Cycle of the Serpent

A foul air pitched low through the corridors, thick and abrasive in the winding depths of the temple. Moss overpowered the stones, shrouded in a darkness so deep it was like stepping into pools of night. The stench of decay wafted through the Altmer's senses, earlier nausea returned in bubbling waves.

Athenath crumpled the end of their sleeve into their palm and pressed it hard over their nose, forcing himself not to gag at the odor. Meaty and slithering, sweet like overripe fruit trampled under the foot of a count's horses. He inched forward, flinching as the noises of battle shredded thinly in the air above him, dust kicked from the ceiling. The clamor of weaponry and magic overhead sung back to him choruses of the early years they spent in Bravil, huddled in the cellar of a friends home, the riots in the streets raging like wildfire, the statue of the Lucky Old Lady suffering the most damage. His friends mother wound fingers through their hair and rested another hand atop the head of her youngest son - only youngest in matters of minutes - cooing to the five children that this would be over. Morning would come.

He swallowed hard, a solid, sticky lump formed in his throat as the edges of their eyes watered. They drew in a long breath and swallowed again, forcing his trepidation to lie under a brave farce, stifle the tremor of their lip. What could they want with comfort in this place? Using their sword to break apart spiderwebs that threaded through the temple's corners and crevices, they kept moving, the hair on the back of their neck prickling. Their head still carried a dull pound from the brightness of the temple's patron, bumps raised on their arms as he followed the untrustworthy guidance of braziers. This was the decision they'd made and now they had to stick to it, even if it clung to him with webbed hands and slick, bony fingers.

Fear staggered in shallow breaths as they examined the edges of the narrow passageway. Segments of the discussion between Emeros and the Vigilants crossed through their mind like wraiths, the little laughs as the alchemists' distraction snapped into place, the shock on the faces of the strangers when the Altmer darted from the brush and gave the beacon into its rightful place. The Vigilants violently fought against this, and Athenath could only push blame onto them so far for the reaction. Though, it's not like he had a choice. The Vigilants hadn't seen what they'd seen, heard what he'd heard. They hadn't nearly been burnt by a stone whose warmth wrapped around their heart. They hadn't heard the voice in Fort Hraggstad or known the sky to tumble inside out. Athenath had.

This did little to stop his hand from clutching the amulet of Mara beneath his clothes.

Peering through the bars of a strange gate, Athenath squinted in the dark, their vision barely able to make out the flickering candles and the chest at the other end. If Emeros and Wyndrelis were here with them, they'd be scrambling to find a way inside and dig around for a few spare coins. He was almost glad that they were above, then. It meant there was no one to reprimand him for the ideas of prying open an offering chest in a ruined temple. Surely, the Daedric Prince that this place belonged to wouldn't miss a few lonesome coins, would she?

Shame filled his face with red, shot through their chest with a bolt like lightning as they thought of the battle above them. They were up there, fighting off the Vigilants so that Athenath had a chance to do the will of Meridia and get this the fuck over with. Who knew how the battle above was going? Who could say if his friends were dead or alive?

Athenath choked the idea down like bitter medicine. There was nothing saying that his friends weren't alive and waiting for them. They had to have hope. They inhaled through shaky lips, exhaled, and leaned against a wall covered with creeping vines from decades of abandonment and disrepair. They would keep moving. If not for his own sake, for the sake of the pair ensuring that the Vigilants didn't plunge in here and kill them for doing the will of a Daedric Prince. This would be merely an extension of Mara's will, that Athenath show compassion to a place gone to decay, to relieve it of whatever evil hung over its head like a dark star.

If the gods had a problem with that, then they could shove it.

The halls gnawed dull teeth into the ridges of their mind. The open chambers swallowed them whole, thoughts ground into powder, tongue lashing at subconscious formations. The darkness corraled them into the corners where the shadows lie deepest, drawing their blade. Dread plummeted through their stomach, sweat cold along their brow. Movement above had long faded from their ears, and now they could only hear the movement of their body and the patter of their pulse. And, that of the things which made themselves all too at home in the ruin.

