Chapter Text
There was something about Dwemer ruins that had always gotten to Freya’s mind. It had been almost a decade since she last stepped foot in a Dwemer ruin, and it was just as horrible as she remembered.
“You’re looking a little jumpy there, sister.” Maddox teased. The last time she had seen him, her brother had been forced to cut off most of his hair since he had taken a fireball to the head courtesy of a student. There had been no injuries, just the loss of his beloved hair. It was once more shoulder-length and curly, and all was right with the world once more.
Well, her world. Regulus was an overprotective mother-hen, Freya liked stealing shiny things, and Maddox loved his hair almost as much as he loved his siblings and his wife.
“Dwemer ruins bring trouble.” Freya tightened her grip on the sword that had once belonged to Gallus, a previous Guildmaster and Karliah’s lost love. The blade was perhaps her favorite weapon, lethal in all its simple beauty, not because of enchantments or ability to withstand a battle. It was the blade’s history, a sword that had once sat on the hip of a Nightingale Guildmaster and did so again. Karliah had thought Freya worthy of Gallus’ sword and thought her worthy of the role he once held.
Freya hoped she was a fraction of what he once was.
“Of course they do. The Dwemer and Falmer both.” Regulus was scowling. He hated Dwemer ruins even more than she did. Regulus had never told her the full story, but Freya knew his trip to one without them had been a bad one.
Regulus was the tallest of them, always had been, but becoming a werewolf had made him even taller, bulkier, and turned his eyes a shade of silver too sharp to be those of a normal Imperial. Combined with the heavy armor he wore, Regulus was not easy to injure, and the few hits that connected tended to do more damage to those he fought then Regulus himself.
Maddox stopped his teasing then, grass-green eyes betraying the apology he would not voice. That had never been their way, not when they had been on the streets of the Imperial City, and not now. It was sometimes a startling thought, just how far they had climbed. Street kids of the Imperial City to Guildmaster of the Thieves Guild, Archmage of the College of Winterhold, and Harbinger of the Companions.
And Dragonborn. Freya had the body of a mortal but the soul of a dragon, which showed itself in her golden eyes and ability to slay dragons. It granted her the ability to speak their language and wield it against them.
“Remind me again why we’re here?” Freya asked, breaking the silence. “When you were talking before, I stopped paying attention.” In truth, she hadn’t, but Regulus was extremely wound up and that couldn’t be healthy.
It worked. Her oldest brother gave her a look, one of mixed fond exasperation and annoyance, but repeated what he had told her weeks ago upon walking into Riften. “The avalanche that happened a few months back uncovered the entrance we used, and as usual, lots of adventurers have tried to make a fortune. Few have returned, and those that do speak of dark things, strange creatures, and green. Lots of green.”
Freya nodded slowly, as if she was just now remembering. The Companions had been hired by an elderly couple to retrieve his body, if possible. They wanted to give him the proper funeral rights. Regulus had taken the job and decided it was time for the siblings to do something together again. It had been several years since they had done something like that.
“They could have just seen their first Chaurus.” But Maddox was eyeing the walls around them. His hands were free, Dawnbreaker sheathed at his hip, but a mage was never truly defenseless. “Though there is something strange here, an energy I don’t recognize.”
Freya stretched out her senses, the ones from a lifetime of larceny, even before the Guild, and the ones that came with having a dragon’s soul. There was something there, something that made one of the souls she had once consumed perk up. It strained, trying to reach out. That was never a good sign.
“Step behind me for a second.” Her brothers did so without question, and Freya breathed in. Her next breath was not a shout, but a whisper. “LAAS YAH NIR.”
The Aura Whisper shout created a rippling wave that spread out in every direction. Her eyes filled with several pinpricks of light, but there was something off about them, something not quite right. “There’s definitely something ahead, but I’m not sure what.”
“Forwards we go. Hopefully there’s no Chaurus – it takes forever to get their spit out of my hair.” Maddox reached up with one hand to touch his hair.
“That’s what he’s worried about.”
As they went deeper into the ruins, they found signs of fighting. Arrows on the floor, scorch marks on the walls, and the bodies. The bodies were everyone, a mix of Falmer, Chaurus, torn-apart adventurers, and the scraps of Dwarven spiders. There were also piles of strange black goo and scraps of tattered cloth.
“I’ve never seen anything like this before. Do either of you have an empty potion flask?” Maddox asked. He looked adorably eager at the prospect of a new discovery, the chance to learn more.
“Just a small one.” Freya pulled it out of a pouch at her waist. When Regulus had said they were going into a Dwarven ruin, she had packed anything that might be even remotely useful. Freya hated the ruins, but she wouldn’t deny that they held the potential for treasure.
