Qaralana stood just outside the door to Lost Echo Mine, panting from the effort of having just killed a cave bear that had blocked her path. This was where Jalamar had insisted he’d heard cries of terror and horrible noises; but right at this moment it was quiet behind the door. She heaved a sigh as her breathing returned to normal.
I suppose I could have used a Shout to help with that battle but I still don’t feel right about all of that. I don’t really know what it means, or how to control it, and I don’t want to alert half the hold that I’m here, either. Good thing I’m good with my blades.
She looked behind her at the cave door entrance and tsk’d. Stupid, stubborn Daddy. What harm would it have done to come with me just to make sure everything is alright here? He’s bigger and stronger than I am.
She sighed.
Maybe. He’s also a lot older.
And not just that, she thought as she pushed the door open to step into the mine. He’d been very out of sorts lately, very distracted, and very closed-off about the whole thing. And he’d seemed incredibly flustered by the fact that she’d been talking to Dale.
“What is it, Daddy?” she’d asked him after Dale left.
“Don’t get involved with that lad, Qara,” he had growled, looking upset.
“Why not? You’re just being over-protective, Daddy. He’s just someone I met when I was on the way to check up on Uncle Dar. He’s nice.”
“He’s…“ Brynjolf started to speak, but then shook his head. “He’s not what he appears to be. Not good for you. Trust me on this.”
So she had left him stewing in his own juices. I don’t know what’s distressing him right now but I can’t deal with it. I promised Jalamar I would check on the miners, and I intend to do just that.
It looked like any other mine, once she’d stepped through the door. A long, gradual tunnel led downward, with only small pools of light under the torches placed at intervals along the right-hand wall. She heard voices ahead, so she snuffed out the torches as she passed each one. Stealth would definitely help, at least until she figured out what was going on.
Around the corner and below her, a hand cart, barrels, and a table laden with tools confirmed that this was in fact a working mine. She was about to proceed when she heard a man walking back and forth.
“Maybe I’ll pay off my bounty,” he muttered. “Walk into town a free man.”
Bandits. Jalamar was right!
She tried what had worked for her many times before, the approach her mother and Delvin Mallory had taught her: she drew her daggers and crept up behind the man, ready to slash him. This time it did not work so well. Her first stab turned into a flat-blade contact that slipped harmlessly down the man’s armor as he whirled to face her.
“Never should have come here!” he snarled.
Ordinarily she would have responded with something clever, but she was far too busy for the next few minutes trying to survive. He was wielding a pole arm, giving him a very long reach, and he was strong. Only her speed allowed her to get under his attacks. It wasn’t until just before the very last stab reached his heart that he even seemed to register the fact that a young woman was going to defeat him.
Qara stepped back from the body, her heart pounding again. She’d been lucky to avoid anything but minor damage, but what she hadn’t avoided was a healthy dose of fear.
I thought checking out this mine was going to be nothing dangerous, and instead I’m going to be lucky to make it out alive.
She heard movements below, and peered down toward the next corner where another figure paced restlessly. She crept backward to extinguish the torch over the staging barrels and then surveyed the area to see how she might use the terrain to her advantage. Just past the table where she’d cornered the first bandit was a half-wall.
If I need to, I can retreat and hide behind this for a bit. It’s not much but it’s sure better than nothing.
She crept down the tunnel as carefully as she could, and glanced around the corner. It was a familiar setup: torches at the next corner of the tunnel, with lights revealing a room off to the side about halfway down. She could just see the edge of a bedroll in the room, and assumed that’s where the bandit she’d seen was. She’d only taken another two steps or so toward the room when the man emerged. Qara nearly panicked, stepping behind one of the upright supports for the little cover it provided. She peeked around the pole to spot the bandit, still at the base of the incline, patrolling back and forth.
Well let’s see what I’ve learned from Chip.
She pulled out her scrimshaw bow, hoping that its light color wouldn’t give away her position. When the bandit stopped moving, she loosed a carefully-aimed arrow at him. The grunt of pain and surprise told her that she’d struck the man; but it was clear that she had not even close to the same power or skill Chip had in archery when he started up the slope. She turned and crept up the corridor, bypassing the hiding spot she’d picked out in favor of retreating as far up toward the mine door as she could.
“Is someone there?”
Well of course someone is here, you dope. I just sank an arrow into you – what did you think, it came out of nowhere?
The temporary disturbance didn’t seem to have bothered anyone else in the mine; she still heard the rhythmic clacking of picks striking rock. She waited, though; it had happened often enough that she’d thought the coast was clear only to find out that it wasn’t. The bandit she’d hit might well be doing exactly what she was – waiting silently for his adversary to appear again.