How did they wind up here? Bruma came to mind, the night before Helgen, before it all went wrong. The light-hearted chatter, the drinks that seemed to warm through the wretched chill of the Jeralls, just a stone's throw from Pale Pass, where the war had ravaged the mountains clean like carrion birds plucking meat from the bone. Athenath had been playing their tambourine to a small group of travelers, laughing with them, cheeks red with the heat of the hearth. A couple of Imperial soldiers caught up with one another at one table, and at another, a family sat, words light, conversation with friends they hadn't seen in a while.

It was hard to believe, in times like those, that the Great War had ever affected County Bruma. Or anywhere, for that matter.

They had been born a fistful of years after the Great War. Its shadow stretched long enough for them to graze it, fingers reached to brush the phantom which haunted roads still deemed unsafe for carriages due to the marauders, small towns they spent solitary nights in, paths where the cobblestones tugged out of the ground and no one had bothered to fix it. The holes in some castles from cannons, the ongoing efforts to rebuild some settlements, the air thick with construction of new farms seeded with hope for a better life.

Here, far from Bruma, the stench of hellish work dug into their senses like a dull knife. It reminded them of those stories. Scars of combat on the bodies of so many of the townsfolk in Anvil, missing limbs, missing eyes, backs which never recovered from being ran through, hearts which palpitated in rhythms of wrongness from Dominion battlemages. The hollow-eyed faces they'd passed throughout his entire life.

The Mer slipped through the damp, dark passages, under the burning chandelier to the high-whine of the beam Meridia sent down, a light seated in a worn pedastal. Would Wyndrelis, if he were here, have anything to say about it, how strange the light was, how it seemed to fight back the low-hanging mist of rot around him? He half-wondered if the mage had ever encountered something like this. Or Emeros, for that matter, with his scattered mentions of years spent traveling, and the scant stories he told on long nights of the places he'd been.

Reaching out a careful hand, they brushed the pads of their fingers along the top of the light, a smooth gem beneath their touch. It, too, was warm as the beacon had been. If it were a garnet or an opal, they'd be snatching a full fist over it and locating the nearest fence who would give them a fair bit of gold for the item, but the thought snapped on the stone of the dais above ground. This would damn all their efforts to see what this temple had in store. Instead, they rested their hand atop it with care. The chamber trembled beneath their feet, the Altmer stumbling as the gem rose and filtered light through its surface, the colors congealed into white with the faint gleams of rainbow scattering along the concentration. The beam glared against high, strange carvings above a door. Every movement of their feet sent their heart skittering at his chest. He was the only one alive down here, just he and the necromancer which worked in the temple's depths. No voices around him. No comments from his friends, no familiar presences.

If anything happened to him, the idle thought trickled in, there was no guarantee anyone would come running to find their body.

They barely had time to despair over the idea. The chamber the beam had opened gave full view of two shades in tattered funeral shrouds, the sickly stench of rot hanging off of them like cuts of meat, revulsion lacerating the patter-rushes of their heart, dust which made their nose itch filtering through the room. He grimaced and tugged their sword from the sheath, movements staccato as adrenaline kicked its heels against him.

The first one rushed them. Athenath's blade wasn't drawn in time and only one thought saved them a nasty blow to the chest with an axe, to dodge out of the way, spinning on their heel and using the moment to ready his blade. He backed off, then lanced it through the figure once, dashed backwards, twice, and as the figure soon gave a wail of defeat and disintegrated, the next one shredded the distance with its own axe raised. Athenath sprinted out of the way of the attack, every instinct in their body demanding him to run. There was no choice but to fight, even if their wrists wobbled with the weight of the blade and their own trepidation. They slashed and pierced the figure, frost enchantments at least slowing it down. The shade soon joined the ashes on the ground, but the fight was far from over. In the distance, another. If Athenath were only an archer, this would be easier, some way of taking down the distant abominations without arousing attention, but here they were.

There was nothing he could do now. Meridia's energy swept against their mind not unlike a hand dusting off the crumbs of a table, scooping dread into a palm and tossing it away. Meridia's words washed ashore in the back of their head. A reminder that there was no other option. That they were not to fail her, that they were not to fail.

