The air growled like earth shifting in a landslide. Derkeethus and I froze as the atmosphere crystallized into a moment of awful anticipation. A deep, grumbling hiss escaped the bricks of the mausoleum, and to my surprise, the mortar crumbled away into dust that shot out at us in a spray of fine sand. Bricks tumbled to the ground before dissolving into ash. The foundation under our feet sank into a strange, viscous mist. Together we huddled in the shelter of the white cloud, knowing it was a useless place to hide. We were laid bare to whatever evil was after us.
"Derk, come on. Let's go!" I cried, reaching out for my friend's arm, but closing on nothing. I turned back to him, my head still swiveling about like a startled bird, and found him prone on the ground. He twitched in stiff angles, reminding me of a mudcrab. "...Derkeethus?"
His mouth worked loosely, but I only stared at him in horror. Around us, the growling swelled into a painful roar, and the Argonian's limbs twisted and jerked. "Run..." he gurgled.
But I couldn't move. My legs refused to listen to the part of me screaming at itself to flee. I just watched as the roar gave way to a vague laughter and Derk's body went suddenly still. Just like Durak, energy flowed from his ghostly form into the black hole in the sky. "No! Where are you taking him? Stop!" I cried as my friend's body dissolved into the ash. The laughter became hysterical and frenzied, and I spun around to locate the source, in spite of knowing it was omnipresent.
Then, like a storm, the voice faded, taking the chattering entities with it. Sighing in relief, I searched the ground for any signs of the mausoleum or Derkeethus. There was nothing. No trace of either ever having existed. This place eats memories. Suddenly, I felt a looming presence at my back, and I turned, expecting some kind of horrible face to accompany that horrible voice.
Instead, I was greeted by the wall that plagued me endlessly in this hell. I glared at it, hating every brick--every particle--that made up its unnatural presence. Derkeethus, though he'd been taken by that thing, would return, but I didn't know how long that would take. I bet it took him beyond this wall. I bet that's where it lives. Clenching my fists and gritting my teeth, I gathered my courage and marched across the wall.
A set of stairs descended onto an open basin dominated by a malevolent-looking castle on the far end. Large mausoleums dotted the empty plain, some possessing massive floating gems that drew in energy and lightning in an endless storm. Along the wall, to my right, crouched a smaller tomb, a black and rotting tooth. Unlike the wasteland on the other side, souls drifted about in a hapless daze. Their feet dragged as if weighed by invisible chains--some in lines. They reminded me of the "prisoners of war" that were sometimes led through Chorrol to Hammerfell.
As the souls meandered, I realized their primary course lay in the direction of the blackened tomb. They're being brought in for "processing". The Argonian, then, was surely inside already. Resolutely, I stalked across the ashen ground toward the building.
Only a few steps forward and I was somehow veering off course, heading for a tree here or a forgotten gravestone there. Though I still headed in the general direction of the tomb, I could't seem to fixate upon it. "Oh, for Y'ffre's sake. This is ridiculous," I huffed, dropping down onto the sand.
For a few moments, I stared at my translucent legs, watching the leaves meander about lazily. Suddenly, they flashed brightly and a soft humming buzz enveloped me. In that color-drained world, the faint green light emitted by that essence was like a balm. I felt something brushing the inside of my head, and I looked around. Nearby lay a low building that definitely hadn't been there the last time I looked.
Like the rest of the structures in the Soul Cairn, this one was devoid of all life and all evidence of life. Except for a singular altar, sitting, small and unassuming, at the end of row of covered arches. Below the cast iron table were candles. Lit candles. I crouched before their tiny flames, nearly weeping in relief at their warmth. It was something alive! Flames that breathed and moved and danced.
So absorbed was I in their wonderful light that I almost missed the shattered soulgem sitting on the table. There was no note or engraving on the altar indicating what these were, or who they once contained, but I saw them as a sign nonetheless. Taking them in hand, I reached for my pack or a pocket. Then I remembered that I was naked, and had to satisfy myself with carrying the sharp fragments in my hands. They were ice cold and unpleasantly smooth.
No sooner had I turned around that the altar disappeared. Trees surrounded me on all sides in an unending forest of groping fingers. This is like last time, I thought. However, the grotesque apparitions were, thankfully, absent. As I gazed over the tops of the branches toward the blackened tomb, I found it further away than before.
"Do you think you are free?"
"What happens to a Bosmer in a tree?"
My feet shuffled to a stop amid the skeletal trees. Looking about frantically, I tried to find the voices as they drifted by; maybe if I followed them, they'd lead me to the tomb. Yet, the moment I stepped toward the nonsensical chanting, the tomb drifted further to my right. Then to my left. Sometimes, it disappeared all together. All the while, I shivered, thinking of what the spirits did to me last time--how they had crawled on the inside of my head like horrible worms. Yet, no matter how much I corrected my heading, nothing kept the building in my sights.
"Stay still," I spat.
"Stay still on the rill."
"He grinds bones into mill."
"Last one came to break his will."
With a huff, I plunged straight toward the mausoleum, ignoring the spirits this time. I bent my will upon reaching that place, as I tried to recall doing the same to Derkeethus' body when he and I shared the dragon's soul. I was closing in on the tomb, only a few hundred paces from its door, when the forest rematerialized around me. Suddenly, I stood inside a cluster of gravestones, their hollowed heads turned toward each other in gossip.
"Enough!" Magic flowed through my words as they barked through the air like the crack of a whip. There was something of the spriggan's woody tone coming out of me.
"Little lost soul."
"Can't reach your goal?"
"He will devour your skull in a bowl."
"Silence!"
The chattering stilled into a faint whisper.
"Show me his tomb," I commanded. The leaves floating around me brightened until their shapes burned the backs of my eyes.
"We don't have to."
"You aren't him!"
"Show me."
The trees vanished, stones dissolved, and a little of my power diminished. Then, there it was as if I had been standing in front of the door the entire time.
Comments
I like writing about the Soul Cairn, but I really, really hate playing the Soul Cairn. It's an awful place.