Reunion, Resurrection, Regret, Part II
There’s not much of anything left here anymore but ash and ice. A few corpses so badly charred you couldn’t loot them if you tried. What’s left of the walls do little to keep out the cold and the snow, but Haze found some respite from the wind. Admittedly, she was far more morbidly fascinated by the bodies than she should have been. Black, dry, each one a landscape of skin melted to armor, frost collecting on the peaks like mountains. Namira certainly had painstakingly painted every grotesque detail, every crack and warp of the body, every crumpled torso with limbs bent in ways they shouldn’t.
It gave her a way to pass the time until the snow died down enough to see where she was going.
Shards of tower and rock disappeared into the white overhead. Some rust red of dried blood still clung to stones, ice, people. Everything was muted, intense, otherworldly. Black into white, only broken by rust. Silence and wind, only broken by the crunch of snow under her feet. Cold air, the smell of frost and char, only broken by…
Blood?
Is that fresh blood?
Hairs stood on her back as her hunting instincts drew her to full alert. It was a smell the bosmer knew well, and against such an empty palette it rung loudly, shook her. Who was there? Or what? There’s a fresh kill here.
Quietly, her hands drew the bow without her mind even registering the command was given. Wide eyes and perked ears, breath slow and silent as her heart raced against her efforts to calm it, she crept forward. Did what she could to track it. Her senses were limited but heightened, every icy flake of snow that crashed into her formerly numb face seemed to scream now. Every sound felt louder.
The outline of a body in a heavy suit of armor appeared in the snow. There was no one near it, but that didn’t mean nobody would be. Scanning every silhouette in the ghostly white surrounding her, she began to climb up the incline to the body. Still alive? Not possibly.
The frost was too thick on the metal for it to be fresh.
But then why did she smell warm, newly spilt blood?
The feeling of her foot hitting something in the snow sent a chill up her spine so sharply she swore a mage had shot an ice spike through her back. She went still. Slowly, looking down…
A forehead, an ear stuck out from the snow. Dead. No worry there. Her heart sunk down from her throat. This one was soot black and awful, but if his ear was still there, maybe the rest of him was. And if he wasn’t melted into his armor… then maybe he had some coin on him, yet.
A relieved smile crossed her lips as she reached down to brush the loose snow from his brow–
Warm. He was warm.
“My gods…” she hadn’t felt herself say it, but she’d heard it, as if it had been spoken to her rather than come from her. “I have to start a fire!” Odd words, given the remnants of the blaze that surrounded her. Still, with what minimal proficiency in the flame spell she had and whatever she could find on her to burn, she started a small campfire near a wall as quickly as her hands can work and then returned to the bigger task of digging up the poor sod. “Don’t you die on me now, you bast–” she began.
At some point, once uncovered enough, the head rolled down the hill a few feet.
For the first time in a long time, she felt sick. She’d seen a great many horrid, putrid, grotesque things. She’d admired the most of them. But this? This was ill. This was wrong. That head had no body. It had been buried in snow. And yet it was warm, not frozen or frosted, and the smallest streak of bright, fresh blood trailed in the snow behind it. White, black, rust, red.
Hesitant but compelled by a fascination driven in those who are intrigued by the disturbing and unsound, she retrieved the disembodied head. Held it gingerly. Felt its warmth. Steeled herself for some cruel daedric trick to bring the face to life. It never did. Not as she stared into its half closed, dead eyes, one still fiery amber as if the spirit still burned quietly within somewhere, and one, milky. White. Blind and ghostly. It still did not spring to life as she spoke to it, wiped some soot from its cheeks, turned it and examined it. One side was textured like molten and cooled skin, a texture she knew and loved. The other, dark, olive, leathery. He had tusks. Was obviously once an orc.
“I know this man…” it was a whisper, spoken as if she feared he’d hear her, or somehow hear the images that flooded back into her head of the day she mistakenly crossed an orc in the woods, bloody, raw, dangerous. How he’d left her after she prodded and poked the beast until it snapped. Something akin to fear, but different and indescribable overcame her. There were no other bodies in the snow that had not been mutilated into an unrecognizable clump of flesh and iron. Her eyes turned to the corpse in frosted armor, still lying lifeless at the top of the hill. Her mind, to the smell of fresh blood that had drawn her here. And her feet, of course, to carrying her to the unthinkable before her. Sure enough, as she pulled what she could up out of the snow, the body was headless. She touched his neck; warm.