Using momentum as their driving force, they swung the sword through the chest of the next shade, twisting their torso in a fast motion. The creature crumpled to the ground in a heap of cloth and putrid rot, while he recovered from the dizziness. The Altmer decided not to approach them, let them come to him instead, enough time in the distances to see what they were preparing to do. When two shades rushed them at once, his eyes widened and he turned to the passageway he'd emerged from, sprinting up its narrow neck until they could turn and take only one on at a time. The first shade groaned and shrieked, terror pounding through the Mer's veins as the world around them dimmed, the other shades sweeping in to back up their compatriot. He pulled his blade from the gut of the creature and swung it again, this time landing at the chest, this time, twisting with a stubborn grunt, watching as the shade fell to pieces.

The chamber, silent ahead of them, beckoned them to return. The hammering of their heart in their chest and rush of blood in their ears deafened the world around them. They scanned the room for any threats, hands shaky and hard to control.

A blow to their shoulder shoved them to their knees. At first, it was a blunt strike of a heavy shield, knocking the wind out of them. Athenath yowled like an animal, armor doing little to protect them from the sheer force, their body burning with the sharpness of it, something in their muscles pushed in a wrong direction. With all their willpower, he clung to his blade as their shoulder blade bellowed with the ache. He allowed the floor to do some of the work for them, stone providing a base to prop themself up, to dive the blade into the lower abdomen of the shade above them, close enough they could smell its foul, sulfurous breath, its own blade raised to swing down.

The moment it fell, and its own weapon clattered noisily to the ground, it was over. They rolled onto their stomach for a moment to avoid putting pressure on the soon-to-be enormous bruise, catching their breath in ragged draws. The floor looked as though it could be right against their eyes, every crack in the stone clear in their vision. The rest of the room seemed a distant memory, and the pain wafted through their body in waves. Gods knew something had been knocked out of place, and he wasn't keen to dwell on it if they could help it.

A blade went for a weak spot in the leather, and pushed through to the muscle beneath his skin, only stopped from diving further by the rest of the armor's sturdiness. A shade he'd not seen, one who had been clever enough to hide, finally made itself known. Its sword pulled out of the wound which rushed with blood, and rose above their head to strike down again. Athenath's right fist tightened against the hilt of their own blade. He rolled over again onto their back with tears stinging their face at the searing weakness of their other arm as the shade's own sword came down to lance the earth, and the Mer saw his chance, striking upward like a snake.

It struck through, and as this shade disintegrated to ash around them, he laid back on the floor, whimpers and stifled sobs bubbling up through their throat. The breaths left hitched and heavy. Uncomfortable sounds, lucky that the weak spot had been surrounded by stronger support. He wondered if this had been the spot one of Emeros' arrows had struck, and the hole had not been repaired.

They could barely reach it with their fingers, but the heat of blood told them everything they needed to know. Their left arm refused to raise, fingers on that hand tingling as if the limb had fallen asleep. Through choked noises and the biting of their own lip, vision pulsating, he blinked hard to clear the blur and gingerly rolled the straps of their knapsack down their arms, pulling it open with shaky hands, face pale, palms clammy, his teeth grit so tight they feared breaking them. The stinging rammed so deep into their flesh that he worried, without Wyndrelis' help, they'd lose the ability to wield a weapon in that hand entirely.

He dove with their good hand for the healing potions, lip of their bag tossed open carelessly as they bit the cork off a bottle swirling with scarlet liquid, and chugged it down without a second thought. They found a spot on the wall they could lean against and let the potion do the work, sniffling and wiping their nose on their arm. The process of a wound coming back together hurt like hell on its own. Muscles were nudged to do the work of repairing themselves, and the nerves did not numb for the task. They bit down on their sleeve, forcing slow, even breaths as it worked and squeezing their eyes tight, the concoction sliding through their veins, knitting every fragile ounce of flesh together. The injury would not scar, he'd gotten something down quick enough to keep that from happening, but it would leave a terrible pain in its wake which would not fully resolve for a handful of days. And if the damage had gone further, who knew whether or not a healing potion on its own could fix it.

