A.D.W.D. Chapter 15: Broken Tower

• Posted by Exuro December 9, 2015 - Filed in TSC: CB Story - 2,084 views

  

   

   

   

  “What do you mean I can’t come? You’re letting her go and I’m at least twice as strong!” Belchimac complained.

   

  Tyranus finished signing his letter and started sealing it with candle wax before responding.

   

  “First of all, she won’t be fighting. Second, are you skilled in treating field injuries? She is. Third, I have a more important task for you, one that the fate of this village may depend on.”

   

  He pressed his seal ring, embossed with the Horn of Stendarr, to the hot wax, then secured it inside a pack stuffed with camping gear and field rations.

   

  “I need to have this letter delivered to Keeper Carcette at The Hall of the Vigilant.”

   

  “A courier?” the lad said in distaste.

   

  “Do not mock couriers!” Tyranus scolded. “Wars have been won and lost by their success, or failure.”

   

  “So are we going to war? What’s in these letters?”

   

  “Every day is a war for our souls. The creature you have been paying tribute to will return for its next sacrifice, this letter will ensures others like me will come to banish it. I cannot stay for I must free the Sybil and root out the evil in Markarth, but I will not have your folk go unprotected. Do you understand what will happen should it return and there are none capable of facing it?”

   

  The redheaded youth swallowed and nodded. In addition to recounting the recently transpired events, the letter also contained his suspicions of Rorikstead’s plentiful harvests and his profiles for Amari, Trebonde, the youth himself, and the villagers he’d had a chance to question. It was a long letter.

   

  He smiled reassuringly at the lad. “Have no fear, you will succeed and the beast will be slain.” He dropped the pack and a map he’d sketched on the table between them. “I marked the path to the Hall and good camping spots along the way for you. The river is low here,” he said pointing at the map, “With a bit of hopping and climbing you can cross here and avoid the Broken Tower Redoubt. The passage through Robber’s Gorge should be safe now, and then once you reach Morthal ask for Jonna the Innkeeper. Mention that I sent you and she should give you a free meal and bed; I helped them with a vampire problem last year.”

   

  He passed over a small pouch of coins. “Use these to purchase a fur cloak, boot, and gloves. You’ll need them for the rest of the journey.”

   

  “So, um, I better leave now then,” Belchimac said uncertainly.

   

  “Yes, wait one more thing.” Tyranus unwrapped Viana’s mace and passed it reverently to Belchimac. “Avoid contact, but use this should the need arise. Then when you reach the Hall, show it to Carcetta, she’ll understand.”

   

  “Yes, I will.” Awe filled the lad’s voice as he looked up at the priest. He shouldered the pack and left immediately while staring intently at the map in his hand. Tyranus sincerely hoped a sabercat didn’t eat him. With that matter settled, he visited the merchant Endar to see about his own gear.

   

  ***

   

  The three outsiders gathered at the edge of Karthewasten as Magnus’s last rays drenched the skies in blood. Each was prepared for battle and set in their role. Tyranus had a new belt strapped about his robes stocked with nearly Endar’s entire stock of potions; his steel boots and silver mace were honed and oiled; and his hands were protected in similarly polished steel gauntlets this time. Amari was wearing trousers now, which still allowed much better movement than the dress despite being much too large. Tellevi had helped her hem them, but there was only so much they could do. Across her pack she had strapped the sack of poisons she brewed at Robber’s Gorge and she wore a dagger she’d taken from the Toad. Scuttles had emerged from the river and scouted ahead along the mountain tops unbeknownst to the others. Then there was Trebonde.

   

  “I believe we are going to battle, not a garden show,” Tyranus teased.

   

  “Mock all you want, this was an excellent choice.”

   

  “But where did you find the prison shackles?” Amari asked.

   

  “Oh, that.” Trebonde looked at the modified stump of his hand. He had been working with the smith to attach a garden cultivator to his wrist and shape it into a claw. They managed by extending the cultivator’s shaft with welded plates and then used the shackles to latch it in place. “Tellevi had a crate of the things.”

   

  “Of course she would,” Tyranus muttered.

   

  “Come here my pretty!” Trebonde cackled in a pitched voice then started clawing the air before Amari's face with his new hand. She started laughing and dodging the swipes.

   

  “Time to move out; we only have till midnight.” Tyranus sobered the mood.

   

  They fell in line behind the holy warrior and started off on a quick jog towards the Broken Tower Redoubt. An hour later they pulled off the path and hid behind a boulder in view of the fort embedded into the canyon wall. Tyranus and Trebonde peered around the edge as they all caught their breath.

