Split (1)

train · 180k rows

text stringlengths 0 41.4k
"Because this is the contract we were given, and I can’t think of any other way to find Loche."
The darkening scowl on her face deepened further as we made our way to what passed as the city docks. "I still think that we go back and tumble that place in around his head."
"If he double crosses us, then that will be plan B."
The midday sun was high above us by the time the orc moneylender made his way down the creaking jetty on the end of the city. The Niben stretched out beyond the horizon, dozens of kilometres wide and rolling with tiny waves in the breeze. Far to the north we could see the tip of White Gold Tower appearing from the haze from where City Isle lay hidden beyond the edge of the skyline. Other than the few islands scattered about the bay where Lake Rumare met the Upper Niben and the sails of enormous caravels and trading hulks there was nothing to be seen for kilometres.
While we waited for the burly Orc, Viconia spent the time complaining bitterly, cursing the guild, our contract, the stinking latrine of a city and me in equal measure. She had not been in a pleasant mood for over a week now and it seemed to be steadily getting worse as her personality became ever more corrosive.
Kurdan was good to his word at least, providing a small boat with a set of oars and triangular sail that he insisted on sailing himself. Not one of us trusted the other and as neither Viconia and I had no experience with boats or any idea where the fort was we had little choice but to let him take us. Several kilometres into the open water, steering around the deeper channels where the enormous cargo vessels sailed across the waves we were brought to where the broken mound of walls jutted from the wind-blasted rock. Ancient and fallen into disrepair after being abandoned sometime in the 2nd Era, Fort Grief had once been a base for the Imperial Navy but improvements in sailing and weaponry and the dwindling importance of Bravil had sealed its fate to slowly sink into the depths of the Niben. It was a sorry sight of crumbling stones and decaying walls much like its parent city, but despite the weight of the years against it was still sturdy enough that the walls couldn’t be scaled easily, and the only entrance was the yawning gatehouse.
"What brought your cousin to this place?" I asked the grumbling Kurdan as he pulled in the sails. For the entirety of the journey I had watched him intently, watching how he steered the tiny craft.
"Eh?" he looked up from where he had been tying the sail off onto a set of pegs on the side of the hull. "Oh. He "eard there was old treasures "ere or sumtin’. Damned idiot."
"And were there?"
"Not that I "eard." His temper was fraying with every metre we got closer to the island and I could see him struggling to keep the smirk off his face.
"Why haven’t you come here to reclaim the axe?" Viconia asked from her position at the bow, leaning back and feeling the water spray through her hair as it waved in the breeze.
"I’m afraid of ghosts an’ the dark." There was something close to honesty in his voice as he failed to meet either of our expressions and Viconia and I shared a glance and our mutual foreboding.
Crunching in the gravel the keel pushed through the rocky beach and grounded us on one of the few places where boats could land on the island. Nearly thirty metres up the beach the towering walls of the ancient coastal fortress rose into the sky, decayed but still surprisingly strong.
"Well, we’re "ere." He muttered as he threw out the boat’s tiny anchor into the beach and pulled down the sail. "I suggest yer get to it."
"What does this axe of yours look like?"
With a snarl, and brandishing an oar like a fighting quarterstaff as he planted it into the gravel he motioned vaguely towards the fort, jamming another stick of tabocco into his mouth. "It’s a battleaxe with the word "Dragol’ carved into the "aft. "Uge. Yer can’t miss it." Digging behind a tusk with a grubby finger he nodded to the ruins, the triumphant grin growing on his face with every second. "I ain’t gonna draw yer a picture."
Turning our backs to the Orc Viconia and I made our way towards the gatehouse. For a moment I considered that his plan was to simply leave us on the island and call it a day, but there were a number of fisherman’s boats scattered about the bay, and the deeper water of the upper Niben was the primary route for the trade vessels heading from Leyawiin to the Imperial City. A significant number of them were close enough to hail if a rescue was required which only seemed to increase my growing unease.
"You know that this is a trap." Viconia muttered as we crept through the open gatehouse, looking up at the ancient murder holes and studying the half-closed portcullis.
"Yep." I replied, looking about for signs of anyone before pulling my bow from its leather case that had kept it and its string dry in the trip over. Carefully I strung its impressive weight and nocked a silver tipped arrow with practiced ease. "But an identified trap is one that is already defeated."
