Two Forsworn warriors stood guard in the cold shadow of the cave entrance, their breath pluming in the early morning air. They weren't at ease. The usual rhythm of their territory had been off for days.
"No word from the southern patrol," the first grunted, his eyes scanning the mist-shrouded hills. "Nor the eastern one. It's been too quiet."
"The stones are whispering of ghosts," the second muttered, his grip tightening on his notched axe. "Or wolves that walk like--"
They never got to finish the thought.
From the grey thicket thirty yards away, two arrows materialized. There was no shout, no drawn bowstring audible over the wind. Just the soft, simultaneous thwip-thud of fletching finding a home.
Each shaft buried itself to the feathers in a warrior's throat. Choked gurgles replaced conversation. The guards clutched at the sudden, impossible pain, their weapons clattering to the stony ground as they crumpled, twitching, into the dirt.
Silence returned for a handful of heartbeats.
Then, from the mist and brush, the hunters emerged. Torin, Qasim, Aela, and Auri moved with a predator's quiet grace, closing the distance to the cave mouth. Echo padded behind them, a massive, silent shadow, her nose working as she sampled the scents of blood and cold stone.
Torin crouched by the two dead sentries, giving them only a cursory glance. No armor worth taking, no special markings. Just two more obstacles removed.
He turned to the others, his voice low and matter-of-fact.
"Right. We all know the plan. It's not subtle." He nodded to Qasim. "He and I go in. We kill everything that moves, loot anything that looks important, and find what we came for."
His gaze shifted to Aela and Auri. "You two hold the door. Make sure no one goes in or out. This cave stays sealed until we're done."
Echo let out a soft, inquisitive grumble and nudged Torin's ankle with her broad paw, her dark eyes fixed on him. And me?
Torin looked down and grinned, giving her a solid pat on the shoulder. "You're coming with me, obviously. I need someone to block doorways and look intimidating."
He straightened up, hefting his axe. The silvery metal seemed to drink in the gloomy light. He caught Qasim's eye and gave a single, sharp nod.
The Redguard's only response was to unsling his shield and draw his scimitar, the blade gleaming dully. No words, no pep talk. Just readiness.
Aela had already melted back into the rocks to the left of the entrance, her bow in hand.
Auri gave Torin one last, unreadable look before ghosting away to the right, vanishing into the landscape as only a Bosmer could.
The 'plan' for assaulting the Sundered Towers—these ancient, crumbling ruins—wasn't complicated. It was brute force and controlled violence. All the real strategy had happened over the last two days, thinning the Forsworn herd in the surrounding hills.
That part was done.
Now came the messy part.
With Echo at his heel, Torin stepped over the dead sentries and into the dank, waiting darkness of the cave. Qasim followed a pace behind, a silent shadow. The time for subtlety was over.
...
Torin moved through the dank cave like a force of nature. Magically enlarged, he had to duck his head under low-hanging stone teeth.
His skin gleamed with the hard, lusterless black sheen of Ebonyflesh, making him look less like a man and more like a walking statue of volcanic glass. The ground underfoot was a mess—a rough, semi-natural staircase of stone mostly swallowed by centuries of dirt and rubble.
He didn't flinch. He didn't hurry.
Twang. Thwack. Twang. Thwack.
Two Forsworn archers, perched on a ledge above, fired frantically. Their bone-tipped arrows struck him in the chest, the shoulder, even glancing off his hardened cheek.
They didn't pierce. They didn't even scratch. They just snapped or bounced away with harmless, pathetic ticks, like hail striking an anvil. Torin kept walking, a slow, relentless advance.
A third Forsworn, a wiry Breton with hate in his eyes, was hiding behind a crumbling pillar. He waited, holding his breath, until the massive, blackened figure passed him. Then he erupted from cover, his rusty sword aiming a vicious thrust at the back of Torin's skull.
He never got close.
A blur of darker shadow, radiating the same oily black sheen of a shared Ironflesh spell, launched from behind Torin. Echo hit the warrior like a furry battering ram.
Her jaws, powerful enough to splinter timber, closed on the back of his neck with a wet, crunching snap. The man's cry died in his throat. Echo shook her massive head once, violently, and dropped the limp body.
Her muzzle was a mask of red. With a furious, rumbling roar that vibrated the very stones, she didn't pause. She charged past Torin, a living projectile of fur and rage, and launched herself at the nearest archer on the ledge.
The Forsworn had time for one scream before he was buried under half a ton of enraged bear.
The second archer panicked, swinging her bow away from the unstoppable man to aim at the uncontrollable beast.
It was the last mistake she'd ever make. Torin was suddenly there. One massive, black hand shot out, wrapped entirely around her throat, and lifted her off her feet. There was no dramatic struggle, no heroic last stand. His fingers tightened like a vice.
A sickening, crunching pop echoed in the chamber as he crushed her windpipe and cervical spine. He dropped the body without a second glance, letting it crumple to the dirt like a discarded rag.
From a deeper alcove of shadow, a fourth figure emerged. This one was older, a hunched Forsworn woman with wild eyes and a staff of gnarled wood tipped with a yellowed skull.
She pointed the staff at Torin, her lips already moving in a guttural curse.
Torin's axe began to rise, lightning gathering at its head.
