The Khajiit mage J'zargo hurried after Onmund's footsteps.
The magical gear Skyl had given him greatly enhanced the wearer's ability to stay hidden. The darkness felt like an old friend. He didn't conjure any light; in that colorless, empty void, nothing betrayed his passage but the tiny splashes beneath his paws. No one could sense his tracks but the water itself.
Onmund's voice drifted back from ahead. It sounded like he'd turned a corner; the sound grew faint.
J'zargo quickened his pace a little. As he stepped over a patch of slick ice, he suddenly heard a sharp little crack beside him—the sound of thin ice splintering. The Khajiit whipped his head around.
He saw nothing. Only darkness.
Crack.
There it was again: ice breaking. A stranger's footstep.
The structure of a Khajiit's paws spread his weight evenly, so the ice beneath J'zargo's feet remained intact. Whatever was out there in the dark had no such advantage.
Crack, crack… The sound of footsteps slid past J'zargo and headed on ahead.
Who is that? No—what is it?
He wanted to call out, but he kept his silence—for the moment.
He dropped into a half-crouch and crept forward in an even more hidden posture. As much as he hated to admit it, growing up in a Khajiit caravan, J'zargo had learned many a thief's trick. Those skills were like bones—once they'd grown in, they wouldn't fall out on their own. Even if you wanted to forget, the memories would start aching again in the small hours of the night.
A Breton thief who'd traveled with their caravan had once taught J'zargo that shadow was a jealous father.
In that father's world, only one child received his love. You had to watch that father carefully, because he did not want his successful child to challenge his authority.
Right now, the shadow held at least two sneaks, maybe more. J'zargo could only hope, for the time being, that he was still the favored child.
The cracking sounds stopped as he crossed the ice. A cold wind blew down the passage ahead—sea air forced through cracks in the rock and then down into the Midden's deep cave network, picking up the smells of rot and age.
J'zargo tugged his hood down, letting his long whiskers fan out as he tried to feel the shape of the wind. Where the other sneak had gone through, the airflow would be weaker and more turbulent.
That was how he knew the other person was still ahead of him. At a junction, Onmund's glowing marks were obvious on the wall, shining faintly with magicka. J'zargo widened his eyes. Khajiit had darkvision; with that little bit of light he hoped to make out the other sneak's form.
He saw nothing.
Why? Invisibility?
Onmund's voice was growing more distant.
At the end of the passage, a rotten wooden door opened out into the flooded cellar. A few draugr were shambling around the edge of the pool, the deathfire in their eye sockets and the faintly glowing mushrooms on the walls providing a thin veil of light. From a high ledge overlooking the pond, J'zargo stared down at the ripples on the water's surface.
He saw it—the other sneak walking across the water, ring after ring of ripples spreading.
The draugr were completely unaware of the intruder. But as the center of those ripples passed through them, the dried and ancient bodies toppled like wheat beneath a scythe, falling apart into several pieces. The whole thing happened in eerie silence, as if they had always been broken. J'zargo knew better. They'd been sliced to pieces by the other sneak.
In the instant of the attack, a low, hunched shadow flashed above the water—a brief glimpse, as the violent movement tore the veil of the Invisibility spell. J'zargo finally caught sight of the stranger's outline.
He—or perhaps it—was a low, ground-hugging bundle of black cloak, a body squat and flattened like some kind of beetle.
J'zargo had never heard of such a creature.
It kept moving. When he finally slipped down onto the flooded floor himself, the stalker suddenly stopped.
Slowly, it turned its head.
A pair of eyes glowed green as corpse-flames.
Every hair on J'zargo's body stood on end.
But the thing only stared suspiciously for a while, then turned away again.
"Master J'zargo?" Onmund's voice echoed from the passage ahead.
J'zargo stayed silent. The creature, however, replied in a low, hollow voice:
"I… am… here…"
"Come look at this—place is beautiful!" Onmund answered, delighted.
"Wait… for… me…" The thing picked up its pace just a little, its body fading again behind the curtain of Invisibility.
Panic clawed at J'zargo. He wanted to scream, to tell Onmund to run for his life—but he forced himself to stay calm.
What should he do? He couldn't reveal himself. He had to go back for reinforcements. Master Skyl and Master Maryon could handle this creature.
J'zargo turned and bolted back the way he'd come. The moment his feet hit the ground, Onmund's shriek tore down the passage behind him.
He didn't look back. He kept running. Somehow the corridor seemed to stretch on and on, the turns multiplying without end. All the route markers he'd seen before were gone. J'zargo gradually slowed, then stopped. He cast an Insight spell. Waves of magicka pulsed outward and bounced off the stone, feeding back into the spell's structure. A pale cloud of light coalesced in front of him, sketching the shapes of the surrounding tunnels. With J'zargo at the center, a labyrinth of routes unfolded, twisted and convoluted like the folds of a brain.
This was no longer the Midden. At some point he'd slipped into an illusion trap.
J'zargo stood there, thinking hard.
A scream rang out from the passage to his left—sharp and desperate.
Brelyna Maryon's voice.
J'zargo rushed toward it. When he arrived, he found Brelyna lying on the ground, badly wounded. A globe of magelight floated above her head, driving back the dark.
"Who's there?" The dark elf was busily casting healing spells on herself. Having heard something move, she snapped her head up. Where her blood-red eyes had been, there were now only two pitch-black holes. Her eyes had been gouged out. "Come out, monster!"
J'zargo stayed just outside the glow's reach. A dark elf shouldn't have been able to hear him. So what had she heard?
The darkness gave no answer. Brelyna's voice turned hopeful. "Master Skyl? Onmund? J'zargo? Is that you?"
He gave no reply. He didn't dare.
She was in terrible shape. The air stank of blood. She was still bleeding out, and her mind was on the edge of collapse. If this dragged on, she would die.
The Dunmer woman began to sob in anguish, blood streaming from her ruined eyes. J'zargo turned his face away.
At the same time, a hideous shriek of tearing metal split the air. The magical light went out at once.
Brelyna's head struck the ground.
J'zargo shook from head to toe. He could have struck then, when the creature attacked.
The darkness had saved him again. This jealous father seemed to have a special fondness for J'zargo.
He had always liked cowards.
Footsteps echoed from a passage in the southeast corner. A young mage hurried over, a glowing spell in his hand. He saw Brelyna's body and froze.
It was Skyl.
"No… how could this…"
J'zargo's eyes went wide.
The creature is still here!
What do I do? What do I do?!
If he tried to protect Master Skyl, J'zargo would surely die—and Skyl might not even live. If he stood by and did nothing, at least one of them might escape. J'zargo could warn the College about the disaster in the Midden, and then never set foot in this place again—maybe he could just run, far, far away…
The darkness crawled around them like a living thing, like the deep ocean at night, terrible hunters slipping past while blind fish swam on, oblivious.
Skyl crouched beside Brelyna's body. The glow of his light spell spread behind him, outlining the scythe-like insect limbs slowly rising up at his back.
"Run!" J'zargo hurled an Ice Spike, shattering the spectral limbs. Then he sprang, hurling himself bodily onto the creature, wrapping it up, hauling it down with his own small weight. His cowardice had already cost two companions their lives. This time, J'zargo would be the one to die.
Skyl turned around and stared.
What he saw was an illusion-struck J'zargo wrestling furiously with a tangled clump of waterweed—and burst out laughing.
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