As they climbed back up to Saarthal Onmund marveled at how much easier it was to make very minor changes to the environment (as he carved out stairs and created walkways from earth and stone ripped from the walls or dug into steep inclines, all so they could climb a roughshod but solid staircase all the way back up to the dragon wall room) versus trying to push outward against seemingly infinite tons of dirt and rock - he'd only practiced this sort of thing in the storage room and had been limited in what he was able and allowed to do, but with so much empty space here he felt only limited by what he could imagine and not by his personal skill level with the magic.
((continued below cut))
Brelyna had looked surprised and impressed at the skill as Onmund dug and shaped, and expressed an interest in learning it herself; he was able to show her a few things on the way up (and it was a very...VERY long climb) but found the bulk of his attention was needed to actually shift and shape the path, and as he worked he began to send his senses outward and started to piece together how things had opened up enough to allow him to fall through a year ago.
Here and there he could sense very tiny openings zig-zagging around them - none of them were wider than two or three of his fingers - and they stretched roughly from the direction of Kestrel's buried home up toward the surface. It occurred to him that they couldn't have been underground without any means of getting air down there -- Kestrel might not need to eat or drink but surely she still needed to breathe, and so did he. As he pressed outward, tediously following along the crazy, winding, random paths of these little...air holes, he supposed, he began to match up their shapes and paths with the haphazard parts he'd tumbled down; at some point in the past someone must have found one of the tiny openings (he'd ask how they found it and why they wouldn't assume it was some kind of animal or insect burrowing, but they WERE dealing with the Prince of Schemes here) and had started digging their way down...and as they dug and shifted dirt (and removed a lot of it) the ground started to become unstable and collapse, which only made the openings wider, steeper, and more dangerous to navigate.
Whoever had started the digging probably had no clear idea of where they were actually going and kept following the air hole tunnels, creating bigger holes and a steadily growing mess of open areas that eventually crossed paths with part of a glacier that let the ice invade the tunnels and add erosion into the jumbled chaos, and once he had a mental map of the jagged, dug out path from top to bottom he realized that yes...it really HAD been pure chance that he'd not only survived the fall but had managed to fall through the areas that were connected all the way down to crash through into the large cavern-like room where Kestrel kept her pet spider-construct (which, in his mind's eye, felt partially like a "blank" area in the earth -- he assumed Kestrel had warded the place to avoid detection and that PROBABLY prior to Varea's invasion he wouldn't have been able to see any of the compound at all).
Not for the first time Onmund wished he'd had parchment and something to write with, to see if he could accurately sketch out everything he was sensing -- he tried a few times to describe the paths to Brelyna but it was difficult to describe something like this in a lot of detail without any visual aids. Not being able to "see" the shape of the compound and its rooms also made description rather difficult -- what he could sense stopped at the top half of the web-filled room where the spider was and couldn't go further, though he remembered quite well what the inside of that webbed room had looked like (and he still shuddered at the memory).
He did wonder why the spider had taken him to Kestrel... Maybe it, as a magical construct, could sense magic in turn and that's how it knew to take him somewhere...Kestrel did say he wouldn't have been left alive if he'd not had magical talent, but that didn't explain WHY the creature would know to do that if no one had ever fallen before Onmund had come along; maybe the thing had once been used as another defense when she'd lived among mortals above ground and it was trained to bring anything it found to her whether it was magical or not.
...not that it really mattered how or why or anything like that now, and though he put the spider out of his mind to focus on his current task he did find himself curious if he could create a construct of his own sometime.
Assuming he lived through whatever was coming.
When they finally shoved their way through the dead roots and vines that crisscrossed the floor at the base of the dragon wall Onmund was mentally and physically exhausted, and laid there on his back for a moment to catch his breath after he'd hauled himself up onto the ring of solid ground around the vines.
"Are you all right? I can go find the supplies on my own if-"
He shook his head, flashing Brelyna a tired smile. "I'll be all right, I just need a second."
She nodded and dropped down to sit beside him; he closed his eyes to try and gather himself and when he opened them he found Brelyna staring at him. "...what?"
"It's just hard for me to believe everything you've told me...everything you've been through. And to think, I was mad at you for not letting us know you were alive."
Onmund chuckled a bit and she joined in after a brief pause. "Believe me, those first few weeks all I could think about was escaping, and I still thought about it even after she almost killed me. It wasn't so bad after awhile but when I finally saw the crown and understood how serious it all was, THAT was when I finally stopped thinking of escape in any form. I mean, sure, I missed everyone, and it was difficult to wrap my head around being immortal, and-" he stopped and let out a noisy huff of breath. "-actually, I'm still not sure I've come to peace with that yet. It was one thing to imagine that I'd grow old and die down there and no one would ever know what happened to me, but it's something COMPLETELY different to know that I'm not going to grow old and feeble, that I'm going to outlive everyone I've ever known. If I never return to the surface I guess it'd be the same thing as dying - the same thing to everyone up here, anyway - because I'd still reach a point where no one knows or remembers me. To the world I'm just...gone. The world is going to change and I'll be the same."
"Physically, maybe," Brelyna said after a moment. "That doesn't mean your mind, your emotions, or even your spirit are incapable of changing."
"I guess. Still. The thought of outliving everything I know NOW is...weird, and uncomfortable. It might be different if I'm up on the surface as a part of the world and changing with it but until the crown is dealt with there's no returning here. I may as well be dead."
He went quiet after that and so did she -- laying there in the silence letting his mind and body rest helped a great deal and soon enough he was rolling over to push himself to his feet. "All right, let's grab what we're after and get back - I feel safer down there than here."
Saarthal felt even eerier now -- knowing that those most familiar with the place were under the control of...whatever Varea was, and could potentially have trapped or sabotaged this place on their way in, wasn't a pleasant thought; if Varea had never intended for anyone but herself to leave it seemed reasonable to be wary of any nasty surprises left behind but thankfully they encountered nothing but normal, dusty, crumbling halls. And about halfway back to one of the front rooms that they'd used as a sort of home base Onmund sighed loudly enough for Brelyna to hear.
"What?"
"It just occurred to me that... All right, thinking back to the very beginning, one of the things I'd held out hope for was if anything happened to Kestrel then I'd go back to normal. No more immortality or anything like that."
Brelyna partly turned around to look at him curiously, then nodded as understanding crossed her face. "And that didn't happen."
"That didn't happen," Onmund repeated, sighing again. "I should just stop thinking about it...there's no telling if I'll even survive a fight with Varea, or with whatever that crown actually does."
"Well if you're going to think like that maybe you should focus on the immortality," Brelyna snorted, turning back around. "You can't go into a battle already expecting to lose."
"YOU haven't seen what we're up against...and you also don't have the training that I do," he added quietly. They fell silent again and remained that way as they located the abandoned supplies and began to pack food and waterskins into a pair of burlap sacks; Onmund wished they had actual backpacks so he'd have both hands free on the way back down but he consoled himself with the fact that there'd been food left here at all -- he didn't want to venture anywhere near Winterhold or the College at the moment (and for good reason).
By Brelyna's estimation of her own needs they packed about twelve days (if rationed carefully) of supplies into the now-hefty sacks, then let their footsteps turn back toward the far end of Saarthal; on the trek back down Onmund was careful to rip up and tear apart the stairs he'd created - easy enough even with one hand - and he even closed up the hole in the webbed room for good measure.
They left the food and water in Onmund's room and then found themselves staring awkwardly at one another, both with the unspoken question of "now what?" on their minds.
"-I have no idea how long Kestrel needs to recover," he started. "And, um...honestly, no idea what to do while we wait for her. I can always practice my spells and maybe show you what she's shown me? -- oh, wait. Let me show you the library."
He hurried out of his room and out into the hall, pausing to let Brelyna catch up with him, and then led her over to the doorway of the library; there he paused and managed a sort of mischievous grin. "Prepare to be amazed. I know I was."
The latch lifted under his hand and he pushed the door open then muttered and started the chain reaction of the lanterns lighting; he stepped out of her way to let her inside in time to watch as the library steadily brightened, and he grinned again at her look of surprise.
"...it's huge."
"Yes it is. With books Kestrel's only rules are don't damage them, don't write directly in them, and don't take a book out of the room its stored in. Other than that, read whatever you want."
Brelyna stared around, then roughly elbowed Onmund in the side hard enough that he grunted. "You were alive down here all this time AND you had this many books. I can't believe you."
Onmund rubbed the sore spot on his ribs with a grimace and a smile. "I'll leave you to it - I want to get some sleep. I'm...not sure if Kestrel's rules about exploring are going to apply to you so try to stay in here, in the sitting room, or in my room."
Her left her to wander among the shelves and retreated back to his room, falling into bed without even kicking his boots off. There wasn't a way to tell how long he was asleep but it felt like he'd awakened too soon; groggily he rolled out of bed and straightened his clothing...then went to his wardrobe and changed into clean clothes (he really wanted a bath, but also didn't want to be caught unawares by anything or anyone while naked). When he went looking for Brelyna he found her curled up in the pile of cushions in the sitting room with a few books stacked nearby -- for a brief moment he felt like an ass for not offering her the bed and taking the floor himself but she looked comfortable ensconced among the pillows and with her books so he let her be.
Of course that left him still wondering what else he should be doing; after pacing the hall a bit (and listening carefully at Kestrel's door for any sign of movement) he went into the Hall of Mirrors and began to go through his usual exercises. He didn't quite have enough energy or desire to get through all of them (it was going to take more than one nap to recover from all the torment Varea had put him through) but right as he was dropping down to sit against the wall he heard what he thought was Kestrel's door open.
Or, what he HOPED was her door. What he knew for certain was A door had opened in the hall.
Clambering back to his feet Onmund quickly moved back to the doorway and stuck his head through; his spirits rose a bit to see that yes, it WAS Kestrel's door that was standing open but he couldn't see Kestrel herself, and as he took a step into the hallway he heard a yelp from Brelyna. He broke into a run and skidded into the door frame of the sitting room where he could see Kestrel's hunched back and Brelyna's legs kicking out at the cadaverously thin mage.
"Hey! Stop! Kestrel, wait-!"
An invisible force blasted him out of the room; he hit the ground and rolled, landing almost upside down against the wall across from the door. He quickly righted himself and hurried back into the room in time to see Kestrel rising from the floor; she looked awful - worse than she'd looked when he'd first met her - and as he watched she spun and in one motion lit the fireplace and tossed something into it that audibly splattered and then sizzled in the growing flames.
Brelyna lay on the cushion pile where Onmund had found her before, and was silently crying and tightly gripping a bloodied area on her shoulder.
--in the same place Tolfdir and the others had had an injury.
Onmund hurried over and fell beside her. "Let me see, let me-"
"Heal her up, apprentice," came Kestrel's gravely order. "We've a lot of things to discuss."
He managed to pry Brelyna's hands off her shoulder -- her robes were ripped open at the shoulder seam and he grimaced when he saw the palm-sized area of raw meat there. It looked like Kestrel had just cut out a wide circle of flesh but as Onmund began to heal the wound and the skin pulled together he could barely make out a whitish scar forming in its center that was...some kind of ugly, angular rune. "What did you do?"
"Removed the mark," came Kestrel's answer. She staggered over to a chair (not her usual chair) before the fire and collapsed into it. "Taking no chances. She's clean and free now."
Onmund nodded absently at that - there wasn't a reason to argue against freeing Brelyna from any sort of magic of Varea's - and used the sleeve of his shirt to mop up some of the blood; once she was healed and had a moment to calm down Brelyna shot Kestrel an angry look.
"You could have just explained what you were doing instead of grabbing me like that."
Kestrel didn't move from where she sat with her head leaned back and mouth slightly open, and for a few breaths didn't even respond. "...difficult to talk. Not important enough to waste strength on."
Onmund conjured a little globe of water and thrust his hands in, swishing around to clean the blood off before tossing the orb out toward the hall and drying his hands on his shirt; he then cautiously approached Kestrel, eying her up and down. That softer, more alive look he'd seen on her corpse earlier was gone and she was even more gaunt than before, and her skin was a pasty white save for where it was tinged blue around her lips, eyes, and under her fingernails. "...can I do anything to help you?" he asked quietly. Again she didn't move, and he settled on the floor at her feet. "Would healing magic help?"
Kestrel very, very slowly shook her head. "What helps I won't ask for. Tell me everything."
He winced a bit at her voice - the more she talked the more hoarse it grew. "All right, just - I'll talk, you listen."
"Start."
He was faintly aware of Brelyna righting herself in the cushion pile, listening to him as he recounted how he'd awakened in the College, how Varea had initially introduced herself and then how everything had steadily gone downhill; he tried to gloss over the torture but didn't miss how Kestrel's jaw clenched when he'd mentioned it, and he was starting to go a little hoarse himself by the time he'd told the whole tale.
For a time the only sound in the room was Kestrel's raspy breathing and the pop of the fire (the chunk of flesh had long since burned to ash), and Onmund remained at her feet waiting for an order, or...or something. She looked ready to keel over even if her body seemed intact; whatever that coffin had done had restored her but she seemed so weak and fragile...he prayed it was only brief, only temporary, because if Kestrel was in no shape to handle Varea then he had no idea what they could hope to do.
Finally, with some effort, she raised her head and then let it drop to her chest, fixing her gaze on Onmund. "Did well. Proud of you."
He managed a small smile at the praise, but it quickly disappeared. "You don't need to waste words on that. Are you sure I can't help you? Is there a spell I just don't know yet that could-"
She managed to hold up a hand and he went quiet again at the gesture. "Blood, apprentice. Quickest. But I refuse to take it. Another few days, will recover."
Blood...he should have thought of that. She WAS a vampire after all. "You just need blood? That'll help you heal? How much blood?"
She was already shaking her head. "No."
Suddenly Brelyna was standing behind him. "Why not? You're a vampire, don't you need blood to survive?"
"Not technically," Onmund answered, before Kestrel did. "They won't die without it. ...but if you'll heal faster then why won't you take it? I'm offering it - we have to get that crown back and a few days might be all she'd need to create a disaster," he went on, turning his attention back to Kestrel. "I'm immortal, right? It won't kill me."
Kestrel fixed him with a glare. "NOT immune to harm," she hissed, jabbing a bony finger into the middle of his forehead. "Think, apprentice."
"Then use us both?" Brelyna asked hesitantly. "Take half of what you need from him, and half from me...unless, that'll somehow make us vampires too?"
"No."
"-does it have to be human or Mer blood?" he growled. Her pointy, bony finger poking at him had hurt more than he'd expected. "Can I go catch a deer or a goat and let you drain that?"
Kestrel went quiet - he assumed she was thinking - but then shook her head again. "Too risky. Can't rely on 'what ifs.' Can't rush into unknown situation."
"But if we don't stop her-"
She held up a hand again to silence him. "Aware of risks. Calculating best course for success. I will not take your blood...too risky. Accidentally turning you is a danger."
He let out a frustrated sigh but didn't push it further; it wasn't like she'd suddenly decided against taking his blood and he definitely didn't want to wake up as a vampire one day...and yet for this one situation he thought the risk of turning was laughably lesser than the danger the crown posed.
"Can I...can I bleed into something?" he asked -- this would be his last attempt to-
"No. Leave it. Help me back."
-that was about what he was expecting. He stood and offered Kestrel a hand up out of the chair; her hands felt as dry as parchment and like a handful of twigs, but he lifted her up with little effort and let her lean on his as he led her back to the white coffin and helped her step inside. The door swung shut on its own and when it had closed he breathed a sigh of relief that was shortlived as he wondered what sort of chaos and destruction Varea would sow while they waited for Kestrel to regain her strength.
After everything that had happened with the Eye of Magnus, with Ancano, with the deaths of the Arch-Mage and Mirabelle, it seemed so strange to be back in Saarthal.
In a way Onmund couldn't fault Tolfdir for wanting to return to some semblance of routine; the elder mage was now the most senior member of the College and didn't seem too eager to take on the mantle of Arch-Mage, nor did anyone else really...but as he WAS most senior everyone was looking to him anyway, and his first decision had been to try and strive for normal while things calmed down. "Normal" had included leaving some assigned to try and smooth things over with Winterhold (Onmund did not envy anyone for THAT job) with the rest of them returning to how things had (relatively) been before the incident.
((Continued below cut))
And because of that Onmund and his fellow apprentices were here in Saarthal once again, picking out those ancient relics for cataloging and study, studying the ancient carvings, and recording the names of those buried here in their quest to learn as much as they could about the people that had once called this place home so long ago.
Their days were fairly simple: wake early, do whatever Arniel badgered them into doing all day, then fall into their (rock hard, incredibly uncomfortable) "beds" to repeat the process again; the same thing, day after day, for...three months? Four? It was hard to keep track of time when you couldn't see the sun.
This morning seemed no different from the others, aside from waking with a mild headache and colder than usual -- at some point during the night he had pushed the top of his bedroll down his body (or, he supposed, he'd pushed his body out the top of the bedroll) and he was uncovered down to the waist. He still had his robes on but the uppermost level of Saarthal was...chilly, to say the least; with a groan Onmund sat up and fumbled to pull his hood up - the fire had gone out overnight which partly explained why it was so cold. Which of them was supposed to keep an eye on it again? It was also difficult to remember who did what each night when "night" didn't really hold any meaning.
'Oh well.' Ugh. Even the tone of his thoughts was resigned to it all. He missed his room in the College, and the library, and the more conventional means of learning instead of poking about in these old ruins; the novelty of it had worn off awhile ago and he was raring to get back to his studies (or the very least stop wallowing around in the dust, dirt, and cobwebs).
Moving slowly, head throbbing, Onmund grabbed a few logs from the pile of spare firewood stacked around the base of a pillar that had wooden steps pounded into carved slots in the stone; he stacked and lit the logs with a quick word and sat there as they steadily burned, thankful for the warmth. Arranged around him in a loose semi circle Brelyna, J'zargo, and Tolfdir were still asleep -- he had no idea where Arniel was but if the man was already awake he would no doubt be coming for the rest of them soon.
Once he'd warmed up a bit his headache eased; he'd never really given much thought to the cold until he'd come this far north to Winterhold and the College -- it got chilly and snowed sometimes when he'd lived at home but Winterhold seemed to be more snow by volume than anything else.
'Maybe I've grown too soft...too used to always having a fire to read beside,' he thought as he stood and sleepily wandered over to the crate of foodstuffs they'd brought in with them; there were ingredients enough to cook a proper breakfast but Onmund knew if he cooked for himself he'd be pestered to share or to cook enough for everyone, and as he still had a bit of a throbbing pain directly behind his eyes he really didn't want to bother. Retrieving a pair of apples he tiptoed back to his bedroll and chewed on them quietly, waiting for someone to wake up and prod him to work.
-----------------------------
Bit by bit they were moving further into Saarthal -- some days they were sifting for relics, others studying carvings and coffins and making sketches and wax rubbings of each; he preferred the rubbing days personally...there was something awe inspiring about touching something so skillfully made that was so old and yet still (mostly) well preserved in those rooms that hadn't had a ceiling or wall collapse.
Right as Tolfdir awakened Arniel had come - there were burial urns and coffins in one of the furthest chambers from here (and three...four? Four levels down) that Arniel was focusing on today; as the older man led Onmund and the others onward he realized, with some trepidation, that the chamber Arniel wanted to examine and document today was actually the large room that had once held the Eye of Magnus -- in fact, the closer they got the more they could hear (and in a small way, feel) the hum of the pedestal that the Eye had once floated on.
"Should we..." he started, pausing when Arniel turned to give him one of his patented looks of annoyance. "Should we be this far in? Next to this thing? I don't really feel properly prepared, considering what happened with the Eye - this might be just what it sat on for ages but I can still feel it from here."
"We will, of course, be careful," Tolfdir broke in before Arniel could reply. "With something like this there are certain precautions one should always take. In fact, approach and I will review them with you."
Tolfdir's 'precautions' involved a few warding spells on themselves and considerably stronger ones placed on the floor in a circle around the empty Eye pedestal; they didn't really ease the feeling that disaster was around the corner however, and even as Onmund set about carefully cleaning away years of dust and dirt to reveal the intricate designs and names carved into the coffins in this chamber he found himself constantly looking over his shoulder to the green glowing circle of inscribed...stone? Metal? He wasn't even sure what the Eye and its base had been constructed of, but he didn't trust it at his back.
It was a long, filthy afternoon...or evening, or -- well, it was a very long day of cleaning and scribing, and rubbing wax and paper over the carvings to create a copy for the library. Arniel usually set them to their tasks and then more or less ignored them unless he needed something - it meant their days were usually ones of silent focus, with little chatter (and lots of boredom).
And it was because they worked in silence that Onmund wasn't certain when, exactly, everyone had left the chamber; he'd straightened up and stretched, arms and shoulders cramping and throbbing, and when he'd turned around he found himself alone -- his attention had been shifting between his work and the pedestal and he'd given no thought to the others there with him, and now...
A small chill went up his spine - alone in the Eye's chamber with that unending sense of dread he couldn't shake and that vibration and humming that gently shook him clear to his bones.
It wasn't ideal, and he tried to tamp down on the sudden spike of fear that hit him when it sunk in that he'd been left behind.
'Don't be foolish. You know the way back. There is nothing dangerous between here and our camp,' he found himself thinking. With a heavy sigh - tinged with annoyance - he gathered up his scattered parchments and bound them up in one large roll then carefully skirted the Eye's glowing pedestal and began to climb up the dry-rotted steps to the higher tier of the room; halfway up his foot broke through one of the steps and he instinctively dropped the parchment roll and caught himself with both hands, feeling the wood splinters bite deeply into his knees and shins as he partly hung there. He gave himself a moment to recover from the sudden shock of breaking through and his near fall and then, with a grunt, hauled himself onto the steps above the broken one and peered over their edge to where his parchment roll had hit the floor below and rolled almost to the Eye's pedestal.
...he'd have to go near it to pick those up. Damn it.
Not wanting to risk another broken step (or a worse injury other than skinned and splinter-filled knees and torn pantslegs) Onmund climbed the rest of the way up then walked around to the other set of stairs that led down to the floor; the closer he moved to the pedestal the smaller, more cautious his steps became -- it seemed both wise and foolish to fear something happening (after all, he'd been feeling that way all day) even though the pedestal only radiated residual power from the Eye, NOT power of its own. Tolfdir had seemed convinced that the power would eventually fade, and wasn't especially useful in the state it was in anyway...absolutely nothing should happen if he just walked up to it, but that feeling of dread...
Onmund ducked to snatch up the parchment roll but only manged to get a few fingers on it -- it slipped from his hand and rolled further along the right side of the pedestal. With a growl of frustration he scurried over and grabbed the parchment, standing and quickly backing up from the pedestal and watching it warily.
Nothing happened, or was happening...and nothing WOULD happen. He was just being overly cautious, and shamefully fearful.
He blew out a sigh of relief and then, oddly, felt a draft across his cheek -- he'd been all around this room all day, steadily moving from one side to the other, and hadn't felt a thing, yet now he felt what was undeniably a soft draft blowing against him. Licking a finger and holding it up, testing for which direction the draft was blowing from, he found that it was coming from his...right. But there was nothing to his right-
No. No, he was wrong, and he stared over at the door that had, up until this moment (or at least until he'd noticed it) been firmly shut.