He didn’t appear to be looking for her any longer, once she was close enough to spot him again. She drew another arrow and took slow and careful aim at him once more, loosing once he reached the light again. This arrow felt better leaving her hand – straighter, and a better pull – and the substantial groan and stagger from the bandit once it reached him told her that she was right. Once more she fled up the mineshaft, this time stopping at the half-wall and peering carefully out from behind it.
“I know I heard something!”
She grimaced in dismay when she saw not just her wounded bandit but another one as well drawing their weapons and heading for her. She used the deepest shadows to back up toward the doorway, and tucked herself in behind some of the supports to wait and listen. After several quiet minutes, Qara inched slowly back down the corridor to the corner, hoping for an opportunity to finish off the man she’d already shot twice.
There they were, both of them at the next intersection, scuttling around in the torchlight like skeevers searching for a morsel of food. The wounded man was moving slowly, limping – an excellent target. She decided to put him out of his misery and readied another arrow, shooting it just over the head of the second bandit and catching the first one square in the throat. He fell to the floor, but the second man turned to look directly at Qara.
She hustled back up the mineshaft once more. That fool had himself half-blinded by standing in the torchlight. There’s no way he saw me. I have at least a chance to hide.
And so she did. Every few moments she heard the man exclaim “Huh?” or “What was that?” but while she could hear his footsteps up and down the corridor he didn’t make it up to her hiding spot.
Qara chewed on the inside of her mouth, pondering. She clearly could pick off these sentry guards one by one, slowly and painfully, with her bow. She definitely needed to finish off the man she’d just shot. But sooner or later she was going to get very fatigued doing this, and she had no idea how many others were working below in the mine proper.
The bandit was still calling out to find out who was there when she aimed another arrow and watched it drop down the slope and into his shoulder. She tsk’d and retreated.
I’m just not a very good shot. Fair, but not good enough.
She heard the footsteps nearing, then retreating, then nearing again. It seemed like a lifetime before she could move, painfully slowly, back down the mine to where the torch at the far end silhouetted the bandit’s form. He stopped, muttering about the arrow in his shoulder.
Have another.
This time the man fell, dead. Qaralana blew out the breath she’d been holding.
That was good, but I can’t keep this up. I’ll run out of arrows before I get to where they’re digging!
She investigated the room with the bedroll, taking a few loose coins and grinning to herself, thinking about her stubborn father and the training she’d had from the Guild. You never leave coins behind. Never. Then she moved quietly down the mineshaft, past the bodies of the dead bandits.
As it happened, she’d been much closer to the dig point than she’d realized. The shaft opened out into a large cavern with two levels. Burning torches marked individual veins of whatever ore they were digging. A stream flowed through the place, over the edge of the upper level, filling the cave floor with water; and as a result the bandits had built wooden platforms from which they mined. Qara slipped quietly down into the pool and through the deepest shadows before her, to extinguish the light on the nearest platform. Then she turned to take stock of the place.
As she’d feared, there were at least three people digging at the other end of the cavern. And it sounded as though there might be more, the sound coming, perhaps, from the tunnel just beside the dig zone. She pondered for a moment and decided to try a trick her parents had taught her.
One of the spells in her repertoire was a fury spell. Brynjolf had described how such a thing could be used to pit enemies against each other; but it had been her mother who had shown her the spell and trained her how to use it. Maybe it would work in this situation. As she gathered up the energies in her left hand, an odd thought occurred to her. She’d never seen her father use any magic at all.
How did Daddy know about that spell? Is it because he was a…
She shuddered, thinking about what Chip had told her. The idea of her father having spent years as a vampire was just too terrifying. But it made sense; where else would a Nord with only the barest shred of healing magic have learned such a thing?
Regardless. I have to try it.
She took aim at the miner at the far left and released the spell. Her aim had been perfect; but it was immediately obvious that the spell hadn’t worked. All of the miners drew their weapons and, rather than attacking each other, started rushing around the cavern looking for whatever had cast the spell. Qara grimaced and ran for a spot in the relative darkness, behind a pair of beams.
It took a few minutes of her being totally silent before she heard a deep voice – an Orc – say “Nothing here after all.”
Great. An Orc.
So now what? Magic didn’t work. Let me think.