   

  “I see two warriors at the entrance. Two more are about a fire in the broken tower closest to us, none on the first rampart, and another two on top.

   

   “At least four more must be inside and the Briarheart judging from when we… we last past through. I’d hazard the Sybil is in the west tower guarded by at least eleven of the Forsworn in total.” Tyranus added.

   

  “What’s your plan?” Trebonde asked.

   

  “We charge, I’ll use my wards to protect us and once inside we can use the narrow halls to keep the fight one on one.”

   

  “Are you mad! You just said there are at least eleven of them in there. There’s always a back door. We slip in, nab the girl, and get out.”

   

  “Do you see this back door? The fort is built into a mountain! We don’t have time to turn over every rock looking for a secret passage.”

   

  While they were arguing, Amari folded her legs beneath her and stilled her mind. She let her spirit follow the tether to Scuttles and mantled the squirrel. After a jarring transition, she was suddenly above the fort looking down on the three auras huddling behind a boulder. It was unsettling knowing that one of those forms was her. They looked down and easily spotted the figures Trebonde had seen first, but there were more than four inside. She found six seated as if feasting on the first floor and two outside walking away to the east on patrol. The east tower was empty, but the top of the west tower, which had appeared so innocent with her eyes, was a scene of nightmares when seen through Scuttles’s.

   

  A festering chaos boiled within that tower cell like a cancer protruding from Nirn’s skin. It swelled and shrank as if beating to an unknown tune. At the edges of the chaos half formed shadows of teeth and claws from another plane snapped and tore at the boundary with an insatiable lust for what was at the center, a flame of white light that extended like a beam into the heavens. For as far as they could see ghostly wisps of souls unable to move beyond the veil converged upon the light in hopes of joining the Deadra in their feast. The light pulsed in opposition to the chaos, but a twisted darkness she remembered all too well from her dream would uncoil to reveal the abyss of its heart that would draw the frenzied Daedra back. Even Scuttles was drawn to it; Amari had seen enough, she had to warn the others.

   

  She slipped back into her own skin. “The ritual has already begun!”

   

  The men both turned to her in shock.

   

  “Also, there are six eating on the first floor, not four, and two are out patrolling the eastern road.”

   

  Tyranus looked at her in confusion, but decided to act instead of question. Amari pulled him back, “No, not that way, there is a back door, sort of. Follow me.”

   

  “You’re not supposed…” Tyranus’s objection trailed off as she darted back the way they came towards the mountain opposite of the fort.

   

  Amari ignored their confused protests and led them to a goat trail winding over the mountain. Scuttles already knew the lay of the land and those memories had merged with hers while she had slipped her skin. After climbing to the top canyon, they crawled through the shrubberies to avoid the line of sight of the uppermost sentries. They peered through the brush and spotted the patrol walking further to the east below them.

   

  “How?” Trebonde whispered with not a little awe.

   

  “Detect life; I can sense the flows energy.” Amari answered while not technically lying.

   

  “At that range, with that detail? What about the path?” Tyranus asked.

   

  “You can’t?” Amari asked innocently, “and, and I saw a goat up here.”

   

   “Impressive, that spell always gave me a headache.” Amari beamed inside and doubled the pace down the mountain to the east side of the fort.

   

  At the base they huddle in the shadows of the full moon and Amari pointed to across the road to where the east tower joined with the canyon wall, “See there? There is a crack from where the tower has settled away from the canyon we can climb.”

   

  Trebonde strained his eyes at the shadows she pointed at. “Too dark to see any detail from here, but you’ve been right so far creepy girl.” He turned to Tyranus. “Your Holiness, if you would remove steel clompers for our next maneuver.”

   

  “How has no one killed you yet?” The holy one snorted as he strapped the steel armor to his back. Only soft leather linings covered his feet and hands now.

   

  “Oh many have tried, yet here I stand.”

   

  Amari’s heart was racing as she watched the sentries on the wall and sifted through the info dump Scuttles was sending her. If felt like when she was breaking out of Robber’s Gorge, but this time she was breaking in. She waited until she sensed all the sentries were turned away then darted from the shadows, across the road, to the boulders on the other side. She snickered as she heard the men grumbling behind her, they were probably conspiring to keep her away from the action.

   

  She reached the other side safely and started slipping between the moonlit boulders when Trebonde grabbed her, wrapping an arm across her mouth and pulled her deeper into the shadows. She startled, but he pointed with his cultivator at the upper sentries, one was raking the boulders with his gaze. They waited as silent as a farm mouse until the sentry shrugged and turned away.