The process could have taken minutes, or hours, or days, for all they knew or cared. They sniffed hard and wiped their face on their left sleeve, frail movement returned to the limb, and flexed the muscles within. Strength came like the kind one earned in the morning, weak fist turned to nails able to dig into the palm. They stared for a while at the back of their left hand, as if it were made of wax, and its attachment to them made about as much sense as a guar in Alinor. They turned it over and over, even rubbing it with their right hand, blood caked to the ends of their fingers, trying to make sense of the sensations.

Stumbling to their feet, they tugged their knapsack on, clasped their amulet for a silent moment, and went further into the temple.

How far did this damned place go?

How deep underground had they gone already? Into the mountainside, the ruin dug like a burrowing insect. Did it go deeper, under the foot of the world? The heights of the sky were lost to him down here, and every chamber they fought their way through proved how alone they had become in this place. The foul stench permeated his clothes. The elf was certain it was going to cling to them for days after. It drained their senses and their courage, and in some flickering way, he would swear up and down that it was stealing his hope. The malodorous fog leeched off their resolve for some purpose Athenath could not and would not even try to define, all he knew was that every step took them closer and closer to what could be their grave if they made even so much as one mistake, and there was no one here to back them up.

Mara had always been his faithful goddess. Here, they wondered if her compassion was guiding them through the depths. Were they clearing this temple because Meridia commanded it and he was too chickenshit to fight back, or because the compassion of his Aedra made them want to do it? Maybe her guidance echoed in their veins like the hum of something greater. A purpose to put down the defiler of a temple, to bring the place back to its rightful owner, to show compassion to the desecrated dead by setting their souls back to Aetherial sleep.

The further Athenath went, the more they clung to this idea. Sometimes they clutched the amulet hanging out of the collar of his shirt when they had a second to catch his breath, leaned against a wall and rubbing his thumb over the worn gem in the center. Maybe Mara had brought them to Skyrim for a reason. A land ravaged by war could benefit from the guidance and peace that the goddess brought. A bard who could learn from this land, and dedicate the songs to the mother whose chapel had become their comfort.

Pain soared through their body from accumulating injuries, and reason dimmed when he drank the last of his healing potions, but they pushed onward into the temple. Meridia had asked it of them. Mara was commanding them. Like a mother who shoved them on to better things, who believed in them when their mother had not. The lady Athenath looked to when the world crumbled, when the sky blackened with the serpentine shadow and the land torched itself into ash. The lady who forgave him, gave them a new life, unwasted here.

This was an extension of Mara's compassion. It had to be.

The final depths unfurled before them like an ink-drenched scroll in the desk of a clumsy scribe. In the center of the chamber stood Malkoran, and all of Meridia's wrath with him.

A dozen shades surrounded the robed figure, a choir of shrouded death that he rose with his own hands from slumber. Where there should be light piercing the chamber, where cracks and holes in the ceiling gave way to blue skies, it was as though Meridia herself had placed a hand over the sun. If the stench at the entrance was something to cover one's nose at, here, it was positively overpowering. The malicious, cloying death that crammed itself into the Altmer's mind like rags into corners to stop water flooding in.

Athenath swallowed hard. He had to resist the innate urge to gag loudly and cough and splutter. His stomach lifted to their sternum in the putrid air, the dry blood under their armor itching against his skin, dirt and dust of an untold number of abandoned years spat in their face. Every step had to be measured. Hard, when his fingers were refusing to clench tight on his blade, when their toes threatened to slip out beneath them from the adrenaline. Everything in their body went stiff as the sight and stench overpowered their reason. As if some part of them were ready to accept this fate, and fall down before Malkoran. Briefly, they thought of the thief who'd stolen the cowl of Nocturnal, the tale from the Imperial City's waterfront district clawing at their throat. He wished in this moment that he'd been this thief. If they were, they would run no risk of being spotted.

