The Bound - A Tale Of Tamriel

18

18

i. Öenthir.

At first nothing happened and all the companions glanced at each other with questioning faces. Then the lighting changed from the mellow, sun-like colour to a harsh red that flicked on and off at regular intervals. The door to the outside began to rise and Revna almost dashed to try and keep it open, but stopped by a calming hand on her shoulder by Itagaki.

The noises began, then, as soon as the door closed. The sound of metal grinding on metal, of steam being set free. The metallic clicking sound came more often and louder. And then the floor moved, the thick gears at the side of the room began to turn and the whole floor began to descend.

Slow, at first, and with increasing speed, the floor and the companions descended, past the footprint of the building and down, down, down leaving the building in the distance far above them.

Öenthir tried to calculate how far down they were going, but the rate of descent and the flashing red lights that would appear every few feet at the side of the shaft began to make her feel nauseated. She closed her eyes, still trying to count the seconds.

By the time the descent ended, she found that she had instinctively moved back to the centre of the moving floor and had clasped the arm of the first person she could find.

"It's alright." It was the dark elf's voice and her hand that patted her own. "You can open your eyes. We've stopped."

They had, indeed, stopped and she pulled her hand away from the dark elf, opening her eyes.

The lights had returned to the colour that they had been, revealing a long corridor ahead of them made from the same metal and stone as the building above. On the ceiling, two thick pipes led off into the distance.

"Any idea how far down we came?" The first to step off the platform that had lowered them down here, Itagaki surveyed their surroundings.

"Hundreds of feet." She stared upwards into the shaft they had come down, but there was nothing but blackness above now. "I can't be more specific. It was difficult to keep track."

"More importantly, can we get back up?" The dark elf had, as usual, hit upon the most burning question. "There's little point putting ourselves at risk if we can't get out to take the last gem back, is there?"

Öenthir looked at the dark elf to make a point that she still wasn't talking to her. At least, not as she had before. She looked around the walls and found what she was looking for, another lever, exactly the same as the one upstairs.

"Hypothetically, yes." She aimed the answer to the other two.

"Then let's find this Onzngknd and give him his damned gem back." Revna swung the Argonian hammer onto her shoulder and began to walk down the corridor.

Distance, in the corridor, was difficult to gauge, but Öenthir believed they had walked for almost a mile before they found anything other than the enormous long corridor. To the left, they found a door with grill viewport at about Itagaki's head height. On tip-toes, she could about see inside.

It was a small room that had various banks of switches, levers and knobs set against the walls. The strangest thing, though, was the metal creature that trundled from one bank of switches to another, twisting knobs, flipping switches in some set pattern.

Öenthir found herself fascinated by the contraption. Wondering how it moved on the ball at its base. What is was powered by. What it was actually doing. Her curiosity may never end by such a thing and she had to drag herself away. All of this she could explore later, one day, as soon as they had finished the task and saved the Jarl's daughter.