   

  Tyranus joined them a moment later and Trebonde motioned for her to lead on. They crept to the base of the tower, using the canyon’s cover to avoid the moonlight washing across the land. At the base Trebonde spotted the crevice from where the natural canyon and man formed bricks had separated.

   

  “Nice work, I could have really used you earlier,” he whispered.

   

  Amari swelled at the praise, but Tyranus frowned at the implied motive. Trebonde took the lead from there, wedging himself up the crevice. He used his claw to hook the lip of a brick and cast Tyranus an ‘I told you so’ look. Amari squirreled up after him and Tyranus lumbered up last.

   

  Tyranus managed to reach the summit without alerting the sentries somehow and Trebonde signed, Two, my kill. Tyranus nodded and began carefully strapping his boots and gauntlets quietly back on. Trebonde pulled a leather strap and a steel wire attached to the loops of his stump’s shackles from his sleeve.

   

  “Mercy or Justice?” He whispered.

   

  Tyranus glanced at the east tower’s door and his eyes hardened. This close to the tower they could all feel the dark powers stifling the air and grating against their nerves. The air felt thin and Amari’s eyes frantically swept back and forth, paranoid the fangs she’d seen in the chaos would tear through the waning barrier.

   

  “Justice.”

   

  Trebonded nodded and tucked the leather strap back and tightened his grip around the steel wire. He motioned Amari for her sack and then he began coating a pair of daggers and his new rapier with the poison. He offered a bottle to the priest who in turn refused, but Amari took it and coated her dagger.

   

  Trebonde left the cover of the west tower with a dagger poised and shadowed the first sentry. In a single fluid motion he plunged the dagger deep into the Forsworn’s kidneys, hooked the man’s jaw shut with his claw to prevent the reflexive gasp, and then sidestepped the falling body, already moving on to his next target. The other sentry turned at the sound of his partner falling, but that only positioned him to be closed lined by Trebonde’s wire. The assassin stepped behind sentry and finished synching the garrote around the man’s neck. Trebonde kicked him behind the knees, then drug the Forsworn into the shadows as the sod gushed the last of his life down his front.

   

  Tyanus stepped out and looked down on the first Forsworn. His back was arched and his face was contorted in frozen agony. The sentry had clenched his jaw so tightly that he’d shattered his own teeth. Foaming blood was escaping from between those shards in labored bursts, evidence of the poison liquefying his internals while the shock from the kidney wound locked him in place. The priest brought his mace down; giving the sentry the only peace he had left.

   

  “You shouldn’t have had to see that,” Tyranus whispered to Amari.

   

  Flashbacks of the Toad bearing on top of her returned to Amari, of him spraying her with the same frothy blood with each cough.

   

  “This is the world we live in.”

   

  Tyranus sighed, the way youth could so easily accept the atrocities of life…

   

  Trebonde had left the second sentry in the shadows and was releasing a continuous stream of swears under his breath while he fiddled with the lock on the western tower’s door. Amari and Tyranus watched anxiously while Trebonde tried to balance a torque wrench in his claw and use the pick with his good hand all while the beat of the chaos continued increasing and the pressure in the air was reaching an unbearable crescendo.

   

  Tyranus downed a handful of potions and then commanded Trebonde in a voice turning gravely and booming with bass, “Stand aside; we don’t have time for this!”

   

  Trebonde barely had time to roll out of the way before a stone golem charged the door.

   

  “FOR VIANA!!!” The golem bellowed as he turned the last step into a thrusting kick that blew the door off its hinges. The door went skidding across the floor and set off a series of lightning rune traps spread across the floor. Tyranus charged through the explosions, shrugging the blasts off like water, and let loose a torrent of his own lighting into the back of the elk helmed figure before them.

   

  “Well there goes the element of surprise,” Trebonde noted sourly, “but damn can he make an entrance!”

   

  The Briarheart had been holding the still beating heart of a goat above its head and chanting in a harsh, primal language. Candles arrayed in a circle around the Briarheart flickered in the ritual’s wind and a dark mist, almost visible even without using the sight, poured from the briarheart in the Forsworn’s chest into the goat heart. With each beat, the mist exploded outwards in a shockwave and Amari could faintly hear otherworldly howling drawn to the pulse.

