Cycle of the Serpent

A trail of slaughtered cobwebs lead the way through the temple. As much as Emeros thought his complaints, he dared not clench them between his teeth nor utter them in the damp of these once-great ruins. Instead, he tracked his way through the corridors and focused his attentions wholly on ensuring the pair were not ambushed. Wyndrelis kept several feet behind the other as he followed, thralls in mechanical march with the steps of their master. The Bosmer flicked glances to the braziers, the illumination casting wild shadows against the walls as the roots of the mountain tangled with stone.

And the stench, gods, the stench.

It had been a narrow victory on the dais. Wyndrelis had managed to knock out one of the Vigilants with the butt end of his mace, the unconscious Vigilant's knees buckling as they toppled over themself. Emeros caught the other Vigilant and ran them through with his poisoned blade, his movements swift as to not prolong the situation. He peered down at them for signs of life, their eyes rolling back and glassy. He'd made sure to strike where it would be a quick kill, but he still found himself kneeling down with his hunting knife in hand to slit vital arteries in their throat. It mattered not that they had struck first, he was not going to allow a wounded creature to suffer.

He looked up in time to see Wyndrelis smack the spiked end of his mace into the back of the other Vigilant's head with a sickening crack, blood splattering from the wound and drinking the metal of his mace.

"Good Daedric lords, man!" Emeros exclaimed as he rose from the dais, wiping his knees. "They were unconscious! You could have-"

"She would have come into the temple after us," Wyndrelis said through a bewildered quirk of his brow and a tight-toothed ghost of a sneer. He looked to the body at Emeros' feet, then to the one at his own. He seemed to be weighing options, but by what metric, Emeros could not know nor attempt to understand. The mage moved his palm above the bludgeoned body before him, and summoned violet curls of light to swim over the still-warm remains. The light circled thickly as the figure lifted from their place on the ground, her feet finding purchase in the stone, shuffling in the way of a sleepwalker to Wyndrelis' side as the Dunmer did the same motion over the second corpse.

Emeros had said nothing, though he thought much of the action. He, instead, hardened his gaze. He then moved his attention from thrall to thrall to the one whose work raised them, inhaled through flared nostrils, and turned on his heel to find the entrance of the temple.

Now, a putrid odor followed at their heel like the nipping teeth of a pup, carried atop the floor in a thick, dark fog which stagnated at his mid-calf. Every step was as though one were wading through air, the mist waterlike and thick. Wyndrelis looked to Emeros, and Emeros to Wyndrelis, yet neither dared an attempt to speak. The silence was as prevalent in their lack of words as it was in their lack of actions. Emeros' trepidation made lines in his forehead as he continued his attempt at making sense of what these ruins had once been, and now what they'd been made into.

He'd read plenty of books on the subject of necromancy, the practice which now stared him in the face on two fronts. Emeros had a familiarity Mirise Dres' writings. They'd served only to sicken his gut against the idea of the work altogether, the words of a woman who'd spent her childhood observing the faces of the dying a sour taste in his mouth. More than these, however, he understood the nature of Mannimarco's schemes in the various eras he'd made himself known, and of the Worm Cult and their goings-on. He'd heard the rumors of their revival in the aftermath of the Oblivion Crisis, pockets of cults popping up across Tamriel and extinguished, coming back like a stubborn weed throughout the past two-hundred years. There'd been a revival in High Rock at one time, swiftly cut down by battlemages who wished to preserve the lives of those in the province.

Where his academic disdain had been planted, his personal hatred flowered. Everyone knew about the black market under Wayrest, rumors of a corpse trade persisting for centuries. In his minds eye, as he moved through the dark, he could picture the Dominion deserter who'd sit with him on long nights, his voice roughened silk in the dim of the long evenings as he explained the necromancy that, on official Dominion documents, had never happened. Yet he'd been taught in its ways well enough for battle, tales of turning corpses of guards onto the very towns which they had protected on his tired mouth. Emeros could hear every word that the flaxen-haired Altmer spoke over dim lights in a hush, his regret dragging every syllable down until he spoke no more, and merely left the stories to the dead of night to die. He would fold his arms over his lap and hum a note, and stare into the hearth for a long time after that. The mournful voice of his old friend soaked him to the bone. He would be, in lighter terms, disappointed at the sight of Emeros being trailed by one who worked in this form of magic willingly.

After the fall of their shared city, Emeros could only hope that he'd avoided the fate of the accursed trade.

"Tell me of the Green Pact."

