By the morning of the third day I was growing concerned that I had somehow failed to remove the infection wholly, or had merely bought time for myself instead. I was also becoming concerned that if I stayed any longer in my cell, that either the boredom or Valen Dreth’s company was going to send me insane.
“By the Nine and all that is holy can you stop your gods-damned humming?” I spat, sitting back in my chair and counting the number of cracks in the ceiling’s stonework.
“Humming, humming, humming.” He replied, and I heard the creak of his wooden cot as he stood on the rotting straw mattress. “Hum hum. Ho hum.”
The bars clanged, and I jumped a little as he slammed his face between a gap. “Huuuuuuummmmmmmmmm…”
“No wonder no one else has been locked down here with you.” My chair creaked threateningly as I leaned back further and crossed my arms in front of me. “Even by the standards of Imperial Justice it must have been classified as a cruel and unusual punishment.”
The humming continued but I could see the image of the Dunmer’s crack-toothed smile in my mind’s eye. He didn’t have a face for grinning but he did so as often as he physically could.
This deep under the Imperial Prison district there was little sound, especially how the only source of it was through the hole near the ceiling that was mostly for ventilation. I had listened, despite the difficulties posed by my irritating neighbour on and off for most of the previous days at the shouts and cries of the Legion Training grounds on the surface. The Prison District was in effect the Legion District and was the home, headquarters and where every legionary, forester and Battlemage would be trained. No matter what far flung portion of Tamriel they had originally hailed from; all recruits would be brought here for their first year of service.
But this particular morning just a handful of hours past dawn, the noise was coming from within the prison itself. Doors were unlocked and roughly wrenched open, and the echoes of shouted orders wafted their way through the thick oaken door to the upper levels.
Whatever was happening had not left Dreth in a good mood. Like the Legion; the Prison seemed to run like a well lubricated dwemer automaton and for the previous days at least the meals had been delivered with precise timings. This morning they were over an hour late with breakfast.
The infernal humming stopped for a moment as the door up the stairs was unlocked. A second later, the armoured form of one of the Watch jogged down the stairs, clanking and jingling in his full armour. The flushed expression on the Legionary’s face regarded us both briefly, making only the most cursory of glances to the empty cells before disappearing back the way he came.
“They must be preparing executions.” The Dark Elf muttered evilly as the grind of a lock had faded into a whispered echo. “They are never this lively of a morning unless there’s killin’ to be had.”
“By the gods I hope so.” I snapped at him, my own temper fraying. My humours were unbalanced not only at the waiting, but the fact that my dreams during the night had been blood soaked and horrifying. Even for someone who had faced down Corpus creatures and worse in his time in the Legion, my nightmares had been left me sweating and shaking. “Being executed would be a relief after being stuck with such a s’wit. How you haven’t managed to choke to death on all the guar shit that dribbles from your mouth is beyond me.”
He spat on the floor in the corridor, the thick phlegm splattering on the stones but before he could open his mouth to reply the metallic echo of the lock returned. Both of us froze for a moment before a grin spilt his face like a festering wound.
“Hey, you hear that?” The chuckle, thick and pneumonic rattled in his chest. “The guards are coming… For you!”
Pressing his face between the bars as he seemed to do out of habit, he tried to peer around and up to the door. I remained in my seat, hoping that it would be what passed for breakfast, but if it was my executioners coming for me it would at least mean that the mind-numbing wait was over.
Metal clanked and rubbed together, and with the rolling echoes, the sounds of several individuals urgently talking reached our ears. Curiously, I saw Dreth suddenly look very confused and even worried as he backpedalled from the door as fast as he could.
The armoured silhouette of a soldier appeared at the door to my cell, and I was taken aback at the sight of a suit of armour of a make and design I had never seen before. Interlocking plates covered the man’s shoulder’s, chest and thighs in a shifting skin of metal. While it shared similarities to the thick heavy plate of the Cyrodillic and Northern Legions, it was obvious it was designed more for mobility and agility than solid defence. Metallic ringing and chiming echoed over the sounds of his armour as he fumbled through a considerable amount of keys. So intent on the door’s lock he didn’t even look into my cell.
“We don’t know that Sire.” A distinctly female voice echoed through the corridor, and I watched with utter confusion as more soldiers appeared. “The messenger only said they were attacked.”
“No, they’re dead. I know it.”
I shifted in my seat and stood agape at the sight before me. Three heavily armed and armoured soldiers dressed in their unusual armours were enough to gain my attention, but it was snatched away at the fourth individual in the group. Unarmoured and dressed in nothing more than thick robes, not only was he far from a soldier but was easily twice the age of the others who were escorting him. I might not have been able to recognise the others but the older man had a face that had been stamped on pieces of gold and silver coinage throughout the Empire.