   

  A pedestal rose beside the Briarheart, holding up a severed head of a goat bathed in its own blood. Its mouth absently opened and closed, taking in the dark mist. At the crash of the door it flopped on its side and stared past the charging Vigilant, towards the doorway, and directly into Amari’s eyes. Their gazes locked and she couldn’t turn away. Those eyes, black within black, became her world. The tower, sound, even light all faded away, only the eyes remained, and emptiness. An emptiness she recalled, a void that had been held at bay only by the Dragonborn’s aspect. Even then it had beckoned her, urging her to step out of the light. Now it had latched on to her, pulling her deeper; though nothing to reach something. Then Tyranus’s voice broke through.

   

  “No!”

   

  He brought his mace down on the heart in the Forsworn’s grip then kicked the Briarheart out of the circle with a force that sent the Forsworn crashing into the prison cell door before it. A final shockwave was released and with it all the mist, pressure, and howling dispersed in a roaring rush. Only a faint scent of raw earth and pine lingered in memory of the ritual.

   

  Tyranus stalked towards the downed Daedra worshipper with lightning arcing from his stone fingertips and spoke in a voice burning with holy vindication, “For your atrocities to the divines, for your sacrilege to nature, for the theft of a Divine Sybil, and for the murder of a Vigilant of Stendarr, my Student! Viana! I condemn you in the name of Stendarr’s Wrath... to death!”

   

  The Briarheart convulsed and spasmed with each shock, but managed to throw up a ward before Tyranus could finish it and tackled him.

   

  “Amari!” Trebonde shouted in her face and she blearily became aware that he was shaking her too. “The girl! I need your help.”

   

  Amari shook her visions away. “Right, I’m behind you.”

   

  Trebonde visibly relaxed and led her into the tower. A heady cloud of incense hit them like a warm pillow as they entered, but it did little to mask the scent of decaying entrails. A tangle of two forms rushed past them and collided into the shelving across the room. The Forsworn had tackled the vigilant and had control of one of the vigilant’s legs, but Tyranus refused to go down and was dropping elbows on the Forsworn’s back with meaty thuds. Amari and Trebonde jumped out of their way and bumped into a larger than life statue of Dibella smeared in blood. Those curves are really not fair, she thought in passing.

   

  “Hello, over here,” a surprisingly calm child called from behind the bars of her cell.

   

  Trebonde ran to the lock with his pick set already in hand. “Hang in there, we’ll get you out.”

   

  “I know.”

   

  Trebonde looked up. “You’re sure confident.”

   

  “I have seen it; She showed me you would come.”

   

  “Yet another creepy child,” Trebonde muttered while shaking his head. “Amari! Get down here!”

   

  “But—“ Amari started. The two combatants had separated and now bolts of lightning were cracking through the air and reflecting off their wards at random across the room.

   

  “Ignore them! I need you to hold the torque wrench.”

   

  Amari knelt next to Trebonde and gripped the L-shaped piece of metal he had inserted into the lock, “I’ve never picked a lock.”

   

  “Well you’re going to learn now. Gently rotate the wrench up or down and apply pressure as I say.” He started running the pick across the lock’s pins and rattling off directions to Amari.

   

  Amari stiffened as she sensed the Forsworn below them bolt from their table and start frantically gearing up. “They’re coming!”

   

  “Less pressure, you almost broke my pick,” Trebonde responded, not taking his mind off the lock.

   

  “The Forsworn—“ Amari started again, glancing at the door way with a panicked turn.

   

  “—Is why I need you to give the lock less pressure.”

   

  She focused back on the lock and with a few more guides on pressure Trebonde started clicking the pins into place. Then a stray lightning bolt hit the wall a hand’s span from Trebonde’s head and Amari jumped.

   

  “Focus! Back off the pressure a bit, more, more, hold. Put a little more back on now and… there!”

   

  The final pin clicked into place and the door swung open. Trebonde stood up in victory. Then Amari saw the Sybil’s eyes widen and tackled him to the ground. The back swing of a saw toothed bone sword sliced the air were his head had been seconds before. Trebonde mouthed his gratitude, then they turned to the duel. The Briarheart had obtained two bone carved swords at some point and was weaving them in an intricate pattern as it approached Tyranus.

   

  “Two just left the other tower!” Amari updated.

   

  “Sorry buddy, we don’t have time to let you win this honorably,” Trebonde muttered as he threw one of his daggers. The dagger landed true and stuck in the center of the Forsworn’s back. The spirit of vengeance didn’t even flinch, but the impact did throw the blade pattern off and that was enough. Tyranus wove his mace through the opening, ripping the Elk head off and the whiplash snapped the neck of the man underneath. The lifeless form landed at Amari’s feet and soulless eyes, same as the goat’s black on black, stared up at her. The warrior priest stepped on the corpse and incinerated the plant heart with a lance of fire for good measure. Breathing hard, he looked to see the Sybil was standing free and he sighed in relief.

