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It never snowed like this on Vvardenfell. All that place got was ash, especially these days. Not that Solstheim was immune, but this part of the island was at the whim of the storms off the sea. That meant—much to his chagrin—blizzards.
Teldryn Sero looked up, letting a few heavy flakes fall onto his chitin lenses, melting and obscuring his vision. At least not much had changed since the last time he left it.
He’d wandered out here on some mindless quest for Neloth. The old bastard was tired of his drinking, and tired of his chaos, or so he had vehemently spat. After Teldryn had gone and destroyed Raven Rock’s shrine to the Nerevarine—and blasted bits of the roof off the temple to boot—Neloth had given him a bit of an ultimatum. Shape up or ship out. To be perfectly honest, neither of those options appealed to him. But then again, neither did wasting away in the Bulwark jails for being a destructive s’wit.
He sighed and fished around in his bag for the taproots he was supposed to be rinsing in the headwaters of some random river. He wasn’t sure if this was busywork or if the place actually had any real magical significance.
He didn’t care.
What he did care about was the fact that Neloth had taken the sujamma out of his bag before pushing him through a thrice-cursed portal. One second he’d been tossing taproots around in the warmth of Tel Mithryn and complaining to nobody in particular—seeing as Neloth would never actually listen to why he’d done what he’d done—and the next he was freezing his pohim off in the middle of an impending storm.
Typical Telvanni bullshit, if you asked him. Why Neloth never ran these errands himself was one of life’s great mysteries.
He stared ahead into the gap in the cliff where the Harstrad river flowed from. It was darker than night and looked too small for a normal person to fit through from this angle. Fantastic. He’d have to contort to get through. He closed his bag again and sighed, breath fogging before him even as it passed through his scarf. It was freezing and he’d have to trudge through icy water all for nothing. The tower was likely fine. He had to admit, if this would fix the weird rotten spot, then the place would smell significantly better. Probably. He steeled himself against the deathly cold and made his way into the tiny cavern.
Ahead of him, the waters glowed as they cascaded from an unseen source somewhere deep within the mountain. The sound of flies buzzing magnified a thousand times, blocking out the sound of water rushing under his chitin boots. He pressed his palms to the sides of his helm, but no matter what, the sound wouldn’t leave him. It pierced his brain like a headache after a bad bender. The pain shot through his right eye as if he’d been stabbed.
“Leave.” A voice commanded, emanating from everywhere and nowhere all at once. It sounded myriad and high-pitched, like each insect that buzzed before had switched to Tamrielic without a second thought. “Leave this place.”
He blinked against the stinging tears and looked up through mist-fogged lenses. A Spriggan—unburnt and larger than any he’d ever seen—reached out a gnarled, wooden hand in his direction. Glowflies drifted in and out of its form, and somewhere in its center, a pale green light pulsed in time with the beat of his own heart. He felt paralyzed as he locked eyes with the thing, its face unmoving—just a carved wooden mask.
It took every ounce of effort he had left to reach for his sword, which gleamed golden in the light as he unsheathed it. His head could have split open as the Spriggan screeched in its uncountable voices and lunged for him, nails sharpening into claws as it moved with uncanny speed.
The part of his mind that was always fighting took over as he moved his feet into the correct stance, dodging as the Spriggan slashed at him, aiming straight for his throat. He weaved out of the way, blocking blow after blow, claws glancing off moonstone blade in showers of sparks. In his free hand, he drew enough Magicka to cast Firebolt. He dodged again, aiming a jab at the Spriggan’s chest.
The Spriggan shrieked, claws scraping the chitin plates of his armor, blocking his hit. Teldryn snarled and brought the sword down on its arm. It caught in the jagged wood and pulled free, sending a shower of green-tinged splinters everywhere. The noise it made as sap leaked from its wound was enough to raise the dead.
This was it—the moment he’d been waiting for.
His other palm collided with the wooden sternum of the thing, releasing the spell he’d been holding back. At close range, it wasn’t quite as powerful as it could be—but it was a Spriggan, and if the ones that lived out in the southern ash wastes were any indication, fire did a fine enough job.
The Spriggan became a bonfire under his fingers, twisted wood splitting and cracking under the conflagration. The green glow gave way to a blinding orange as fire consumed the taproot in its chest. Teldryn jumped back as it flailed and thrashed, scratching at its own neck as fire crept up its throat and the vines which composed its spine.
It fell to its knees in the icy gravel near the waterfall, the smell of woodsmoke filling the tiny cavern. The buzzing stopped, and all that was left was the crackling of a dying fire, until all that remained was a gnarled, blackened husk.
Teldryn held his breath as he approached the corpse, drawn by something between fear and disgust at what he had done. He reached out to touch the ashen bark, as if in some kind of apology—or reverence. The uncanny silence was stifling as he inched forward.
His fingers grazed the burnt twigs which had once been a verdant crown. The barest touch sent the entire corpse collapsing into nothing but a pile of ash. One moment whole, the next nothing at all, as if it hadn’t been there at all.
The cavern around him seemed to shudder, a sad sigh of wind rushing through the exit, chilling the back of his neck.
Something like grief pulled at the back of his mind as he reluctantly turned toward the waterfall. None of the glow from before remained. He half-wondered if that had been imagined. He dipped the taproots in the river, and held them there until the freezing cold numbed his fingers to the bone.
He could not shake the feeling of that fire which had burned with white-hot fury under his fingers. The way the flames stole the very spirit of this place all but haunted him. There was a strange sense of guilt building up in the silence that didn’t seem to leave him. Something told him it never would.