"And sticking your head into an illithid’s tentacles gets your brain eaten." She replied bitterly and drew Dragonbane. There was no sign of any danger in the ruins, but there was also no sign of anything in the ruins except the dust of the ages and the occasional crab that called it home.
Entering the courtyard of the fort I immediately started checking all directions and making a mental map of the area. Built in the similar design as hundreds of others throughout the Empire it was a giant rectangle of stone and masonry, one short edge containing the primary gatehouse, and the other containing the inner keep. Five stories tall, fifty metres wide and just as long; the stronghold in the Fort’s interior towered above the surface and sunk at least a single story under the ground. It was built to house a Casta and all the supporting staff and was a separate fort within a fort. Normally unassailable without significant numbers of attackers, the doors had long since fallen into decay and left it permanently opened. The constant moisture had softened the wood and rusted the hinges of the main doors until they lay on the ground like wounded soldiers waiting for the end to come.
Overall the fort itself was impressive, the courtyard mostly cleared of debris and containing a surface area as large as the interior stronghold itself. Age and neglect had ruined it but it was not quite useless; the walls were thick and most of the fort still stood resolute. What concerned me though was that there were signs all over that the fort was not entirely abandoned. Freshly kicked over piles of rubble, mostly fresh bloodstains and the detritus of several individuals such as scraps of clothing were scattered about at random.
Some rubble shifted as we moved closer to the interior fort’s doors, and within a heartbeat both Viconia and I had twisted at the sound. My bow was suddenly raised, the arrow’s fletching tickling my jaw and ear and Viconia’s hand was wreathed in crackling energies even before we identified the source of the noise.
Clothed in a dusty doublet and linen pants, an elderly Breton slid from where he had been crouching and shrieked in terror at the weapons suddenly pointing in his direction.
"Oh gods!" he wailed, curling up as best he could to present a smaller target. "Please! Please don’t kill me! I... I’ll get Kurdan his money I swear!"
"Who in Shar’s name are you meant to be?" Viconia hissed threateningly as neither of us lowered our weapons in the slightest.
"Aleron. Aleron Loche..." He whimpered, and my unease increased dramatically. "Who.... Who are you?"
"I’m Kaius." My bow lowered to the ground and the tension was carefully released from the string as I gestured between Viconia and myself. "My eloquent companion there is Viconia."
The flash of white hot anger twisted Viconia’s expression into one of hate as she swore consistently in Drow and kicked a rock across the surface of the courtyard. Aleron’s look of terror didn’t subside at her anger or at our heavily armoured appearances.
"Kurdan... H-he didn’t send you?"
I shook my head as Viconia stormed off a few metres away. "No. We’re with the Fighter’s Guild. Your wife contracted us to find you."
The expression of terror only increased at my words and sweat stained his tunic. "That means... Oh no..."
Eyes widening in fear he suddenly grinned a smile of one who had come to accept his fate. "It appears as though Kurdan has tricked another poor soul with his "axe" story."
"Yeah, we guessed that it was a trap of some kind."
My response did little to allay his fears, if anything he appeared even more morose than before. "And yet you still came. You haven't guessed it yet? There never was any Axe of Dragol, it was just a ruse to lure you out here. I fell for the same trick, but in my case, he told me if I retrieved the axe, he'd erase my debts." His head shook sadly and looked almost on the verge of tears. "I was such an idiot to believe him."
Viconia slid up the walls with her usual grace and hunched down behind the parapets and I looked about the abandoned fort and noticed that other than the gatehouse there was no other way out other than a six metre drop over the walls. A trivial height for Viconia and I but looking over the aging and frail Breton before me I knew that he’d be lucky not to end up killed by the fall.
"You're now the prey in Kurdan's insane hunt, just like I am." He continued as he looked between Viconia and I as we moved about the courtyard and walls. "And here, we'll most likely die."
There was a sigh and he sat down heavily on the pile of rubble that he had been hiding behind. "Kurdan doesn't make most of his money being a simple usurer. He also invented what he calls "the Hunter’s Run’. People pay him a great deal of money to hunt and kill living human prey. No questions asked, and he takes care of the bodies. He uses this place as the hunting grounds. I was placed here because he knew someone would go looking for me and it appears as though you too have become the prey for his twisted game."