   

  “More coming!” Amari interrupted, shocking him back into the battle mindset.

   

  The hiss of two fireball came from the opposite tower and Tyranus leapt to block the doorway with his ward. Explosions of fire washed over the shining surface and scorched the tower’s exterior, but his ward held fast.

   

  “Fall Before Stendarr!” He roared as he countered with a charge.

   

  By the time Trebonde and the girls exited the tower, one Forsworn was already sprawled in a crushed heap on the stones and Tyranus was hurling the other head first off the ramparts.

   

  “Maybe I should stop taunting him so much…” Trebonde mused. Amari looked queerly at him and he grinned back. “Nah, you’re right. Where are the rest now?”

   

  “Four directly below us, two on the first rampart, the two at the front are running up the tower, and the patrol is returning, fast.”

   

  Tyranus’s gaze flicked across the battlefield. “Ten left, Trebonde take the girls to safety. I will buy you time and meet you in Markarth.”

   

  With that he charged down the eastern tower’s stairway with a war cry on his lips, taking the battle into the narrow corridors and drawing the Forsworn to him.

   

  “Well come on, you heard the man. Let’s move!” Trebonde ushered the girls back to the crevice the from before.

   

  He slid down first then caught Fjorta. Amari was half way down when she sensed the patrol suddenly veer past the main entrance and come straight for them! Amari tried to cry out a warning, but it was too late, a Forsworn sorcerer and warrior were already upon them. They were cornered with nothing but stone to their backs, all she could do was watch in horror as the sorcerer released an empowered fireball. Trebonde covered the Sybil with his body shut his eyes against the impending explosion.

   

  Then a blur dropped from the sky, intercepting the fireball mid-trajectory. The spell burst and the blur flashed a bright purple that drank in the flames. Amari felt a sudden rush of power surge through her link to Scuttles, too much, she felt as if she was about to burst. It needed release. She poured the overload into a sphere before her and launched her own inferno back with a cry.

   

  The ball of fire arced lazily into the Forsworn. The sorcerer brought a ward up in time, but the warrior was washed away in flames. Trebonde looked up in surprise as only a shockwave of heated air swept over them, but he saw an opening in the recoiling sorcerer. He dove into a roll, came up into a lunge, and pierced the Forsworn’s heart.

   

  Trebonde glanced back at Fjorta. “Was that you?”

   

  She shook her head, equally perplexed. Then Amari rolled to a stop between them with her sleeves on fire. The other two immediately started stamping and beating out the flames with vigor.

   

  “Ow, ow, they’re out, stop!” Amari cried out. She stood; gingerly cradling her blistered hands and spitting dirt from her mouth.

   

  “Can you run?” Trebonde asked. She nodded. “Good we can figure out what in Oblivion just happened later.”

   

  They took off back towards Karthwasten and Markarth beyond. Behind them they could still hear Tyranus trying to blow out his opponents’ eardrums with his war cries and the exchange of lightning bolts echoing through the canyon.

   

  At the bridge Amari lurched, almost falling as she doubled over. It felt like she got hit in the gut and then had a fist full of her essence ripped from her.

   

  She got her feet back under her and Trebonde called from over his shoulder. “You good?”

   

  “I’m good,” she managed in a strained voice, but was Scuttles? She felt fear from him, and pain.

   

  They had just made it across the bridge when Amari felt another hit like before. This time it knocked her down and she collapsed hard on her shoulder, twisting to avoid hitting her burnt hands. She felt her life being siphoned through the link to her familiar and cried out in agony.

   

  ‘Shit, come on! We have to keep moving!” Trebonde went to lift her to her feet but she tore away and started worming back towards the bridge.

   

  “No! I have to save him, he’s hurt!” She felt more spectral maws tear and bite into her familiar as they greedily drank in her essence through the link.

   

  “He did that to buy us time, don’t waste it! Come on, we’re going!” Trebonde shouted and then lifted Amari over his shoulder.

   

  “No! No! No!” She screamed, her voice was rising in pitch and becoming more delirious with each outburst. She flailed trying to break free from his grasp, but his grip held. She frantically looked for another escape, but finding none, she took in a final breath and became completely limp.

   

  

   

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