#tesart

Veryn remained with the guar, the animals loosely tethered and grazing on what dried grasses had survived the cold. Leaning against Sharn, he squinted at Caius setting up a tripod, topped with a gleaming brass instrument. Even from a distance, the man looked intimidating, cloaked in red, clad in decorated Legionnaire’s plate. “Do you hate him?” His spine stiffened at Sharn’s question, vertebrae locking together like a Skyrim shield wall. “It’s that obvious, huh?” Nerves crawled like spiders through his mouth, desperate for a release, and he laughed wryly. “I don’t know if I hate him. What he did, what he’s doing? How can I forget that the Blades are using me as their sacrificial pawn? How can I forgive Caius for lying to me about my own death? And yet if I don’t do anything, if the Empire doesn’t — what if Dagoth Ur wins? What if the voice in my head — ” He broke off abrubtly and gestured around him. “What if all of Morrowind becomes like this or worse? Endless rock and ash, choked by poison weeds. What if Cyrodiil becomes his twisted garden? All of Tamriel?” His answer was a gaze of worry, of uncertainty - a gaze that told him Sharn did not know what the future held either. “And must you carry that weight on your own?” “I don’t know, alright?” He raised his voice, the aching pulse in his temples overriding clarity of thought, frustration and anger threatening to spill out in a torrent of tears and rage. Stomach roiling, Veryn clenched his teeth and eyes, clawing at his mind to gain back a semblance of control. Not here, not now, not in Mamaea, where he couldn’t tell whether the heartbeat in his ears was his own. Sharns hands found his shoulders, her voice found his ears; but he couldn’t quite tell what she was saying over the ring of anxiety until her tone changed and her words stilled. “Ryn,” she said, her voice full of alarm. “I’m fairly sure I’m sensing some magic out here, and it’s not yours.” His stomach stopped squirming and dropped down like lead as a screaming sense of warning jolted through his veins and dragged him back to the present. He cast out his magic hyperagonally, reaching out to the ambient magicka that surrounded them, searching it without rhyme or reason, trying to find patterns in that sea of near-primordial chaos. Usually he was good at this. Usually, he saw patterns where there might be none at all. Today though — “I sense nothing. But if you do, then — ” A corpse from an era long-gone. “Necromancy.” Sharn realised it at the same time he did, wide, panicked eyes meeting the lenses of his dust-mask. “Run!” A creak escaped from the ground, a grinding, grating sound, as if some long-shut door had been opened, some rusty, stilled joint started moving again. Little clouds of dust began to leap towards the sky, growing larger with groan from below. His boots dragged through the ashen dust, solid ground becoming looser and looser with each step he took. Sharn cursed, sinking in to her ankles, the earth caving in below her steps. He stumbled next, their footing disintegrating faster than they could run. Out of the depths echoed a snap, sharp and sudden, followed by another; by a third one, the squealing movement of ancient bones beneath their feet, splintering and fracturing from the pressure of soil and dust. Mamaea awakened, a giant unable to bear its own weight, a skeleton collapsing into itself, a gaping mouth to the abyss, jagged ribs jutting out like teeth. “Hold on!” Veryn yelled, barely audible through the dust blasting his mask. Grasping Sharn’s arm, he drew on his magic without care, lifting up the both of them in flight. A brief distance was all he needed, a few more paces, and they’d make it to more solid rock. Caius must be out there somewhere, obscured by the same storm that proved his undoing. The wind screeched and howled and hummed, resonating with the beat of a thousand scarab wings. It ripped at his clothes and armour and tore at Sharns limbs, wresting them off balance. His magic fizzled, unable to keep two people airborne for long, leaving him only one way. Down.