Viconia called out from her place on the battlements and I could feel the anger resonating in every word. "There’s some boats landing on the shore."
"How many?" I called out, looking about and realising the opened gatehouse was going to be no hindrance for what was coming.
"Three boats, four people in each. They must have been waiting offshore for us to arrive." Several bloodcurdling howls echoed across the island and I felt my guts clench and bowels turn watery with expectation. "And they have dogs."
"I'm sorry you got mixed up in all of this." Aleron had gone as pale as a freshly drained corpse and he hurriedly made the mark of Stendarr with such energy I was surprised his fingers didn’t fly away on their own accord. "I hope you can fight. It's our only chance of escaping alive."
"How long have you been here?" I spun so fast that he flinched away from me as though stuck.
"Any other way out of the fort or off the island?"
"Unless you can swim across the open water or find a fisherman that isn’t in Kurdan’s pocket or threatened by him; there’s no way off the island. As for the fort, there is the rear gatehouse in the depths of the central building but its locked. Only the hunters carry the keys for it."
The baying of the hounds grew in intensity and I could almost feel them straining at their leashes. From the barking they were sizable animals and trained to hunt humans or other large beasts.
Viconia dropped lightly to the ground and barely made a sound from the drop. Carefully rising to her feet she brushed the slight traces of dust from her vambraces while looking over Aleron and myself. "Well... They’re coming."
"A dozen hunters and a couple of dogs. Not bad odds."
Spitting on the ground she looked at me and tightened her hood. "I hate dogs."
Looking between the two of us Aleron was beginning to lose himself to his rising panic. "I wish I could help more, but I can't fight. I've never held a weapon before in my life! Please... get us out of here!"
"Can you find your way to the rear gate?" I asked him, replacing my silver tipped arrow with a cruelly pointed bodkin made of high grade steel.
He nodded with nervous eyes and dripping with sweat. The whites of his eyes were highly visible now, as he continued looking between us and the open gatehouse in the walls as the sounds of the approaching dogs grew louder.
"I’m guessing you have some form of plan?" Viconia’s voice was dripping with scorn and sarcasm but she too was listening to the bays of the hunting dogs.
"The two of us, and a darkened series of tunnels and rooms?" My grin was more terrifying to Aleron as I pulled my mask up over my face and pulled my hood down until all that could be seen was the darkened shadows where my eyes were. "It almost doesn’t seem fair."
My grin was returned by one of her own as she tucked her bone white hair into her own hood and ensured her headband was tight.
As a tiny group we began making our way to the central keep, keeping our eyes on the exterior gatehouse even as I glanced to our elderly charge. "Aleron, I want you to make your way to the back entrance to this place."
"But the hunters-"
"We’ll worry about the hunters. You just get yourself to the other end. I’m guessing this place has been set up like a maze or a series of tunnels?" His feverish nod confirmed what I was beginning to suspect about this place. "This place has been purposely changed to make it easier for these bastards to chase us down. There’s not going to be anywhere to hide and the dogs they have mean that they are prepared for us to run. We’ll hold them off, you just make your way to the other door and wait for us."
He saw the darkness in my eyes and the building anger at finding ourselves stuck in such a predicament. He nodded briefly, before shuffling his way as fast as his aging frame would allow him.
Viconia and I stood in the darkened doorway and watched the opened gatehouse on the far side of the courtyard. "I’ll take care of the dogs." I said simply, feeling her eyes rest on me for a moment. "We’ll let them into the fort and take them apart."
"As always jaluk, your effectiveness in battle makes me ache with desire." She replied sarcastically, watching as I pulled back on my bow and point it in the direction of taunting hunting calls and howling dogs.
The group of them appeared in the shadows of the outer gatehouse, clad in various types of armour and with three of them almost being dragged along by the beasts straining on the ends of their leashes. They were all armoured and heavily equipped, almost comically so if they had originally come with the intent of killing an elder Breton with far too many winters under his belt. Against Viconia and I was a different situation entirely as they soon realised as I released my first arrow.