The words came from behind him. He turned to face Wyndrelis, who massaged the bridge of his nose and raked his fingers through his crow-feather hair and shifted his posture, shuffling his weight from foot to foot. Emeros cocked his brow.

"I've not once followed it. Not in memory, anyways."

"Yes, but," Wyndrelis sucked in a breath, held it, and let it out long and weary, "you surely were surrounded by it."

He scoffed. "Of course I was. One can't live in Valenwood without the Pact affecting every aspect of one's life."

"So, tell me of it."

Unsure of where the conversation was going, the Bosmer paused, folding his arms over his chest. "We're not to harm the forests of Valenwood, nor are we to eat anything made of plant life, nor take the shape of beasts. We're not to kill wastefully, nor are we to leave our enemies to rot once we've defeated them, and to eat only meat."

As he ticked off the points of the Pact which had shaped the upbringing of nearly all those around him in his early life, he watched the Dunmer's eyes grow in their intensity. "Not to kill wastefully," he repeated, "like the wolf in Riverwood?"

The Bosmer, entirely unsure of where this was going, gave a slow nod. "Yes, precisely. That part, I suppose, I tend to follow. After all, letting a good hide go to waste would be a shame, and I'm certain Alvor could use the money from the leather."

"So tell me, then," Wyndrelis began, "if one is not to kill wastefully-"

He knew where this was going, now. He interjected with a sharp, "no, absolutely not this. The Green Pact makes no room for necromancy, it's simply about taking down an opponent or a hunt."

"But how can you be certain?" The Dunmer countered. "If one can make use of a kill, then what does it matter the shape it took when alive?"

Emeros stormed away without another word, something still and cold coating his features. He was from Valenwood, of course he understood these sorts of things, the Green Pact was burnt into his mind despite not following it. But this, ensnaring a soul from its chance at restful sleep and trapping it within gems or in a rotting husk to be used however the summoner see fit, this was not what the Green Pact made room for. The question nagged at him, however, how could he be so sure? The Pact was so fiercely debated within Valenwood itself that it was hard to know exactly what the rules were, or how they could be toed around, or what parts were often followed and others had loopholes. Wooden furniture had been in both his parents' home and the home of his guardians, but since it had been imported, no public scorn was given. He would not entertain that necromancy was somehow allowed within the bounds of his home province's law. Making the most of a kill applied to fauna and their uses. Not to the corpses of foes, and certainly not to the purpose of leading them around like half-strung marionettes.

Neither spoke, finding easy pathway through the dark. Wyndrelis followed in close step behind. The battle had not been an easy one, and taken much longer than either had expected. They should have been in here sooner. Emeros squeezed his eyes shut and massaged his temples for a moment. The signs of cut down roots and webs, the steps in dust, all of it showed that they at least did not come here to find a corpse.

The bodies strewn across battlefields of the Great War lurked at the corners of his vision. He'd been a traveler during those ages, an occasional merchant, and an adament student of his craft. He could recall the hushed stories in taverns of necromancers scavenging the remains, fending off animals. The natural way of the world disrupted. Tales spun of the graverobbing in the recent burials. Did it matter at all if he objected to the other's work? How could the other Mer tolerate his own soul's defilement? How did the Dunmer look himself in the mirror as he knew that with every thrall, he trapped the souls of the dead from any form of afterlife?

Emeros kept moving.

In the guttural silence, he had too much time to think, and thought far too fast. The idle words conjured themselves in the crevices of his mind, the questions, the demand for an answer as to what the past few weeks had been, and the knowing that there would be no explanation. He thought to himself in the unsettled quiet, what did he know of necromancers?

Sadists, the lot of them, the response came to mind. Especially with the shining example which lay at the end of this winding temple carved into the mountain. Interrupters of aetherial slumber. The bastardizers of the dead, or the thieves of life for whatever purpose they saw fit. They tackled the divide of life and death, and attempted to wield power over both. Many of them turned to illegal body trades, or plucked battlefields like carrion birds. Pursuit of lichdom required many sacrifices, after all. Mostly, it was to continue twisted experiments in the dark caves and ruins where they made their homes. They would carry out the inhumane works, and they would worship the death that they brought.

He shed a backwards glance.

What did he know of Wyndrelis?

