Chapter Sixty Eight

“You cannot escape Miraak’s sight!” Gaeolin leapt back, the sword of the cultist only missing his throat by a hair’s width. Frea struck from behind him with her axe. As he fell forward, Gaeolin finished him with an expert slice across the chest. The body collapsed to the bloody floor as the pair caught their breath.

“They seem convinced that I want to avoid him at this point.” Gaeolin smirked. “The master seems unwilling to face me himself.”

“How much deeper can this go?” Frea sighed. She looked down the next set of steps, seeing another tunnel slope down after them. “I heard Miraak was powerful… But to have built so large a temple…” She collected herself, shaking the intimidation off. “It cannot be much farther. I can feel it. Come on.”

The temple crowded around them, the passage growing narrow the farther they walked. Gaeolin knew that here they would stop seeing living guardians. The air was too stale. He kept his back against the stonework, his ears listening for any and all sound. Frea was surprisingly silent in her steel armor, occasionally falling so quiet that he couldn’t hear her. After a few minutes, the silence was too much for the Bosmer.

“So, tell me about the All-Maker, Frea.”

She flinched at the whisper, scowling at him. “Now of all times, you decide to have a spiritual discussion?”

“Anything to fend off the dread I’m feeling.” He smiled an apology. “I’m curious. You mention her, and she brings you peace. I could use some of that at the moment.”

She nodded. “I suppose, for an outsider like yourself it might be hard to understand. She is the land, the sky, the animals we hunt. She is everything.” She tilted her head a bit as she thought. “But she is also not these things herself. Think of them more as what she has left behind. Memorials to her creation. My father, Storn would be a better person to tell you about her.”

“Your father is a shaman?”

“And our leader.” She peeked ahead of them, her axe twitching. “To the Skaal, our laws are the teachings of the All-Maker. We strive for balance between her creation and our needs.” She considered him for a moment. “Surely, our cultures are not so different, Gaeolin. You are from the southern shore of Valenwood, are you not?”

He raised an eyebrow. “How did you know?”

“Your tattoo is a good clue. Very heavy Khajiiti influence. Also, the dialect you use. Your kind are not so rare here that we do not learn of you. But still, it was mostly a guess.”

Gaeolin thought about her question. “Well, we hold Kynareth dear. We honor the woods, but I think to call us a people of balance might be a bit too kind.”

Their conversation was cut off by their arrival at a dead end. It was a room, lit bright by enchanted fires. No heat came from them, but their light revealed something neither of them would have suspected. Suspended from the ceiling was a complete dragon skeleton. It’s bones had runes carved in them, perhaps a long dormant spell. 

“I had heard that Miraak had turned against the Dragon Cult,” Frea inspected the bones, “but to display the remains in a manner like this… It is no wonder the dragons razed this temple to the ground.” 

Gaeolin hardly spared her a thought. He could hear them. Whispers wove from the monument to their left. A word wall, Dovahzul runes carved with the sting of ancient power. He held his torch ahead, letting it wash over the words. 

‘Pah weird morokei Miraak, zok suleykaar do pah Sonaak, wen mul bolaav naal faaluaan do jul.’

All praise glorious Miraak, most powerful servant of all Dragon Priests, whose strength was granted by the Gardener of Mankind.

“Gardener of Mankind?” Frea looked at him, possibly ready to ask him what he meant by the question. Their curiosity was broken however, by the eruption of the sarcophagi around them.

The draugr here all held weapons of polished ebony, their edges sharp despite age. They were surrounded, the throaty breaths echoing off of the high ceiling. Gaeolin lashed out with his sword, bringing the nearest to the ground.

Frea let out a mighty cry, leaping over the first that fell to her axe. She was a terror to behold. She cut one across the chest, taking the feet out from another, only to turn and remove the head of a third all in one stroke. Gaeolin parried several strikes. These elite guardians gave no room for error. He took a chance, jabbing low at the nearest. The creature growled as the blade hit its mark. It was now two against two. Just as they began to turn their attention to these, the last coffin burst open. A hulking draugr emerged, helm adorned with large horns. It snarled in harmony with the sound of its sword leaving the scabbard. 

“Fus!” Gaeolin rushed, his blade poised as the distance closed. The zombie made to behead him with a mighty swing. The elf threw back his weight, sliding beneath the arc of the weapon. He readied a spell in his free hand as he stood. Frea distracted the beast as he brought his arms together for the final strike. 

Golden light burst along the steel. It lit the undead like a pyre, the smell of burning cloth and preservatives filling the room with a tanging odor that seeped into their nostrils. Frea did not hesitate to bury her axe into the last of the monsters, the light leaving it’s eyes in final death.