This room had a higher tier that was roughly like a squared, sideways "C" with the inner bit of the C facing where the Eye had rested; the doorway he'd come through was up those stairs on that higher level, and there had been a second door at the very back of the room that, to his knowledge, none of them had ever tried. In fact, he'd just assumed it was locked since no one had mentioned trying to get through it.
But now it stood wide open. Had the others just gone ahead of him through it, rather than back to their camp? Onmund wasn't actually certain which answer would annoy him the most; he tucked the parchment roll under his arm and made his way to the door and stuck his head through it.
It opened into a hallway with root and vine-choked walls and strangely there was a scent of moist soil carried on the draft that blew against his face. Did this lead outside? Or maybe there was an underground spring here...he found himself debating whether it was wise to blindly head down the hallway or not -- he couldn't hear any footsteps or voices ahead of him so it wasn't likely the others had come this way.
But if that was true then... Then, whatever was at the end of this hallway would be an area none of the others had seen before. The thought was an exciting one - that he would discover something before anyone else - and yet there was the nagging question of why this door had suddenly opened. Maybe they'd accidentally triggered it? There were levers and switches elsewhere here that had unlocked ancient mechanisms...but he couldn't recall doing that himself, and he really doubted Brelyna or J'zargo could've kept their mouths shut if they'd done so.
If he was careful, and took all precautions he could, there just might be something spectacular at the end of this hallway that he could discover on his own...something he could rub the others' faces in. He bent down to lean the parchment roll against the door frame and began to carefully inch down the hallway; there didn't seem to be anything here aside from crumbling stonework and dead plant matter: nothing jumped out or collapsed down on top of him and in fact the hallway didn't go very far before it took a sharp right turn. At the corner the draft was more like a gentle breeze and was actually strong enough to ruffle the edges of his hood against his face, and it was also rather frigid. There HAD to be some connection to the surface in this direction, or maybe somewhere ahead a glacier had broke through the wall, or...or something, to explain the chill.
And there was still the smell of moist soil, but not the distinctive smell or sound of running water.
The lighting was rather poor here; there was the light coming in from the chamber behind him, and a very faint, sort of silvery light coming from the end of the hallway to his right, but the combination of both still wasn't enough to really see where he was going. With a quiet word and a practiced gesture he conjured a little ball of magelight and threw it to the ceiling above him -- its golden glow lit the hallway considerably but now the far end to his right was lost in a haze of dust floating in the air that was now lit by the light and was about as clear as morning fog to peer through.
Onmund moved slowly and methodically, checking everywhere around him for any nasty surprises as he moved through the fog-dust and finally his boots sank into the damp soil of a seemingly natural ramp made of dirt and rock and as his brain registered what he was looking at he found himself going a little slack jawed.
The room was roughly circular and for the most part left as a natural cave. Mostly. There was a hole in the ceiling through which fading sunlight filtered and it was absolutely freezing in here; at the base of the ramp was a round area full of ferns growing in the tiny circle that received light from above.
But at the rear of the room...in the very back...
A massive wall, shaped like a cylinder sliced in half, was cut from the stone walls of the cavern. There was an enormous stone dragon's head at its center, surrounded with intricate carvings that curled and swirled around the head, and below it was a rectangular part that had been left smooth save for writing chiseled into the rock -- it was angular, blocky writing that he vaguely recognized but not from where, and in general he wasn't even sure what he was looking at...he'd never seen anything like this before. What was it? Why was it here, buried at the back of an ancient, forgotten tomb?
He called the magelight orb to himself and sent it into the ceiling of this room, casting the strange carvings of the wall into sharp contrast with the rest of the shadows around; there didn't seem to be any magical energies here - no dangers that he could sense. Very carefully he slid down the muddy ramp and stepped to the edge of the circle of ferns, admiring the wall... Now he wished he'd brought his parchment and wax after all - to take a rubbing of this would be challenging, but imagine the looks on everyone's faces!
With a grin he moved through the ferns, having to pick his feet up higher than his normal stride to keep from getting snarled in their roots. The soil beneath them shifted and his steps sunk in deeply --
He heard a sudden loud crack and froze, and an instant later there were dozens more snapping noises...and then the ceiling was rapidly disappearing above his head.
-- no, the ceiling wasn't moving, HE was. He was falling - the ferns had been growing in soil trapped atop a crisscrossing network of roots that he could just see above him as he plummeted, and his weight had been enough to cause the dead roots to break away and let him drop.
The magelight above him faded to a dim point of light as he plunged into a dark free fall - it seemed odd to him that he wasn't even screaming, but then he did as he slammed into something and his knees were rammed up into his chest and chin and he bit a chunk out of his lower lip as his teeth were forced together.
Whatever he'd landed on was sharply angled and icy and even as he scrabbled for a handhold he was sliding deeper into the darkness; the magelight wasn't even visible anymore but it hardly mattered as again the ground disappeared out from under him and he fell back into open air. Then he hit, and fell, and hit and bounced off something and was sent into a tumble that slammed the back of his head into the next thing he collided with.
With it so dark he wasn't certain at what point he'd blacked out (did it even matter? Was there a difference?) so there was no telling how long and how far he'd fallen when he swam back to consciousness.
His limbs felt...heavy. He couldn't lift them and his mouth was full of blood, his head felt like he'd split it with an axe, and all over his body he hurt; if it weren't for the pain Onmund would have wondered if he'd died, but no...he was in agony, so clearly he was awake and alive.
'Alive...alive is good. Now...where am I?'
He was flat on his back and spread-eagle, and laying on something vaguely...fabric-like, he thought. It wasn't stone, and it certainly wasn't dirt or mud; he wiggled a few fingers -- or, he tried to...nothing was really moving or working, and even thinking hurt. With a whisper he conjured another magelight orb and felt his heart stop as it illuminated his surroundings.
Above him was a jagged hole in a massive expanse of webbing - he'd fallen through several layers of it, and when he went to raise his head he found he could move his head but not his hood: it was firmly stuck to the web below him, as was the rest of him. It wasn't that he couldn't move because of injury, it was because he was trapped in a massive spider web.
'No no no. No, no no...' It was a mantra in his head as he struggled to think on how to free himself. Webs could be cut, but he couldn't move and had no blade...they could be burned, but he was stuck IN it and could incinerate himself before he managed to free himself if he wasn't careful. Could webs be frozen? ...no, no, that was dumb, frostbite spiders spun webs in lots of cold places - if cold could make webs fall apart that would be totally useless for the spiders.
Maybe he could...maybe he could carefully burn away enough to free an arm, and then be a bit more liberal with the flames once he had full control over where he could aim it. It was really the only thing he could think of.
Very carefully, starting with his left hand, he conjured a tiny flame; with the webbing so close to him as it burned it began to sear and blister his own hand but after a few short bursts and the stench of his burning sleeve he had his hand free almost up to the elbow and with how loose his sleeve was now he had a little bit of extra room to work with.
Onmund breathed a sigh of relief - it would hurt but it just might work - then paused as a shudder ran through the webbing; he couldn't see much no matter how much he craned his neck to look up and around the edges of his hood, nor did the magelight reach too far in any direction -- he couldn't see any walls or actual ceiling...just the dark hole he'd punched into the web above when he'd fallen through and an indistinct darkness on all side.
The web dipped again, and then there were regular little...taps, or vibrations.
Something... Oh no. Something was coming.
'No, no...Divines, not like this, please...'
He flattened his palm and pointed it down at the web, letting loose with a rather reckless blast of flames aimed at his own hip; the webbing caught fire and he felt himself tipping in that direction, and could feel the web's hold on his shoulder and armpit loosening as the flames weakened it.
Then, there -- glistening in the darkness was a set of multiple eyes, bobbing up and down as the creature moved steadily toward him.
"Get away!" he snapped. He slung his arm that way and sent a half-formed fireball roaring for the eyes - he couldn't see the spider's body but he didn't need to see more than the eyes to know where it was. He saw a flare of flames and heard an angry chittering, then the spider's retreat set the entire web wobbling as it rapidly backed away and back into the cover of darkness.
"Come on...come on..." he hissed, spraying himself with fire to try and free his legs. The more he burned the more he was tilting downward feet first and saw with some dismay that below him was just more webbing. Where was he? How far above the ground was this web?
The web dipped again, deeply, and there was a sudden shadow blotting out the magelight -- the spider had jumped and landed nearly on top of him.
The spider was massive...larger than any he'd ever seen and now it loomed over him so closely he could count the bristly hairs on its front legs.
"BACK!" he shouted, sending a gout of flame over the spider's underbelly.
It made angry noises and jabbed at him with one of its front legs; there was a tearing noise and Onmund tilted even further downward with a very clear view of the thick webbing that awaited him ten feet below.
The spider made a grab for him and the web tore beneath them both; with a cry Onmund found himself falling again. The remnants of the webbing that clung to his legs flipped him upside down and in a surge of terror he hit the webbing face first and stuck there with one arm trapped uselessly beneath him.
Once again the web sank as the spider hopped down after him; before he could conjure his flames again he was suddenly spinning as the spider seized the webbing around him and began to cocoon him in place.
"Stop! No!" He had one arm bent awkwardly and trapped against his chest and the other, thanks to how the webbing had wrapped as he'd spun, was pinned against his back.
Thrashing to try and rid himself of the leggy grip the spider had him in he also desperately conjured flames with the hand behind his back, feeling their heat and sting as they began to burn, but he was abruptly interrupted with a terrible pain - a pain with impact behind it, like he'd been hit by an entire quiver of arrows all at one time - in his hip just above his backside.
It burned terribly but soon numbed, and the numbness began to spread; his thrashing slowed and then stopped as he lost all feeling and control over first his legs, and then his arms. The flames stopped, his heart was slowing, he was feeling sleepy...the spider's venom slowly removed his ability and will to fight and quietly he slipped into sleep within the web cocoon.
The weather over Windhelm was overcast and gloomy; Onmund hoped it wasn't a sign of the sort of "welcome" they were going to receive as they (himself, Gormir, and Kestrel hanging around his neck) crossed the bridge that led to the city. They were met just inside the city gates by a group of guards who ushered them quickly and quietly toward the Palace of the Kings where they deposited them in a side room and then took up positions to either side of the doorway, both inside the room and just outside of it.
Onmund wasn't exactly confident about this meeting - mostly because he didn't have a full grasp on why Kestrel had wanted it in the first place. Guessing at her intentions was difficult but he had a suspicion she was going to ask Ulfric for safe haven somewhere within Eastmarch, or maybe ask for permission to leave Skyrim by way of his port. As for how the Jarl would respond to any such request that too was hard to guess; after their talks at Winterhold Onmund knew Ulfric didn't see them as a direct threat, not like Korir did, and that he at least shouldn't be outright hostile to them, but that didn't necessarily mean he saw them in strictly a good light either... Though, now that there were fewer of them maybe that would erase any illusion of posing a threat, either to Eastmarch or anywhere in Skyrim in general -- after they'd emptied the College of everything they could carry and destroyed what they couldn't they'd finally had a moment to sort out who was going and who was staying.
((Continued below cut))
J'zargo and Brelyna had decided to stay, of course - they'd both seen how advanced Onmund was in his studies after his year with Kestrel and had pledged themselves as apprentices. Nirya and Urag had made themselves near-permanent residents of the library (and thankfully they'd taken it upon themselves, once he'd had taught them how, to enlarge the library to fit what books they'd retrieved from the College -- Onmund was very tired of digging dirt and moving rocks to make space for the rest of the College's contents and members, and the little underground home felt cramped even with all the new rooms so he was definitely glad they were handling this particular part). Gormir had stayed for lack of anywhere else to go and had fallen into a role of hunting and gathering to help keep them all fed (with J'zargo's help -- the two of them seemed to get along rather well, in fact).
But then, after emptying the College, Enthir had been the first to leave followed a few days later by Sergius. Drevis was still undecided but Phinis and Nelacar both had announced they intended to stay but pursue independent studies, and did not intend to take any part in any sort of rebuilt or reformed college of mages. Onmund privately believed Drevis was going to leave too but decided not to mention it to anyone but Kestrel, and overall she hadn't been surprised to see the others leave and wouldn't be surprised if Drevis did in fact decide to go as well.
"It is, after all, their choice," had been her constant response to any speculation prior to the departures. "I won't force anyone to remain."
And he did understand that it was their choice but Onmund had quietly hoped everyone would remain -- they'd lost the physical College but could have rebuilt elsewhere if they'd all just stayed together. A part of him suspected that they didn't trust Kestrel despite all she'd done to save them and there was a small voice in his head that constantly grumbled over how it seemed like near everyone they'd helped had ultimately turned on them in the end... It wasn't very fair to think that way though, and because of that it was easy enough to silence that little voice when it grew a bit too loud.
Oh well. Perhaps it was for the best -- anything they attempted to rebuild, IF they rebuilt, wouldn't be the same. And he doubted that even Ulfric would allow a new college to be built under the guidance of an ancient mage from another era that had willfully disregarded the orders of a Jarl because she'd disagreed with him. Whatever was to happen in the future he imagined it would remain a small thing: a place somewhere for them to live and study, out of sight of the rest of the world, with no effort put into attracting new students to the fold.
He did make a mental note to request that, wherever they moved next, they took steps to ensure any new apprentices couldn't literally fall into the role as Onmund had. Maybe they could find a nice, abandoned mountaintop somewhere...
The room was completely silent as they waited save for the soft sound of the chain rattling as Gormir took off the necklace housing Kestrel and silently handed it over to Onmund; rather than hang her from his neck Onmund settled for placing her in clear view on top of the stone-topped table they waited around -- it was covered in maps and scrolls, with writing tools and also tiny carved wooden pieces meant to mark out troop movements left in small piles here and there. It didn't look like anything here had been touched in awhile and there wasn't anything especially interesting to look at either; it left him wondering if this was some sort of test to see if they'd look at or tamper with the table's contents.
Finally from the other room he could hear the heavy footfalls of men heading their way; Onmund straightened his posture and clasped his hands behind his back, turning to the doorway to see if this was Ulfric arriving or someone sent in his stead.
A man dressed in furs, hides, and sporting a headdress made of a bear's head with the arms hanging over his shoulders strode in, his gaze falling immediately on Onmund.
Onmund felt a small twinge of awkwardness at the man's look -- he'd left the 'battle robes' he'd worn at Winterhold behind and was instead wearing a spare set of robes they'd found in Arch-Mage Selos's quarters. He hadn't dared go so far as to actually wear the Arch-Mage's robes of office, so to speak, but this particular set looked formal (while also possessing fairly potent enchantments for defensive purposes) and the formal look was all he'd really cared about at the time. Whatever the man thought Onmund couldn't tell from facial expression alone but based on the grunt the man let out after a moment or two of sizing him up he assumed the man didn't find him too impressive, formal clothing or not.
Ulfric thankfully entered moments later and offered Onmund and Gormir the briefest of nods before gesturing for everyone to sit around the stone table; the bear-mantled man must have taken some other unspoken order from the gesture as he quickly swept the scrolls aside and rolled up a few of the various maps before moving to stand at Ulfric's elbow.
"Does your master mage puppet you again?"
Onmund shook his head at Ulfric. "No - I'm myself. She's right there, actually--" he pointed to the black-gemmed pendant on its chain that still lay on the table in front of him.
Ulfric's gaze dropped to the necklace then returned to Onmund, accompanied with a raised eyebrow only for both eyebrows to raise in surprise when Kestrel's voice projected out of the pendant.
"I assure you my apprentice speaks truthfully, Jarl Ulfric."
The bear-man narrowed his eyes. "And what sorcery do we deal with?"
"I can't really see who just asked that but regardless I did assure Jarl Ulfric that I would not use Onmund's body longer than was necessary. As such, my soul now resides in this pendant -- and is well-protected both within and without," she added after a pause.
"Very well then. Had I known I would be speaking to jewelry I may have reconsidered my agreement to this meeting. Speak your piece and be quick about it."
"I shall be direct then: I ask for permission to relocate somewhere within your lands, Jarl - preferably somewhere off the beaten path. In return, any such mages that decide to remain under my tutelage will guard your Windhelm and protect your people."
That definitely surprised Ulfric. "Elaborate, if you will."
"Certainly. I want to stress that I am not offering to fight your war for you -- in fact, I intend to remain neutral to this whole mess regardless of what holding or territory we end up in. However you wish to conduct your war, and whether you are successful or not, is entirely up to you. What I can and am willing to do however is to look after your people while your forces are elsewhere. It hasn't escaped my attention that there's rumor that dragons seem to be making a reappearance, and your city's guards may not be able to handle one rampaging through Windhelm on their own. Additionally I was told that when you rode to Winterhold's assistance you were limited in the number of men you could spare -- the situation may be different now but this tells me you are in a position to at least consider my offer as it would potentially relieve a few worries you have here at home while you're afield fighting your war."
The bear-man scoffed. "If you're not here to fight for Skyrim then we're wasting time and breath speaking to you."
"Quiet, please, whoever you are. The adults are talking," came Kestrel's sarcastic reply.
Onmund grimaced a bit but the man didn't respond, instead looking to Ulfric; the Jarl remained quiet for several breaths.
"And if it is the Legion that comes for my city," Ulfric finally said into the silence. "What then?"
"Obviously if they march on this city then a handful of mages aren't likely to turn the tide of that battle, nor would we try," Kestrel replied. "What we can do instead is get your people out of the city and to somewhere well out of the way of their warmongering. -- the ones who will go, at least. From experience I find that Nords do not typically run from battle, even if they're hopelessly outnumbered or out-skilled. It is both admirable as well as condemnable but I won't force anyone to leave."
"Only a coward runs," the bear-man growled.
"You call it cowardice, I call it choosing the battlefield," Kestrel countered. "If I know I will lose here but that I will assuredly win in a different location I consider it far more useful to go to where victory is assured. Dead men rarely win wars and we are straying from the point of this meeting besides."
The man looked to Ulfric again. "You can't be seriously considering this?"
"Enough, Galmar. I would at least hear all the details on the table before I make a decision." Ulfric's attention moved between Galmar and the others before moving back to Kestrel on the table. "What is your intention? Another school?"
"No, though I will not turn away any who come seeking instruction. We obviously can't completely hide ourselves away - bare minimum we must have a means of feeding ourselves, we must have some sort of income to survive off of. I don't intend for it to become widely known where we are but we also cannot just disappear and still uphold our end of any bargains made, assuming we manage to come to an agreement."
Ulfric nodded curtly, then reached out to tap fingers against a map that was still left open; Onmund glanced down and saw he was tapping on Winterhold, near the cost where the College was. "And what of your College? Have you given up the castle to Korir?"
"Not willingly but yes, we have. We have taken all that we can carry from there - a detail I'm sure has made Korir even angrier as he has no spoils to go with his stolen property. If I may, however, I would ask you warn him not to try expanding beneath the main floors of that castle -- the ground can easily be de-stabilized and then he and Winterhold will have a second collapse on their hands."
That was a little half truth they'd decided to use -- down in the Midden were two things the mages hadn't been able to move or destroy: the Augur of Dunlain, and an atronach forge. The Augur was...not able to be reasoned with, so there was no hope of asking it to never approach anyone that may stumble into the room that housed it. And leaving the atronach forge out in the open where anyone could attempt to use it was too dangerous. They'd spent several days moving dirt and stone around to fill in the Midden, and then several more painstakingly replicating the patterns in the stonework of the College's floors, carefully erasing any hint of the Midden's existence.
It had been rather boring and tiring work but it was sadly the quickest solution to the problem as any sort of magical means to prevent mining under the College wouldn't last without a source to power it and they simply didn't have the spare hours and hands needed to acquire one and get all the delicate spellwork in place while also emptying the College. They had been racing against time to get everything out as it was, as Kestrel's ice-globe spell was going to eventually wear off and Korir had wasted no time either and had already had men working at rebuilding the bridge to the College the day after the mages had left (and once they had one in place the men came back armed with pickaxes -- it was a strange thing to watch from the inside but it had prompted a bit more urgency in the mages as they hurried to carry out crates and satchels and armloads of objects).
Ulfric nodded slightly after a pause. "I cannot promise he will listen but I will warn him. Anything else?"
"Yes, actually. Should you, for any reason, come across an intact corpse of an Altmer woman, I would be rather grateful if you would retain it for reasons I don't think need to be voiced considering my current situation. If you're able to have it delivered to me I would consider myself owing you a single favor in return."
Ulfric nodded again and stood in one smooth, if abrupt, motion with his expression betraying nothing of what he might've been thinking about THAT particular request. "I will consider your offer. For now I have other things to attend to. The guards shall see you out."
At that Ulfric left with Galmar stomping along at his back, the bear-mantled man pausing to throw one final glower at them before disappearing through the doorway.
Onmund picked Kestrel up and lifted the chain around his neck. "Well...it wasn't an outright no?"
"Wasn't a yes either," Gormir grunted.
"Give him time. He will be weighing the advantages and disadvantages against his game of politics and calculating cost measures with his war," Kestrel said quietly. "I did not expect an immediate answer today anyway."
"How's he get his answer to us then?"
"Nelacar was kind enough to tell me of a College member serving here within the Jarl's court -- that is how I got this meeting set up to begin with. I thought it'd be better for our chances if 'one of our own' were the one to broach the subject with the Jarl. Any messages or answers will make themselves to us through him."
The guards at the door hurried them out of the city as quickly as they'd escorted them in and Onmund pulled up his hood as they trudged back out into the wind; the weather had shifted while they were inside and it was beginning to flurry.
Gormir peered up at the sky then out toward the horizon, and shielded his eyes from snowflakes. "Looks ready to get worse."
"Hopefully it'll hold for a few hours more since I'm due back at that Azura statue," Onmund sighed. "A couple more days and that part should be done."
Gormir plodded along behind him as they headed further from the city back toward a little clearing they'd marked as a temporary portal placement in the event Ulfric actually agreed to meet them. "-not been any trouble out that way?"
"None so far as I know. Aranea's said Winterhold's been all but kissing the backsides of the stonemasons though."
Gormir let out a bitter chuckle. "I bet. Any gold is welcome now even if they'd rather stick you in the back than let you inside the city limits."
Onmund looked back at him. "What, really? They don't like dunmer either?"
"Not daedra worshippers, they don't."
Onmund found it a bit amusing that, having driven out the mages he hated so much, now Korir had to rely on the daedra worshippers he apparently also hated -- and even this source of coin wouldn't be there much longer as the statue was close to finished and the altar wouldn't take long to complete either being as Onmund wasn't the only person working to restore it.
Aranea had explained when they first met how all the followers of Azura had scattered long ago but with the destruction of the statue and altar a lot of them had come rushing back. Among them were a few of the original stonemasons that had crafted the statue in the first place; they'd been rather pleased when Onmund demonstrated how he could meld and shape stone, and they'd all worked together to create a rough plan of repair for the statue: the stonemasons would get the remaining pieces fitted together and Onmund would fuse it and then help fix any missing bits by getting raw stone set in place for them to shape and carve with their tools. It'd taken a few weeks for them to get the resources together to build a pulley system and scaffolding for the tallest parts but it was coming along and was nearly completed, and Onmund was assured that for the rest of the altar and the platform it had rested on all he'd need to do is get the stone in place and the masons would finish the rest.
Korir would have maybe another two weeks of whatever he could squeeze out of the masons and then they'd all leave again, leaving Winterhold empty. How he'd attract anyone up to his nearly abandoned hold was anyone's guess and, Onmund supposed, wasn't any of his business so it wasn't worth thinking about.