A Dunmer judging by his netch-hide armour folded over with a gurgling scream as my arrow punched into his chest and speared a lung. Coughing pink froth, he tried to rise to his feet with the help of one of his comrades, but a second arrow punched into him shortly after the first and left him clutching at the feathered shaft where the fletching jutted from his throat. Within a second of appearing one of their number was already down with mortal wounds and they all realised that this hunt was not going to the same as any others they had experienced.
Nodding to Viconia she vanished into the tunnels like a shadow, moving with all the grace and ability of someone born and bred in the darkness. I fired another arrow that was wasted on a stout roundshield carried by a hulking Nord, before turning and fading into the darkness after Viconia and Aleron.
The cries of anger and growing bloodlust fought with the baying of the hunting dogs for audial supremacy as I flitted through the shadows of the fort. Like I had suspected, over countless hunts Kurdan had gone to considerable effort to create a series of passages through the rooms and corridors of the abandoned fort. Doorways had been blocked with rubble or forcibly collapsed. Passageways were blocked off by stacked piles of ruined furniture and the broken skeletons of boats wrecked on the beach and several "dead ends’ were created that were in a lot of ways not just figurative.
Within seconds I had vanished down a corridor, purposely travelling down a separate passage to Viconia and using my enhanced senses to track not only the hunters and their animals but Aleron but the panicky tempo of his heart. The darkness slipped away into greyness as crabs and the odd rodent scattered before my unnatural presence and soon I found myself in a position where I decided to make my stand.
My bow was placed against the wall, carefully out of the way where it wouldn’t get damaged and Sunchild found itself in my hand. The howls of the hunting dogs were echoing through the fort now, their terrible barking adding an extra level of horror to the extraordinary situation. I stood in the centre of the passage before the hollowed-out room that had once been a barracks and waited, tapping Sunchild against the doorframe to send the metallic echo through the darkness and draw the pursuers towards me.
I did not have long to wait, as the excitable growls and barking of the hunting beasts grew in volume until they exploded around the corner. Thickly muscled, the enormous Colovian mastiffs barrelled their way down the hall in my direction as they followed my scent. Grinning fiercely, my face tightening under the mask I saw how all three of the dogs had chosen to come after me once the slipped their leashes and readying myself for their charge I met them head on.
The first of the enormous brutes, easily half my bodyweight and consisting of dense bone and solid muscle launched itself at me with the intent to rend my throat or drag me down by the arm. Bred for hunting boars; they were solid creatures of brute strength and obedience, further enhanced by the fact that they wore a collection of thick leather and metal plates protecting them from a blades edge or tusk.
In midair I caught the animal by the throat, picking it up bodily with my left hand and slamming it into the wall even as I gutted it and cut its heart out with Sunchild. It died in a second, its barking roar cut off in mid breath before I hurled its corpse at the other two following it. All three went down in a tangle of limbs and gore, their charge stopping as surely as they had run head first into a brick wall and I faced off against them as the surviving two picked themselves up.
Growling and snapping they faced me, their training allowing them to stand before me and lead the trailing hunters to my location. Understanding the threat of the sword in my hand the two of them hunched down like coiled springs, both still reaching my hip in height and easily sixty kilograms of muscle and animalistic fury.
My own animal rose to the surface and I roared at the two hunting dogs with a face split by a fanged filled maw. The unnatural nature of my vampiric side and the daedric corruption was enough to transend species and for a moment they paused, their barking and growling stopping as confusion entered their canine minds. Ears lowered flat to skulls, tails suddenly dropping between their legs as they caught my foul sulphuric scent on the air and with some deep-seated instinct they took a step backward away from my darkened form before bolting from the room back the way they came.
Only seconds behind them the group of hunters encountered their trained and highly prized animals sprinting from the depths of the fort as fast as their legs could carry them. I heard one of their number go down as he was barrelled off his feet by sixty kilograms of terrified animal, cursing and moaning with pain even as the rest of his party whistled and tried in vain to regain control of their dogs. Buoyed by the confidence that travelling in a group of armed men provides, the half dozen that rounded the corner were beginning to feel the first prangs of uncertainty. One of their number was dead even before they got into the fort itself, and now two of their maneaters had run whimpering and pissing themselves in fear instead of hunting and killing the trio of individuals in the ruins. My bloodthirsty roars hadn’t helped their morale and they now moved a little more cautiously, their taunting cries falling silent as they readied their weapons and stalked the ruins.