It was clear that she wouldn’t be able to take all of them on at once. It was also clear that if she attacked one, they would all come running. But maybe…
She took another look around the cavern. There was a fairly deep pool just on the other side of the rocks that formed the upper edge of the space. If she could draw the bandits up the ramps and toward her current location…
Qara nodded to herself and drew her bow once more. The Orc was easy to spot, even in the dim lighting of the lower cavern. She lobbed an arrow over the rock wall and into his back, then stowed her bow, crouched down into the smallest package she could make of herself, and moved toward the rocks. It was wet, and cold, but it was going to be much better than taking on three toughs at the same time.
It was, as she had expected, a bit like taking a sharp stick and thrusting it directly into a wasp’s nest. The bandits started milling about, running around the lower level of the cavern and then back up the ramp toward where she was. But they also were moving through the glare of the torches she hadn’t snuffed, and she was in the darkest corner of the opening. Their vision was hampered. Qara was able to slip over the edge of the rocks, down into the pool in the lower level, and across the open space with just enough time to douse the light in the exit tunnel before the bandits announced that there was nobody around and they must have been hearing things.
It was a short tunnel in front of her, and it led into another staging area for supplies and ore. She snuffed the torches, but a cooking fire beside the table wasn’t something she could deal with. She swept the few coins off the table there and was just about to scurry away from the light when to her horror a woman came trudging up the slope from below.
Qara was able – just barely – to slip past the woman and down the corridor, blindly, until she found a place where an attempted side shaft had collapsed. There was a pocket there, out of the line of sight in the main tunnel just enough, and Qara pressed herself against its wall for a few moments. She waited until she heard the woman’s footsteps moving away and then continued down the tunnel, dousing torches where she could.
She stopped short at the far end of the tunnel, and had to fight not to express her dismay in some audible fashion.
This was the main part of the mine: enormous, deep, on multiple levels, with well-constructed wooden platforms and ramps and thick wooden archways. And she was standing right out in the open. The only thing in her favor was the fact that she’d doused the light sources on her way in and wasn’t silhouetted by torches.
She scanned the area to get an idea of its layout. Directly to her left were a small table and chair where one of the miners could take a meal break. She could probably drop down over the guardrails there and safely reach the next-to-lowest level of the ramps, bypassing a number of bandit-miners, without hurting herself.
That was what she did, scurrying down the remaining descent to the far corners of the depths.
Daddy would be proud of me. I may not like working for the Thieves Guild but he and Delvin certainly trained me well.
The problem was that there were far too many people in front of her and just above her. No matter how good she was at sneaking, she knew better than to think she could get past all of them. So she decided to use the skill she had learned from the Shadow Stone – not far away from the entrance to the family home – and turn herself invisible. It wouldn’t last for long. She couldn’t linger. But she might be able to get to the far side of this chamber to see what might have been creating the horrible screams Jalamar had reported.
It was a simple, quiet trek across the great cavern, under the many layers of supports and around the two corners in the next corridor. Twice she had to pass very close to bandits: the first was the most terrifying, as she was afraid something as simple as her body warmth might give her away, or the man would shift direction and bump into her, in which case she was as good as dead. But neither of those things happened. She slipped past him and hugged the wall crossing in front of a man who looked like he might be the chieftain, then stepped up a short ramp, across a bridge, and down the other side.
That’s when she caught her breath in utter amazement. She – and the tunnels – had emerged into a Dwemer ruin, just as Jalamar had suggested. She stood at the top of a deep chamber, through which the curved stone walkways typical of a Dwemer structure spiraled downward to the floor several stories below.
I don’t believe it. He was right! Oh how I wish Harald could see this. He’d be beside himself.
Qara worked her way down, moving slowly because the walkways had no railings and the extreme drop on either side was dizzying. As long as one was careful, though, and kept eyes on the path before them rather than ogling the scenery, it was a simple enough task to navigate these structures. Still, she breathed a sigh of relief once she reached the floor.
The room at the bottom was well-lighted by the Dwemer torches that had always fascinated her. They weren’t wooden torches; their flames gave off a hint of blue at the top of the flames, and she’d never been able to figure out what powered them. For all she knew they were steam-powered like other Dwemer things – but then what was it burning that the steam powered? As interesting as it was to think about such things, though, it was more important to get out of earshot of the bandits. The way to do that was directly before her: a large pair of Dwemer metal doors. She pushed them open, wincing as they clanged shut behind her. Maybe she’d get lucky and they wouldn’t have drawn the bandits’ attention. Maybe.
