conjuredskies | III: Third Seed

Felix had already decided he needed somewhere secure to store the materials - and test the knowledge - he’d been busy gathering. Somewhere reliable - thus, not the Nexus - and private - thus, not the camp. Preferably nowhere in Skyrim at all. Vile’s tongue, he was about ready to throw that benighted, pointless province to the dragons by now.

And so, what else? He went home.

Bruma didn’t feel the same. Maybe the houses were rougher and lower, the wind less biting than he’d thought. He walked the streets with his hood up to avoid being recognized, and noticed things. How people glanced around themselves as they chatted, how they measured out their words and changed subjects as the stranger passed by. How little they gave away. How swift the silence fell when a pair of Thalmor emissaries walked by, heading toward the chapel.

He’d grown too used to the Nexus. Used to people who spoke freely and carelessly and paid not a thought to who was listening. People who lived fearlessly. Or knew they ought to, at least.

Fuck, Felix… this isn’t right.

I know, Jim. I just can’t change it.

Not yet.

His feet carried him out beyond the northern gate before he knew it. That was fine. He knew where he was going. He turned west, on the path into the sparse mountain woods. Bruma was a hunter’s town, and though he met no-one the trails were well-traveled. When his path grew uncertain he called up his familiar and let it guide him through the undergrowth as dusk fell around them.

Like a dream, the ruin was exactly where he expected. Broken arches reared up between the pines, glittering bone-white under the stars. Felix walked among the shadowed stones and broken pillars, his ghostly wolf bounding ahead, waiting by the doors. He pressed a hand to bare stone, and it ground open with more noise than reluctance. Inside, the steps led downward, to the flickering light of torches, and the eerier lights of the ruin itself. And the scent of recent death.

His familiar huffed the air deeply and growled. Felix sighed and conjured a blade. Well, it was to be expected. Necromancers do get in everywhere.

It took the best part of a day to hunt them all down. Perhaps two, but without sunlight he didn’t notice. Felix had an atronach drag the bodies into a room where the stink would be less bothersome. Meanwhile, he inspected the former residents’ experiments. He was beyond playing squeamish. It seemed absurd to him now that he understood so little of what he was seeing. He’d done so many things no conjurer alive could dream of- and yet how little he knew of half the school he professed to study. How could he expect to protect anyone that way? How could he expect to really wield his own power with such willful blindness?

Keep an open mind, Felix.

He still didn’t much like them. They were such crude experiments. Disgusting. He’d have done better, if he was the sort. Just because you sought knowledge didn’t mean you had to be so pointlessly grotesque about it. These were Imperial citizens being mutilated, for Mora’s sake. He’d have an atronach burn them.

Then he’d truly begin his work.