Ahead of them the clearing came into view and he was relieved to see the circle of rocks they'd used to mark out the portal spot was still undisturbed. As they got closer Onmund gently touched the pendant and, as usual when Kestrel took control, his body stumbled a few steps as her soul took a moment to adjust to the switch; being inside the pendant was like being inside a large faceted globe -- "behind" him was his own chest (with a magnified view of whatever he was wearing - he'd never really thought of what effort must go into making clothing but seeing all the details very up close had given him a newfound appreciation for what he wore) and "ahead" of him he could see the world as though he were looking out of a window. It was quiet and strangely cozy in here and he didn't mind waiting while Kestrel did whatever they'd needed to change places for -- in this case it was casting the portal spell as this was one type of magic you really didn't want to get wrong and Onmund simply wasn't practiced enough to portal long distances yet even with anchored, defined endpoints in place.
She relinquished control once they were back in Saarthal; the only downside to portaling in and out of here was they all had to climb the stairs each time they needed to go outside. As Onmund began his climb he could hear Gormir behind him still -- he supposed the man would be going out to hunt again as the smoked bear meat the others had been eating for the last couple of weeks was running low and no one particularly liked eating vegetable-only stews.
"No J'zargo this time?"
"He's supposed to be waiting topside for us to return -- he'd better be, anyway. I'm not waiting on him today."
Onmund chuckled and kept climbing (and was halfway up when he realized he was still in his formal robes...he decided it wasn't worth heading back down to change and kept going -- it's not like he planned on getting dirty and the robes were thick enough to keep him warm even if it started snowing hard). The carved dragon wall loomed over them as they crested the steps and kept going, traveling through empty rooms until they came to the main entry hall where, huddled over a small brazier, J'zargo waited.
"There you are - this one was beginning to wonder if the Jarl threw you all into the harbor."
Gormir jerked his head toward the door. "Come on, let's see if we can't find another bear - at the very least I want two deer this time."
J'zargo twitched his nose. "We shall need firewood as well - most of it was used to smoke the last hunt's gatherings."
"That's what the sled's for, isn't it?"
The khajiit huffed out a sigh. "This one will get the axe."
Gormir smirked and kept going, brushing passed Onmund and J'zargo and heading outside.
Onmund paused, glancing at Gormir's back and then to J'zargo. "You don't have to keep hunting if you don't want to, you know. I can do it when I'm done with that statue and altar."
J'zargo waved a hand, tail thrashing behind him. "It is not the hunting that bothers this one, it is the weather. Everything freezes quickly and it makes gutting anything we hunt a pain in khajiit's tail."
"At least frozen meat holds well?"
"This one supposes so...would like to taste fish again though."
"It's a possibility if we end up moving."
"Did the meeting go well then?"
Onmund glanced down at the pendant, half-expecting Kestrel to speak up; she didn't, surprisingly. "--well enough. He didn't say no but we didn't get an answer either way."
"Ah, yes, good. ...an answer for what?"
Oh, right - J'zargo had no idea what they'd gone for. "Kestrel wants permission to move to Eastmarch. Jarl Ulfric lets us settle somewhere, and we protect his city in return."
The khajiit scratched at his chin. "Interesting... At least Eastmarch does not hate mages. Perhaps if we are lucky we won't be barred from the city outright. J'zargo would not mind at all to go to the market as needed and-"
"Let's go, khajiit - weather's turning."
They both jumped a bit at Gormir's shout; Onmund hurried outside with J'zargo on his heels, carefully stepping outside and navigating through churned up, iced-over snow to where Gormir waited next to a wooden sled.
The snow was indeed beginning to pick up some, as was the wind; Onmund adjusted his hood and latched the clasp to keep it pulled in tight to his head. "Couldn't have held out another couple of hours..."
Gormir hefted one of the ropes attached to the sled and slung it over a shoulder. "The north isn't known for sunshine, mage. Ought to make hunting easy enough -- can't run from what you can't see. Stay downwind and we'll have something bagged in no time."
J'zargo sniffed suddenly. "--speaking of downwind, does anyone else smell that?"
"Smell what?"
"Something burns - something burnt. This one does not see smoke but can smell it on the wind."
Onmund sniffed deeply -- whatever the khajiit could smell wasn't strong enough for him to pick up on it. "I don't, sorry. It's being carried on the wind so..." The wind was coming from the west; he jogged back toward the wooden walkways and stairs that zigzagged down the hill to Saarthal and climbed to the uppermost one, then clambered on top of the bluff that Saarthal's entrance was dug into. Up here he could very faintly smell smoke now so he kept climbing, moving all the way up past a giant, square-ish segment of rock that jutted out from Saarthal's top (it looked like it was part of Saarthal but his probings had shown it was a carved but solid chunk of the mountain - no guesses as to what it was or why it was made that way, either) and up to a higher point on the ridge.
There, three ridges over, Onmund could make out the little pinpoints of light that marked where trees were aflame -- and here, standing directly in the wind without any parts of the mountain to shield him, he could definitely smell the smoke.
He turned around and jolted a bit when he found Gormir standing only a few paces behind him, squinting out at the far ridge. "--you move way too silently when you want to."
"What do you figure did that?" Gormir asked, ignoring Onmund's attempt at a joke.
"No idea." Onmund turned back to the ridge; every tree within view was engulfed in flames and judging by the column of smoke there was likely more of them hidden from sight further out.
Then, on the wind, came a roar muffled by distance. Onmund and Gormir looked to one another silently.
"Did I just hear a dragon?"
The two of them looked down to Kestrel then, as J'zargo climbed up the ridge behind them. "--did J'zargo just hear you say dragon?"
Onmund wordlessly gestured toward the flaming trees in the distance. "There's really a dragon over there?" That was directed more toward Kestrel but Gormir interrupted him with a rough slap to his chest, shaking him until he looked up from the pendant and back toward the trees.
A dark, winged figure darted up from the flames, circled a few times, then dove back down out of sight on the far side of the trees.
"...this one thinks we are not hunting tonight, no?"
"Oh, we're hunting, but it won't be deer."
The two mages looked to Gormir blankly -- the man couldn't be serious, right? But then again...if the dragon was that close and if it saw them, then they wouldn't have a choice--
"Interesting. Well, Gormir is correct - consider this a trial run for the eventuality that we find ourselves guarding Windhelm from one," Kestrel said into the silence.
"You actually WANT us to go hunt that dragon?" Onmund asked incredulously. "It'd take hours just to get over there."
"If I can hear from here it means it's essentially on our doorstep," Kestrel replied. "I'd rather not have this area laid to waste, again, and have our immediate resources destroyed. Believe when I say it will come to you once you've been spotted so you should probably find your way down from here and get into a more open area."
"Am curious - have you fought a dragon before, master?" J'zargo asked into the brief pause.
Onmund heard a quiet little laugh from the pendant. "I have. It was...rather messy."
"Do we actually stand a chance then?"
Gormir snorted. "Talk like that means you've already lost, boy - come on you two, let's get to low ground. And I'll be needing my shield besides."
------------------------------------------------
So much for his formal robes (though the defensive spells in them meant that only the clothing had taken a beating and not Onmund himself).
Everything was quiet when the three of them had plodded back down into Saarthal; Onmund was thankful for that as he didn't have to immediately explain why his robes were burnt beyond saving and why J'zargo had several bald spots where his fur had been singed off.
"Ah ah, not bed - not yet. Remember?"
Onmund paused with his hand on the door to his room and sighed heavily -- right: Kestrel wanted to speak to Brelyna, Nirya, and Urag first. Which would likely mean waking all three of them up. "Can't I at least change first?"
"Fine, but be quick."
He shouldered his door open and came to an abrupt stop when he saw a hunched figure at his desk but felt a twinge of relief when he realized he was looking at Brelyna's back; she was slumped over a book, head resting on crossed arms -- asleep, by the looks of it. Carefully he crept into the room and began quietly tugging clothes free; plain shirt, plain pants - nothing fancy for now. He was tired of fancy (he was tired, period, but couldn't fall into bed just yet). Once he was clothed he headed over and gently shook Brelyna's shoulder until the woman stirred.
"Oh. You're back -- I thought you'd be back hours ago."
"So did I," Onmund sighed. "I wasn't at the statue, I was fighting a dragon."
That seemed to wake her up some. "A dragon? Really? So the rumors were true then...dragons have returned."
Onmund ambled over and dropped onto the corner of his bed. "I was hoping it was just rumor too but-" he briefly glanced at his burnt robes where they lay wadded into a ball at the foot of his bed. "-at least the combat training was useful." There was a brief pause which prompted Onmund to poke at the pendant. "You said you wanted to talk to Brelyna - she's right there."
There was still another several seconds of silence before Kestrel replied. "Mm, yes, I know. I was thinking. Brelyna, I have a research request for you, as well as Nirya and Urag. I want you three to locate all the information we currently have on dragons and gather it together for study. Something...rather odd happened with this dragon tonight -- something that did not happen with the other dragons I've slain or witnessed being slain in the past. I have my suspicions but I'd rather not voice them so I don't introduce any sort of research bias into your search."
Brelyna nodded. "I can do that, and I'll let the other two know. What happened, though?"
"It burned away like parchment," Onmund said. "It started burning before it'd even fully hit the ground, in fact. And there was this rushing wind-like effect that flew away to the south - it was quick enough that none of us really got a good look at what it was before it was gone."
"Very strange..." Brelyna muttered. "--can I go with you the next time you fight a dragon? I'd like to see one."
"I have a feeling we'll be seeing more of them as time wears on," Kestrel replied, before Onmund could. "We did bring the skeletal remains back for study however. We'll have to prepare to bring them inside Saarthal somehow -- I'm thinking into the room that once held the Eye. It should be large enough to house it and we can use the last remaining bit of ambient energies in there to power the spell to move something of that size."
"So dragons...don't die like that, normally?"
"No," came Kestrel's flat reply. "They never did. Or at the very least they persisted long enough that you could harvest useful things from them -- blood, scale, organs, bones, and by then there wasn't anything useful enough to care about if it degraded. There was only a small handful of scales that didn't burn away on this one, and of course none of the soft tissues or fluids remained. All the bones seem intact so at least there's that."
Onmund lifted Kestrel from around his neck and held her out toward Brelyna. "Here - you two go research. I need to sleep -- oh, and uh, don't make fun of J'zargo when you see him."
Brelyna gave him an odd look but stood up, stretched, then took Kestrel and left. Onmund closed the door behind her then collapsed into his bed, hoping the masons wouldn't be too angry with him tomorrow.
-------------------------------------------------
Ulfric had eventually said no. Siddgeir, Idgrod, Skald the Elder, and Igmund had said no. Balgruuf had at least apologized with his answer -- he too was concerned about what it would look like politically if he allowed the mages sanctuary in his hold. He struggled to remain neutral in this war and worried that if he allowed them to settle that it would appear he was fortifying against one side or the other (or possibly both at once, and a single hold couldn't hope to fight a war against two superior forces). They accepted each rejection gracefully and quietly arranged to speak to the next Jarl on the list. But finally...
Laila Law-Giver, Jarl of Riften, had said "yes."
...sort of.
Laila didn't want their protection or assistance (she was...strangely convinced that nothing was amiss in her lands but had at least expressed deep appreciation for their desire to protect her people) but gave them leave to settle in Ivarstead -- a city as far from her capital as you could get, but it was still permission to settle somewhere.
The people of Ivarstead at first had mixed opinion on the appearance of the mages; some saw it as a means to draw more than just pilgrims to the tiny town. Others saw it as something that would bring nothing but trouble to their peaceful lives.
They had immediately, and accidentally, gotten on the bad side of Temba Wide-Arm, who owned the lumber mill in Ivarstead and had been expecting something of a windfall out of the mages that had arrived and were in need of a building to house them. When she'd learned that they could, more or less, cause a building to slowly spring from the ground like a plant of stone she'd stormed off in a huff and had refused to even speak to any of them for nearly two weeks straight until her bosmer apprentice Gwilin had talked her into dropping the grudge and assisting them with providing wood for furniture in exchange for labor.
In fact a lot of what the mages needed they obtained either through bartering or by trading labor, as they didn't possess a stockpile of coin to buy things outright; farmwork and working at the mill were the only tasks available to help with but a few things were at least rather simple to do. Kestrel quietly taught them a few spells to increase crop yields (and Onmund taught the others how to conjure water) and nearly overnight they had the enthusiastic approval of the farmers, and once they'd smoothed things over with Temba they had both a steady supply of food and wood.
There was a large hill to the north of a barrow on the edge of town and that's where they chose to settle, and they fell into a routine of helping the townsfolk in the morning, working on their home in the afternoon, and then spending a part of their evenings socializing with their new neighbors. The folks of Ivarstead hadn't heard the story of what had happened at the College so they weren't already poisoned against the mages, and at least a few of them had questioned the decision of driving them away; it was nice to know that there were still plenty of others in the world who could see reason and the truth of things, and at last the last of Ivarstead's hold outs were welcoming of the mages and looked forward to what the future might bring for them all.
It took months but finally they had their home: their living quarters were (thankfully) above ground this time, and they'd included several empty rooms in case others came to seek them out with the intent to stay and study. There was a proper kitchen and storeroom above ground too, and a small gathering hall. Within the hill they'd dug out study rooms, a giant library, an armory, and miscellaneous closets and work rooms to hold the various supplies, tools, and stockpiles they had taken from the College. While they had been sorting through the books (they thought it best to keep Kestrel's and the College's libraries separated among the shelves) Urag had found an old spellbook that taught them all how to direct air currents so there was always a feeling of freshness to the air within the underground portion of the haven and a barely noticeable breeze flowing from the multiple air holes they'd put in.
And, both the above and below ground areas were spacious enough that everyone in Ivarstead could fit inside if the need ever arose -- Jarl Laila might not have accepted their offer of protection but it was still an option if Ivarstead ever got attacked.
Which was something they would probably find themselves testing soon -- the frequency of dragon sightings was increasing, especially to the north. Ivarstead was very open to an attack from the air and a dragon could devastate the town in minutes; when he wasn't helping at the mill Gormir had taken to sitting on the front steps of their haven, attention always turned to the sky. There was a slight but still noticeable tension to the town each time they heard anything that could be mistaken for a distant roar, or heard stories of sightings from the travelers who regularly passed through the town...it was becoming more "when" than "if" regarding an attack, and Onmund wasn't sure how they could minimize the damage to the town if they weren't able to lure the damn thing away.
'We'll just have to see when the time comes,' he kept telling himself. They wouldn't be able to plan until they saw how a dragon might attack Ivarstead -- fighting a dragon out in the forests or on the side of a mountain required different tactics than fighting one in or near a populated area. Would the dragon purposely target people fleeing it and ignore those trying to stop it? Would it prioritize damage and chaos over a calculated strike?
There were so many different ways a dragon attack could go. For now the best thing to do was try to not let it bother him too much.
"Tell me, Onmund -- how do you feel knowing you've been my apprentice for two years?"
Aha - so THAT was why Kestrel had insisted on going with him this morning; he paused to consider the question (and the chicken he was reaching under took that opportunity to peck at him - he shooed it away and grabbed the eggs from the nest and settled them gently in the basket he was carrying).
"I...don't know. I guess older, and smarter." He quickly moved on to the next nest and then stood -- he was pretty sure he'd gotten them all today. "But I think I'd feel that way even if I'd stayed at the College."
"No regrets?"
"Not really. Maybe if you'd asked me a year ago I would. Why?"
"Just wondering. When you're essentially a mind in a gemstone there's little else to do besides think and talk. You've endured a great deal, and it seems fate has rewarded you with what you wanted."
"It did?"
"We're above ground and no longer hiding."
Onmund shrugged. "True, but now that I have it it doesn't seem so important now considering what it cost."
Kestrel laughed quietly. "You really have gotten older then."
"And I'm only going to get older."
"Have we received word from Ulfric?"
"Not yet. I don't think we should rely on him to trade a body for a favor." He hefted the basket of eggs and headed from the coop over to the little field where Boti and Jofthor were growing cabbages. "If he was interested in a favor I feel like he would have delivered by now. If there's anyone the Thalmor would want dead it'd be him and I doubt they've only sent males after him."
Kestrel was silent a moment. "Short of skulking around a battlefield... I may have to settle for whatever we can get our hands on. I am adamant that it must be female, however."
They both went quiet as Fastred, Boti's daughter, stood up from among the cabbages and came over to retrieve the egg basket from Onmund; she gave him a shy little smile as she took it and Onmund gave her a curt nod in return and hurried back toward their haven on the hill -- Fastred was young and pretty and had taken a liking to him, something he wasn't certain how to handle as according to her parents she already had two suitors vying for her attention and he had no intention of stepping into the middle of that mess.
"From what I've heard about Riften we likely can just find a body stuffed in a gutter," he muttered. "Jarl Laila is... I'm surprised someone like her rules over somewhere like that."
"As I've said before, not all leaders are wise and not all who are wise end up leaders. You'll find that there are many who believe manipulating events while puppeting another is the best way to obtain and hold on to power. I will admit I was genuinely surprised she permitted us to settle -- being as she refused our offer of assistance I was expecting that whoever pulls her strings would not want us anywhere near their business at all."
"For all we know it's more than one person doing the string pulling."
"A possibility I did consider, yes. Did Brelyna and Nirya finish the matrices?"
"I think so. I remember Nirya mentioning she didn't think they'd hold though." His boots thudded onto the wooden steps that led up into their homestead; from this point on the hill you could see all of Ivarstead and the road that led into the town. It was a nice view and he could pick out Gormir's form over at the mill, swinging an axe and steadily building up piles of chopped wood.
"It's not really a matter of if they'll hold but if they'll work at all. This isn't something I've seen before and we're working on guesses and hypotheses. We'll find out one way or the other once we destroy another dragon."
Suddenly, almost as though she'd summoned it with her words, there was a roar echoing down the mountainside and it was loud. Onmund spun on a heel and peered up at the peak; you couldn't see very far up the mountain from its base - there were always clouds and blowing snow that blocked any view of the top of the Throat of the World. The roar had sounded like it had come from above but he couldn't see anything but the usual white cloud cover.
"Speak of the devil."
With a grunt Onmund hurried inside and down the short hall to the stairs that led into the hill; in one of the work rooms, carefully sat upon a rough wooden base on top of one of the tables, were two devices that looked like several soul gems fused into a pair of fist-sized, spiky, greenish gems, both held in a delicate copper and iron filigree. Kestrel had referred to them as soul matrices - something meant to hold a soul and amplify its properties without damaging or draining the soul itself.
Right now they were empty but only because they intended to try and trap a dragon soul inside one.
They'd fought two more dragons before they'd come to settle in Ivarstead -- much like the first one they'd found the dragon's body had burned away and some sort of wind-like phenomenon had rushed off into the wilds each time. Kestrel's best guess was they were witnessing the dragon's soul fleeing and while she had no idea why this was happening now and hadn't before when she'd personally fought dragons she was determined to catch one to examine and try to determine why.
He reached out and carefully lifted one of the matrices off its base; it looked fragile but was as solid as a rock in his hand, and he hurried over to a small side table near the door and pulled a leather pouch out of a drawer -- it had once been a waterskin but had since been repurposed into a sack large enough to carry a matrix. Onmund slid the matrix inside and tied it to his belt, then jogged back up the stairs and about collided with Gormir as the man came rushing into the hall.
"-got a dragon circling in from the northwest."
"I heard it. Sounded like it came off the mountain," Onmund responded. He sidestepped out of Gormir's way; the old guardsman disappeared down the hall and Onmund heard his footsteps turn into his room.
He left Gormir to gather his things and continued outside; halfway down the path to town a shadow flew by overhead and the dragon's screech tore through the sky followed by the panicked shouts of -- well, Onmund couldn't quite recognize Ivarstead's inhabitants just by voice alone yet but he could spot Fastred, Boti, Temma, and Klimmek hurrying toward Temma's mill.
"Just get inside and stay there - we'll handle it," he yelled at them, waving for them to keep going.
He stopped at the barrow and shielded his eyes as the dragon spun in the air with the sun at its back; this one looked strangely pale - almost white. The others had been a sort of muddy brownish-red...guess he was about to find out if coloration meant anything with the damned things.
Color aside he needed to treat this one as he did all the others, and that meant that first he needed to get its attention and get it out of the sky.
At the moment it seemed content to keep to the air and was gliding back toward the mountain but its current path would take it directly over Ivarstead; Onmund waited for it to get closer then lobbed a fireball into the air in its general direction. It didn't hit (and he hadn't intended it to) but now the dragon's head turned toward him, and its wingtip dipped as it took a sharp turn and angled in toward where he stood at the barrow's edge.
He'd stopped here mostly because the barrow was made of (and ringed with) stone and was far enough away from the town that no structures would be immediately set aflame; this dragon, however, inhaled and breathed over Onmund as it strafed by overhead and his ward rippled as it was bathed in ice.
"At least this one can't set the town on fire," he growled under his breath, shivering a bit at the icy blast of air that slipped up under the ward's edges. His boots crunched over the iced-over grass as he turned to run away from Ivarstead and out toward the wilderness.
By now he was rather familiar with the surrounding territory; there was the lake that the river fed into with its little island in the middle, and further beyond that was an old, crumbling watch tower on the far shore. If he took a sharp turn north he'd be running down into a very steep ravine that led up to the eastern side of the Throat of the World (and the river at the bottom of the ravine, which he knew was rather deep through that stretch of the mountainous area). Onmund would have much rather run to the south to the sparse forest and smaller hills but didn't think he could safely cross the river with a dragon circling overhead, and to get to the bridge he'd have to run through town which wasn't a good option either... He'd have to make do with the ravine.
With the sound of beating wings behind him Onmund took off down the hillside, moving north; he knew where the almost invisible game trails were between the rocks that jutted out of the ground here and stuck to them to avoid getting his feet tangled in the undergrowth. He went about halfway down then turned to stand his ground, watching as the dragon continued on overhead but could see how its head twisted to keep one eye on the mage.
"C'mon, get closer..."
It circled back and dipped low - Onmund took that as a sign that it was about to strafe him again with its breath. He shifted his weight to the balls of his feet and waited to hear the inhale, then danced off to the side as the dragon came gliding through spewing its ice breath at him; he kept his ward up in case it turned its head suddenly but with his free hand he hammered a bolt of lightning into the beast. The lightning struck the dragon's flank (he'd misjudged the speed a bit and had missed the wing) and the dragon shifted in such a way that it seemed to rise into the sky at almost a right angle to the ground, rapidly rising out of his reach again.
"Is a mouthful of snowflakes all you've got, dragon?" he yelled up at it. "I can do this all day!"
Movement up the hill caught his attention; Gormir came into view -- the guardsman was wearing his battered guard's armor (though he'd removed all traces of Winterhold's insignia from it) and was wielding a large, finely crafted longbow that Onmund knew rather well: it was made from some of the dragon bone they'd collected from the three dragons they'd killed so far. Coming into view behind Gormir Onmund could just see the top of Brelyna's head at the very crest of the hill -- the dragon's attention shifted from Onmund to the two up there, and he hurried back up the hill in time to see Gormir plant an arrow right into the dragon's left haunch as it turned in the air.
"Nice shot."
"Get it to ground, boy."
