Chapter Text
Drelethyn let out a weary sound, the long night seeming to catch up with him. Shifting, S’en guided his head from her shoulder to her lap. He made no move to protest as she gently brushed his hair back from his forehead.
“Mmm,” he hummed. Opening his eyes, his gaze fixated on S’en’s talisman, which swayed close to his nose. Her touches stilled as he reached up and grasped the cord just above the stone, pulling it away from his face a little to get a better look at it. “Did you ever find out what this thing is anyhow?”
“No. I haven’t,” S’en said, shaking her head.
“It’s powerful,” Drelethyn said, watching as it slowly rocked back and forth. “And its old. This framework it’s in looks Dwemer-made.” He tapped the metal contraption that embraced the stone it held.
“There was more to the dream I had about this place.”
“There was?” Drelethyn released the talisman and looked up at her.
“Mmhmm.” S’en looked contemplative, her gaze distant. “After I saw the razing of the city… I spoke to Lorkhan.”
“To Lorkhan?”
“Yes.” S’en frowned. She looked down at Drelethyn. “I don’t think… that this was the first time I’ve met him in my dreams. I just didn’t know what I was looking at before now.”
“What did he have to say?” Drelethyn asked.
“He didn’t,” S’en said. “I tried asking him why you and I were dragged into this, and if he wanted us to find Cor’s creation, but he didn’t say anything until I asked him what he wanted. Then he just told me to wake up. And then I did.”
“Well, that’s not helpful.”
“I think he wants us to figure it out for ourselves,” S’en said. “That he wants us to decide if we want to continue down this road.”
“It’s not as though we have much choice otherwise,” Drelethyn groused.
“We might have more choice than we think,” S’en said, “but even without siding with caution, knowing as much as we’ve uncovered without seeing it through until the end… I think it’d haunt me.” S’en frowned. She pulled off her talisman to hold it in her palm once more, scrutinizing the walnut-sized stone as she held it aloft above her face. “This was hot when I woke up.”
“The stone?” Drelethyn asked.
“Mmhmm.”
Drelethyn’s weight lifted from her legs. She looked down to see him propped up on one elbow, his other hand held out.
“May I?” he asked. S’en dropped the talisman into his palm. Drelethyn turned it between his fingers, studying the stone and the cage that surrounded it. “This was Serthi’s, right?”
S’en nodded. “I think it had something to do with him being able to use Fabrication,” she said. “I thought it was why I was able to, as well, but Dagoth Mulis apparently thought otherwise.”
“Remind me how he said Fabrication works?”
“It’s creatia. He said that it was taught to House Dagoth by the Dwemer, but that they needed some connection to Lorkhan to use it. ‘Forge a connection to the will and corpse of Lorkhan’ I think were his exact words.”
Drelethyn sat up. He put the talisman down on the blanket and looked at her very intently. “The corpse? He said that? Are you certain?”
“I am. It was disturbing, which is why it stuck in my head. Why?”
“The Heart of Lorkhan is a stone.”
S’en looked at the red stone, then at Drelethyn, then at the stone again.
Pulsing. Alive.
“Oh,” she said, quietly.
They sat there, the stone resting between them, glowing softly once more.
“Surely it’s not the whole Heart?” S’en asked.
“No. Definitely not,” Drelethyn said. “The Heart was still in Red Mountain past Cor’s death. Its absence would have been noticed. This must be a piece of it.”
“A piece of the Heart?”
“That’d be my guess. Although, according to scripture, the Heart Bone is the one bone that cannot be cut. If that’s true, this stone being a piece of the Heart should be impossible, but it seems no less impossible than the rest of what we’ve been dealing with.”
“Maybe Lorkhan consented to it.”
“To having his heart cut.”
“Mmhmm. Perhaps that would make a difference.”
“It’s possible,” Drelethyn conceded. “Makes sense with how he doesn’t seem particularly mad that we have a piece of his Heart. If this is a piece of his Heart.”
“Right. If it is.”
They continued to look at the stone, neither of them making any move to pick it up.
“Is it wrong that I’m not sure if I want to wear it again?” S’en asked.
“I would be thinking the same if I were you,” Drelethyn said. “Then again, it hasn’t killed or possessed you yet.”
“You’re right, it hasn’t,” she said. Cautiously, she reached out to touch it, immediately flinching back the moment she felt her fingers come into contact with the warm stone. Nothing happened, and S’en picked it up. She turned it over in her hands. “I’m betting this is the broken-heart-unlocking thing that Cor mentioned was needed to activate the life-support machine that is probably for Lorkhan.”
“None of this explains the bit about Wasten Cordiale, though.”
“What do you mean?”
“Here,” Drelethyn retrieved a piece of paper and held it out to her, presumably so she could read it. “Cor insinuates that your stone there is not only the key to activating the machine, but is the key to Wasten Coridale itself.”
“I thought Wasten Coridale was locked by the Trials,” S’en said, handing the page back after giving it a cursory glance. She frowned, fiddling with a bit on the metal cage of the talisman. Strange, that hadn’t been loose before.
“As did I, but now I’m not so sure what we can expect.”
“Does she mention where Wasten Coridale is at all?” The bit of metal turned, clicking into a different configuration, revealing another moving piece. S’en turned that as well, continuing to absently fidget with the contraption.