Malkoran stood at an altar, back to them, and while they wanted to look away, they couldn't. He dragged a hand over the putrifying, bloated corpse of a soldier in Stormcloak armor, his methods centered on the fresh bodies he could scavenge. He worked feverishly, as though in a trance, his hands weaving the magicka through the carcass spread out before him. Horror knotted into Athenath's already aching chest, stubbing out what little confidence they had left.

Yet, they still had to get closer.

They gulped down air quietly, and kept moving against the tremble of their feet. They shifted through the dark. They had to get closer to Malkoran, take him by surprise. Maybe if they did this, then they would avoid becoming one of the shades at his disposal. The fear gnarled through their veins, tree-like in the twisting. Cold sweat made them flinch as it drained down the back of their neck. Their eyes stung at the display before them, moving his feet carefully. He dragged his sword from the sheath in as slow and quiet a motion as they could, clasping the hilt between trembling fingers as they made their sharp and jagged way to Malkoran.

They would have done well, but the potent concoction in their brain stole their ability to keep their fingers tight, and the sword clattered to the ground the moment it was fully out of the sheath. They threw himself to the ground, to avoid being seen, but it was too late as every red pinprick eye was on them.

All they could think about as Malkoran shifted to face them slowly, as if he'd known all along that they were there, was that he wanted to be home. Home was a far-off land. He was going to die here. That was the only thought in their mind as the shades' eyes all met their own.

Was anyone out there at all? Would anyone take their body or would they wind up a thrall here?

Were their friends dead or alive?

"Meridia has sent yet another pawn to do her bidding," Malkoran sneered as he clicked his tongue, a smirk on his lips. The Breton watched as the elf staggered to their feet, but the more he struggled to stand, the more the mist clung to them, like it were tying him down to the ground. "You won't make it out of here alive, so there's no use in trying. But, worry not, your body will go on to serve the most powerful wizard in Skyrim." The shades inched ever closer like attack dogs, awaiting Malkoran's signal. Dark, wide brown eyes met the Breton's gaze, their palms pressed against the floor, and damn it all, their left shoulder was still giving them fits. "Do you think you're the first to make it this far?"

Athenath's gaze darted to the Stormcloak's body, then to other fresh specimens away from the altar, stacked up together for use later, mouth gaping as he spotted an amulet on one's neck, in the shape of a sun, cold sweat drenching his back. Malkoran tutted, shaking his head. He said nothing else, but the message was clear - that Athenath's chance of survival had gone down significantly.

The wizard raised his hand, magicka shifting in shape, the shades closing in with an eagerness to serve their master and bring another to their ranks. He said something about worms, or a king, but Athenath couldn't hear through the pounding of blood in their ears or the way his breath was as loud as a horn blown right next to them, then the hands they shoved over their ears, not wanting to know what the sound of their own death would be.

A strike of magicka flung out through the air. Athenath yelped and clutched their head tighter, curled up, forehead against the stone. Malkoran cursed wildly, the shades ignoring the Altmer as the necromancer howled commands. They lay there, in a ball, unwilling or perhaps unable to look up from the ground as the sounds of muffled voices carried on, something familiar in the way that they thundered against their senses. Their closed eyes gave only images in swirling black of home, back in Bravil, the chapel they'd spent so much time in. He wanted to sit before Mara's altar. To feel her presence like a mother. He wanted a mother, he wanted his mom, he was about to die and for some fucking reason all he wanted was his mom, a woman they hadn't seen in years, her hand patting his hair and their fists clinging to her skirts like they did when they were small. Instead, their body remained curled up against the cold ground of a ruined temple in the middle of fucking nowhere.

When Athenath's curiosity got the better of him, he popped open an eye, a hand thrust towards them.

"Come on, you're no good on the floor like that."

Emeros' voice bolted through their chest, knocking sense back into their muddled head. Athenath stared up at the Bosmer as he readied his own weapon. "Emero-"

"Not now, we need to move," he instructed in a rush. The moment Athenath snagged his hand, their eyes found Wyndrelis, whose magicka formed wards around himself with one hand, the other throwing ice spikes at the shades, slamming into the chests of the wraithish creatures. Emeros pulled them from the ground, and the Altmer grabbed their blade. He managed a quick prayer to Mara before dashing to the fight. He looked to Wyndrelis as the mage countered Malkoran's spells, and behind him, Athenath could make out the figures of two dead thralls dressed in Vigilant robes, swiping and bashing shades with their own weapons.