But more, even. She could feel the faintest… the faintest thum, thum, thum… He had a heartbeat. What in arkay’s asshole.
Curiosity and resolve fueling her, she stuffed the orc’s head into her bag and began trying to coax the body downhill. It was a struggle freeing it from the snow, but once she had, gravity quickly carried the heavy lug down the hill. Sheer force of will and unbridled dark fascination did the rest in pulling him to the fire. This was a bad, idea, and she knew it fully, but she couldn’t stop herself in the name of knowledge.
She’d have made an excellent mage.
As the frost began to thaw into a shiny coat of water droplets over his breast plate, she pressed her ear to the stinging cold metal, not realizing she was smiling. Thum, thum, thum. It was barely there, but there it was. This was exciting. And that was her problem. The thrill of danger in doing something she shouldn’t.
She’d have made a very excellent mage.
Naturally, she had her healing kit on her. Stitches, to hold the head in place. Bandages in case bleeding increased. And advanced healing potions to fuse the two–if he was, in fact, still actually alive.
She readied them all, but doubted she’d need any, as she aligned the orc’s head on his shoulders.
This was absolutely some eerie daedric tomfoolery.
Cold. Gods’ shit, he was so damned cold.
The dry and frigid mountain air may as well have been poison burning down his throat, hitting his lungs with the force of an avalanche. The Orsimer gasped, no, rasped for every precious breath despite the discomfort. Of all the places he expected to wake up, freezing to death on top of a mountain hadn’t been one of them.
That stench. Oddly familiar. Burnt bodies. He knew that scent, and as overpowering as it was, he found that it didn’t bother him. Should it have? There were other scents familiar to him as well, carried on the wind. Prey. Food. He remembered that he was not alone in this body. Had it been another hunt gone awry that had put him out here?
No, that wasn’t possible. He was still wearing his gambeson. The black fabric kept him just insulated enough that he wasn’t freezing his arse off. Still, it was odd. If he’d somehow passed out, the boar should have taken over for him, and that should have meant no clothes.
This was certainly a horker-sized mess he’d gotten himself into. Now, if only he could remember what exactly the mess was. He wracked his brain, searching for names, faces, anything to jog his memory on why in Malacath’s accursed name he’d come here.
Oh… Oh shit.
There was nothing there. Nothing, nobody. Just blank, shadowy lapses where he could sense vague impressions the people and places he’d once known. It was all just gone, erased in an instant. The Orc realized with a jolt of fear that he had not the slightest idea who or what he was.
The chain of sudden revelations was lightning-fast, occurring all in the split seconds while his vision cleared from darkness into hazy light. He was not alone. He caught the scent long before his eye was able to focus in on her. The pungent, saturated aroma told him that the woman could only be one of those ardent denizens of the wilds. Had some hag witch taken him hostage? Erased his memory?
Whatever the case, she was currently stabbing a needle into his neck.
He reached instinctively for a weapon, fingers sinking into naught but icy earth. It was another fraction of an instant before his vision cleared enough for him to make out the details of the figure before him. Elven, Bosmer, exactly as wild-looking as she smelled. But she was small. He could chase her off without a weapon if need be, or snap her in half if it came to it.
But for now, she was the only one who could give him any answers. A powerful hand reached up and clamped around her wrist, accomplishing very little apart from pushing the needle further into his thick skin. Stitches, he realized. His throat struggled against him as he croaked out a question. He didn’t release his grip. “Who the fuck are you?”
Despite having been filled with expectant anticipation of this exact moment since having felt the warmth of his cheeks, the sudden coughing and gasping startled her half white. She'd seen death before, blood and spit sputtering from haggard mouths as the last breaths of life were choked through their throats. Somehow this was different. The air hissed through the gape in his throat as he gasped, blood began to trickle fresh down his neck as though it had been cut fresh.
The entire scene distracted her, was so otherworldly and wrong, that she'd forgotten she was even present and involved with it until the hand seized her wrist. She felt like an elk, stricken, shocked, unsure of coming death. But in spite of herself, she could feel the words boiling up through her throat.
"Stop talkin, idiot! I'm trying to sew your damn fool head back on."
That's probably not exactly what she was wanting to say, least wise to an agitated orc who she knew from past experience could break her.
"Don't squirm an whatever you do don't try to sit up. Last thing I need's to go chasing your damned head down the cliffside, y'hear?"
A moment passed as her body caught up to the casual sass of her voice.
"Don't remember me. That cuts deep, moonsugar."