"Right." Onmund watched; the dragon hadn't seemed to react much to the arrow in its side and was arcing around to come at them again. He glanced to Brelyna and caught her eye, jerking his head toward the left - she nodded and brought her hands together, the flicker of flames appearing between her palms. As the dragon dipped low and inhaled again the mages shot their spells with Brelyna targeting the left and Onmund aiming for the right. The dragon clamped its mouth together tightly enough Onmund heard teeth clicking as it tried to brake its forward momentum with a sharp beat of its wings coupled with a sweep of its tail that shifted its entire body like a cracking whip; Onmund's spell missed but Brelyna's struck the wing membrane and left a large and obvious scorch mark there, and the smell of burnt hide reached them as the dragon's wings buffeted them with wind as it struggled to climb again.
Gormir drew and fired a moment after the mages and his arrow embedded itself into the lower rib region of the dragon, eliciting an angry roar that grew distorted and echoed strangely off the surrounding hills as the beast rose back into the sky.
"This one doesn't seem to want to cooperate."
Gormir grunted in response and readied another arrow, tracking the dragon's path through the sky with the arrow's tip.
Brelyna conjured another fireball between her hands. "-here it comes again. Same as before?"
"Sounds like a plan," Onmund replied. They cast again in unison, one to each side, as the dragon came down and then scattered in opposite directions as Onmund's fireball struck the wing's tip and sent the dragon into a tumble that ended with it crashing into a partially rotted tree; he took a facefull of leaves and dirt as the dragon scrabbled on the ground to right itself with a sweep of its tail but he was already casting again, sending another fireball into the creature's side and feeling the heat across his face as somewhere behind him Brelyna fired neatly over his shoulder.
It didn't take long for the dragon to get its feet under itself and in an instant it had lunged and covered the distance between them. Onmund's ears began to ring as the dragon roared at him, almost point blank - these damned things were loud when they were close - and he had to dive to the side to avoid the snapping teeth. The dragon turned to follow him and Brelyna sent a pair of fireballs in rapid succession into its unprotected shoulder and wing; as it turned to snap at her Gormir shot again and pinned an arrow into the scales right at the dragon's brow -- it was a poor angle and just barely hanging there but it got the dragon's attention and it whipped its head around to breathe directly at the man.
Onmund heard Gormir's snarl of pain as he was lashed with the harsh, icy breath; he wasn't positioned far enough in front to send a spell down the dragon's throat so he hammered one into the side of the beast's skull. The dragon jerked to the side, off balance, and Brelyna shot a maintained spray of lightning at it; it wasn't the most damaging spell against the dragon's protective scales but it definitely made it difficult to concentrate or move with finesse, evidenced as the dragon tried to bite at her and missed without the dunmer even needing to move.
Onmund hurried over to where Gormir was clumsily trying to brush away the ice clinging to him; the healing magicks he flooded the man with seemed to strengthen him and banish the numbness of the ice, and within a few breaths Gormir was reaching for another arrow and readying to fire with an appreciative nod to Onmund.
The dragon made as though it was going to bite at Brelyna again and as the mage moved (and interrupted her lightning) the dragon abruptly spun the other way and sent its tail smashing into her; Brelyna was sent rolling uncontrollably down the hillside and almost out of Onmund's sight among the scrub bushes.
Growling in irritation he summoned a small whirlwind around himself and then sent it at the dragon, filling its face with grass, leaves, and gritty dirt. It wasn't meant to really harm the thing but it did distract it enough that Gormir's next shot struck it in the throat and stuck in deep. The dragon let out a pained noise and leapt clear over their heads, landing well over halfway down the ravine and then leaping again to put itself airborne. It rose to a distance out of their reach then turned to stare them down, remaining there for a moment or two before bellowing out what seemed to be speech and then turning to fly out over the far side of the ravine and then out of sight.
Onmund kept a close eye on the dragon until it was completely out of view then looked around for Gormir and Brelyna -- the guardsman was over helping her to her feet, and while she had an obvious bruise already forming on her face she seemed to be all right.
"So much for that one..." Onmund grumbled, dropping a hand to rest on the pouch holding the soul matrix. "Should we follow it?"
"No," came Kestrel's reply. "It wouldn't be worth the time to try and track it down. This area is too mountainous to efficiently follow and then fight it, and it could just as easily be retreating somewhere that favors it."
Brelyna brushed hands across her face, healing away the bruising. "I guess we'll try out these matrix things on the next one." She too was carrying one of the pouches tied to her belt; if only they'd managed to kill the dragon...
"Let's return to town and let the others know the dragon has been driven off," Kestrel went on. "I feel we'll have no shortage of them, considering we live at the base of a mountain that houses monks that study the dragon's thu'um. ...that may be a factor in the future if it seems like we're seeing far too many dragons for one region."
Gormir snorted. "Surely you don't think the monks up there are allied with the damned things?"
"No, but dragons tended to be very prideful. If they think mortals are reaching for something above their station, especially if that 'something' is the dragon's own language, I imagine they'd have a few rather violent opinions to express about that. We'll have to keep a careful watch and headcount, and see if there's anything amiss in the coming days."
They trudged up the hill and among the trees, heading back to Ivarstead. From the top of the hill the town seemed deserted save for J'zargo - they could see him pacing near the main road that lead through the town. Onmund handed Brelyna the matrix he was carrying and continued on as Gormir and Brelyna headed back into their main hall.
"Aha, there you are," was J'zargo's greeting. "This one heard the shouting about dragons and was readying to put out fires."
"This one breathed ice, actually."
The khajiit's nose twitched; Onmund had seen that particular twitch enough to know it was a sign of annoyance. "Lovely. What don't they breathe?"
"Let's not test fate with a question like that. Is everyone inside?"
"Yes. J'zargo sent a few stragglers into the inn -- he will let them know it is safe to come out."
"For now. We didn't manage to kill it, only force it to leave. Gormir did put an arrow in its throat so it should be off licking its wounds for a bit, if it even comes back at all."
"Ah, sad. This one was wanting to practice against a dragon again. Ah - might J'zargo take the master and practice instead?"
As Onmund looked down at the pendant he heard Kestrel chuckling quietly. "Eager as ever I see. I will give you a few hours but come this evening I will need to be returned to Onmund -- there are a few tasks I need him to perform."
With a shrug Onmund passed the necklace off to J'zargo and left them to it; he headed over to the lower entrance to their haven and went inside, heading to the library -- Kestrel had mentioned tasks she wanted done and if they were anything like the other 'tasks' she'd had then he would need to retrieve a couple books and have them ready for this evening. Urag and Nirya greeted him and then left him to his own business as he wandered the shelves, looking for the titles he was careful to not let them see him taking and also was careful to shift to another shelf once he was done copying reference notes out of them.
Necromancy as a whole still made him fairly uncomfortable but he was steadily getting used to the idea that it was essentially just another tool, and that it was up to him to not abuse it. Using it didn't make him evil, doing evil things with it would make him evil. And he didn't think restoring Kestrel was inherently evil, even if they needed to somehow obtain a body to anchor her soul to -- that too wasn't necessarily an evil act if the person was already dead. And if the rumors about Riften were true then they'd probably trip over a body and no one would care if said body disappeared. That was a 'truth' that made him more uncomfortable than necromancy did, in fact.
He made it back to his room without any questioning from Urag or Nirya, and spent the rest of the afternoon thumbing through the musty tomes; J'zargo finally brought Kestrel back well after dinnertime, looking exhausted but rather pleased with himself. Once he was back in his room Onmund reached for the book rest that Kestrel normally sat on when they were pouring over books but a tutting noise from the pendant made him pause.
"No books tonight. We need to plan for a trip instead."
"To Riften?" he asked.
"Yes, and then...elsewhere. Wherever it is that seems to be seeing a great number of dragons."
Onmund moved over to his bed instead, leaving Kestrel sitting on the little table he kept beside the head of the bed. "--so, anywhere."
"Technically. We need to capture a dragon soul for study, or at the very least figure out where these souls are fleeing to."
"And you want to do that before we actually stick you back into a body?"
"Onmund, acclimating to a new body could take months. Skyrim may not have that long if the dragons are returning in full force. I've seen the devastion that even a small flight of dragons can do to a region."
"A...flight?"
"It's a term referring to a grouping of dragons. It was coined by -- well, it's not important. The man who popularized the term has long been dead and I'd rather not get started on a history lesson. Even if the old bastard would be beyond pleased to know his name persisted through several eras..." she added after a pause, sounding somewhat amused.
"So...which are we doing first, then? Riften, or dragon hunting?"
"Riften. Once we've obtained a body I know how to halt further decay - it should be fine to sit for weeks, months, or even years until we can get to it. We obtain it, bring it back here and stow it away in my quarters, then head out into the great unknown until we find ourselves a dragon or two and answer a few questions."
Onmund nodded, looking around his room. "At least I won't need to worry about food. What exactly should I be packing then?"
"Spare robes, something to sleep on or in, blank parchment and writing tools, a matrix, whatever coin you currently have or small trinkets you think you could barter. We'll visit the armory before we leave and see about making sure you've at least one martial weapon on you."
"I'm not really practiced with weapons."
"No, but I am."
Ah, right. "All right. Seems like we have a plan. When are we leaving?"
"I will give you a day to prepare, and we'll need to let the others know besides."
The trip to Riften had been uneventful; the trip back was done with a portal in the dead of night so no one would see Onmund carrying a cadaver wrapped tightly in cloth and leather, or hear his body casting spells as Kestrel readied her remaining coffin with the needed enchantments to place the body in a sort of magical stasis so long as it remained inside. Her spellcasting ended with a conjured magical lock over the coffin's lid and then just as silently as they arrived they left, sneaking back out of Ivarstead and heading north. It would be a long trek, skirting the base of the Throat of the World to circle around north and then west to reach Whiterun; they'd decided to begin their search there as Whiterun was a central region and a heavily trafficked trading hub, and if there was any new information to be had about dragons it would likely be running rampant in the streets as folks speculated and told tales.
Onmund secretly hoped they'd get lucky and find a dragon sooner rather than later; while Kestrel wanted definitive answers regarding the dragon souls Onmund didn't see what they could possibly do if the soul matrix didn't work -- their plan was built around the assumption that it would, and if it didn't then they'd have no reason to keep wandering around Skyrim hunting dragons...probably. This was another assumption Onmund had as, by his logic, if Kestrel could capture a dragon soul with a spell she would have done so by now.
Actually... "What do we do if the matrix doesn't work?"
Kestrel didn't answer right away; Onmund lightly hopped over a depression in the ground - he imagined it probably filled with water during heavy rain - and continued on up the far slope of the ravine. The moon was at least bright enough to light his way though it cast strange shadows that kept catching his attention as he walked.
"-we return to Ivarstead and consider another path."
"That's what I thought." He huffed a bit as he clambered over a fallen log. "-watch: Ivarstead will see more dragons than we do by the time we get back."
"I won't say that's not possible but for all our sakes I hope not."
Onmund hadn't slept outdoors since he was a young boy; the nighttime sounds of the woods were somewhat soothing as he camped under the stars, tucked in among tree roots or under rocky outcrops. It took five days to get up to the river that ran along the northern side of the Throat of the World. In all the time he'd been walking they'd not seen anything other than a few deer and a fox; it'd been strangely peaceful, and pleasant. Part of him was thankful for that while part of him wished to just get the dragon hunting part over with -- he felt rather exposed despite the tree cover, and wasn't particularly wanting to try and fight a dragon in a cramped or tree-choked area. If they could make it out onto the plains without incident he'd consider themselves lucky, even if the flat farmlands that surrounded Whiterun wouldn't offer any sort of cover and would force him to rely on his wards and wits to keep out of danger.
It took another three days until Onmund got away from the base of the mountain and finally moved out of the forest and took his first few steps out into the plains.
"Finally... I'm going to walk holes into the soles of my boots by the time we get to Whiterun."
"A hike across farmland is easier than through a forest at the least. We should make good time now."
Onmund peered up at the sky; it had been an overcast day with the faintest hint of rain on the wind for the last couple hours. It would be getting dark soon and if it was going to rain he'd rather have what shelter he could from the trees. "I think I'll camp here at the treeline and head toward Whiterun at dawn. I'd rather not be wet, miserable, and also the tallest thing in the middle of a field in a storm."
"Logical. We did recently pass a pine copse - that should suffice for a shelter."
With a nod Onmund turned to head back into the forest; his feet hurt anyway so he could use the extra hours of rest before starting out in the morning again. He found the copse and set about loosely braiding some of the lowest branches together to form a sort of ceiling, then unrolled his bedroll under it and stretched out. As night was falling the rain finally came but the braided branches over his head were thick enough to keep the water off him; the rain itself wasn't very heavy and seemed to be just enough to fill the air with the pleasant smell that came after a rainfall.
At some point he drifted off to sleep and, come morning, a roaring voice thundered down from the Throat of the World-
DOVAHKIIN!
Onmund jerked awake and kicked out at his bedroll thinking, for a brief moment, that something had grabbed him and was holding him down. Once his sleep-fogged brain caught up to him and the last echoes of the call had faded away he sat there with his heartbeat racing in his ears, staring around in confusion.
"-what the hell was that?"
"...I have genuinely no idea. But I do know the word we just heard."
"The -- what was it?"
"Dovahkiin. Dragonborn."
Onmund wiped a hand across his brow, smearing off cold sweat as he inhaled and exhaled slowly a few times, trying to calm himself down from the abrupt awakening.
"Well. Considering this sudden development I think we should return to Ivarstead and take the path up the mountain. That voice seemed to come from the top of the mountain itself, which would mean the monks are responsible. If they're calling to a Dragonborn..."
"Wait, UP the mountain? All the way up the mountain?"
"Yes, Onmund - that's typically where the top of a mountain is."
Onmund groaned. "-Klimmek complains about how rough that climb can be, and that's even when the weather is clear."
"You just spent a week walking through the woods, spending a day climbing a mountain should be easy in comparison. Had I been able to predict a bunch of mute monks would suddenly shout from the heavens then we could have waited in Ivarstead -- I so despise wasted time."
He set about rolling up his bedroll and carefully undoing the braidwork that held the pine branches in place; though he knew that returning to Ivarstead emptyhanded was a possibility it still soured his mood to have to turn around right as they got to Whiterun's territory. "Can we at least stop in Ivarstead for news and to rest? And probably a new pair of boots..."
"Yes, we shall. I hope the others have sense enough to be researching why the monks would be summoning a..." She trailed off a moment. "--I can't believe I've lived to see another era with a dragonborn existing within it, and I say that as someone who has been alive for several of them."
"What does that mean? I mean - I know what dragonborn means, I've heard the old tales. What does that mean for us?"
"A great many things."
"That's not really an answer."
"I don't want to discuss it right now. Are you packed and with everything at hand?"
"Yeah, I'm ready to go."
"Good. Trade places and I shall return us to Ivarstead and spare your feet."
Onmund placed a hand on the pendant and was quickly drawn inside it, watching from within as his hands traced the complicated shapes needed to form a portal that would return them to Kestrel's quarters at Ivarstead. After a brief flash of light they were back inside her room, and Onmund was quickly given control of himself back; he pushed out the door and wearily headed back to his own room to drop off his pack. He couldn't hear anyone moving about and assumed the others would be either in town or downstairs in the library (there was no way anyone could have slept through that noise), and let his feet take him toward the stairs to check there first.
Going down he met Brelyna coming up and he walked with her back up into the gathering hall and dropped onto one of the benches. "Please tell me you heard the shout this morning."
She nodded. "It woke the entire town up. I think everyone is excited more so than worried or anything -- Wilhelm seems to think we're going to see a rush of pilgrims in the upcoming weeks because of it."
"And one of those will be the dragonborn themselves," Kestrel cut in. "In fact, do let everyone know that if someone claiming to be a dragonborn arrives that they let us know. It would...certainly help answer a few things."
"I will. I'm just as curious as everyone else." Brelyna paused, then eyed Onmund up and down. "I guess you didn't run into any dragons while you were gone."
He shook his head. "Not a single one. I bet I will when I climb the mountain though."
"So long as you aren't knocked off the mountain."
"That won't be an issue," Kestrel interrupted again. "Get to your tasks and research -- Onmund, we have our own tasks to tend to, if you please."
With a shrug (and an inward groan) Onmund stood and headed back to Kestrel's room as Brelyna headed outside and back down the hill into Ivarstead. He closed the door behind him and slowly moved over to where the coffin sat. "So...actually getting started on getting you into the body, then?"
"Yes. We no longer have the luxury of time -- we must have this in place as quickly as possible."
"Is...is a dragonborn appearing really that bad?"
"...Onmund. You said you've heard the old tales. Do you not recall at all what they said?"
"Not...entirely, no."
He heard a sigh come from the pendant. "Let's get started. The world is about to grow more chaotic."
----------------------------------------------
As a final catalyst to get Kestrel anchored to her new body they'd had to sacrifice the tether that bound them together; splitting them apart had been easier than expected though it left them both feeling empty and nauseous for days afterward. When the nausea finally wore off Onmund found himself starving -- hungry for the first time in over two years.
And, of course, it was during his first meal in all that time that the Dragonborn arrived in Ivarstead.
The mages made themselves available to the woman, of course -- all their knowledge, both in book form as well as instruction. Onmund had walked with her to the base of the mountain, and watched as she steadily climbed the crumbling stone stairs until she was out of sight among the cloud cover far above.
While she was gone the mages planned, and studied, and waited. Whatever was about to happen in the world was too important to stand by and simply watch. They debated and researched and made plans for this and that, and waited for the woman to come back down the mountain.
"You're sure about this?"
"You should consider yourself lucky I now have two other apprentices to keep myself occupied with while I wait for you to return."
"And if I don't?"
"Please. You are my pupil - I would consider it a great insult if you're killed by something inconsequential."
"She could just say no."
"She could. But she won't."
"You seem pretty sure about that despite not knowing anything about her."
"Trust me, Onmund. She won't turn down your offer of help and I sincerely doubt you'll be the only one following in her wake. The path this world is on is about to take a drastic turn and I'd rather it not be directly around a corner and into oblivion."
"What will you be doing?"
"Teaching apprentices, catching them up to your level and readying ourselves to step in if the situation calls for it."
"So much for staying quiet and out of sight."
"Yes, well. At least we had the forethought to include spare rooms in the haven."
When the dragonborn finally came down off the mountain Onmund was waiting, and as Kestrel had assured him his offer of help was accepted. Once again he found himself heading out of Ivarstead and into the more or less unknown.
He'd be back eventually though. Probably. Personally witnessing history was usually the best way to record it -- it was an interesting thought to consider that a book he'd penned himself would eventually find its way onto Kestrel's bookshelves and potentially beyond.
Three days had passed and nothing had happened. No Varea, no Kestrel, no visible change in the guards or mages.
The Jarl had returned by then and to Onmund's dismay Ulfric was with him; neither of them was especially pleased, and wasted no time letting him know how deeply angered they were over this whole fiasco. It didn't escape his attention that, during his initial little tirade - when Korir was tearing into him, Brelyna, Nelacar, and Gormir, even - that the guards were not mentioned at all; it left a sour taste in his mouth even as he argued with them, trying to get them to understand that none of this was anyone's fault but Varea's but Korir seemed especially fixated on the mages's supposed role, and he grew more heated by the moment as he spat and yelled to be heard over every word coming out of their mouths.
((Continued beneath cut))
Gormir, thankfully, stood beside Onmund and the others for the entire argument. That a Winterhold resident was willing to stand up to his own Jarl to make him see reason seemed to mellow Ulfric's fury, and finally Ulfric dismissed Korir entirely, ordering him back to his hall and everyone in the inn outside so Onmund and the others could sit with him in private. They spent the next several hours (several uncomfortable, tense hours) fully detailing to Ulfric what had happened, starting with Onmund's fall in Saarthal and ending with how they'd repelled the daedra, and the strange hum and blast that had knocked Onmund, along with everyone else that had been outside, off their feet.
"And, nothing more has attacked Winterhold?"
Onmund shook his head. "No, Jarl. Nothing. We've been preparing for the worst but it's not come. I'm..." He paused, eying Ulfric carefully. "I'm not sure what's happened, so I'm not sure if the worst WILL come." He fell silent, staring down into his lap. There's no way Kestrel and Varea could have been fighting all this time, and if one or the other had triumphed he was certain they would have returned here by now...
He looked up to find Ulfric staring at him, his chin resting on interlaced fingers and elbows braced against the table. A sigh rumbled out of him but his expression remained stony and unchanged. "You know how Korir sees your kind, mage - and how I saw you all prior to hearing the full accounting. I personally see magic as a tool but any tool can be misused. Korir wants to have all of you executed due to the danger you pose to his holding."
Onmund's eyes widened. "What? No! How can he say that?"
Ulfric held up a hand and Onmund fell silent, gripping the edge of the table between them with white-knuckled hands.
"I disagree with his broad declaration. He is blinded by fury and hate - something I too fell prey to on the way here when I heard him describing the chaos going on. I now understand, as much as I am able, what truly happened here, and I do understand Korir's desire to protect his people. As I am not yet king, nor is this my hold, what I can actually do in this situation is very limited. Once he's had time to calm down, as I have, Korir may listen to my counsel but I cannot force him to do much - not without causing an incident between our holds and casting doubts on my ability to rule once I am crowned."
"I - I understand, but Jarl, please - he can't execute them, they're innocent. I can't let him do that," Onmund growled.
Ulfric's expression hardened. "LET him do that? Are you challenging his decision before it's even made?" He paused then added "I'm sure that will help your case," his tone dripping sarcasm.
"But he's right," Brelyna broke in, leaning over the table some toward Ulfric. "And how can he want to execute the mages while letting the guards walk free? It's not fair."
"I agree. But again, this is not my hold and ultimately not my decision." Ulfric closed his eyes for a few breaths, then opened them to stare them down. "If I am capable of understanding who is truly at fault surely you can understand how my hands are tied."
Onmund felt something inside him deflate. "I...yes. Unfortunately," he muttered. "What can we do, then? I DON'T want to argue for more deaths in the name of "fairness" - those guards are just as innocent as the mages. Can you at least get Korir to..."
There was silence for a long moment - he knew what he wanted to say but it was difficult to voice it when he could imagine how Korir would react. And he knew the others would object too, but...there didn't seem to be another--
"Get him to what, mage?"
"To let us leave," Onmund sighed. "Will Korir just let us leave?"
Brelyna's eyes widened and she looked to him with an expression that was part surprise, part horror; the College was home to everyone, HAD been home to him too. There was a lot of history, a lot of hidden power, within those stone walls. To leave was... It seemed like admitting defeat, like running with their tails between their legs. But if the alternative was being put to death, wasn't running better?
Ulfric slowly straightened and leaned back in his chair, rubbing at his chin. Gormir shifted on his stool, the old wood creaking a bit, and the noise drew the Jarl's attention to the man.
"...Jarl Ulfric, if I may..."
"Go on."
Gormir nodded. "There wouldn't likely be a Winterhold still handing if not for the return of Onmund here, and his master. I'm no lover or hater of magic but everyone's had days to hear what happened here, both from our Jarl and from those sitting here. They all saw these mages here defending them, and whether they like mages or not there's not a man, woman, or child here who would easily condemn someone innocent. Surely Jarl Korir has to see that none will trust his judgement if he falters now." Ulfric slowly raised an eyebrow at that and Gormir leaned back from him, looking uncertain. "I-I mean to say, no one will see him as fair. I...I know I wouldn't. I can't help but see myself standing in the boots of the mages, or of the men and women I've known and worked beside for years. That he'd spare one and not the other when they were both in the same situation... Who could possibly trust him in the future not to do that again when it's them in the mages' position?"