He was a quiet mage, with an exceptional knowledge of his studies, and his mastery of his work could not be overstated by what Emeros had seen. He sought the College of Winterhold, and he was not only talented in the art of restoration, but in conjuration, destruction, and was a dependable ally in battle. Quick-witted. A tad solemn. He was reliable, as much as Emeros hated to admit it now. Wyndrelis had proven he was willing to do anything to keep the three of them alive. He'd made his friends laugh in quiet moments, and saved them from dragonfire in battle. When they'd defended the remains of the Western Watchtower, Wyndrelis had used up most of his magicka reserves to keep the trio as a whole from coming to harm. He'd agreed to dodge swinging axes for the other two in a Nord burial tomb at a point when he'd barely known either of them.

If not for the battle at Fort Hraggstad, Wyndrelis would never have likely revealed his talent for the forbidden art.

Emeros paused at the entrance to a chamber. Beams of light created a clear path to dive further into the ruins. He had long stopped caring about what lay ahead at the end of these passages. All he wanted was to find the Altmer alive, get back to Castle Dour and acquire their pardon, and board the next carriage to Windhelm. His experiments would not last much longer, and if he'd any lingering hope of getting them to the White Phial to be looked over, then he should head towards the ancient city as fast as his feet - or hooves of the carriage horses - could take him. If the younger Mer would choose to side with Wyndrelis' practice when presented the option, then he would simply part ways with the other two. An idea gleamed bright in his mind like a blade in the sun that if he did not leave to Windhelm as soon as possible, then he might wind up the thrall under the hand of two necromancers instead of one.

Wyndrelis stood in the doorway to another chamber. "Tell me what you know about necromancy."

The question caught him off-guard. He froze, as if the words themselves had pinned him in place. He drew in a breath and folded his arms over his chest, as if this were his shield. "Every necromancer I've had the distinct displeasure of hearing about has been a sadist, or power-hungry, or both. Why do you ask?" He hadn't meant the words to come out so thick with aggravation, but they did, the curl of his lip a tight sneer. Wyndrelis' thralls stood by the Dunmer's side, statuesque.

"So you believe these things... for what reason?" He knit his brow. "You won't make something disappear by ignoring it. Alchemy and magic go hand-in-hand." He turned his gaze to the Bosmer's knapsack, then to the throat-slashed thrall. "You poison your opponents. Don't you think that that, on it's own, is questionable?"

Emeros rolled his eyes as the Dunmer began to walk. "What you fail to realize is that the intrigues of a necromancer-"

"Wait-" Wyndrelis stopped him sharply, stepping into another open space they'd come upon, pointing a hesitant finger towards the room. Emeros peered in, his heart thundering.

A thin pool of blood lay in the center of the stone floor. More clung to a wall, where it appeared to have been pressed there by an injured body. He dragged his worries down beneath the waves of his mind, his hawk-sharp eyes taking in every detail of the room. A corpse being dragged across a floor would leave streaks. He could see no signs of this. Ash-heaps lay on the stones, weapons strewn about the ground. He pressed a palm to the entry, catching his breath and attempting to still the pounding in his chest. Wyndrelis scanned the room, as though he were drawing in every detail in some attempt to memorize it.

"It doesn't look like they're in terrible shape," Wyndrelis exhaled through a tight throat, "if we catch up, perhaps..."

Emeros swallowed against his nerves. The other pushed his spectacles up his nose and breathed long and slow. He looked to the thralls, who, for the most part, were quiet. "Come on, we need to catch up to him."

There had been arguments made, during the lifetime of the Mages Guild, that necromancy was as natural as any other magic. He could not subscribe to said belief, and it never once surprised him to find that the vast majority of the practitioners of necromancy were the ones to make the argument. Still, it had been made. When the Mages Guild disbanded at the end of the Oblivion Crisis, two organizations sprung up in its wake, and only one of them carried on with conjuration studies as a whole. Though it was done more in secret than outright, there was knowledge that necromancy happened within their ranks, a selective course of study offered only to the finest of conjurers.

He had to wonder if Wyndrelis was a student of these courses, once.

"Where did you happen to learn necromancy in the first place?" he asked, the pair winding their way through deeper corridors, traps disarmed, the battles won by their friend who'd long navigated the same pathways. Wyndrelis looked up from examining the remains of a shade and sighed, as if the question had disappointed him in some way. He seemed to give it a great deal of thought, rubbing a hooked finger over his chin.

"I have trained for many years in my work, in all forms of magic. But I pursued this," he gestured to the thralls, "in addition to my other... Acceptable studies. Should I have remained among my former peers, I was made an offer. I refused, and then I left."

"What sort of offer?"

The room chilled between them as Wyndrelis began to walk towards the exit.