Their cries of surprise and exclamation reached my ears as they stumbled across the eviscerated corpse of the third dog. Before fading into the shadows, I had hacked it apart, spreading entrails, limbs and blood across several metres of passageway and walls. Their uncertainty was now growing every stronger, used to hunting defenceless men and women they were not mentally prepared for facing someone that could and would make a fight of it.
"What in Oblivion’s name has Kurdan dumped in here this time..." One muttered as he stepped through the cooling remains. To a man they were sweating now, glancing ahead into the shadows but failing to detect me from where I stood in the room.
"This is nothing." Another one said, moving into the centre of the room with a burning torch held before him. An orc of considerable build, he squinted into the darkness and tried to make out footprints in the dust of the floor but only seeing Aleron’s. "One time he managed to get one of those Morag Tong fellas in here. That was interesting to say the least."
Ghosting around to the rear of the group, I slid up close behind one of their number. The handful at the front were the only ones holding torches which allowed me to get in close without losing my ability to merge with the darkness.
"I’m not sure if I’d want to be part of this with an assassin running loose." Dressed in a richly made silk surcoat and chainmail, the Imperial in front of me shook his head hard enough that his nasal helm rattled. "I didn’t pay Kurdan to get killed."
"But that’s exactly what’s going to happen." I hissed into his ear, feeling the jolt of terrified surprise flow through him and the nearest hunters as I appeared behind them.
Sunchild punched through the back of his neck, leaving him gurgling and spasming as thirty centimetres of blade erupted out of his mouth in a flood of gore. To their credit the other five moved with remarkable ease, twisting with all the speed granted to them by adrenaline and bloodlust to find themselves staring into a monster.
Little more than a blackened silhouette in the gloom I exploded into activity, twisting and weaving through them as they hacked and slashed at me. They moved precisely, covering each other with a practiced skill even as I got amongst them and killed relentlessly
A blade was parried by Sunchild, leaving the owner open and free for my dagger to slash his throat and leave him clutching at the mortal wound. A downwards strike of a mace from the orc was simply twisted aside from, leaving it to thud into the floor and the owner openly gaping at my unnatural speed. I ducked down, punching him in the face, feeling the whistling crossbow bolt pass though the space where my shoulders had been even as I flicked my wrist and sent my dagger tumbling into the horrified face of the crossbowman. Another blade was parried aside with a clang of metal and a shower of sparks, grasping the haft of a spear with my suddenly free hand and wrenching its owner off his feet and spearing the orc in the chest with its wicked point.
The falling crossbowman’s sheathed blade was pulled from its owner’s belt as he writhed on the floor, screaming with a bloodied face and a dagger lodged deep into a cheek and jawbone. Holding the hilt blade down I jammed it into a foot, pinning one of the hunters to the floor shrieking even as I kicked him away with enough force that a large portion of filled boot was left behind.
I was untouchable, twisting aside from attacks and leaving them utterly confounded as I took lives with impunity. The downed orc with the spear in the chest roared as he tried to rise before I stabbed him in the face with my acquired sword. Another dropped on his face as Sunchild plucked him bodily from the floor, folding him over the blade before twisting it out in a wash of blood and dropping him like a sack of potatoes. Before they had even realised what was happening four of them were dead or dying messily on the floor and only two remained.
The Nord with the battered round shield came at me swinging, hiding behind the layers of laminated wood and metal and slashing and cutting with his fighting axe. I caught the curved head with the tip of Sunchild, twisting it out of his grasp and grabbing his metal rimmed shield with my other hand. With the sound of a collapsing belltower he bounced off the wall, the runic steel armour protecting him from the impact against the aged stones but doing little more for him as I stabbed him in the chest and speared his heart.
Screaming with terror at the ease that I had slew his comrades, the final and last hunter dropped his hammer and ran, fleeing in the direction of the dogs and barely even making it to the doorway. Falling upon him I picked him from the ground, lifting him up with both arms with enough force that he rebounded off the ceiling in a shower of dust and stone fragments. Now winded and gasping for breath there was nothing he could do as I pulled my mask away from my changed features and sunk my fangs into his throat.