She looked up ahead; this time she did gasp audibly. The Dwemer corridor before her was breathtaking: enormously tall, with elaborate stone carvings, arched ceilings, and accents of the coppery-colored metal along the edges of some structures. While some decorative pillars had crumbled and collapsed into piles of rubble on the floor, the hall was remarkably intact for something so very ancient. There was a large lighting fixture at the far end of this gently downward-sloping hallway, burning with the same odd blue-white light as the sconces outside the doors; and it was toward that lighting fixture that she headed. Once again she fervently wished that Harald could have been with her. He would have been fascinated by the whole experience.
The corridor turned left at the light fixture, down another short slope and into a large square room. There was a table in one corner and stone beds along the opposite wall. A chest next to the bed, a shelving unit with moldering books, and a few empty planters marked this as some ancient being’s living space. The fourth corner had largely crumbled, and what might be beneath was something she would never know.
Another set of doors led out of the room and downward into a corridor that was in much worse repair. Not much of the floor was completely free of rubble. She walked quietly along the ramp until she reached the bottom and turned right. And there, facing away from her but emitting plenty of steam, was one of the most terrifying things Qara had ever seen.
She’d heard about the Dwemer constructs, automatons that moved through some combination of soul gems and steam-generated power, but aside from the ruined spiders she’d seen along the walls of this old cavern she’d never encountered any of them. She particularly had never seen one that was “alive,” so to speak. This could only be what she’d heard referred to as a Centurion. It was huge, even crouched over as it was – at least twice her height if not more. Its blocky top and hammer-like forearms sat atop the tiniest, narrowest waist she’d ever seen, undoubtedly some kind of pivot joint flanked by wheels that served to stabilize the heavy superstructure while allowing it to turn.
Well I have to get past that thing. And I’m not getting any closer to it than I absolutely have to. Time for another arrow.
To her utter amazement, Qara’s single arrow was enough to send the Centurion toppling over on its side. It stopped steaming, and pieces of it fell off. It clearly had been in a battle before she’d come along and had only survived by a tiny margin. She moved cautiously ahead into the space where the ruined machine was, and gasped as she looked around the area.
There were bodies scattered around on the floor. Literally scattered; they’d been pulverized and in some cases lay in pieces here and there. Qara’s stomach threatened to rebel at the sight – and the smell. They hadn’t been dead all that long, and in this space deep beneath ground in the relative cool of the rock they hadn’t decayed horribly; but they had decayed. It was altogether appalling.
This is what Jalamar heard. I’ll bet the screams carried all the way to the surface.
One of the corpses had a journal beside it. She knelt and gingerly picked it up between two fingers, not wanting to get more of herself in contact with it than absolutely necessary. It had only three pages of writing, the first two of which mentioned an ancient lexicon that the deceased’s family had been looking for since his grandfather’s time. Qara frowned. She wasn’t sure what a lexicon was, exactly. The following page said that this particular Dwemer ruin was called Mzubthand, and that they’d worked out a deal with the bandits she’d passed on the way in.
The third page was disturbing. They’d found the centurion, but thought it wasn’t “alive.” One of them had even poked it.
“That’s the last and stupidest thing he ever did,” she murmured, putting the journal back atop the poor corpse. It was then that she noticed an odd cube resting on the floor, next to the column against which the man had fallen. She picked it up, and was struck by the odd sensation she had from it. There was some sort of energy in it; what it signified, exactly, she didn’t know.
“And what gate is this talking about? This, maybe?”
Just beyond the dead man were two short sets of steps with a ramp between, leading up to a set of vertical bars. Sometimes bars like these were a gate. Sometimes they were just decorative. She couldn’t see anything interesting past them except for a large, blank stone wall. At the foot of the ramp, though, was an odd pedestal, not quite shoulder-height to her, with an indentation at the top that looked as though it was meant to contain something.
She looked down at the cube in her hand.
“Maybe this?”
She placed the cube in the pedestal and jumped back. The edges and outlines of the cube suddenly started glowing blue. The cube rotated within the pedestal’s receptacle. And there was a hollow, mechanical sound followed by a hum. A chill ran up Qara’s back as she waited for something to happen. There was another loud, metallic clunk coming from somewhere out of sight. Then, to her complete horror and amazement, the stone wall behind the bars lit up, and the bars themselves began to drop into slots in the floor beneath them, one at a time, until the entire platform was open.
“I’ve got a bad feeling about this,” she whispered to herself, even as she stepped up onto the platform. First, she ran from one side to another of the previously closed-off space, just to be sure there was nothing important that she might have missed. Then she stepped toward the foreboding but irresistibly-lighted wall.
She moved closer and closer to it, looking for scratches like those on the word walls Uncle Dardeh had showed her, or old carvings like the ones in Nordic ruins. There was nothing – just a smooth, gray stone wall. She reached up to lay a hand on it.