“You fight incredibly.” Gaeolin sheathed his blade. The Skaal woman tossed her hair out of her face.

“You as well. Though I suspect you have more experience than I.” She looked about the room, making her way to a chest that stood near the deathlord’s sarcophagus. “I have never seen such a terrible example as this. What was his purpose?”

Gaeolin looked at his coffin, then down to the draugr’s neck. An ornate key hung on a cord around its neck. “He was guarding the way forward. Are you ready to continue?”

“Yes. Lead the way.”

  On and on the ruins seemed to stretch. Through catacombs and halls, each stranger in design than the last. Statues and carving that terrorized the mind jutted out from the walls, some serving as braziers to light the way. Gaeolin had his bow ready, feeling more and more dread the longer this took.

They reached a large sloped hallway. Smoke filled the vaulted ceiling, they stairs themselves covered in moss and the dripping of putrid water. There were two draugr wights, and a number of skeletons that protected the way ahead. Gaeolin signalled his companion, pointing to the far side of the corridor. Frea nodded before taking her place. He looked to their destination, his voice resonating softly as he whispered, “Zul mey gut!”

His voice burst forth from the landing behind the guards, his thu’um making the words to distract them. “Hey, skeever butt!” The undead shambled around, looking in vain for the source. Meanwhile, the pair struck.

Frea bashed two skeletons into a pile of bones. Her cry echoed off the stones, confusing the other dead nearby. Gaeolin walked up the steps, his bow singing as he fired true. The skeletons were destroyed before they could even reach them. The draugr were harder to deal with. One challenged Frea, striking out with it’s mace with a growl. She dodged the attack, sparks flashing as the stone cracked beneath the force. Gaeolin would have helped her, had he not been knocked off his feet by the other.

“Fus ro dah!” This Draugr was old. Very old… The strength of its voice was surprising, and terrifying. Gaeolin jumped to his feet, drawing his sword to block its axe swing. “Fah los het, fahliil?”

He bashed into the beast. His blade missed by only an inch, the zombie unnaturally sprigh for its state. “Su!” His shout rang like steel. The air around him rolled, coiling to wrap around his sword arm. He twirled, speed enhanced by the magic. The draugr backed, trying to block the onslaught. “I’m here to find your master!”

The creature froze. Above its head rose the steel of Frea’s axe, stuck into the skull in a powerful cleave. The blue eyes faded as it fell forward into the slime of the floor. Gaeolin surveyed the corpses, letting out his breath. “Thank you.”

“You should save the talking for people who don’t want you dead.” She hung her weapon at her side. They found the top of the steps decorated by a horrendous statue. It was a strange mixture of a squid, a crab, and parts that Gaeolin had seen on no other creature in his life. Frea backed away from it. “I think I will allow you the honor of pulling that chain. I don’t want to put my hand near this.”

Gaeolin thought to himself that her hesitation seemed reasonable. Why was he even here? He could not deny that there was more at work here than a simple cult. There had to be something more, something evil at work. Was it really worth all of this danger? His face hardened in determination. ‘Yes.’

The chain pulled easily, a section of the wall behind the monument grinding out of place. There was light flickering in the tunnel behind it, calling the adventurers in. Weapons ready, the pair moved in.

Frea went first, ducking into the chamber in silence. The room was circular, the floor made up of metal grating. The iron woven into what seemed like a mass of cold vine, or maybe tentacles. They followed up the walls and across the ceiling, all beginning and ending at the center. In the middle of the room stood another of the strange sculptures, flames licking in its fish-like maw. Just below it, on a pedestal of leathery skin lay a book.

As he stepped closer, the air seemed to strangle him. The flames weakened darkness threatening to overwhelm the annex. “This book…” Frea’s voice was meek, fearful. “It seems wrong somehow. Here, yet not… It may be what we seek.”

Gaeolin looked back at the tome. The cover was pitch black. The more he looked, the more he seemed convinced that it was absorbing the light around it, sucking it into the case. He inched closer, his whole being wishing he could run from whatever this thing was. He let his hand rest on the cover.

A wave of cold fell over him. He lifted it, his heart fluttering in fear. He opened to the first page.

‘The eyes, once bleached by falling stars of utmost revelation, will forever see the faint insight drawn by the overwhelming question, as only the True Enquiry shapes the edge of thought. 

The rest is vulgar fiction, attempts to impose order on the consensus mantlings of an uncaring godhead. First,’

Frea screamed. As he had been reading, a tendril of slimy flesh had emerged from the spine, wrapping itself around his arms and chest. It made for his head. Gaeolin struggled. He had to escape.But it was in vain. The room faded, the world he knew going black.