"What sort of offer?" Emeros pressed, following in even step behind the Dunmer, who looked back at him with features lifeless and bedraggled, the Bosmer haulting in his tracks.

"It related to my studies, but other than that? It's none of your concern. We have someone to find, don't we? So we should keep going."

"Wyndrelis," Emeros heaved a sigh, rubbing his forehead in the crux of his thumb, "you realize that your hiding certain details is the reason we're having this discussion in the first place."

"What would you have me do?" Wyndrelis protested, voice raising in a way that blindsided Emeros. He'd never heard the Dunmer toe the line between speaking and shouting, not in battle, not in quiet, not ever. "Would you truly think that it's a better idea for me to state outright everything I've done? Do you think that a stranger I'd met in Helgen was someone I could trust? Back in Riverwood, would it have been better for you to have me outright admit to my work? Because it certainly would not have been better for me."

Emeros froze as he watched the other's sharp, white irises lock to his own face, his pupils dilated, his jaw grit. He'd never once seen Wyndrelis in such a state, and while he'd not known the other for very long, it was clear to him that this was a rarity which he found himself privy to solely through his own pressing. He almost spoke, almost gave a snide comment, but it died on his tongue, and he drew the silence close as the other's posture began to lose tension. Then, he shouldered past Wyndrelis, and further into the dark.

"We need to find Athenath." Wyndrelis' calm restored itself in fragments at the edges of his voice.

"Yes, we do," Emeros answered curtly. He continued onward through the dim temple, and soon heard the other and the thrall's footsteps follow after him.

The noise of an unfamiliar voice cut through any resolve Emeros had left in him. He broke into a run, Wyndrelis readying magicka into his palm, static electricity building. As the passage opened into a chamber, he spotted a figure with hands raised to bring a spell down upon the curled up form on the ground, the shades crowding the armor-clad body.

Athenath.

Emeros sprung forward. A strike of magicka whipped the air, crackles of electricity lunging to the wizard from the Dunmer's hands. The Breton clasped his fingers around a staff as Emeros closed the distance between he and the elf on the ground. As he made his way to his friend, he could see that the Altmer wasn't dead, and that was enough to cause him to extend a hand and shed a sigh of relief. When the other popped an eye open and spotted him, he spoke through suppressed nerves, "come on, you're no good on the floor like that."

When the younger elf clasped his hand in theirs, the pair now set to work, and he silently wished that the battle would be a quick one as he took in the sight of his friend. Blood sprouted like poppy blooms on parts of their armor, and while the wounds had probably been healed with potions he'd given them before the journey out of Solitude, he knew that they wouldn't have enough for everything. The exhaustion ran in circles under their eyes, the sweat beaded on their brow and a pallor wore itself on their face, gods, this was bad.

There was nothing else he could do but to ensure that this battle ended swiftly.

Wyndrelis had already taken down several of the shades, firing his spells towards the wizard who returned them in kind, Emeros and Athenath swift to join the battle with their blades. It was a frantic fight of quick, sharp instruction and turning bodies. Twisting, gnarled dances of weaponry and clashes of arms, the metal fury of the shades unbidden to mortal limitation. The undead under the necromancer's command challenged the three unlike anything they'd had the chance to fight before. Even draugr had some limitations, the muscle and bone still mortal in nature, but these malevolent things had only the will of their master and their own wrath.

The thralls did help a bit, as much as Emeros would hate to admit it to anyone, even himself. Five people was better than three, and when one of the Vigilants went down, he took over the fight against the shade which it had been fighting, watching the ashes collect into the mist which pooled over the floor. Athenath joked quickly in a shaky voice about something before continuing on, Wyndrelis' magic stinging the air and taking the Breton even more by surprise. Apparently, the man had not been anticipating someone who could match him in both skill and endurance. His face still bore a look of snide mockery until Wyndrelis' frustration with the other reached its boiling point, and he sent a fireball colliding into the other necromancer.

The chamber, engulfed in the stench of death, caused the Bosmer to cover his nose firmly with the end of his cowl. The heat of the fire dragged ruddy hues to his cheeks, warmth smacking into him, Athenath bent in the middle and choking on the putrid smell with their palms clutching their knees. Wyndrelis never took his eyes off the corpse. He wanted to ask why, or demand that they leave as soon as possible before the entire mountain came down on top of them, but when the fire faded into smoke and the ashes began to move, he understood.

