’ve got what we came for,” Harald said. “We’re heading south.” And with that he turned and led the way back to the lift, back through the Dwemer ruin he’d so wanted to see, and back to Arnima.
Matthew, the Priest of the Nine, lit up when he saw Harald enter the church.
“Hello priest. The gauntlets have been found.” Harald had rinsed them and himself off in the river on their way back. The water had been icy but his soul felt every bit as frozen and submerging had shocked him back to feeling almost human again.
“So Reamonn finally made the expedition. He was raving about it for quite some time. Did you find our elusive thief?”
“I’m not sure how to answer that. We had to enter a pocket of Oblivion, where we found an – entity. Strange thing it was. It was standing next to the gauntlets.”
The priest’s eyebrows rose and, if Harald had been able to see the hair on the man’s neck, he was certain it would have been standing on end. “Daedra? Within a Dwemer ruin? Unheard of! How did you manage to find yourself in such a terrible place?”
“The Missionary claimed that they were deeper still when we’d already reached the floor of the ruin. It was the only place left to check.”
“I see. The presence of the gauntlets in such a remote place should have raised our concern from the start. Daedra, now. Are we but pawns in some grander scheme?”
Again, Harald heard the strange voice speaking to him. “And you shall go from nomad to nobility.” Again, he shuddered. “I hope not. But it surely is reason to be on our guard.”
Matthew nodded. “I shall ruminate on this later. In the meantime, you should rest. Thank you, friend. It’s rare for a helping hand to go further than absolutely needed.”
Harald breathed deeply and exhaled as he handed the gauntlets to the priest. It felt like shedding a horrible weight. He’d have liked to say he’d been happy to help. If they’d had this conversation before the group had traveled deep into the ruin, it would have been true. But he couldn’t say that now and be truthful. So he simply nodded.