“My job right now is to get you to safety.” Other than the voice, there was nothing to suggest that the individual standing by the side of the aging emperor was female. The armour snuffed out the last of her femininity, and there was not a single trace of difference between her suit and the other two flanking them. There was distinct sense of urgency about all of their actions despite the way the Emperor moved with all the speed and ability of a man of such years, and as the first soldier continued fumbling with his set of keys his commander stepped up to see what the delay was.
An expression of annoyance darted between her subordinate and his attempts to find the right key for the lock and the interior of my cell, but as she caught sight of me sitting in the chair it turned into something resembling shock and anger. “What’s this prisoner doing here?” She snapped, glaring at me with enough force that I couldn’t help but rise to my feet. There was little that could be seen of her face in her barbute helm, but there was enough to see the inherent threat. “This cell is supposed to be off-limits!”
Still fumbling with his set of keys, the first soldier looked up suddenly, not only at me but also at his commander. Without his commander’s exclamation of surprise, he wouldn’t have noticed my presence until after he had opened the door.
“Usual mix-up with the Watch. I…”
There was a muffled curse from his commander, and she stepped up to the bars, her hand resting on the hilt of her sword with every intent to use it at a moment’s notice. “Never mind, just get this gate open.” She glanced at me with as much warmth as a Vvardenfell winter. “Stand back prisoner, we won’t hesitate to kill you if you get in our way.”
I backed hurriedly against the far wall of my cell, confused and very concerned. These were no palace guards. No violet cloaks or breastplates polished into gleaming mirrors of perfection. Every piece of their equipment was not designed for ceremonies but for the brutality of war, and the recognition of their weapons was enough to leave me pressing my back into the cold stones of the far wall. While I had never seen one in person, everyone within the Empire knew what a Katana looked like and who wielded such weapons.
They were Blades; the sworn protectors of the Emperor and by far some of the most dangerous individuals within all of Tamriel. Their reputations as expert swordsmen were legendary and even fully armed and armoured I wouldn’t want to cross swords with any one of them. The fact that I was now face to face with three such individuals was more than enough to leave me in a cold sweat despite my confusion.
The door opened with a screech of poorly oiled metal, and one after another they filed in. Completely ignoring me, the female commander moved over to the wall to my right, pushing in the stones in what appeared to be a very precise pattern. The second Blade, hanging the ring of keys from a hook on his belt moved towards me with all the grace of a predator and barked an order not to move but my eyes and attention was locked on the third individual who ducked his head through the cell door.
Uriel Septim VII; the Emperor of all Tamriel stepped inside the suddenly cramped cell with his last bodyguard following dutifully behind. His robes were magnificent, furs wrapped around his shoulders and silks so expensive that their cost alone could’ve supplied an entire legion for months had been pulled tight around his body. He wasn’t dressed for travel and as he shuffled his way inside of the cell I caught a glimpse of an enormous gemstone amulet clasped close to his chest. The central ruby-like stone placed in the centre was as large as my fist and worth more than entire kingdoms.
There was little to do but to stand there in silence, eyes wide in surprise and shock at the sight of the most powerful of men standing in the very last place I expected to see him. What surprised me even more was when he glanced in my direction for a heartbeat, stopping in mid stride and looking even more shocked to see me than I was to him.
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“You…” I started at the sound of his voice, feeling a surge of terror as he and all three of his bodyguards looked at me. “I’ve seen you…”
I pressed myself further into the wall as the closest Blade glanced between me and his charge, his grip tightening around the hilt of his Katana menacingly. With a gesture the Emperor stopped him, not taking his eyes from my own as he shuffled closer.
“You are the one from my dreams…” He murmured, his voice suddenly growing softer despite how his face hardened. “Then the stars were right, and this is the day. Gods give me strength.”
Running my tongue over my lips I glanced between him and his guards, seeing their expressions of confusion mirroring my own. “What’s going on?” I asked, the only words that I managed to choke out of my throat.
The Emperor sighed, looking suddenly a lot older than even his considerable years. “Assassins attacked my sons, and I’m next. My Blades are leading me out of the city along a secret escape route.” His smile was grim, even though he was chuckling as he gestured to me. “By chance, the entrance to that escape route leads through your cell.”
Scraping and grinding, the wall began to open and as a single entity the trio of Blades stepped into a protective circle around the Emperor.