Ulfric slowly nodded to him. "It is Korir's choice, and he will have to live with the consequences of his decision." He stood abruptly; Onmund jumped a bit at the sudden movement. "Come - I wish to see the defenses you have, and hear what you have planned. I could only spare twenty men and I must return to Windhelm as soon as possible, and no doubt Korir will soon tire of being ordered about in his own hold and demand the opportunity to speak to you as I have."
Onmund nodded silently and stood to follow Ulfric back out into the snow; those that had been ordered out of the inn hurried inside as they left, seeking shelter from the storm that was still blowing. Tugging up his hood Onmund took the lead and, shouting over the gusting wind, led Ulfric around Winterhold pointing out where they'd placed wards and where Gormir had set what men were left to defend the town. Ulfric didn't say much aside from directing pairs of men from the forces he'd brought to go here or there, shoring up where he saw weak points in Winterhold's defenses. At the far end of the town they paused as something caused the wind around them to shift -- like the wind had taken a very brief break in blowing to-
The twilight matriarch chose that moment to land ten feet from them, and Onmund quickly reached out to stop Ulfric from drawing his weapon.
"Wait- that thing is on our side."
"Have you gone mad, mage?"
Onmund's brain chose that moment to scream at him over who he'd just manhandled, and he quickly pulled his hands back. "I'm sorry, ah, sorry -- I mean, yes, it's on our side. I know it sounds dumb or dangerous but this creature was also forced to act against its will. It's allied itself with us until Varea is dealt with."
"You are foolish, thinking a beast like that would-"
The wind halted entirely then, and the air took on a blueish tint. Ulfric paused, whatever he was about to say cut off; alarmed, Onmund looked around to see that Ulfric, as well as the others, were frozen in place - as though time itself had stopped for everyone but himself. What could have...
"Kestrel?" he called into the silence. A thin line of blue light appeared in front of him further down the road, widening into an oval through which a man stepped. Onmund blinked in surprise at Quaranir. "You... You came back. Why?"
The psijic's expression softened briefly even as his hand came up in a sharp gesture that then ended with the flat of his palm thrust out toward the mage. From his fingers sprang narrow filaments of white that raced across the air between them, striking Onmund and coiling around him in thick bands of conjured rope.
"Hey-! What are you-"
The ropes tightened, pulling his arms in to his hips and forcing his ankles to snap together; he wobbled on his feet and then toppled, biting deeply into his lower lip as his chin slammed into the snow. He felt the back of his robes ripple and then he began to rapidly slide across the ground toward Quaranir; as he came closer to Quaranir whatever force was moving him was slowly lifting him upright as well as rotating him so his back was gradually turning toward the man.
Mere feet from Quaranir Onmund winced at an ear-piercing shriek and then again found himself falling face first into the snow as the psijic dropped him with a startled cry. Behind him Quaranir grappled with...the matriarch. The twilight had the talons of one foot sunk deeply into the mage's arm and was tearing at him with the other, all while beating at Quaranir's face and shoulders with her wings. The blue tint to the air disappeared and through his daze Onmund could hear Ulfric continuing to speak as though nothing had happened for several words before the man realized that Onmund was not beside him and--
"We are under attack!"
With a groan Onmund awkwardly rolled away from the thrashing tail and Quaranir's staggering gait; his lip was throbbing and his chin freezing as the wind reached the slick of blood and melted snow running down his face.
"Onmund!"
Brelyna, with Gormir on her heels, rushed to him; in the few seconds she had before Gormir reached him she grabbed the ropes and tugged at them - they didn't budge in the slightest - but then the Nord guardsman just grabbed his belt and hood and bodily lifted Onmund off the ground and swung him away and over his shoulder as several of Ulfric's men rushed toward the struggling figure of Quaranir.
Onmund's ears popped from a whoosh of approaching pressure and there behind Gormir he spied a second psijic man stepping free from a portal. "Behind us!"
Ulfric heard him and spun in one movement. The psijic's feet had barely touched the snow when Ulfric bellowed in the tongue of the dragons; Onmund had never seen a Thu'um performed before and whatever this one was lifted the psijic off his feet and sent him flying backward to crack into the trunk of a pine tree before falling to the ground in a heap.
Gormir plunked Onmund's feet to the ground and steadied him, and beside them Brelyna was rapidly muttering under her breath, trying spell after spell until finally she hit upon the correct one and the ropes binding him disappeared.
"Thanks," he let out in a rush, spinning to look back toward Quaranir in time to see the psijic manage to throw the twilight and guards aside in a sweeping motion; the man's arm was shredded down to the bone and the snow at his feet was stained a bright reddish pink. The guards recovered far quicker than the psijic must have been expecting and he flickered out of view to reappear further away, frantically trying to tend to his bad wounded arm.
"-I don't get it, he helped me before. Why did he--" Onmund fell forward, or at least, part of him did. From where he landed in the snow he had a good view of his own body stumbling, crumpling into the panicked grasping hands of Brelyna and Gormir.
Oh no...not again. Not now.
If he was here and his body was there, that meant--
He watched as his eyes opened, and he looked around in mild confusion before his gaze fell on the sight of Ulfric advancing on the psijic still collapsed at the tree's base. Onmund's face twisted into a look of sheer fury, and one of his hands raised to the sky and sent out a blast of golden light that, similar to Quaranir's spell, encased the unconscious psijic man in yellowish bonds. Ulfric spun around, and Onmund's spirit shifted unexpectedly to hang at the Jarl's shoulder, staring his own body down; at least this time, while he wasn't able to control where his consciousness appeared, he felt a lot more stable and whole than the first time this had happened -- he actually was able to keep his thoughts together and coherent, and could understand what was going on around him a lot better.
Not...that he actually understood what was happening right now, to be honest.
"I warned you and you pursued anyway - this body is younger and much more rested than I was when you took me. What chance do you think you have NOW?"
Took? ...wait. The psijics captured Kestrel? What about Varea?
"Hush, apprentice," his body said as it turned to face the guards and Quaranir. "I will explain when this is dealt with."
Quaranir was being driven back rapidly off the road, fighting to keep the five guards in front of him while the twilight and Nelacar harried him with spells and talons; with a gesture Onmund's body sent out a crackling blast of lightning that wove between the guards without harming them and slammed into the hurried shield Quaranir raised and just as quickly shattered it. Onmund's spirit shifted again to float alongside his body as it stalked forward and sliced the air with a hand gesture; the guards were roughly shoved to either side to clear a path for Onmund's body to approach Quaranir uncontested. As they (that is, Onmund's body and his spirit, separately) approached him Quaranir's gaze shifted -- it almost seemed like he could see Onmund's spirit, and Onmund supposed that Kestrel, inside his body, must have realized this as well as his body extended a hand and Onmund was drawn into his own palm.
"Don't even think about it," his body snarled. The hand holding his spirit pulled in close to his chest, and his own fingers blocked his view of what was going on outside of his body. "I need no further reasons to cut you down."
If Quaranir responded Onmund couldn't hear him from where he was sheltered against his own chest; at the moment all he could hear was his own heartbeat and hear his body breathing, and also strangely feel the magicka flowing out of him as Kestrel used him to cast several spells.
"What is going on here, mage?"
Well, he could definitely hear Ulfric, and he sounded angry again.
"Jarl Ulfric, I can explain-"
And that was Brelyna.
"Don't you-- aaargh!" He - Kestrel, in his body - let out a frustrated noise at whatever was going on; Onmund had the sensation of a sharp turn. "You, girl - Brelyna, was it? Explain-"
"No, YOU explain, mage," Ulfric interrupted. "Explain now or be cut down where you stand."
"That's her - that's Onmund's master," Brelyna cut in. "The spell binding the two of them lets her speak through him, and-"
"-and I'm to believe that, after this?"
"Enough. We're only going to cause confusion if we talk over one another." Onmund inwardly winced -- Ulfric was going to think HE was the one talking to him in such a manner; now more than ever Onmund wished he could see what was going on beyond the closed fingers of the hand that was holding his spirit. He gently moved as his chest lifted - Kestrel, taking a deep breath - and the fingers above what he currently perceived to be his head uncurled just enough to let him see his physical chin above him, and through a small gap between his fingers he could barely make out where Ulfric stood, with Gormir behind him.
"Now," his body went on. "I am Kestrel. Onmund is my apprentice, and there is a spell at play that is allowing me to speak to you right now. Onmund is safe, just not in control of his body at the moment."
"I'm to trust you at your word?"
"Yes, lord, you are. None of you are in a position to disagree."
Onmund winced again. Kestrel, please don't pick a fight with Ulfric and his guards. He felt himself bobbing up and down and what he could see of Ulfric was growing closer.
"'Lord' is not my title, mage."
"Jarl, lord, whatever you're called is hardly a concern of mine right now. Were there just the two?"
"The two...?"
"The two Psijics. Were there only those two that showed up?"
"Yes."
Onmund's view shifted again and he could barely make out the edge of the twlight's wing. "And you - why are you here?"
"You defeated the woman who destroyed Azura's altar, mortal?"
"I did. You'll find what's left of her in a crater far to the south of here."
Now he could make out the top of the twilight's head, and as it dipped briefly out and back into view he assumed the twilight had nodded. "-good. Azura asks, in exchange for the aid she has provided, that the young mage you possess assist her priestess in restoring her altar."
"Agreed," came Kestrel's response. "Now return to your mistress as you do not belong here."
Hey, wait a moment - I don't get a choice?
Above him his chin lowered as his face gazed into the hand that held him. "Don't complain, Onmund. You can handle melding a statue back together in an afternoon." Onmund heard the rustling of wings and again his view shifted though this time all he could see through the gaps in his fingers was snow and trees. "Now, Jarl - I suggest we retreat somewhere better guarded, where I can explain who I am and why I am here in this form as you see me now. -- and before you get any ideas, I do not intend to hold this possession longer than I must. Onmund is fine but I find being in a body that is not mine to be incredibly uncomfortable - the only one of us that could be assumed to be suffering is me."
Without further word his body turned and began walking up the road; Onmund could sense himself using restoration magicks to mend his lip, and could hear the crunching of multiple footsteps behind and around him but Kestrel kept him cupped in close to his own chest until he found himself peeking out at the darkened inside of the inn. Once they were seated his hand deposited himself onto his shoulder which gave him a free view of everything around him, and as he sat perched next to his own ear he listened as Kestrel described the ambush by the psijics -- how they'd swooped in as she lay there, wounded and exhausted, in the aftermath of finally besting Varea by destroying the crown itself while the woman had been wearing it.
"And so, Jarl, they now hold my body captive and as of this moment there's no feasible means of retrieving me," his body went on.
"But what about Onmund?" he heard Brelyna ask (she was sitting on his other side, his own head was between him and her and he could not see her from here). "What do you do now if you don't have a body to return to?"
"I can place my spirit into an object for the time being, until I figure out how to retrieve myself."
"What reason would these psijics have to take you captive? Or to come for your apprentice?"
"I have a history with the psijics. They believe themselves valued counselors, keepers of secrets, and custodians of dangerous magic and relics." Onmund heard himself snort. "They have failed in those last two more times than I can count over the centuries and several times came crying to me for assistance in cleaning up their damned messes. At some point they decided that I, too, was dangerous - and to be truthful, I am, when provoked. They have made several attempts to either bring me to heel beneath their banners or take me captive. I've never meant them any harm and, as I've said, I've often helped them...I don't know what ultimately changed their opinion of me but even now I just want to be left alone. Lesser mages may seek power and control - all I seek is knowledge and answers to existence's greatest mysteries. I am no one's enemy...save for Molag Bal's now, I suppose. The whole reason any of this happened is because I spent ages keeping a relic of his out of the hands of his followers...now that the crown has been destroyed I have nothing tethering me to this region."
"Why did they come for Onmund?"
Onmund heard himself snort. "Why else? He's my apprentice. They likely wanted him there to 'assist' me so they could capture us both at once. And once they had me, while they did not know the extent of what the spell binding us does they DID correctly assume that I could use it to communicate with him -- though I imagine if they'd known exactly what I'm capable of doing with this spell they would have killed me outright and Onmund as well, rather than give me the chance to sever my spirit from my body and escape them."
"And should you leave here - would that remove reason for these psijics to come here?"
His body nodded. "They should have no quarrel with this town. And if they decide otherwise know that I won't let that stand. Whether I choose to remain in this territory or not won't have much impact on how quickly I can get back here if I need to."
Ulfric nodded slowly at this, gaze dropping to the table as he sat there lost in thought. Kestrel seemed content to let the silence stretch on though Onmund could see that Gormir and Nelacar looked uncomfortable.
"--what will you do now? As I have explained to your companions already I cannot shield you from Jarl Korir's decisions. He is still convinced the mages deserve to be executed for their supposed role in this mess, and as for myself I am not certain if I should attempt to change his mind regarding any decisions made about you, master mage."
Onmund heard himself snort again, loudly. "He is hardly in any position to threaten me."
Ulfric's eyes narrowed. "I'm not sure I care for the implications of that."
"Care for them or don't, it's not my problem." Onmund's view of the room shifted slightly as his body stood. "I think it's time I speak to this Korir."
"It may be best to wait. He is still furious that I have kept him barred from this meeting as well as the one earlier."
"I have little time for children playing at governing, Jarl Ulfric. If he can't hold his temper and conduct himself with the dignity of his title then perhaps his people deserve a new leader."
"That is a question for his people to decide." Ulfric stood as well, staring him - them - down. "Know this, mage: I will take you at your word now, but I will show no mercy should you be found to go back on your word."
Onmund's lips curled into a smile. "The feeling is mutual, Jarl. Send Korir in, I will deal with him - and if this turns violent you can rest assured it will not be me that instigates it."
Ulfric nodded, gesturing for the guards around him to follow as he swept out of the room. For a time there was just silence, then Korir all but kicked the door in.
"You! I want you and the-"
Onmund's hand raised and Korir lifted from his feet and accelerated across the room to drop roughly into the chair that Ulfric had just vacated; the spell reminded Onmund of being moved in the exact same manner when he'd first been "adjusting" to his new role as Kestrel's apprentice. It brought him a tiny amount of amusement to see the same magic rendering Korir pale and sputtering, unable to form a coherent sentence for a breath or two.
A ghost of a smile crossed Onmund's face - Onmund could almost picture Kestrel's own features superimposed over his, fangs and all. "Greetings, Jarl Korir. We have much to discuss. I do hope you'll behave yourself."
After several hours of getting nowhere Kestrel had threatened to simply bury Winterhold under the mountainside and be done with it and all its inhabitants - something Onmund knew to be an empty threat but it had finally forced the Jarl to compromise, at least a little bit: the mages were free to go but would be killed without question if they returned to Winterhold, and the same held for anyone who supported or showed anything other than contempt and hostility toward them.
At this Gormir had protested the Jarl daring to make opinion an enforceable law; Korir took it as a declaration of treason to the hold and ordered the man banished with the mages. As Onmund had suspected Korir did not hold any of the enthralled guards responsible for their actions -- it was only the mages, the magic users that he'd hated for a lifetime, that he blamed for everything. Kestrel had taken it in stride, brushing aside the obvious bias and assuring him that Winterhold would not have magical worries "of any kind" as she led the others out into the storm and toward the College.
The only people outside now were the guards that were still holding their posts; Kestrel swept by them with hardly a look, marching across the bridge to the courtyard where she destroyed the stone jail cell without even breaking pace and leaving the men and women there to sort themselves out. Inside the College the mages were lined along the wall, bound and gagged and with eight feet of space between each of them.
In here were ten guards and two volunteers from the town; when "Onmund" stalked into the room the nearest ones had all reached for weapons before realizing Gormir was at his shoulder.
"Stand down - leave. All of you. It's over." Gormir's tone was sharp and abrupt, and seemed to surprise everyone there even as it immediately drew their attention to him.
"Over?" a woman nearby repeated - she wore the garb of a guard. "Then what's-"
Gormir moved over to her and nearly pressed the front of his helm against hers. "I said, leave. Now."
The woman pulled back in surprise but took a few hesitant steps toward the door; Gormir planted his feet and stared down the remaining men and women there. They all slowly moved from the mages and then filed out in silence. Once they were gone Gormir reached up and tugged his helm off, then hurled it across the room.
Onmund felt a pang of guilt as he looked the man over - Gormir was gray-haired, his beard thick and braided with what looked like brass beads woven into the hair. He was scarred, thick jawed, and was even missing a small chunk of his right ear -- this man was rough, worn, and based on his age Onmund guessed that he'd probably lived in Winterhold all his life, fighting for and protecting its inhabitants for years. And now he was being thrown out, with them...all because he'd spoken out against his Jarl's injustice and unfairness.
Onmund's hand reached up and moved him from his shoulder to just over his own sternum, giving him a view of the mages ahead of him but hiding Gormir from view. "Listen well - Korir is banishing us from Winterhold. We are permitted to take only what will fill the wagon he is providing. We will regroup at Saarthal and plan our futures there - what is required of you now is swift packing and an understanding that I will answer your questions once we're somewhere safe."
Saarthal... It seemed like Kestrel was going to lead them to her home. It'd definitely be the safest place for them all right now though there wasn't really room for everyone. But, if they were to plan for the future, and now that there wasn't a reason to remain hiding, they probably wouldn't stay there for long.
The size of Kestrel's library came to mind then, and he inwardly groaned as he thought about having to move all those books...
Gormir helped cut the ropes and remove the gags; once the mages were free they'd clustered around Onmund, or who they thought was Onmund, and Kestrel had stubbornly refused to say or offer anything further than "shut up and go pack" until finally they all scattered, hurrying to try and pack up what they thought couldn't be left behind.
For a moment, as his body turned, Onmund lost sight of Gormir, nor did he hear the man's footsteps following along behind him; as he turned around again he could see Gormir standing near the wall, one arm braced against the windowpane and his head lowered.
"I meant you as well, Gormir."
"And what do I pack, eh? Can't take the city or the people I know with me."
"I would assume you'd at least like some clothing."
"Clothing is replaceable. Home isn't."
Kestrel walked them over to Gormir, reaching out to put a hand on his arm. "I'm sorry you have to suffer this disappointment - not all leaders are wise, and not all wise men end up leaders. Sometimes you simply get someone too fixated on their own nonsense who still manages to fool enough people to place themselves in power. This city, and this-" his hand reached out to tug at the leather straps that held the guard's armor on "-may feel as familiar as skin and you may feel deeply attached to what it means, or meant, to you. Don't. You don't need a guard's uniform to be a good man, and you don't need a hold to guard to satisfy a desire to protect."
He swatted the hand away. "And what would you know of that?"
"I've been alive since before the second era," Onmund heard himself say dryly. "I think I know a thing or two about watching symbols and places and people fade away. There is a delicate line to walk between holding on to who and what you are, and holding on to a time that has passed. Your time here is passing but you will remain the same man with the same memories as before."
Gormir stared at her - him - for a long time, then shook his head. "I can't even see myself being anywhere but here. Where are we even to go? What place could a simple man have among a bunch of magic users?"
Onmund's shoulders lifted in a shrug. "First we'll return to my home, and then find a new home elsewhere that can accommodate all of us. Give it some time and you'll have an entire new hold to keep an eye on."
"Pah. We can't just build our own hold somewhere; there's not a Jarl who would accept that, especially not if Korir runs his mouth - he might poison all of Skyrim against us."
"Sounds like we'd need a man who was present and isn't a mage, and thus has no stake in protecting us, to make sure the correct story is told." Gormir's response was a heavy sigh, and again Onmund's body moved so he couldn't see the man. "Go pack, Gormir."
"If that was an attempt to make me feel any better about this-"
"-there are times where the truth doesn't make anyone feel any better, regardless of what side of the truth you may be standing on. All I can do is point out that despite how you feel now you're the one on the correct side of it." Onmund watched as Kestrel walked them toward the door, only to pause right before it and shift enough that he knew they were looking back over their shoulder. "And besides - we do have at least ONE Jarl who knows what happened here, and that Jarl is currently trying to become king. Depending on how history works itself out the truth may come knocking on Korir's door and he won't like what it has to say to him."
With that they left, heading back out into the courtyard. Kestrel paused at the stone base where, until recently, the statue of a mage had stood; Onmund recalled how it had been shattered, and shortly afterward how the daedroth had come after him, and felt his spirit shiver a bit at the memory -- he hoped he never had to face one of those things again, ever.
Kestrel rubbed his hands together and Onmund felt magicka shift in both his body and in the air as whatever she silently casted made his hands glow. She began to trace patterns around the ruined statue's base, fingers cutting through the stone like a blade through fabric; his body made one full circle of the base before stopping to carefully deposit his spirit on top of it, giving him a perfect view as Kestrel continued on with her stonemarking.
What is she doing?
Onmund's face lifted to look at him, smiling a bit. "Watch carefully, apprentice -- this isn't how I intended you to learn teleportation circles but I may as well make use of this time to teach. First, we must prepare the foundation - this includes sketching the base of the circle as well as calculating the width and height. See here..."
---------------------------------------
The storm had blown over and it was late at night by the time the wagon Korir had ordered arrived at the College; he watched, perched back on his own shoulder, as the mages carefully packed in crates and satchels full of supplies, books, scrolls, reagents, tools... It was a pathetic fraction of what filled the College and he knew they'd agonized over every choice they'd made and that they were leaving a great deal behind. He suspected this wasn't the end of it, knowing that Kestrel had placed that rune circle in the courtyard, but he couldn't help feeling an encompassing sadness at having to leave the College for good this time.
It was somehow worse than what he'd worked through when he'd been resigned to an eternity underground as Kestrel's apprentice. Maybe eternity was easier to reckon with since there wasn't anything to compare it to and it wasn't easily understood - it was just a nebulous concept to a man who still thought of himself in terms of being mortal, not something that felt permanent or encompassing; he supposed that even though he'd thought he'd come to terms with never returning to the College there must have been some small part of him that'd hoped that someday he'd return here. It still felt like home.
'Now I know exactly how Gormir feels,' he found himself thinking. Even though he'd spent over a year somewhere else...
He was dragged out of his thoughts as Kestrel moved them to the wagon, holding out a hand to Drevis and gesturing for him to bring the bag he was carrying over; when she took hold of it Onmund could hear the soft noise of glass objects clinking together, and watched as his arm rummaged through the bag carefully until it pulled out a jar of frost salts before handing the bag back to Drevis with an appreciative nod.
With the jar in hand Onmund was next turned toward the bridge leading to the College, stopping just before the planks. Behind them Onmund could hear shouting and approaching footsteps as his fingers dug into the frigid salts within the jar.
"Stop! What are you doing!?"
"Stop right there, mage!"
That last voice was Korir's.
Kestrel gestured behind them and Onmund felt the magicka in him shift and release, and his spirit turned around to see a rough and towering barrier of snow and rock forming with a thunderous crackling noise that blocked the Jarl and the guards from stepping foot onto the bridge; there were a few failed attempts to climb over or around it and a lot of pounding and shouting, all of which Kestrel ignored as she took a handful of the salts and threw them into the air where they hung, glittering and bobbing gently in the breeze. His palm pressed against some invisible, flat surface, and then slid rapidly to the left and then directly up - almost like he was polishing whatever it was in front of his body. The frost salts began to glow and expand outward into geometric shapes, growing larger and larger; now Kestrel hurled the entire jar of frost salts against the shapes and uttered a few words that made Onmund's spirit shake as a cold chill raced through him.