For a moment there was nothing. It was just black. And then she found herself on another stone platform, looking at another set of bars.
What in the name of Satakal is going on here? Where am I?
She looked around in dismay. There didn’t seem to be any way back through what she’d thought was a plain stone wall, and while she could see a standard lever that might potentially lower the bars in front of her, it was well out of reach on the other side.
I’m stuck in here, aren’t I? Oh by all the old gods and the new what will everyone think? The only one who will even have a clue where I might be is Daddy and I can’t imagine he’ll be able to make that wall open up again…
Just as the panic started to rise into her chest, well and truly raising her heart rate, she heard a voice.
“Mecaius! Mecaius, are you in here?”
The voice sounded like that of a young man, but it carried overtones, an accent of sorts, that reminded her distinctly of her father’s brogue.
“What in Oblivion!” the voice cried out, and a man wielding a sword ran forward toward the bars.
“Help me, please!” she cried out.
“You there! Did ye just come through that portal?”
She snorted. “I just got here, yes. If that rock wall is what you call a portal, yes. But I’m stuck between a rock and… these,” she said, shaking the very firmly-placed metal bars.
“If you just came through that, well that would make you the Traveler, wouldn’t it?”
“What? The Traveler? What in blazes does that mean?”
“’They who arrive thru the shimmering gate mark the start of the worst,’” the man said. “It’s a… just a story, of course.”
With every word he spoke the more Qara thought of her father and his distinctive tones. Then she shook her head and tried to curb the urge to stomp on the floor.
“Story or not, I’m stuck back here. Can you get me out? And who are you, by the way?”
“I’m going to assume that you’re from Skyrim and that you somehow managed to get the portal working. I’m Olvir. I guard this part of the hold. My job would dictate that I arrest you right here and now. However…I’m in the middle of something important right now.”
“What do you mean, ‘assume I’m from Skyrim’? Of course I’m from Skyrim. Riften, to be exact. Where else would I be from?”
Olvir simply shook his head. “If you give me a hand with the important task, after that you’re free to go.”
“Oh come on,” Qara whined. “Do I look dangerous?” I guess I shouldn’t tell him about being Dragonborn and all because yes, given that I suppose I’m definitely dangerous. She tsk’d, and heaved a sigh. “Ok, what’s the important thing?”
“I’m searching for a Nord named Mecaius. He’s the blacksmithing apprentice in Amber Creek. I assume that since he isn’t in here, he’s in the nearby cave. Unfortunately, I can also assume that the cave is full of bandits,” he added with a sarcastic tone.
“Yeah. That usually seems to be the case. So you’ll let me out?”
“I’ll still have to report your arrival to my superiors, but if you’re willing to assist me I’ll say you were cooperative and helpful.” Then he grinned. “Oh, also. The switch to lower these bars is out here. And it looks like your… portal, thing, has shut off. Meaning I’m the only one who can let you out.”
Qara felt the steam beginning to build between her ears and took a deep breath. It wouldn’t do to explode like that Centurion on the other side of the wall. It had come to a bad end, and she didn’t want to follow suit.
Apparently her anger and frustration were showing, because Olvir tsk’d and smirked. “Hey. You’re the one who went jumping through random ancient portals. It’s your own fault.”
Qara wanted to reach out through the bars and punch him. He was really cute, she thought, but he was entirely insufferable. It reminded her of how many times she’d heard her mother say she wanted to break Brynjolf’s nose. Instead, she heaved another deep sigh.
“Look. First of all, it’s not my portal thing. I literally just happened upon it and the people who were trying to open it. Who are all dead now, by the way. Second, I didn’t jump through it. I touched the very solid stone wall and the next thing I knew I was here. Third,” she said, looking around with growing dismay, “I will die if you don’t let me out. There’s nothing to eat except what’s in my pack and I don’t see any water. And finally, the thing that opened the gate from the other side is still on the other side. So be a sport and lower the bars, would you? I’ll help you with your bandit problem. I just got through some to get here in the first place and now I’m wondering why I bothered; but if it’ll get me home, sure. I’ll happily help.”
Olvir grinned. “I’ll get the lever.”
The same mechanical sounds she’d heard on the other side repeated themselves, and the bars slowly dropped into their slots. She felt relief growing with every one that hit the floor. She had no idea where she was, but at least she wasn’t trapped any longer.
“Well, let’s get moving,” Olvir said. “We don’t want to waste any more time.”
He started trotting toward another set of large Dwemer doors. Qaralana shook herself, looked around, and started after him.