Six hunters had died in twice as many seconds and I stood up amidst the carnage, licking the wetness around my lips with a tongue that felt unusually long and scaly around the sharpness of my fangs. The crossbowman was left writhing on the floor, desperately pulling at the dagger lodged deep into his face and hacking wetly as his sinuses and throat continuously filled with blood. The Redguard I had lifted from the floor with Sunchild was moaning and clutching at his belly where the curved edge had made a mockery of the brigandine leather and left him gutted, and with precise stabs I finished both off, licking the blood from my blades before returning them to their sheaths.
Sounds of fighting throughout the fort was dying away as quickly as their owners and I could hear the suddenly cut-short whimpers as the other two wardogs were slain. Judging by the cries of pain and suffering, Viconia had dealt with the other hunters and the dogs had been killed by one or more of the hunters themselves as they turned on their handlers in their fear of me.
The sensations of multiple heartbeats in the ruins dwindled away to my mind and I could sense the panicky heartbeat of Aleron in the farthest reaches, and the slightly increased heartrate of Viconia’s. Ghosting through the ruins after clearing the pockets and fingers of the deceased hunters of valuables and a collect of random keys I quickly made my way to Viconia.
She sensed by presence as I wafted through the door where she was surrounded by a collection of messily slaughtered hunters. Instinctively her sword came up to my throat even before I had finished emerging from the shadows, looking on Viconia with my mortal eyes and seeing little more than her lithe shadow and the glints of her eyes in the depths of her hood.
"So much for taking care of the dogs." She said simply, the annoyance dripping from every word as Dragonbane slid into its sheath once more. "I’m not going to do your job for you all the time mal’ai."
"I killed more of the hunters than you." I said simply as my face returned to normal. "I wasn’t expecting the dogs to run away from me."
"Well, if you bathed more often then you mightn’t fight off adversaries with stench alone." Drawing a knife she cut away a couple of keys hanging around their deceased owners throats before acquiring their rings by the expediency of hacking off fingers. Her anger had definitely been increasing every day since that morning in Glenvar and I didn’t have a single clue what to do about it. For a minute or two I watched as she satisfied herself with the small collection of baubles and coins that she found on the hunters’ bodies before the two of us faded through the shadows of the fort, leaving the slaughter behind us.
The exit to the ruins was in a sorry state; a tiny open aired gatehouse where the roof had collapsed long ago and left a ten metre by ten metre open space of gravel and broken bricks. The doors however were quite possibly the best maintained pieces of construction on the entire island and had been secured with chains thicker than a thumb and a lock that looked strong enough to withstand blows from a Warhammer.
The gates however were already open, the lock discarded on the ground and chains hanging from the metal spikes that had been rammed into the wood of the door. Thick and unyielding, the wooden bar that had normally kept the doors closed from the other side had also been thrown to the ground, its treachery no longer needed.
As Viconia and I exited the darkness of the fort’s interior we both came to a sudden halt. Standing in the now opened doorway was the towering form of Kurdan, holding the kneeling Aleron in front of him by the hair. The old man had been beaten in the minutes it had taken for Viconia and I to make our way to the rear gate, and a quick glance at the enormous plank that normally barred the doors from the outside told me everything I needed to know. This "game’ as such was never meant for the hunted to survive.
"I'm impressed that you killed all my clients." Kurdan exclaimed as we exited the ruins, covered in gore with not a drop our own. "Doesn't matter. More will come along with their purses fat with gold and "earts lustin" for blood."
He was now dressed in thick orichalcum plates from the heart of Orsinium; jagged layers overlapping and providing incredible protection while almost looking cobbled together messily. Now easily weighing as much as Viconia and I combined he was an impressive sight, if considerably lessened by the fact that a dozen others similarly dressed were left as cooling corpses in the forts behind us in less than half an hour.
Obviously waiting for us or the hunters to appear, he had been at the gate when Aleron had run in terror from the tunnels. In the minutes since recapturing him he had proceeded to beat him mercilessly, leaving the old man’s face a map of pain and horrid bruising under the thinning skin and blood running from the ruin of his face. Groaning with agony and barely conscious, the only way he was remaining upright on his knees was Kurdan’s fingers wrapped in the grey mop of hair on his head.
Kurdan gestured to Aleron forcibly kneeling between us and chuckled. "Too bad "bout Aleron. At least now he's free of "is debt... ha ha ha ha!"

Subsets and Splits

No community queries yet

The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.