The jar shattered and the salts inside it slid along whatever invisible barrier was forming beneath the shapes; the air crackled and ice formed, rapidly racing around, up, and below, wrapping the entire College in a thickening globe of ice that immediately lowered the temperature near it to the point Onmund's body was shivering violently as they turned to walk back across the bridge. Right before reaching the stone barricade Kestrel dug fingers into the stone archway and stomped the ground; from Onmund's fingers and where his heel struck a shockwave spread out and shook the bridge apart, sending the planks and remaining stone tumbling to the beach far below (which, considering the damage from the Collapse and then the daedroth it wasn't too difficult a task to force the rest of the stone to break apart and fall).
Only then did she demolish the barrier and followed it by shoving all the guards and Korir back from them, fixing Korir with a stare.
"I hope you didn't intend to both drive us away and also steal what you've forced us to leave behind, Jarl. Let's not add theft to your ever growing list of questionable decisions."
"You damned mage -- Winterhold could have made use of that fortress for our own defenses!"
"I suppose you'll have to build your own," came the flippant reply. "You are, after all, banishing a large part of your defenses as it is."
Korir's face went a deep red and he turned to the guards around him. "Seize them - ALL of them."
Several guards drew their weapons and advanced a few steps; Gormir hurried forward with his hands outstretched. "NO - stand down. We've all suffered enough and I won't stand to see my Jarl lower himself into the mud for his own damned pride!" The few men that had moved to follow Korir's order actually paused at Gormir's outburst; Korir fixed Gormir with a murderous glare but before he could say anything else Gormir jabbed a finger in the air toward him, glaring just as intently back at the man. "Save what honor you've got left, Jarl, and go back to your hall. While you've still got one, anyway. Without the College there's no reason for anyone to come this far north -- you won't need a fortress to defend an empty city, and I won't stand to see you stoop so low as to drive innocent folks out of their home so you can claim their belongings for yourself. What would you even do with it? Divines know you can't likely use it. Sell it? No amount of gold will save Winterhold now. This city dies with the exile of the mages."
Gormir huffed several deep breaths through his nose (it briefly made Onmund picture a bull ready to charge) then turned to let his gaze roam over the guards and the few townsfolk left that had bothered to come "see" the mages off. He seemed poised to say more but finally just grunted in distaste and stomped back to the wagon and hoisted himself up to the bench in front.
Onmund could see a small smirk crossing his own face -- he supposed Gormir's speech was a lot better than Kestrel threatening to bury the town again, and Gormir was right: even if they'd left everything for Korir to claim, what could the man do with it? The only persons who would be interested in it would be...mages, maybe alchemists. He really couldn't see Korir dealing with mages even if it was in the name of raising funds to keep Winterhold afloat, and it'd probably be more trouble than it was worth to try and transport goods elsewhere to sell. Winterhold really had depended on the patronage of those that came to do business with the College and with them gone...
Korir would have to live with the consequences of his decision, just like Jarl Ulfric had said.
Onmund's hand gestured and the mages gathered around the wagon. "-are we ready?"
"Of course not. But do we truly have a choice?" Nirya sounded bitter.
"We have plenty of choices - I am merely choosing the least violent one," Kestrel replied. She walked his body around to the front of the wagon and gave Gormir a nod. "I suggest we leave before anyone else gets any ideas."
Gormir flicked the reins and the wagon lurched forward as the sole horse began to move (it was Nelacar's mount; Onmund wondered where the horse he'd ridden had disappeared to - maybe Quaranir had retrieved it though Onmund doubted he would have bothered). There was no fanfare, no hurled curses their way -- just the silence of a city watching them leave and the faint whisper of pines moving in the wind.
For most of their walk there wasn't much talk; Kestrel carefully explained, in broad terms, how she was actually possessing Onmund and that Onmund himself was perfectly fine -- the others had seemed both surprised at the spellplay at work and a few had admitted that they'd thought Onmund hadn't seemed himself when he'd arrived at the College to set them free. Kestrel was content to let them think they'd figured it all out ahead of time and went quiet as the others chattered amongst themselves; they were nearing the break in the mountains where they'd need to turn to head down the trail to Saarthal when J'zargo cleared his throat.
"At the risk of sounding ungrateful, this one wonders how we can possibly live within a crumbling ruin."
"My home is under it - we are merely walking through Saarthal to get there. Ordinarily I would open a portal but the wagon won't fit."
How are WE all going to fit?
Onmund's lips curled into a smile. "Well, apprentice - it would seem that after I've deposited myself somewhere secure, you will need to either start digging or teach the others so they can help you. Now that the crown is gone we won't need to stay there long but we WILL need the space to fully empty the College of all that's in there, and I'm sure we can all survive a night or two sleeping in the floor."
Phinis shuffled up beside them. "What do you mean "empty"? What have you prepared?"
"I left a rune circle behind so we can portal in and out. The spell that wraps the place in ice will last a month, possibly two depending on how the weather holds. Let Korir have his pyrrhic victory - by the time he can get into the College I intend for him to only inherit cobwebs and the contents of the latrines."
At that Urag began laughing; the laughter was loud and rough and Onmund wasn't sure he'd ever heard the orc laugh before now. "I like it. Serves the bastard right."
"Do you really think he won't change his mind and kill the guards involved?" Nirya asked quietly - from the sounds of it she was somewhere behind and to Onmund's right.
Gormir grunted and spat from the front of the wagon. "If he tries it he'll have one hell of a fight on his hands. I know those men and women - they won't go down quietly even if their Jarl demands it."
"I don't care for the fact we are letting Korir win, pyrrhic victory or not," Sergius grumbled. "As much as the College did for Winterhold..."
"And what do you suggest we do, Sergius? Go back and force them into a confrontation?" Drevis snorted. "I don't much care for this particular ending to the College's history but at least let records show that we left with dignity and without bloodshed."
"But what are we to do now?" Enthir broke in. "I don't intend to stay in a hole in the ground or a crumbling ruin, nor do I think we'd be welcomed into any other hold considering what's happened. Knowing Korir he won't rest until all the Jarls hear his version of our supposed assault on his hold."
Onmund's shoulders lifted in a shrug. "We shall discuss that when we're indoors and sorted - none of you need to remain with me if you don't want to. For now let's prioritize getting me out of Onmund's body, getting your belongings out of the College, and getting short-term food and lodging sorted. ...I suppose you could, instead of digging anew, expand off the spider's dwelling, Onmund. It would be less work on you and there would be a guardian available that doesn't require sleep."
"It's a-- ugh. I'll explain when we get there. It'll be easier to show it than try to explain it." Kestrel - meaning, Onmund's body - sounded weary. "We are nearly there. Gormir - may I ask that you take whoever you choose and attempt to hunt something for your meal tonight? Onmund and I do not require anything so hunt and gather enough to feed the rest of yourselves."
Onmund heard Brelyna quickly quipping a "don't ask" after Kestrel had fallen silent. The rest of their walk to Saarthal was quiet; once they'd arrived Kestrel directed the others to bring the wagon's contents inside the ruins and to store them further back toward the wall with the dragon carving. Being as Gormir and whoever he took with him would need to get down into the hideaway with the others Kestrel rebuilt the staircase descending down into the home, detouring only to introduce them to the spider (Nirya wasn't pleased at first but seemed placated when she learned it was a construct and not an actual living spider). She offered them a quick explanation then of what doorways led to what room (and told them that in no uncertain terms her own room was strictly off-limits to everyone but herself and Onmund) and then left them to poke around or go hunt or read or whatever they wanted to do while she walked Onmund into the little armory room and looked around.
"Let's see, which shelf did I... Aha, there we are."
Onmund's knees cracked as he squatted on his heels, his hands reaching out for a small lock box that looked to be made of plain iron and sky blue glass; whatever was inside it rattled gently as his body straightened and walked into Kestrel's room, locking the door behind them. The box was carefully sat upon the scrying table and then Kestrel moved them over to the wardrobe (it was only know that Onmund noticed scorch marks on it - likely from when Varea had led the others down here to steal the crown) where, in the pocket of a rather plain tunic hanging amongst other clothing (that Onmund had never seen her wear) she retrieved a key.
The key opened the lock on the box and the lid tipped open on well-greased hinges to reveal a box of strangely colored soul stones -- most of them were as black as obsidian and comfortably reminded him of the same material that had made up the crown.
"This is definitely not how I wanted us to progress into necromancy but considering the circumstances we have little choice."
Necromancy? I don't want to be a necromancer of any kind.
"I know the stigma regarding this particular type of magic but it too is ultimately just a tool. There are actually quite a few practical uses for necromancy and, as you'll eventually learn, the best way to stop others from misusing it is knowing intimately how it functions. These-"
His hand reached in and pulled out a jagged soul stone the length of his palm and about three fingers wide at its widest point. "-will be combined with a bit of complicated alteration, and will serve as my home for the time being."
...do you really think we can retrieve your body, somehow?
Kestrel was silent for a long moment as she once again went to the wardrobe and removed what looked like a small jewelry box from the long drawer that made up the floor of the wardrobe. "--in a perfect world, yes, I think we could. But the world is rarely perfect and the Psijics will be expecting that."
So what do we do, then?
"I have a few ideas but it will take quite a bit of planning. This...won't be corrected for quite some time, Onmund."
Oh.
A small smile crossed his face as his hands gently placed the jewelry box next to the box of soul stones. "Don't sound so depressed - you're not the one being made into jewelry."
But I'll be the one fixing you, won't I?
"Of course. Who else could I possibly trust to do so?"
Once he'd calmed the guards down and kept them from attacking he'd gone with them to meet up with the other remaining guards and the few adventurer types who'd survived the attack. There wasn't much he could do except help carry the wounded into the inn and afterward, according to Aranea, he'd sat down on a bench out of the way and slumped backward into the wall ("asleep before you head touched the wood" was how she'd phrased it).
Onmund woke with a massive pounding headache, no idea how long he'd slept, and a body that felt made of stone -- heavy, unyielding, not wanting to move in the slightest, and it didn't seem like anyone around him had moved much either so perhaps he'd not been out for too long. He did have a bit of magicka back in him to work with and he ambled about healing the worst of the injuries that Aranea had not already tended to, working his way from the back of the inn where he'd fallen over and out toward the front where he gathered a few others with him and headed back toward the bridge.
((Continued below cut))
There was a handful of townsfolk gathering the dead; men and women were laid elbow to elbow along the sides of the frozen street while the twilights were heaped in a careless pile on the foundation of a ruined building (one that had been in ruins for years, not because of anything the twilights had done). As the thought crossed his mind Onmund peered a bit closer at the buildings of the town and could see scorch marks and spots where the wood had been blasted and splintered, holes in roofs, and a door completely off its hinges and in seven different pieces.
Winterhold had taken a beating and had lost many of an already small population but it had ultimately survived.
Onmund led his little group toward the bridge but stopped at the nearest ruined house; a lot of the wood had been scavenged over the years but there were still some sturdy planks left, and he helped the men to pry those up and carry them to the gap in the bridge. As the others held the planks in place Onmund sank them into the stone -- definitely a temporary measure, and not exactly sturdy, but it held his weight and that of the men with him. One of them retreated back across for rope to tie across the gap as a safety measure while the others continued forward with Onmund at their head.
Inside the courtyard they were greeted with angry shouts from those walled into the stone jail cell Onmund had created hours ago; it was a massive relief to see them all alive and that the firewood had not run out (Onmund felt slightly guilty that he hadn't told anyone about them -- if he'd slept long enough for that firewood to run out...well, he didn't want to think about it). As he raised a hand to melt the bars away one of the men standing with him - clad in bloodstained guard's armor - reached out to stop him.
"Is it safe?"
That...was a good question. The guards in the cell were awake and seemed normal but that could easily be a ruse. "I...actually, I'm not sure." He tried to examine them magically and couldn't sense anything except his own armor as radiating magic but as the mark or spell or whatever he wanted to think of it as was of daedric magic he wasn't certain he could trust what he saw (especially since the dagger proved inert to his attempts to sense it, even now).
The guard's hand moved from his arm to uneasily pat him on the shoulder. "As much as I would like to free them, given what's happened I think it best we wait. Until we're sure." That guard turned to the remaining man with them. "-go fetch a few hands more and bring these poor souls more firewood, and food if you can."
The man wrinkled his nose. "You would feed and protect the enemy?"
"They're not the enemy, they were forced to do this," Onmund corrected him. "The mages inside as well. None of this was something they did willingly." The man didn't seem convinced but turned to leave anyway; Onmund looked to the remaining guard with him. "What's your name?"
"Gormir. With the captain's death I suppose I lead what's left of the guard here in Winterhold."
Onmund nodded. "All right, Gormir -- inside are the surviving mages. I didn't have time to make a cell like I did for these out here. I'm...hoping they're back to normal but I can't guarantee that any more than I could for the guards here."
He glanced at the cell; the guards inside were all glaring at him but had fallen silent. Gormir's gaze followed his own and Onmund heard a heavy sigh come from behind the helmet. "I'm not sure I understand what even happened here."
"I can explain it more in-depth once we've checked on everyone."
"We will need to set defenses -- I don't dare let those mages into the town, not after this. The Jarl was forced to ride with an escort to Windhelm, to request reinforcements." Gormir sniffed and looked to Onmund. "He was furious when he was made to leave. You know how many see magic, especially here in Winterhold. You and the mages will be lucky to survive the Jarl's wrath."
Whether he meant Korir or Ulfric wasn't clear but it was definitely a thought that had crossed his mind; the relationship between the College and Winterhold had been poor ever since the Collapse, and it had largely been a policy of the mages to avoid doing anything to antagonize or harm the town. After Ancano...and now this...
Onmund sighed and turned to head into the College. "I know. I don't need to be reminded."
Inside the mages were awake, and seemingly aware -- and also angry and confused at being tied up. As they were all still gagged he couldn't completely understand what they were attempting to shout at him but he understood the sentiment behind it.
"Calm down, all of you." Onmund moved into the middle of the room and looked around; no one seemed in dire straights or any more injured than when he'd left. "Whether you want to believe it or not, or remember it or not, Varea had you all under her control and you were summoning daedra to assault Winterhold with. I'm sorry but, I can't set you all free until I'm sure Varea's been dealt with or until we figure out how to remove whatever hold she may have over you."
There was a chorus of disbelieving noises, and several angry half-voiced objections, and Onmund hated all of it -- hated that any of this had happened and that he had no way to fix it. At least, not yet. Maybe there was a book in Kestrel's library...assuming he could find it quickly enough and learn it and--
Where WAS Varea, and Kestrel? Was their fight even still going? ...is THIS the time Onmund was supposed to be there, to help? He tried to put it out of his mind and sighed. "-we'll keep you safe but you have to stay here, and the restraints and gags have to stay as well. I'll be back to check on you all later, I promise." With that he moved back over to Gormir, trying his best to ignore the mages as they raged and pleaded at his back.
Gormir had remained silent and stiff as a board, watching from the doorway. "We will properly bind them with whatever we have at hand," he said finally, when Onmund was back over to him. "Feeding and pissing might be a problem."
"We'll deal with both of those when the time comes," Onmund grunted. He and Gormir left then; for a moment he thought of placing the mages into a cell like he had with the guards but that was too dangerous -- the guards at least couldn't lob fireballs at them.
Outside there was a cluster of people near the jail cell -- men and women from the town, carrying bundles of chopped wood and cloth-wrapped parcels that he had to assume were foodstuffs. Beyond them a few others were working to drive wooden stakes into the cracks of the stone on the bridge to create a rope railing that stretched across the gap; there were a few more planks laying alongside the pair that Onmund had sunk into the stone and he quickly sank those in as well, and helped get the stakes into place too. It was hard to tell if the Nords here were happy for the help -- everyone wore the same stony expression and hardly seemed willing to look at him. At the very least none were openly hostile to him though what they thought of him was anyone's guess.
Gormir quietly took charge to direct others into standing guard at the cell, and to bring in more rope to bind the mages inside properly. Onmund left them to it and headed back into town; he only jumped a little bit when the twilight matriarch fell out of the sky and landed just ahead of him.
"What do you want? Why are you still here?"
The twilight didn't answer nor did she move as Onmund brushed passed her and kept going, heading out of Winterhold and into the mountains. The storm he'd encountered out on the sea was finally closing in on the town and the wind was beginning to pick up; aside from the wind and the crunch of his footsteps it was quiet out in the mountains however and there was no sign of Kestrel or Varea, and the magicka trail they might have left was already dissipated. Onmund let out a disappointed sigh -- with no trail there wasn't much use for him to go wandering aimlessly in the wilderness. He turned to head back to Winterhold and nearly tripped over the twilight.
"Go away - shoo-" he growled. "You aren't supposed to be here. At least go back and bug Aranea or something."
The twilight - a matriarch, he recalled - flashed him a pointy-toothed grin. "Azura does not wish for me to return just yet, mageling. So, I remain."
"Well, go 'remain' somewhere else then."
"No. As it was Azura's will that the priestess return to the altar in time to meet you I too am where she needs me to be."
Onmund wrinkled his nose at that; it sounded a lot like what Quaranir had told HIM as well: there was somewhere he was supposed to be to help Kestrel but for the life of him he had no idea what that meant or could have meant. He knew, since Kestrel's spirit hadn't overtaken him again, that she was at least still alive...if she was injured he doubted Varea would let her escape, or if she somehow had escaped Varea would likely have returned to menace Winterhold by now. And with that thought in mind he urged himself in a jog to head back into town; if there was even the slightest chance Varea could come back he needed to be ready to try and face her down...he needed to rest and try to plan, and...
"Exactly what else does Azura intend you to do? I can tell you right now I don't intend to convert or, or anything like that, no matter how much she helps me. Does she know Varea is coming back? Is that why you're still here?"
"We shall see when the time is upon us."
Onmund bit his lip to keep from growling. "--so does that mean you don't know, or won't tell me?"
"Patience, mortal."
"I can't be patient when it means more people might die."
The twilight's shadow (barely noticeable as the storm clouds approached) passed over his head and she landed on a rock thrusting out of the snow, about twenty feet ahead of him. "She knows but requires patience. There are many things that cannot be rushed."
Hmmph - daedra. Why anyone would ever want to deal with the damn things or their Princes was beyond him.
The twilight's shadow passed over him several more times before he was back on the road and nearly into Winterhold again; there was a small gathering ahead of him - four people it seemed, one of which was on horseback - and as he drew closer he could hear their voices slowly raising in volume and getting nastier.
"--LIVE here, you know who I am!" came one voice, and recognition hit Onmund hard: Nelacar. How had he forgotten- Nelacar lived in the inn here and Onmund should have remembered that but in the chaos it'd slipped his mind. At no point could he recall seeing the altmer mage anywhere all this time; a glimmer of hope filled him as he hurried over to the group.
There were two guards here, Nelacar, and surprisingly Brelyna as well. At his confused look Brelyna gave him a sheepish shrug of the shoulders.
"I met him on the road and when I told him what was happening... I'm sorry Onmund, I couldn't stop him from coming back to Winterhold."
"It's fine," he sighed, standing there and waiting for a break in the ongoing argument between Nelacar and the two guards. "--it's fine, I'll handle it," he finally broke in. The two guards glowered at him but fell silent (and their hands fell to their weapons as well); Nelacar turned his horse and Onmund nearly headbutted the creature on accident as its head was abruptly moved into his immediate space.
"Onmund! What's going on here?"
"It's a long story and I'll tell you all about it in a moment. Did you ever meet a woman named Varea?"
"What? Why does that-"
"Just answer," Onmund interrupted sharply, reaching up to grab the horse's bridle to hold it still. "Did you meet Varea? Were you around her for long periods of time?"
Nelacar shook his head. "No, I can't say the name is familiar. You know I don't enter the College - the only ones I see with any regularity are Enthir and Arniel."
Onmund bit on his lower lip silently; it could be a lie, or it could be the truth, and there wasn't any way for him to tell. He wanted to believe the man, though -- he was right in that he didn't enter the College (he'd been banished for...something, in the past. Onmund didn't know the reason though) and for the most part the altmer kept largely to himself, and communicated with the College mages through written letter. It was likely he'd never met Varea, and maybe Varea didn't even know he'd been here the whole time.
"--where have you been?"
"Morthal, gathering reagents for my -- well, my research isn't important. What IS important is an explanation as to why I am being kept from my home."
Onmund ran both hands over his face, thinking; if Nelacar was in league with Varea there wasn't anything he could do aside from handle it if something happened, and he was moderately certain he could handle the man - especially with Brelyna here too as he knew for a fact that she was clean of any mark or influence of Varea. And, he supposed, there was also the twilight...while he didn't know what the creature was waiting for maybe it could be convinced to help him again especially if whatever she was waiting on required him to remain alive.
Finally he turned to the guards. "Let him through - I'll trust him for now. And Brelyna too, because I know she's free of anyone else's control." He took a few deep breaths then gestured for the two of them to follow. "I'll fill you both in and then we should find Gormir, see where we can help or shore up defenses. We're not through this yet."
Nelacar was able to sense the markings on the guards and mages, and was able to somewhat clumsily teach Onmund how to sense them as well. Daedric magic required a sort of...structured mindset to use, and an "understanding" that it wasn't a school of magic on its own but was a sort of expansive pseudo subset across all of them along while being largely considered just a term used to refer to the magic used by daedra themselves. Being as he knew the schools of magic were sort of...well, pointless, in addition to not having any sort of teachings on this form of magic it was little wonder he'd not been able to sense or use it. Nelacar had also stressed many times that daedric magic was dangerous and difficult even for advanced mages to learn and control, and seemed convinced that Varea's marks combined with the daedric power of the crystal dagger were what had allowed the mages to summon the twilights (and daedroth, as he'd so helpfully identified the monstrosity that had almost killed Onmund twice).
It was a bit encouraging to learn even that tiny bit of knowledge but neither of them had any idea how to remove the marks; Brelyna had reminded him that Kestrel had physically cut away the flesh around her mark, and had shown them the spot on her shoulder with its strange, rune-like scarring in the middle. Nelacar had taken an immediate interest in it, poking and prodding with fingers and magic alike.
"A fascinating means of it all," he'd muttered.
"...means of what?"
They'd followed the mage into his room at the inn and watched him dig through a trunk of papers, parchment, and old books, until he came up with a book about the size of his hand and the width of three fingers; he leafed through until he reached a stretch of pages that, to Onmund's eyes, looked like crazed scribbling and random geometric shapes.
"It would seem these marks are a sort of curse, growing in power due to proximity of the one who cast it. I've not seen it in person myself but I've read and studied such tangential topics due to strange directions my old research has taken me."
"So...how do we remove them? Can we cut them off the others like she did with me?"
Nelacar shook his head. "I believe the longer one is around the caster the further and deeper the mark will spread. I'd rather not have to remove entire arms to be rid of it."
Onmund rubbed at his arm unconsciously. "-then what do we do?"
"That...I do not know. Not yet. Let me review these old notes of mine and see if I can think of something."
Onmund nodded, then looked at Brelyna. "I guess you weren't around her much so yours wasn't too large."
Brelyna smiled faintly. "I was around her quite a bit, at first - I think I might have bored her since I didn't have much interest in what she was there to do and I had my own studies to tend to that I considered more important than humoring a Thalmor. But when you were brought back and started calling her actions into doubt, and when no one seemed to care that you were in danger of dying, I started to distance myself even further. I guess that's what saved me."