“We better not close this one. There’s no way to open it from the other side.”
The nearest Blade lightly rested his hand on the Emperor’s shoulder, receiving only the merest of glances from the aged ruler. “Please sir, we must keep moving.”
“What should I do?” I stammered, feeling totally confused and looking at the determined set of their faces.
A smile, so tiny that it was almost unnoticeable ran across the Emperor’s face. “You will find your own path.” He motioned to the opened passage as he turned and allowed himself to be led down the tunnel. “Take care, there will be blood and death before the end.”
The third and last Blade moved past me, disappearing into the darkness of the tunnel. For a brief moment he spared me a grin in my direction as he followed his comrades. “Looks like this is your lucky day.” Flints clacked together, and in a shower of sparks the torch in his hand came to life. “Just stay out of our way.”
Fading into the darkness like shadows, the group disappeared within nothing more than their booted footsteps marking their presence. For several moments I stood there, trying and failing to comprehend exactly what had just happened. With my eyes jumping between Valen Dreth’s astonished face and the open tunnel I knew I was not turning from such an opportunity. Before I realised what exactly I was doing, I had vanished into the darkness, only briefly pausing to stick my middle finger in Dreth’s direction.
I carefully made my way through the tunnel, following in the Emperor and his guards’ footsteps as it changed from roughly hewn rock to ancient masonry that appeared older than time itself. With every metre I seemed to travel deeper into the catacombs under the prison, my sandaled feet stirring the dust of ages long since passed. There were no other options but to trail after them in the darkness as the tunnels and catacombs seemed to be blocked in every direction but the one they were travelling. With nothing more than the sight of bobbing torches several dozen metres ahead, my eyes soon grew accustomed to the darkness.
The building concern and lack of understanding of exactly what I had found myself in was worrying. Less than an hour before my biggest concern was how I was going to be executed, and yet instead I found myself stepping in the boot prints of the most powerful individual within the Empire. His sons attacked, possibly dead? And now there was a threat on his life? These were not thoughts that filled me with ease. Obviously the passage in my cell had been set aside as some form of contingency for just such an occasion, but that didn’t explain his apparent recognition of who I was. For some reason that was more terrifying than anything else.
I had followed them for long enough that my legs were beginning to ache after going for almost a fortnight without any exercise. They had continued on, moving with distinct purpose through the catacombs through every twist, turn, passage and doorway. Not once did they hesitate or divert from their path and for the most part I followed, lingering a few dozen metres behind, out of the sight of their torches but close enough that it helped me traverse the darkness. Every few metres or so the shadows twisted and bunched as the torches played their light across the alcoves and around ancient support pillars, but some deep seated sense of wrongness was worming into the back of my mind. I had not lived and survived so many years in Vvardenfell without trusting my instincts, and before I consciously realised what I was doing I had begun stalking through the shadows after the small group.
As they moved through a hall of pillars, my heart began racing long before my conscious mind caught up with what my subconscious had noticed minutes before. Shapes moved in mockeries of men and mer, sliding around and between the pillars and hunting those within the tiny patch of light. What I had originally mistaken as tricks of the light and the way it shifted as the Blades walked soon began twisting and condensing around those imbued with a false sense of security from the light’s embrace. Years of hunting allowed me to pick out the movement that didn’t match the flickering torch light even as the shadows became silhouettes, the dozen or so flitting around the tiny group with what were unmistakably weapons gripped tightly.
My cry of alarm was caught in my throat as one of the shadows suddenly exploded into action from behind a marble pillar. Appearing as though it had ripped itself from the shadows, the figure was well within arm’s reach of the Blade commander. It seemed to tower over her for an instant swinging its darkened limbs with such speed that no one could react in time.
A scream of pure agony echoed through the confines of the catacombs, accompanied with the wet-crack of bones splintering with considerable force. Shrieking, and clutching at her shattered arm, she dropped to the floor with a clatter and a rising explosion of sparks that illuminated her attacker. Somewhere in the back of my mind I was relieved to see a man wearing robes and plate armour rather than some daedra dragged from the depths of my subconscious. A wickedly flanged mace was held in an armoured fist, the Blade on her knees before him and within seconds other shadows flickered into horrible existence.
Without hesitation or conscious thought, the other two Blades moved purely on instinct, ripping Katanas from sheathes and hurling themselves at the attackers. Utter pandemonium erupted in the enclosed space, the dropped torches sending gigantic shadows across the walls as they and their physical owners hacked, stabbed, kicked and struck at each other in a frenzy of movement. Roared battle cries overwhelmed grunts of exertion and the gurgling sounds of the dying. With wild abandon the attackers swarmed the pair of fighting men, the Blade Commander laying on the ground where she had fallen and the pale featured Emperor backing away from the melee with undue haste.