With a careful, practiced hand, Maddox scoped some of the black goo into the flask. “It’s thick, almost like tar.” He stood fully, stowing the flask away.
Freya turned away from him, and the world seemed to slow to a standstill. She twisted her wrist, sending the sword in her hand up to deflect the claws of the creature trying to take her head off. Freya stepped in close, pulling a dagger free from her belt with her other hand and burying it in the thing’s neck.
A second creature had lunged out of the shadows at Regulus, who retaliated with a savage blow from his shield that sent it flying. Freya ripped her knife free and threw it across the hall towards the creature. It hit true, right in between the thing’s sickly green eyes. Maddox hit the third with an ice spike powerful enough to cut it in half. All three seemed to almost explode into hat strange black goo upon death.
“What in Oblivion are these things?” Regulus shifted his grip on his shield. His voice had the undertone of a growl, which only happened if he was extremely angry or uneasy.
“Dark things, strange creatures, and green eyes.” Freya summoned her dagger with a quick cast of Telekinesis. It wasn’t one of her better daggers, but a simple steel dagger she used for throwing. Her better ones were the enchanted glass ones in her boots, and the enchanted dragonbone dagger she kept strapped her to left forearm. “I think we found out what these adventurers are encountering.”
The claws had been long and thin but were extremely sharp. They were not sharp enough to do damage to her sword but judging by the marks on the bodies around them, weaker metals would not hold up so well.
“They aren’t Dremora.” Maddox seemed certain despite never having seen them before, but Freya agreed. All Dremora carried a certain scent that changed only slightly depending on which realm of Oblivion they were from. These things smelled foul, sick.
They smelled wrong.
“Are any of these the man we’re looking for?” Regulus asked, looking around.
“I’m not seeing any red-haired Nords.” Freya tucked her dagger away. The stench of those creatures was stuck in her nose, and it was all she could smell.
The deeper they went into the ruin, the more bodies they found. At one point, it stopped being the bodies of adventurers and was only Falmer, Chaurus, and some of the Dwarven automatons. All of it was covered in the strange black goo.
The deeper they went, the more of those creatures attacked them. Tall spindly things with leathery black skin stretched over too-long limbs that dove into the ground to attack. Sickly green things like ghosts that launched balls of mist at them. A being made of fire that spoke in sluggish words, taunting them. There were some Falmer, some Chaurus, but those creatures were prevalent.
“That energy signature is close.” Maddox had long since drawn Dawnbreaker in his right hand. While the sword’s power did not have the same effect on the things they found as it did on the undead, it still set them ablaze, golden-white fire turning shrieking cries of aggression into shrieking screams of pain.
“I can feel it too.” Freya felt a shiver run down her spine. It wasn’t the one that danger used to bring, the one that had gone away after most of Skyrim’s dangers had stopped being an actual danger to her, but something different.
Soon the only thing in front of them was a door that had been torn free of the wall. Considering it was a door in a Dwarven ruin, that was a remarkable feat. Regulus stepped through first, shield raised to protect more of his chest. Maddox followed, Dawnbreaker glowing gold and the beginnings of an ice spell in his other hand. Freya went last, the Nightingale Blade held at an angle in front of her.
There was no other door, no other way in or out of the room. Bodies littered the area. There were enough of them that it was hard to walk without tripping. At the opposite end of the room was an archway on a platform, strange runes that glowed green covering its surface. Set within the archway was a mirror.
The mirror felt wrong.
“I’ve never seen a mirror this big.” Maddox stepped closer, his spell fading. “We have a few at the College but nothing like this – those cost money.”
“A lot of it. I know of a few in Skyrim, but they aren’t worth stealing. They’re too hard to move and the payout isn’t worth the effort. Mirrors this size are vanity pieces.” People who owned them were the type who flaunted their money, and there weren’t prospective buyers willing to pay when they could just commission their own.
Maddox stepped even closer to the mirror, sheathing Dawnbreaker. “I don’t recognize the language. Is it Dovahzul?”
“No.” Freya shook her head. Dovahzul had once been a mystery to her, but she had known her identity as the Dragonborn for over a decade. What knowledge she hadn’t learned from the dragons she had slain she had learned from the Greybeards. Freya knew the language, and while speaking was easier than reading, she could still read them.
One moment, Maddox was staring at the runes. The next, the mirror was emitting green fog, and her brother was being dragged forward.
Regulus shouted their brother’s name. Freya moved, the words of the Slow Time shout falling from her lips without conscious thought. Everything went unnaturally still as she launched herself forward, grabbing onto the back of Maddox’s robes. Then time resumed, and they were both pulled into the mirror.