"It's quite possible," Nelacar said, nodding slowly. "Reduced exposure to the origin of the curse would slow, but not stop, the spread of the mark."
Onmund nodded as well and stood, grimacing a bit as aches and pains made themselves known again. "-right. You find out what you can and Brelyna and I can get wards into place around the town. We can meet back here, with Gormir, and discuss more defenses we can get placed just in case Varea kills or escapes Kestrel and comes back here."
He left the room and picked his way among the people that were laying on pallets of furs and blankets on the inn's floor. Aranea was over at the counter, speaking in low tones to Dagur in between spoonfuls of a hearty looking stew. Between her and now the trio of mages all of the injuries had been mended as best as they could manage -- there would still be scars, and a few permanent limps, but for the most part everyone was patched up and just in need of rest.
Rest was something he knew he needed more of but Winterhold's defense was more important in this immediate moment. As he headed outside and into the roaring storm he could just manage to hear Brelyna's footsteps crunching along in the fresh snow behind him. He wordlessly signaled for her to head to the left, to take the College and bridge while he turned on his heel and headed off toward the right; there were seven points where he needed to place the wards to make sure they overlapped enough to cover the town and meet up seamlessly with the ones Brelyna was placing, and then together they could both move down the road and out into the mountains to get some further flung wards placed -- the farther they managed to get them the earlier the warning would come if danger was on its way.
He'd gotten two in place when something began ringing in his ears -- some sort of low hum that seemed to be getting louder but didn't seem to be coming from any one direction. Very carefully he raised himself from the crouch he'd been in, the foundation stone of an abandoned house cleared off in front of him but forgotten as he tried to pin down the source of the hum.
All at once there was a massive noise - a clap of thunder but twelve times as loud, and it was accompanied by a physical force that lifted Onmund from his feet and threw him back five feet only to skid another three in the snow. With his head humming and his ears ringing all he could do was lay there, stunned, and wonder what the hell had just happened.
To his relief they didn't go far; the creature wasn't truly flying away with him but instead gliding down and around the College to land on the beach far below where the other three creatures were waiting. As soon as he was dumped onto the sands they all four leapt onto him, pinning his limbs and with one of them resting the end of its tail across his neck. Despite their weight Onmund struggled to -- to do something, anything, to get free.
"Let go of me-"
"He doesn't bear the mark of the others."
"Nor does he smell of daedric magic."
"He stopped the ritual - clearly he is not one of those above."
"That means little."
((Continued below cut))
He stopped struggling then as the tail across his throat was removed and a taloned foot replaced it; he could feel the prickling of the talons against his skin -- if this thing wanted him dead it could tear his throat out easily and there wasn't a damn thing he could do about it.
"What are you, little mage? Who do you serve?"
-- it at least seemed like they didn't want him dead immediately. That was good. "Get off m-!" His word ended as quickly as his struggles had as the foot pressed down enough to cut off his air but not enough to truly harm him.
"I asked: who do you serve? Who is your master?"
The foot lifted, the pressure lessened, and Onmund sucked in a noisy breath. "NOT Molag Bal. Not anyone."
This time the foot was removed from his neck entirely as the four creatures looked to one another; they made no other moves or noise and seemed to be silently debating what to do with (or to) him.
And then they all stepped back in unison, freeing him. He floundered in the wet muck, pushing himself up into a sitting position. At the moment he lacked the strength to conjure a ward or defend himself in any way magically, and he'd never been much of a warrior to begin with so even if he had a weapon on him there'd be no taking down all four of them; for a few tense moments his gaze moved between them, noting that there were subtle differences in their faces and how they held themselves, and now that he'd heard them speak he knew they weren't just violent, mindless beasts like he'd wondered about only moments earlier. His knowledge of daedra was woefully lacking so while he was comforted by the fact that they weren't beastlike in intelligence he still didn't have much confirmation that they could be reasoned with (the fact they could speak was a point in their favor but that didn't necessarily mean they'd listen to anything he had to say).
He sucked in a breath -- as many times today that he'd thought he was about to die, what was one more life-or-death situation? The winged things at least looked as tense as he did so maybe they didn't want a fight either.
"What ARE you?" he asked into the silence.
To his surprise one of the creatures laughed at him. "He is as young as he looks, then."
"And apparently knows nothing of daedra. Such innocence, for a mage."
They all laughed together then, the tension in the air disappearing, and the first one that had laughed hopped toward him. "Winged Twilight, childmage. Servant to Azura." A shudder went through the others, and the speaking twilight's face soured. "At least, WE are. There are SOME who choose to serve others. We are as varied as you, mortal, to our benefit and advantage."
The other three fell into a laughing fit again - Onmund didn't understand whatever joke was being made here; he carefully scooted back from the twilight in front of him. "Fine. Just - go back. Go home to wherever you belong. We don't have to fight and kill one another. Just leave."
The twilight in front of him tilted her (they WERE female, right? They looked and sounded feminine enough) head back and forth, eying him. "We would, if able to. The spell you interrupted binds us to this plane but not to their control. We have no desire to remain here. Dismiss us -- we will not fight it."
Onmund glanced down to the crystalline dagger in his belt; only the hilt was visible and he hoped they wouldn't try to forcibly take it from him as it might be the only leverage he had at the moment. IF they were telling the truth then this could, technically, be taken care of quickly. All he had to do was dismiss them...the question was, how?
"How do I do that?"
There was a rustling of wings and a few disgusted looks thrown his way at that.
"What else should we expect from a childmage."
"Molag Bal chose his targets well but where is the sport in dominating and manipulating those who know nothing?"
"We should be ashamed of being ensorcelled by such infant fools."
Onmund irritably waved a hand at them as they chittered back and forth. "Mocking my lack of knowledge isn't going to get you home any faster so stop insulting me and tell me what I need to do."
Again the first twilight hopped toward him, pointedly looking at his belt where the dagger was hidden and squatting on her haunches before him. "Take it in your hand and command us, mage. Channel your command through the dagger to break the binding and allow us to leave this place."
Channel his -- no, this wasn't going to work. He already knew he was going to fail. "I don't think I can," he said after a pause, looking around at them and recalling how he couldn't even tell the dagger was magical earlier. "I'm too exhausted. And I don't know what it is you want me to do with this thing anyway." As soon as the words left his mouth he regretted them -- it was admitting weakness, and helplessness...but, he supposed, if they HAD decided (or still decided) to attack him they would have found out very quickly that he had no means of defending himself.
A twilight behind and to the left of the one just in front of him hunched her shoulders and hissed. "Weak little mageling."
"I am NOT weak," Onmund snapped. "I've been fighting for hours on end and I. Am. Exhausted. Every man has a limit and I've reached mine. If I rest awhile-"
He jerked back as the nearest twilight thrust her head toward him. "I do not have the patience to wait," she interrupted. "If you are so weak then the dagger can be reclaimed and we will be forced to act against our will. We cannot break the binding ourselves or else we would take it from you and go. If not you, who else?"
That was a good question. No one in the College would be in any shape to help or instruct him, if they even knew how or somehow remembered the spell they were compelled to cast... He was certain that Kestrel could but there wasn't anything on the planet that could convince him to go looking for her right now -- he'd already distracted her once and luckily nothing terrible had happened, and should Varea somehow get the dagger away from him...
-- hold on. He'd found Kestrel and Varea out in the mountains where the Azura statue, and the Azura shrine was located. There was a dunmer woman who tended the shrine; Onmund had never spoken to her but had seen her from time to time purchasing supplies in Winterhold. If that woman was a priestess... Maybe a priestess of Azura could do what he currently couldn't.
"Wait, hang on - there's a shrine to Azura not too far from here. There...uh, was, a statue on the top of a cliff, in the mountains. The statue's been toppled but maybe the shrine and the woman who takes care of it is still there. I think she might be a priestess."
The twilight in front of him launched herself backward with enough force to shower him in clumps of wet sand, sending him into a coughing fit as he scraped it off his face and felt it drip from his robes; the four began to talk to one another in a language he didn't recognize or understand -- their words were sharp, harsh, and rushed as they debated whatever it was they were talking about. Finally, the one that had been doing most of the talking thus far turned back to him.
"We cannot sense a priestess nearby but we are willing to trust your word, mageling. Where is this shrine?"
Onmund raised his arm to point, opened his mouth to give direction, and all in the same instant the twilights were upon him again. Rather than grab him by the shoulder and arm as before the talkative twilight seized him by the belt and Onmund found himself flailing in the air until he managed to get his arms wrapped around the twilight's knees; he hugged himself to her form -- as the ground rapidly fell away under him he wondered how Kestrel could stand to fly around; he had absolutely no desire to learn how to fly himself and prayed the flight would be a quick one as he squeezed his eyes shut to block out the unnerving view of the ground far, far below.
The flight wasn't a pleasant experience; a spike on the twilight's leg sliced his cheek open and his lower back was screaming in pain from the rhythmic jerking it had just been subjected to as the twilight flapped its way over the mountains. When the twilight (surprisingly gently) dropped him to the snow Onmund flopped onto his back and stretched gingerly as the daedra nimbly landed in a loose circle around him. He'd never been so happy to be flat on his back on solid ground and dug his fingers into the snow under him, feeling the scrape of stone beneath it.
When he finally rolled himself to his hands and knees and looked around Onmund could see that the rocky, natural base and half the platform here where the statue had stood had been shattered and crumbled away by Varea's spell and swept along down the mountainside in the avalanche. Despite having never seen the statue up close it was jarring to his mind to see the large empty space where it had stood; he could almost picture it in front of him, and remembered how when it fell to pieces below he'd been standing on those pieces. It was...a very strange thing to consider and he knew he shouldn't be wasting time with it. As he stood he scooped up a handful of snow and pressed it to the bleeding cut on his face, and looked around; there were steps leading up to this partially shattered landing that were still intact but there was no sign of the altar or the dunmer woman. Pausing only to sling the blood-tinged handful of snow back to the ground Onmund moved to the edge of the devastation and looked down.
There wasn't any obvious body down there, or hints of tracks or anything like that...not that he'd actually expected to see anything as anyone who had been on that side of the avalanche was likely miles down the slope by now (and most likely very dead).
He turned on his heel and walked back the other way, aware of the four twilights watching him closely; the dunmer woman couldn't possibly be living here out in the open and the elements. From his vantage point he could see three sets of stairs, a little bridge, and three flat areas (including the one he stood on) -- maybe he was standing on her dwelling, or it was under that lowest flat spot, or maybe even on the other side of the stairs furthest from him.
Or maybe she'd fled at the first sign of trouble and this was a pointless trip.
As he moved to the closest stairs he hoped that wasn't case, and was quickly proven right as a glowing yellow ball of something narrowly shot by his head; he jerked back in surprise and lost his footing in the snow, stumbling on the first step and falling backwards onto his backside.
"Not another step, human."
The twilights took off together and began to circle overhead; Onmund stood back up and cautiously peered over the edge of the stairs to see the dunmer woman down below him, standing either in a doorway or just outside of a simple overhang at the edge of one of those flat areas. Their gazes met very briefly before her attention changed to the twilights, watching them with an unreadable expression.
"--who are you and why are you in the company of Azura's trusted servants?" the dunmer called up to him then.
Onmund kept his attention on her as he righted himself and carefully came down the first set of stairs. "I'm Onmund - it's a long story but I do need your help."
The woman came out from under her stone covering and stood there, waiting patiently for Onmund to cross the bridge, go down two more sets of stairs, and then carefully climb up a snowdrift to reach her little hiding place. "Tell me why I should trust you, Onmund."
He gestured up into the sky at the winged twilights that were still cutting lazy circles in the air above. "All I need is for you to dismiss these things home. That's it. That's it and then I'll leave."
"Not without telling me what's going on, you're not," the dunmer snapped. She jabbed a finger to where the altar and statue had once stood. "Not until you've explained what happened here."
"A servant of Molag Bal dominated the mages of the College and some of the guards, and my mas-" he paused - being as he'd told the twilights he served no master he should probably watch his wording now. "--the master mage I am studying under has been trying to stop her, and left me to help lessen the damage in Winterhold. It's...not gone well. I'm exhausted and there's dozens more of these twilight things in the town." He reached for his belt and rested his hand on the hilt of the crystalline dagger. "I have what they used to summon and bind the twilights. Can you use it to send them all back to...wherever?"
The dunmer woman had listened quietly and was staring at him rather blankly. "...how did this happen?"
"I'm not really sure. She - the servant - posed as a Thalmor, and--"
The woman snorted loudly. "And they just let her right in, I imagine?"
"Uh...I guess? I wasn't here when she arrived." He huffed out a sigh. "Look, that's not important - Winterhold is under attack and those things-" he pointed up at the four still circling "-want to leave. And I want them to leave. Can you send them back?"
She held out a hand and Onmund carefully laid the dagger in her palm; he watched as her expression soured as she held it gingerly between her hands. "...yes, I believe I can. I believe I understand what holds them here. Come - Onmund, you said it was?" He nodded to her. "Well, come then, Onmund - lead me to where the other winged twilights are. I will see if I can break what binds them."
The twilights didn't snatch them up and fly away this time; they almost seemed to form an honor guard around them as they made their way from the ruined shrine, flying much lower and even hopping along the ground periodically.
For a time they didn't speak to one another aside from the woman introducing herself as Aranea. The longer they walked the heavier Onmund's legs seemed to grow and the further away Winterhold felt.
"--how long have you been out here?" he asked finally, hoping that talking would take his mind off his exhaustion.
"A long time. The shrine itself has stood for two hundred years. For a time there were others here too but they left as their faith was tested. Fear of one's future can be a potent thing."
He didn't know what to say to that and walked on in silence again.
After a time it was Aranea who broke the quiet. "I foresaw the arrival of a man to the altar, but could not see his face for his hood or tell who or what he was. I suppose that may have been you."
"...foresaw?"
"Azura has granted me the gift of foresight - of visions. For some time I have fretted over the vision of a man standing over the ruins of the altar, and feared you'd come to desecrate it further. It seems I was wrong."
"Uh. Yes - very wrong." Onmund paused, then "-sorry. That came out more rude than I'd intended."
A ghost of a smile crossed her face. "I didn't see it as rude, do not worry. The visions are not always so straightforward that I know what Azura is showing me - she warns me of tragedy, war, death, all before it happens. Her guidance is worth more than anything I've known, even if I do not immediately understand."
"Did she not warn you about Varea, about Molag Bal?"
Aranea shook her head. "She does not warn about all things -- I believe if it is within our ability, even if we are surprised by it, then she doesn't feel a warning is needed." She looked to him. "It is a compliment for your skill and ability, to be considered capable on your own." Onmund snorted before he could stop himself, and she again offered him a faint smile. "Even if we don't feel so capable."
"You're certain you can send all these things back? What about the ones that don't answer to Azura?" he asked, changing the subject partly because he didn't want to hear about how some Daedric Prince thought he was capable and skilled or was proud of him, or whatever else the priestess might claim to say on behalf of her god.
Arenae frowned. "I can command Azura's servants and dismiss them. The other ones may fight my control...I can't guarantee anything with them."
"Good enough, I guess."
They continued on in silence, approaching Winterhold; the single street that ran through the town was littered with bodies of both guards and the winged twilights. The group of guards that Onmund had left at the start of the bridge leading to the College were still making their stand there -- their numbers and that of the twilights were dwindling. Aranea did not comment or seem to react to the carnage and instead removed the crystalline dagger from the sleeve of her robes and held it before it in a reversed grip, the blade pointed at the ground.
It flared once and then dimmed to a pale glow in the same sickly green he'd seen before; immediately about a third of the twilights ceased their attacks and broke away from the group, winging over to land in a tight cluster around Onmund and Aranea.
Onmund looked up nervously toward the guards, already hearing shouts of alarm and seeing a few bows being aimed in their direction. He hoped at least some would recognize him and hold their fire but in the heat of battle--
"-if you're willing," came Aranea's soft voice into his panicked train of thought.
The cluster of twilights around them took off in unison and flew back toward the guards and the others, and began to viciously tear into the twilights that, he assumed, were serving Molag Bal.
He nearly jumped out of his skin as a single twilight - the one that had snatched him, spoken to him the most, and then flew him out to the shrine - draped a wing around his waist and leg, curling around his legs like a scaly cat. "They will pay for him taking what does not belong to him," she hissed.
Onmund yanked his leg out of her grasp and backpedaled until Aranea was between him and the twilight; Azura's twilights were outnumbered and the guards weren't making much effort to distinguish between who was fighting for what side, and aside from the one twilight that remained perched at their side the others were quickly ending the fight with the guard's help.
Beside him Aranea seemed to be concentrating on something. The dagger hadn't changed in appearance and he still couldn't sense anything in or coming from it; he had to assume she was attempting to use it somehow, either by issuing mental commands or attempting to dismiss whoever would listen (though, it HAD seemed she'd ordered the loyal ones to attack, so...who knew what she was doing at this point).
Quite suddenly one of the twilights above let out a shriek, and seemed to tear in half into a shimmering white-purple portal that flickered out of view quickly and took the twilight with it. Two more disappeared in the same manner -- rather than the scream of the first one these two were laughing as they peeled away from the fight and vanished. Others quickly followed and the numbers in the air above them rapidly diminished until there were only nine left -- nine that included the one that still sat with them.
Aranea let out a breath, then offered the dagger to Onmund. "I have dismissed the ones that were willing to obey. I am not so familiar with the spell that brought them here that I can break it forcibly, unfortunately."
Onmund took the dagger and looked at it, watching the green flow fade once it was in his hand. "--there's at least far fewer of them and that should be something the guards can manage." He shoved the dagger back into his belt and looked around Aranea at the twilight that sat there. "Why isn't she gone?"
Aranea placed a gentle hand on the twilight's head. "This is a Matriarch. She's decided to stay a bit longer to ensure the others left behind are slain." She looked over to him. "As you can probably imagine neither she nor Azura are pleased with Molag Bal's actions."
Onmund nodded slowly. "I can see why, yes." He paused. "--does Azura know anything about an obsidian crown?"
Aranae shook her head. "That isn't something I would know but given time to restore the altar I can certainly ask her for you."
"No, no, that's fine. I'd rather not have to deal with any more daedra or Daedric Princes any time soon."
"Very well."
Aranae looked ahead to where a trio of guards were rushing toward them. Onmund stepped in front of the dunmer and twilight, holding up his hands in a placating gesture as the guards raised shields and weapons. "Hang on, wait - I can explain."
He found himself forced to divert his attention to protecting and mending and only taking a shot when he saw an opportunity; if he tried to stay on the offensive the men around him suffered for it, as he couldn't hope to hit every creature that dove at them and with wide open sky over their heads the damned things could come from any angle. As his attention shifted the guards noticed and were rallying around him, and with him keeping them on their feet they were able to focus more on cutting the flying beasts down; as he stemmed bleeding and stabilized wounded limbs Onmund kept pushing forward, guiding their group toward the walkway that led to the bridge that connected the mainland to the College. A few times he had a breath or two to spare and could look ahead to where he'd plummeted off along with that giant creature -- the gap in the bridge had seemed miles across in that moment where it was collapsing under him but now actually seeing it up close...
((Continued under cut))
He was confident that he could just jump the gap and if he had enough time to make sure both sides were secure enough to take his weight it shouldn't be any problem to take a running leap and make it with feet to spare on the other side (especially if he boosted himself with a little gust of wind at his back). As for what he'd do when he got inside...
Kestrel hadn't spoken overly much about any sort of spells to summon creatures; he knew how to summon a (rather small and weak) fire atronach and knew the concept behind summoning those of other elements but those were all spells that spontaneously called the atronach to him and bound it to his service...he knew of old stories of evil mages and daedra, the horrors of eras long past, and knew from those tales that there were ways to set up summoning circles and gateways to summon in more than one thing at a time (maybe it was like the circle Kestrel had for teleportation?) but Onmund had no idea what one would look like since the summoning spells he knew didn't require one, nor did he know if he could safely disrupt it with something as simple as damaging it or removing some minor component.
Depending on where this summoning was happening he could try to seal off doors and windows to trap them all inside. The downside to that was if Kestrel killed Varea and that's all it took to free the others from Varea's control then they'd all be trapped with however many creatures they'd summoned but hadn't been able to send out...if they lost control over those things in that moment that would be a bigger danger than anything Onmund could accidentally do to them. He also needed to consider how little ambient magicka was left around here to draw on -- all that Kestrel and Varea's spells had left behind was likely being used to fuel the mages inside the College now, and Onmund knew he shouldn't rely on a plan of "hold out until Kestrel wins" because there was no telling when (or if) that would happen and trying to outlast something that might not end was a poor idea in general.
He found a moment to throw a spell that, somehow, arced between two of the flying monsters and brought both tumbling down right as his boots hit the edge of the walkway and as he hurried up to the first covered landing he couldn't help but look down at the circular stone pattern there and remember how he'd had to cast a spell in this exact spot to earn his entry to the College.
That felt like an eternity ago and a brief bit of pride filled him - he'd come very far since that moment and had learned more than he'd ever imagined, even if how he'd learned was definitely nothing he could have pictured; he stopped long enough to let the guard beside him know he was going, and then once far enough along the bridge he took a running leap across the gap. His stomach tied itself into knots as he flew through the air, and when he'd landed safely on the other side it ocurred to him that he hadn't checked for stability...apparently all that learning hadn't done much to instill any caution under pressure in him. Onmund's cheeks went a bit red even though no one was here to point out that minor (and thankfully not fatal) blunder but any embarrassment he felt was immediately wiped away with a deep breath and a tug of his hood to better secure it against the wind that whistled around the College's walls and howled through the doorway of the courtyard as he pushed through the ruined opening.
There were a few scattered bodies here within the courtyard; the guards that had been with the mages laid in heaps here and there - as though they'd collapsed where they stood and crumpled like fabric. Cautiously Onmund walked up to one and nudged him; the man didn't move but his skin was cold as ice. He didn't look injured but Onmund couldn't tell if he was just unconscious or dead, and the others here were in the same state. Gritting his teeth Onmund glanced around - there were nine of them in this state and if they weren't actually dead they would be soon from the cold; quickly he looped his arms under the first man's armpits and dragged him over toward the wall of the courtyard where there would be some shelter from the wind. He left the man slumped against the stone at the end of a wooden bench and hurried to drag over the other eight unconscious guards.
Now, what to do... He didn't want them waking up and attacking him from behind, and he didn't want to burden the free-willed guards outside the College with having to tend to and also guard these (and Onmund didn't know how to get them across the gap in the first place). He settled for dragging the bench out of the way and clustering the guards there on the ground where it had sat, and then began to meld the stone around them; earlier the charging giant monster had barreled its way through the doorway to reach him on the bridge and there was plenty of loose stone he could pull free and shape for his needs to supplement what he could thin out and move from the walls and floor -- it didn't take long to partially close off the large, open gap (one of the regularly spaced windows) in the wall behind the men as well as build walls to either side and a ceiling over their heads to leave them sitting in a small cubby of stone.