Going through this temple alone had been a nightmare he could not wake up from, the rotten mist curdling rancid despair into his stomach. They'd prepared, in that moment, to die.

At least now, if they died, it wasn't alone.

Emeros gashed through a shade, Athenath's blade making contact with another. Wyndrelis fired a gout of lightning at Malkoran, the other wizard's ice spikes narrowly missing the mage as he ducked. One by one the wizard's puppets turned into heaps of dark cloth, then ash forming on the stone floors, kicked up by the fury of the ongoing battles. The Dunmer pushed forward, warding as well as he could for each spike in rapid motions, hauling lightning through his palms and breaking it on the Breton's form. As the shades collapsed and the dead thralls groaned, the other two joined the fight against Malkoran directly.

The wizard's desperation grew. His face fell pale as his attacks became frantic and haggard, sweat collecting above his lip and in his hair. Blood loss would settle the score. For now, he was still able to slam spell after spell from his dwindling reserves and grasp the staff he held in one hand. Athenath thrust their blade forward and crumpled as the wizard dodged, Emeros trying with his own blade, parried with the staff's wooden body. Wyndrelis flung another bout of frost at him, but this only served to slow him down. Wyndrelis cursed loudly, his voice taut as his desperation illuminated in crinkling waves of heat from his palms, a thin layer between the magicka and his hand.

The price Malkoran had to pay for occupying this temple was a fireball square to the chest.

The wizard's body gave out. The stench of burnt flesh and hair scored the air. His corpse, still on fire and clawing with wild animalistic sounds, became nothing but an ashen heap on the floor. The putrid odor overwhelmed the Altmer, who gagged and bent with hands on his weary knees. He swallowed and tried to steady the nausea, Emeros stepping back. Wyndrelis watched the pile, unwilling to take his eyes off of it. Athenath's own gaze followed. As the moments ticked by, a shadow, first a fragmentary thing, created itself above the remains.

"Gods damn you," the mage cursed under his breath. The sweat clinging to his brow, the pallor of his face the harbinger of his limits. Wyndrelis grasped his mace, the newly-made thralls coming to his side. Emeros stared up at the shade in bewilderment, Athenath shakily leaning against the wall to catch their breath, hilt of his sword still clasped in one shaking hand.

Malkoran wasn't going down so easily.

The trio lunged. Like cats upon a wild beast. It was no use, even as blades stuck through and maces made contact, all this did was embolden the shade to laughter as he swung a large arm to bat them off. Malkoran picked up his staff, and wielded it as a mace, swinging rapidly in every direction. Wyndrelis held up a ward, but it was no use as the end of the staff collided with his armor, Emeros' focus rushing to the Dunmer.

Adrenaline was wearing off fast. Athenath could feel his own resolve begin to fracture as the shade carried out its onslaught, firing bouts of flame from the staff. He only had enough energy to dodge them, to get out of the way, but this couldn't last long. Emeros looked to them, focus darting from one to the other, the shade coming next for him. He fought it off, his sword making purchase in where the jugular vein would be, but to no avail, the shade's fury ripping through the air. Malkoran had been a powerful wizard, and he was even more dangerous dead.

Emeros hacked again at what was once Malkoran, whose amusement grew from the shrill laughter, as though he were toying with the elves. Athenath clutched their stomach and made straggling attempts to stand, using his sword for support. Wyndrelis lay on the ground, breath shallow. He funneled the weakest flickers of restoration magic into himself. He wouldn't be able to fix all the damage that the shade had done, and Athenath could see from here that things were more dire than they looked. Emeros' eyes flicked from Athenath, to Wyndrelis, back and forth between the pair as Malkoran closed in on him.

He made eye contact with the Altmer, turned on his heel, and ran.