“No.” Drelethyn sighed. “I guess that’s information she might’ve not foreseen being lost. She may have expected someone to figure this out long before you and I came along.”
S’en pressed on a rounded junction in the framework, and suddenly the stone began to glow brightly, growing hot to the touch. She gasped, pulling her hands away. The talisman hung floating in the air, the light growing more intense as the framework surrounding the stone continued to turn and click, reconfiguring itself. Then the stone flashed, illuminating the interior of the ruined hut in a blinding red light. S’en immediately threw up her hands, shielding her eyes from the light’s intensity. She heard Drelethyn swear.
The light faded, drawn back into the stone, where it was held for a moment before a beam erupted from the stone, pointing East. The talisman fell, bouncing lightly on the blanket where it landed. The beam of light remained, emanating from the stone, still pointing in the same direction as before.
“What did you do?” Drelethyn asked, staring at the talisman warily.
“I don’t know,” S’en said. Hesitantly, she reached out and tapped the talisman once more. It was warm, but cool enough to hold. Picking it up, she turned it over. The stone had somehow grown; she had to cradle it in both her hands now. It was heavy, roughly the size of a heart, too large to be feasibly worn anymore. It still lay nestled in the Dwemeri-framework that surrounded it, but its configuration had changed, encircling the stone now rather than forming a cage as it had before. The beam emanating from the stone remained steady, pointing in the same direction no matter which way she turned it. “It’s leading us to Wasten Coridale,” she said, struck with a sudden certainty.
“Well I’ll be damned,” Drelethyn muttered.
“Should— we should. We should follow it,” S’en said quietly, decision made for herself.
“It’s past time to move camp anyhow. We’re pushing our luck by staying here as long as we have.” Drelethyn let out a groan. “Saints is my back mad at me.”
“You old man,” S’en teased, “I did all the work.”
He gave her a playful shove on the shoulder. She smirked and stood, brushing the ash from her clothes. She crouched before the hearth, pushing the ash she had cleared from the hearth back into place to suffocate the flames and douse the fire. S’en contemplated for a moment whether or not she should hide the Dagoth Scarab once more before deciding to leave it as is, feeling as though covering up the history of this place would only to be further stepping on the ghosts of those who died here long ago.
Auro had waited out the ash storm in another nearby ruin, tethered to a fallen wood beam. S’en fed the guar as Drelethyn loaded the tent and their packs onto the creature’s back once more. Then they were off, crossing through the rest of Kogoruhn as they continued eastward. S’en bade Drelethyn to stop as they passed the mass grave once more. S’en dug through her pack that hung from Auro’s flank for a moment, retrieving from it a bottle of sujamma given to her by the master-at-arms in the Maar Gan Outpost and a bone-beaded rosary the Temple priests had given her for protection. These she took with her as she wove her way through the sea of grave markers, pausing to pick a few fire flowers from the wild ferns that grew there. When she was about in the center of the mass grave, she kneeled by a marker. She wrapped the rosary around the wooden stake, and placed the bottle of sujamma, the fire flowers, and the pottery shard she had found elsewhere in Kogoruhn’s ruins at the base of the stake.
The scuffing of boots on the dry ground bade her look up, where she saw that Drelethyn had come to stand beside her.
“Dagoth Ur may be a danger, but these people were innocent,” S’en said, looking back down at the offerings she had laid before the grave marker. “They didn’t deserve what happened to them. They don’t deserve to be forgotten.”
S’en had no prayers to offer them. She knew of no words that could serve as a balm to the ghosts of those who had died here. The only sermon she had ever witnessed was the one she’d accidentally walked into at the Temple in Molag Mar. S’en didn’t know what a funeral entailed, even; she was never told what had happened to her mother’s body when they had found it. She had only been informed of her death, and of her debt that was now S’en’s to repay. There was no funeral; there rarely was in the red-lantern district. They were supposed to be the ones no one would miss, after all.
Drelethyn cleared his throat, and began to speak:
“Upon the altar of Padhome
Built in the House of Boet-hi-Ah
In the ember-hot from which you were birthed
To rest on the bones of your ancestors
Beyond the reaches of mortal tongues
Scorned lovers of pith and tithe
And we will carry the burdens dropped from your fingers…”
S’en looked up at Drelethyn from where she still kneeled, surprised. She stood as well, and remained quiet as he continued to recite the funeral prayer, turning her attention back to the grave marker before she let her eyes shut.
“The shalk says unto you, your house is safe now
The fire fern says unto you, we will wait
The ash says unto you, we will wait
Resdaynia says unto you, we will wait…”
Here he paused. Normally the prayer would close with an invocation of ALMSIVI, but Drelethyn felt it would find no place here. “Veloth guide your passage,” he said instead, hoping the Saint of Pilgrims would be a fitting enough invocation.
S’en slipped her hand into Drelethyn’s own, lacing their fingers together. He gave her hand a gentle squeeze.
Not another word was spoken as they solemnly left the mass grave, their hands still entwined. They had no set destination, simply looking to put distance between them and the ruined Dagoth capital. As they reached the crest of a hill at the perimeter, S’en turned back to give the ruins of Kogoruhn one last, sympathetic look before she continued on.