The trio lunged, Emeros' blade making first contact, Wyndrelis' mace second, Athenath's sword third, but the shade mocked them with shrieks of laughter, shrill noises that shook his stomach into nausea and tore any security from him. The dark of the chamber dimmed further and the world split in colors of fear, his own exhaustion beginning to set in as the shade knocked the three back.

When it used the end of its staff as a mace against Wyndrelis' sternum, the gravity set in.

Emeros' world held in a fragile state as Athenath crumpled from their own bone-deep weariness, battle waging and weighing him down, the armor he wore torn in places and the thick, still-fresh blood clinging to the leather. As the Altmer used his sword to prop themself up, he spun his gaze to Wyndrelis, who lay on the ground, curled into himself, using a warbling restoration spell that barely illuminated in more than his fingertips. Emeros thought back to Bleak Falls Barrow, and the comment the mage had made, that restoration could not return life, and his own retort, that it could prolong it.

When Athenath met his gaze, he knew what he had to do.

He sprung back into action, leaping to Wyndrelis' side and pulling him up against the wall, handing him a magicka potion. He had no more healing potions, this would have to do. He examined the wounds and figured if the other could heal himself, and had the power to do so, he would survive. Athenath took on the shade momentarily, despite the waning energy and ragged breaths, giving their best attempt at shielding the other two from the wizard's onslaught.

Wyndrelis chugged the potion down, pushing a healing spell through himself as soon as he'd gotten a few mouthfuls of the concoction. The sounds of bone cracking back into place to mend themselves made Emeros wince. The hisses from between his tight jaw, the curses uttered in sharp breaths, it all stuck together as Emeros brought a cloth from his knapsack and put it between the Dunmer's teeth so he could bite down. Once it seemed that the bones had been fixed into their place, Emeros hauled him to his feet.

"Are you able to fight?"

"You'd better be, I'm not gonna last much longer!" Athenath called in desperation from nearby, the phantom backing them into a corner. In a moment of battle, the wraithish form's staff had clattered to the ground, opting for spells of its own making. This presented opportunity, and the Dunmer eyed it with a determination that Emeros briefly feared.

Wyndrelis lunged for the staff and aimed it. The three had watched the wizard use it himself, and they knew what it was enchanted to do. The Dunmer swallowed visibly while beads of sweat pelted down his forehead and the back of his neck, and then he aimed, firing fireball after fireball into the spectre. As it burned like the body it had sprouted from, the cacophany of its shrill, haunting wails filled the air, Athenath ducking down to the floor and crawling from the inferno before it could reach them, covering their head with their hands.

The shade roared a painful sound that shattered the air. Emeros fired arrow after arrow at it, Wyndrelis funneling his magicka into the staff, and Athenath swinging with their blade any time the creature dared attempt to approach. The room swelled with electricity, a shuddering up each their spines, heat like the suns rays along their faces as they brought the phantom down, magic and steel working in tandem to seal the fate of the necromancer.

The last bash of Athenath's blade thrust deep into the draping shroud of the form, and at once, all the necromancer's rot filtered out like lancing a puss-filled wound. The mist thinned, the stench that had lingered so long beginning to clear, the darkness pilfered by a light which began to pour in from the ceiling.

The trio surveyed the chamber.

"Is that all?" Wyndrelis asked, catching his ragged breaths against a pillar. He rattled a few heavy coughs which came deep from in his chest, elbow firm over his mouth.

"I don't know, but I think we're safe," Emeros rested his hands on his knees, spluttering as the noxious odor finally released its grasp on his lungs. He rose slowly and returned his bow to its place on his back, looking at Wyndrelis with a cautious raise of his brow. "You'd better get rid of that thrall, else Meridia might have us strike you down," he joked meagerly, humor tinging the grin that fumbled to his face. Wyndrelis waved a hand.

"Outside," he wheezed, "I think leaving more bodies in here would test my luck even more than bringing them."

When Emeros finally landed his eyes on the Altmer, curiosity stopped him from any speech. Athenath moved forward, their features transfixed by the blade at the end of the room. The beam of light which cut through the chamber placed itself along a pedastal, as though directing him to it. The metal of the sword began to glow, the hilt which had once appeared cloaked in dust now singed all signs of age off its shape in clouds. Athenath cupped a hand along the ancient pillar, fingertips ghosting it as the light of Meridia beamed against the back of his palm. A familiar voice came to the room, but did not shake it, and the other two Mer watched as the pads of their friends fingers gingerly ran along the hilt of the glowing sword.

"It is done. The defiler is defeated. Take Dawnbreaker from its pedestal."