It wasn't too difficult to shape a firepit into the floor; it DID take a bit of planning to carefully form a sort of latticework of stone across the front of the cubby itself -- it was now a jail cell made entirely of rock, with plenty of air holes (including a small gap at the top in the ceiling). He broke the bench into pieces and fed it through the gaps to pile it inside the cell, then a single bolt of lightning was all it took to shatter one of the courtyard's small pines into kindling; after a pause to see if anyone came running Onmund quickly tossed some of that onto the pile inside the cell and then loaded the firepit with the rest and lit it. The pit was just outside of the "bars" of the cell so there wasn't a danger that the men inside could fall unknowingly into the flames, and as an added measure Onmund thickened the bars into a rough, boxy shape near the haphazard pile of firewood to help keep any sparks from landing on it and igniting it within the cell itself.
Hopefully this little impromptu shelter (prison, really) would hold enough heat to keep the men alive, if they weren't already dead. And they had wood enough to tend to the fire if they woke up as they warmed up -- it was the best he could do given the situation, and while a part of him nagged at him that he'd just wasted time he knew his conscious wouldn't have let him walk by and leave the men laying there (and also his inner preservation instinct was comforted by the thought that now this group couldn't ambush him from behind).
And now, he needed to find the others inside.
Onmund inhaled and exhaled slowly, and began to circle around the outer edge of the courtyard; the door leading into the College was laying off to the side where it'd landed after Kestrel had ripped it free and through the opening Onmund could make out a very faint chanting. Whatever was going on sounded like it was in the main Hall, and he was somewhat surprised that his stoneshaping and tree destruction hadn't drawn ANY attention from inside.
As he approached the door he slowed, dropping down to creep along on his heels and using his hands to keep him balanced; there was a lot of magicka being utilized in the Hall and this close he could pick out the individual voices of his colleagues as they chanted and did...whatever they were doing. Carefully Onmund pressed his back to the wall beside the damaged doorway and eased himself forward into the small chamber just beyond it, just enough to get one eye beyond the threshold of the gate that opened into the hall proper; he could just make out the back of Drevis's head but he would have to move further in to fully see what he was doing. Onmund paused long enough to conjure his wards then moved further into the doorway; he kept a hand on the wall beside him (being careful not to touch the gate and cause noise) but from here he could clearly see the College mages standing at the edge of a wide rune circle to the right of one of the metal, circular inlays that bore the emblem of the College that was laid into the floor. The runes were blood red and angular - looked like daedric from here - and glowed softly and pulsed with the rhythm of the chanting.
What was IN the circle however was more interesting than what the runes were or what the mages were chanting; one of those winged creatures was bond in ethereal chains in the center of the circle. He could actually make out its features now that he was close and not trying to kill it -- it looked female with its hair (he assumed it was hair) pulled back from a strangely lovely face that had a pair of short, black horns jutting from just above the brow, and its skin was mostly pale purple that darkened to near black across its breasts and across its hips down to its crotch. There were black scale or spike-looking places along its legs and down the tail, which had a hook at its end, and its taloned feet were leaving scratch marks in the stone as it moved and struggled against the chains that held it. As Onmund watched he could see Phinis on the far side of the circle raise what looked like a crystalline dagger. It was glassy and glowed with a sickly green light and as the mages chanted the blade's glow was pulsing in time with the runes at their feet.
There was a sudden pause in the chant and the dagger flared; the chains in turn brightly shone and then disappeared just as quickly, and the winged creature hissed as it was released from the circle to flap its way over toward the open gate. Onmund jerked himself back around and out of the doorway but the creature either didn't notice him or didn't care as it flew away to join the others that were assaulting the town. A few breaths later and the mages began chanting again and when Onmund poked his head into the room again he could see ten more of the blasted things taking shape inside the circle.
They're summoning these things with the circle and that blade - and it looks like the creature has to be bound into their service before they can release it from the circle. They must have started summoning these things after that giant monster chased me away and it looks like they can summon more than one at a time but can only bind them one by one.
As many of the creatures as had been outside Onmund knew that if the binding could also be done en masse then there likely wouldn't have been a Winterhold by the time he'd come back; how long did it take to fully bind one?
He needed to disrupt that circle, NOW. The first thing that came to mind was destroying the floor it was inscribed on; a quick scan with his senses taught him the age of the floor, how it was placed and the cut of the stone, the grout in between the stones, that there were a few weak spots that were going to start sinking and would inevitably drop down into the Midden if not repaired in the coming years, and that the runes were drawn with blood rather than carved into the stone itself. As he mulled over what he learned he thought he COULD just pull it all free and drop everyone down into the Midden...
It was tempting but again he didn't want to accidentally kill anyone here. Trying to disrupt it by shattering the stone that had the runes on it would have to work as a starting point; once he saw the results he could adjust from there.
Onmund rolled off his heels and onto his knees, spreading them apart a few inches before pressing his legs flat to the ground and sitting on them to better keep his balance. Again he sent his senses along the stone of the floor to find the blocks that were burning with daedric magic; it wasn't too different from moving dirt and rock -- it actually felt a bit easier as he wasn't shoving something around but instead merely sending a ripple through its surface layer. Under his spell the stone contracted and expanded rapidly; there was a chorus of crackling noises and a spray of stone shards as the floor ripped itself into gravel.
The power of the circle scattered and the creatures taking form in it popped into existence free of chains and screeching angrily; a little over half of them immediately fled the room with ear-splitting shrieks but four of them instead began to attack Phinis. The mages all quickly jumped back with shields flaring into existence and as they turned to handle the monsters attacking Phinis Onmund pushed himself to his feet and hurried into the room.
With everyone's backs to him he raised his hands and conjured a blast of wind that knocked everyone onto their backs and faces and sent the winged thing careening into one of the nearby pillars. In that brief moment of chaos Onmund scanned the room -- Sergius was close by, trying to roll onto his side to get back on his feet; before the man could move Onmund doused him in water then quickly froze the man's robes to the floor. As the mage struggled to free himself (while shivering violently) Onmund moved his attention to Drevis and struck him with a spray of water too that sent the man rolling like a log to crash into the short set of steps that led down to where the rune circle had been, where Onmund froze his left side to the bottom-most step.
The others recovered fast enough that he didn't have the time to freeze another person in place; Onmund's ward rippled under the deluge of spells hurled in his direction - so many that for a brief moment he couldn't see through the light and haze left in the spells' wake.
Over the crack of lightning and dull thuds of ice and fireballs bouncing off his ward he could hear Phinis casting and cursing, and hear the screech of the angry creatures along with the flapping of wings. His interruption of the rune circle had kept Phinis from binding at least some of the summons to his control, and based on how, once he could see through the shower of spells, the monsters were focused on attacking Phinis and ONLY Phinis, he had to assume the crystalline dagger was what allowed Phinis to do the binding. Onmund couldn't be certain if they simply didn't want to be enslaved or if these things were mindlessly violent in general; regardless of the motivations they weren't interested in retaliating against the few spells that Urag was hurling at them -- all four were wholly focused on Phinis, who was just barely managing to keep them at bay.
"Stop it, damn it-" Onmund growled, switching his ward to one hand and casting a fireball with the other. His ward rang under the spells coming at him but held; the fireball clipped the wing of one creature and slammed into the chest of another as it kept going.
And now he had the attention of the mages and at least a couple of the flying creatures.
As one of them dove for him he blasted wind from a hand; the creature's wings wrenched back and it dropped to the ground to awkwardly hop on its taloned feet as it fought to regain its balance. He shifted his weight and bounced back on his heels, using his other hand to keep his wards in the path of the spells Enthir and Nirya sent at him even as he followed up his blast of wind with a spear of ice that tore through the unbalanced creature's wing and shattered to pieces on the floor behind it a moment later.
Shrieking in pain the creature opened its mouth and shot a bright bolt of lightning at him that left his ears ringing in the seconds after it struck his ward. Movement in the corner of his eye drew his attention and he narrowly ducked J'zargo's clawed hand.
"Not again..." he growled, sending the khajiit stumbling back with a quick burst of water that he then froze into a sheet over the floor between them. J'zargo either didn't notice or didn't think ice to be too much of a threat but his feet immediately shot out from under him when Onmund hit him with another wind gust.
Strangely, J'zargo stayed down though.
Must have knocked the wind out of him. I hope.
Mere moments before the bright flash of a fireball blinded him Onmund swore he also saw Urag fall to the floor -- he couldn't recall anything directly attacking the orc, though in the chaotic mess of this fight who knew.
And yet when the afterimages cleared he saw that, yes, he HAD in fact seen Urag fall. Then Enthir fell too - crumpling to the floor without a word.
A loud crack pulled his attention away from their downed forms; Nirya had been seized by one of the flying creatures and thrown into the wall. She laid where she'd fallen with a nasty bruise already forming along her temple and jaw where she'd struck the wall.
Mid-spell Phinis then fell, and the creatures attacking him grabbed him by the robes and began violently shaking him as the two others circled in the air above Onmund's head.
"Stop it - put him down and just -- just leave, I don't care-" Onmund snarled, tossing a bolt of lightning that was more of a deterrence than an actual attack as he didn't want to risk hitting Phinis. "Just LEAVE!"
At that the two let the mage drop to the ground and joined the others circling in the air near the ceiling. Onmund set his feet, poured a last bit of strength into his wards, and then just pointed to the door.
To his genuine surprise three of them did; he was gently buffeted by the wind from their passing wings as they swooped together to fly out the door as he'd indicated. The remaining creature kept circling for a time longer before it too swept out the door.
He waited several breaths, listening for any sign of their return, then let his wards drop and fell to the ground on hands and knees, panting heavily. Exhaustion that he'd stubbornly been ignoring hit him hard then and it felt like an impossible task to do something as simple as raise his hands to lower his hood and comb a hand through sweaty and tangled hair.
Clambering on all fours Onmund then moved over to Drevis's still form; there was a pulse present but he was out cold...for some reason. Why had they all fallen?
Whatever had happened to them must have happened to the guards outside as well, but WHAT had happened?
Moving slowly - partly out of caution and partly because he wanted to fall over himself - Onmund checked on everyone else; everyone had pulses, everyone was alive. There were quite a few injuries between them all but nothing he deemed life threatening...for whatever reason they were unconscious.
Has Kestrel beaten Varea? Is that what caused this?
...no, it couldn't be that. The guards had already been unconscious when he'd arrived and the mages should have been unconscious too if Varea's defeat had been what triggered the collapse.
It didn't matter, he supposed -- he needed to do something before everyone woke up again. Moving over to Nirya he grabbed the small dagger she always carried; it was usually used for prying open stuck scroll cases, or sometimes he'd seen her use it at dinnertime to cut stubborn bits of fat off her venison. It was sharp enough, thankfully, to slice into her robes with ease and he began carving off strips of fabric and tying them together before then moving to tie her hands behind her back, tie her ankles together, then tie hands and ankles together, and then use a last strip to gag her. He made sure none of the restraints were too tight then moved on to the others to tie them all up (he had to thaw out Sergius and Drevis first); once everyone was bound and gagged he spaced them around the room so they could see one another but wouldn't be able to easily reach each other to assist in removing their bonds.
Laying on the floor nearby where Phinis had dropped it was the crystalline dagger. It didn't feel magical at all when Onmund went to pick it up -- its center still glowed that odd shade of green but he couldn't sense anything coming from it. For a brief moment he wondered if he'd have time to figure out how to use it and maybe take control of the creatures outside but each spell he tried seemed to have no effect in either causing a reaction or giving him any insight. At the very least it was in his possession and couldn't be used to summon and bind more of those things outside; he shoved it into his belt and secured it at an angle so it wouldn't accidentally stab him in the thigh if he shifted.
Then, he plunked himself down in the middle of the room and sat there, chin on his chest, arms slumped at his side, and simply...existed.
He was tired. More tired than he'd ever been in his life. Without the pressing need to defend himself the adrenaline that had been keeping him upright was quickly draining out of him, and he was also essentially spent on magicka (and the ambient magicka here was spent as well). The temptation to fall asleep was hard to ignore -- he knew he needed to get up and check on the guards outside, and then check on the guards in the town to see how they were faring against the flying beasts. He SHOULD return to go help them.
Honestly he just didn't want to move at all for a bit. He'd fought entirely too much and too hard today and had come close to death more than he'd liked and all he wanted now was to burrow into a bed -- a bed, or a bedroll, or the floor, or even a stack of stinking hay. Just, anything that he could lay on and not stir for awhile.
The end of all this had to be close. It had to be. He allowed himself a short time to rest before forcing himself to his feet; his head began to pound at the sudden change of position but a swipe of his hands and a tiny bit of mending magics applied directly to his temples banished the headache.
If only I had the energy to wipe away everything else.
"I'm going to sleep for a month after this," he said aloud.
A sweep of the room showed all the mages still unconscious; it was warm enough in here that he wouldn't have to worry about anyone freezing to death. He ambled across the room, grumbling at every step like a weary and aching old man, and paused to pull his hood back up once he was at the edge of the courtyard.
From here he could clearly see the stone cell he'd created and the fire in front of it. The fire was burning down and it didn't seem like any of the guards had moved; he could toss more wood onto the fire and then keep going to have a look outside at the town and gauge where he'd be most useful, or IF he'd be useful at all.
He trudged out into the snow and wind and didn't at all hear the lone flying creature swooping down on him.
Onmund let out a noise that was half curse and half surprised yelp as sharp talons dug into his arm and shoulder and he was effortlessly lifted into the sky and carried out over the edge of the courtyard's tall walls.
Kestrel didn't seem especially bothered by the falling rocks but Varea turned toward them each time as though she expected an attack, and each time she fell for it Kestrel punished her with a spell. Onmund made certain each target was off to Varea's side or at her back, trying to give Kestrel enough openings so those spells could connect but also with a mind to keep Varea from seeing the rocks falling free seemingly on their own. He knew that this couldn't last forever but with each one he yanked loose he hoped it would spur a new idea, or something.
...or at least, a different idea. He'd already had an idea but it was an even worse idea than rushing out onto a stormy sea.
((Continued below cut))
Onmund had a clear view of the mountain and cliffs around him and he could easily track the aerial movements of Kestrel and Varea as they battled overhead. It wasn't hard to see that Varea used the same wards Onmund had been taught at the College -- they were much more powerful than what a typical mage could summon because she was empowered but they were the same wards with the same weaknesses that Kestrel had so bluntly demonstrated to him over a year ago. The wards were strong enough to mostly hold up under Kestrel's assault providing she attacked from the front and Varea was making sure Kestrel could not easily flank her (when she wasn't turning herself toward the noise of clattering rocks, anyway).
What that meant was Onmund could try and position himself at her back and attack her where she had no visible protections, and if she turned to attack him then that left her open to Kestrel's considerably more punishing spells.
The problem was he doubted he could survive long, even with his knowledge of Kestrel's wards - the crown was clearly empowering Varea and, if she was an actual Thalmor to begin with, then she was likely a skilled mage even on her own. It would probably take only one spell from Varea to destroy him and then there was no telling at this distance if Varea had other protective measures on her person. He wasn't confident enough to believe the wards were all she had, not while she wore that damned crown; he would have to take a risk, wait for the moment where Varea would have her back to him and then he could strike, and then come what may afterward...assuming he could hit her.
She's likely to kill me...but maybe she won't - maybe Kestrel can get her in time. And I won't have much longer before someone notices me here anyway. I would rather have the opening blow and upper hand, even if it's barely more than a breath's worth of time.
It was crazy. It was suicidal.
But then, so was running out onto a stormy sea on a narrow ice bridge with a monster on his heels. And he'd already survived a fall that would have killed him if he hadn't been as quick and as clever as he'd been in that moment.
Quick. Clever. He didn't have to kill Varea - he only needed to survive. This wasn't a question of strength or skill level, it was a question of who could outsmart who. He had to survive just long enough for Kestrel to win -- it was a comforting thought, in a way.
He dropped down onto his haunches and took a deep, steadying breath, then filled himself with some of the absurd amounts of ambient magicka in the air; still holding his breath he stood and clambered onto the statue's arm. Neither mage had noticed him yet and, with an exhale that hissed through now-gritted teeth Onmund threw a bolt of lightning into the sky.
Varea was a quick-moving target, difficult to track and even harder to look at with the crown's influence clawing at him and he only managed to clip her; she arched her back as the lightning skimmed across her shoulders, then spun and Onmund locked gazes with her - in the split instant that he could stand to look at her he could see a parade of emotions flit across the beastly woman's face: pain, shock, confusion, and then sheer rage.
"YOU."
Onmund looked away, reeling from her gaze -- he'd hoped the distance would help with the crown's pull but even here it was strong and he knew he couldn't risk looking at her for too long; it wasn't that he feared she could take control of him as she had the others but he worried that fighting the crown's influence would fatally distract him at the wrong moment. Of course, being restricted to quick glances could prove equally as deadly but--
At a wordless shriek from above he forced himself to look up again; Varea was diving toward him with her hands outstretched and Onmund hesitated as the crown's pull momentarily scattered his thoughts and muffled his instinct - should he shield and try to take the hit or should he move? It was answered for him by Kestrel as she launched a firebolt into Varea's side that sent the woman into a spin to crash into the ground in front of the statue's arm below and about fifteen feet away from where Onmund perched.
Kestrel's voice was unmistakable. "What are you doing?!"
"Helping. ...I think," Onmund answered, glancing up to where Kestrel stared at him in a mix of surprise and fear.
Suddenly Varea was clawing up the stone toward him; his small lapse in attention led to her managing to impale one of her talon-like fingers through the fabric of his pantsleg. Onmund kicked his leg back to free it before she could grab his ankle and immediately lost his footing, falling backward to land mostly upside down in the snow where he'd been crouched only moments earlier. He let his legs slip to the side and righted himself as Varea came over the arm; in a panic (she'd moved much quicker than he could have anticipated) he scrabbled in the snow and haphazardly sent some of the nearby loose rocks flying into her face. They bounced harmlessly off her ward but it slowed her down and gave him a few precious seconds to get his feet back under him. This close the crown's magic was like standing inside a massive fire; it pulled at his mind and left a searing feeling across his face and hands as he lifted them up to defend himself.
He was rocked back on his heels and his ward torn to shreds under the purple-white lightning Varea lobbed at him -- in the same breath Kestrel dropped down to slam boots-first into the woman's back and Onmund was fairly certain if she hadn't he would be dead right now. Varea's shriek of pain cut through his head like a knife and he still felt the crown's influence quite clearly.
Damned thing...
Before he realized he was moving he was suddenly on Varea too, struggling to find a handhold on the crown on her head. The obsidian cut his fingers and burned his fingertips; before he could get a grip and tear it free he was abruptly flying backwards as Varea erupted upward.
"I've had enough!"
The air became thick and simultaneously too hot and too cold to inhale and as Onmund struggled to sit up and draw breath he was slammed back into the ground hard enough to feel several pops in his chest; there was a flash of white-blue and a deafening blast, and then he could feel the ground beneath him rumbling. A pair of hands seized him - one to his robes and the other a handful of his hood - and the world went dark blue for so brief an instant he thought he'd imagined it through the hazy afterimages of Varea's spell, but...no, Kestrel held him and he wasn't on the ground by the statue's arm anymore. They'd somehow moved far to the south and were standing - well, Kestrel was standing and he was awkwardly dangling from her grasp - on a narrow peak jutting from the mountain.
His chest and his ears were in pure agony and to his horror he realized he couldn't hear a damn thing. Kestrel hefted him up and set his boots on the ground then held him a moment longer for him to catch his balance; her attention was not on him however, and when Onmund looked to the north where they'd just been his eyes widened at the sight of the cliffs cracking and crumbling apart. It was incredibly unnerving to watch the mountain come apart in total silence; Onmund hugged his arms to himself and wrapped himself in restorative magics -- he swayed in place as his ribs snapped back to where they belonged and with a pair of pops his hearing came back.
"How...how do we kill her?" He could barely hear himself now over the roar of the mountain falling to pieces; a sizeable landslide was rushing toward them and growing in size. It was a very small comfort that there wasn't a village or otherwise any other sort of settled area in its path that he could think of but even then--
"Have you gone insane?" Kestrel shouted at him. "Why are you here?"
"I came to help-"
"You CAN'T help!" she roared into his face. "I can't protect myself AND you! Do you truly want to die here?"
"I-" Any response he had (and he wasn't sure he had one because he definitely agreed that he was likely going to get himself killed here) was blasted out of him as Kestrel slapped him across the face then seized him by the neck of his robes and lifted him up to the tips of his toes, nose to nose with her.
"Get back there and STAY there until I say otherwise."
Between the roaring earth, the ground shaking, and the actual fear he felt at seeing Kestrel this angry at him all Onmund could do was nod. Kestrel let him drop to the ground and then, to his surprise, shoved him backward; a chill of alarm raced up his spine as he fell and then kept falling -- in a fraction of a breath he watched the sky above him disappear into a ring-shaped hole in...well, the sky, and then he slammed into the ground hard enough to blast the air out of him.
Gone was the roar of the landslide, the whistling of the wind, and the innate sense he'd had of the ambient magicka that had been in that pass; his ears were met with the sound of shouting men, the ringing of steel and the shriek of something...unnatural.
"Hey- YOU!"
Onmund rolled to his side and then up onto his knees right as a man clad in the armor of a Winterhold guard grabbed him by the elbow and yanked him to his feet.
"YOU, mage! Didn't you-"
It took Onmund a moment to recognize the voice -- this was the guard who had tried to stop them before. Blearily he peered between the slits of the guard's helm. "-yes, that was us. My master is taking care of the one responsible for this mess."
"-then what can you do about THIS mess?" the guard went on, roughly hauling Onmund around to face him toward the College.
In the sky around the College were winged dots - some sort of...flying humanoids. He swore he'd seen pictures of those things before but couldn't name them at the moment: winged, vaguely female, taloned feet and arms fused with the wing membranes. There had to be at least two dozen circling and either diving at the gathered guards below or hurling lightning to try and scatter them. The ground was littered with dead imps, dead flyers, and of course...dead guards. There were only so many protectors of such a small town and whatever was going on in the College was quickly whittling them down.
I never should have left... he found himself thinking. No wonder Kestrel had been so...so mad at him. If he'd been here rather than-
But, Quaranir had said...
Wait. Why should he care what Quaranir said? Why would he think Kestrel would need Onmund's help? A mere apprentice? Well, probably more than a mere apprentice at this point, but even then - what had Quaranir thought Onmund could do that Kestrel couldn't?
Kestrel was his master, not Quaranir. Onmund had no idea what Quaranir thought he was capable of but if he really, truly meant that Onmund needed to go help Kestrel then he'd just have to come tell him, directly, himself. No guess work, no subtle hints.
Onmund shook himself out of that train of thought and again looked up toward the winged creatures. They weren't flying so close together that he could arc a bolt of lightning between several of them at once but they moved much slower than Varea did -- they made for much easier targets. With a grunt the mage got his feet back under him and shrugged off the guard's arm; his first spell made the guard beside him flinch but it sent one of the flying creatures careening to the ground where two guards quickly fell upon it with their swords.
"More of that, mage!"
"We'll see how long I last," Onmund muttered under his breath. Without the ambient magicka to draw on his exhaustion was heavy and his reserves fairly limited -- he would need a way to get back inside the College to put a stop to whatever was summoning these things as he could only stand and fight for so long.
"Stay with me," he told the guard at his side. "I will cover us as best as I can but I need to get back over into the College itself."
Onmund didn't need to see the guard's face to imagine the man's expression. "In there? With the bridge destroyed?"
"I'll...figure it out," he replied after a pause.
Rather than elaborate further (as he didn't have much of a plan yet) Onmund sent another bolt of lightning into the sky, blasting a hole through the wing of one of the creatures.