What the Blades hadn’t seen was that they were surrounded with half a dozen armoured attackers reaching from the shadows. The crippling strike against the Commander had been the signal for the ambush, and the assassins moved with utter surety as they sought to end the lives of the remaining blades. As the majority of the attackers surrounded and hacked at the pair, one solitary individual rushed the Emperor from the side where there was no guard to save him.
The Blades had ruined their vison by the torches they carried, hiding the assassins from sight but what the assassins hadn’t realised was they too had been left unable to see well in the darkness. I could tell by the way they moved and stumbled towards their victims that they had been foolishly staring at the torches. From my position further back I had followed with one eye closed, ensuring that I never looked directly at the only source of light. I relied entirely on my peripheral vison to make my way in the shadows, but now I was the only one in the catacombs that could fight both in the darkness and the limited light. Moving quickly, I opened both eyes, using the mismatched visons to see in the light and the darkness simultaneously. Without allowing myself to consider my actions I broke out into a run, crossing the distance between me and the assassins in seconds.
Striding with malicious purpose, the assassin was so intent on reaching the Emperor with his gleaming obsidian dagger that the first he realised he was under attack was when I crashed bodily into him. Dressed in nothing more than rags, I was at a considerable disadvantage against an opponent as heavily armoured as the assassin. The blood coloured robes clung close to his flesh, and the esoteric plate armour he wore stabbed into the back of my mind with the greasy magical taint it extruded. My magical abilities were limited but there was no mistaking the fact that my foe was wearing plate armour conjured from the depths of Oblivion, especially as we found ourselves grappling with each other on the cold stone floor.
The surprise was my only advantage and was one that I used to its full benefit. Even before he had realised that he was under attack I had busted my knuckles into the scowling face mask that he wore, forcing inarticulate howls of pain to be cut off with every blow. Flailing about, the best he could do was roll the two of us over until I found myself on my back, and if it wasn’t for the way I had grasped his knife hand with one of my own I could have very easily found myself bleeding out on the ancient tiles.
“Gods. Damned. Bloody. Bastard!” I grunted, jamming a knee into his armoured chest while trying desperately to keep the serrated dagger from my face and throat. While marginally stronger and actually trained in comparison to my opponent, he was far heavier in his conjured armour. Before I could do anything more than jam an elbow into his throat he was suddenly pressing down hard, forcing his entire body weight down onto his dagger and gripping it in both hands.
“Die, unbeliever!” he hissed through his mask, the scowling plate muffling the words with a metallic dullness. I could see the hints of madness in the depths of the mask’s eye slits, feeling him trembling with exertion as I put all my strength into holding him at bay.
Chiming, and barely noticeable in the raging melee, I almost felt rather than heard the metallic echo of something dropping to the floor near us. Without breaking my gaze with the plated assassin panting on top of me, I quickly reached down with my left hand while the right held him back with an arm strong from years of using a bow. Desperate for something, anything to use against my blood maddened enemy, my fingers brushed over what was obviously a hilt before wrapping around it and jamming it into an eye.
A powerful spasm ran through the assassin, his dagger dropping from nerveless fingers as I pinned the mask to his face with the dagger. Ten centimetres of pointed steel was lost in the depths of his skull, the point scraping at bone at the back of his head and the sudden loss of resistance almost made me throw the freshly dead corpse aside. There was no surviving such an injury but now that my blood was up I had twisted onto my knees even before the dead man had finished rolling onto his back.
The battle as such was over, and in the dim flickering light of the dropped torches I could see half a dozen bodies strewn about. Blood had sprayed in darkening arcs in all directions, staining the white marble floors and pillars and soaking into decades of dust. The sudden lack of fighting and noise seemed even more deafening than the carnage that had taken place in the confines of the catacombs, and I found myself looking about at how all of the assassins were left sprawled about. There was no mistaking the fact that they were all extremely dead.
The sudden cracking of energy stabbed into my mind, and I recoiled from my opponent as his armour began to dissipate and slough away. Like spun sugar left in the rain the armour dissolved and ran into the cracks in the ground, evaporating into smoke before my very eyes. In seconds all that was left was the red-robed corpse with the hilt of a dagger jutting from a bloody eye socket.
“What the fu-”
My exclamation of surprise was cut away as I felt the distinct sensation of a peerless edge coming to rest against my throat.