He didn't need to throw it.
Qasim flashed past him in a blur of motion. The Redguard moved with a liquid, lethal grace Torin had to respect. His scimitar, a crescent of polished steel, caught the flickering torchlight as he executed a perfect, horizontal slash. It was almost too fast to see.
The witch's chant cut off. Her head tilted, then slid cleanly from her shoulders, hitting the ground with a soft thump a second before her body collapsed.
Torin lowered his axe, the lightning fading. "Impressive," he grunted, his voice echoing in the sudden quiet.
He took a step forward, then paused, his head tilting. "If not for the fact that you just stepped on a pressure plate."
Qasim, who had landed in a controlled crouch after his killing stroke, froze. He looked down. Beneath his boot, a small, perfectly square stone tile had sunk an inch into the floor with a soft, final click.
The Redguard's eyes widened a fraction. He didn't curse. He just took a sharp, deep breath and threw himself backward into a dive.
Hisssssss-CLACK!
From hidden slits in the wall beside him, a fan of a dozen thin, needle-like darts, their tips glistening with a sickly green fluid, shot across the space he had occupied a heartbeat before.
They embedded themselves into the opposite wall with a sound like angry hornets.
Qasim hit the ground in a roll and came up in a defensive crouch, his shield raised, scanning for more traps.
Torin grinned, a flash of white in the gloom. "I'd tell you to watch your step, but you were doing a fine job avoiding traps until about thirty seconds ago."
He raised a hand, pointing ahead. At the far end of the chamber, a rough stairwell was carved into the rock, illuminated by a narrow, dusty sliver of daylight from above. "And we're almost out of this stuffy hole. Fresh air and open sky."
Qasim gave a curt nod, his eyes still scanning the floor and walls as he moved to join Torin, carefully avoiding the triggered plate and the poison darts. "We have defeated eleven of them in here," he stated, his voice low. "The rest of the clan should be outside, within the Sundered Towers themselves."
Torin shrugged, the motion causing his enchanted armor to creak. "Yeah. And aside from maybe a Briarheart—if they've got one skulking around—the rest shouldn't be much of an issue."
Qasim's brow furrowed, the first sign of something deeper than tactical concern. "No," he agreed quietly. "They will not be an issue. And that… is what bothers me."
Torin gave him an openly annoyed look. "What? You're going to tell me that easy victories 'poison the soul' or some other preachy nonsense? Save it for the fire."
Qasim shook his head, his expression grim. "No. Not that." He gestured with his scimitar at the bodies littering the cavern floor. "But you, of all people, must see it. The Forsworn will not take kindly to this. An entire outpost, slaughtered. Their patrols, vanished. There is a balance of fear here in the Reach, brutal but real. We are shattering it."
His dark eyes hardened as he looked toward the sunlight. "And there is only one place for that rage to flow, unless they know exactly who wielded the blade." He met Torin's gaze. "Markarth. The city will bear the brunt of their wrath. Their raids will grow fiercer, more desperate. More people will die. Many more."
Torin just stared back, his expression shifting from annoyance to incredulity. "So what? The Nords and the Forsworn have been butchering each other in these hills since before my grandfather's grandfather was a twinkle in his father's eye. They'll find another reason to fight sooner or later..."
He studied Qasim's face, his head tilting. "Besides…" he trailed off, a strange, assessing look coming over his features. "I don't believe for a second you've only realized that just now. You're annoying. Not stupid."
Qasim grimaced, the expression looking foreign on his usually composed face. It was a look of genuine, uncomfortable shame. "Yes," he admitted, the word seeming to cost him. "Much to my shame, you are right. I have known this from the start. And that… also bothers me. That I can be so willing to walk this path, to achieve my goal, knowing the price I won't even have to pay...."
Torin looked him straight in the eye and let out a short, derisive scoff. "If you're looking for sympathy or a shoulder to cry on, you picked the wrong cave, pilgrim. Try the Temple of Mara in Riften."
He gave Qasim a dismissive wave, turning toward the stairwell. "Feeling guilty about it? Then turn around and leave. Walk away. Your conscience is your own problem. I'm sure I can find a buyer for Red Eagle's sword, too… assuming the damned thing is even here."
He started up the rough-hewn steps, his heavy boots scuffing on the stone, not looking back to see if Qasim followed.
The Redguard stood amidst the carnage, watching Torin's retreating back with a complicated, troubled expression. He knew the brutal truth of the Reach.
The Nords and the Reachmen had been slaughtering each other since the First Era. This powder keg was always one spark away from another explosion. It was a cycle of hatred as old as the mountains themselves. Sooner or later, it would have ignited again.
He also knew, from his time in Jorrvaskr, that Kodlak was no fool. The old Harbinger had quietly instructed the Inner Circle to accept a steady stream of contracts from the Reach over the last year.
Markarth's Jarl would have a deep, ready pool of the Companions' hardest fighters at his disposal to blunt the Forsworn's retaliation. The city might bleed, but the Frosworn would lose an arm, maybe two.
Logically, he knew all this. It didn't settle the cold stone in his gut.
He didn't like being the spark. The one who lit the fuse. It felt less like fulfilling a divine quest and more like committing a sin of omission so vast it echoed.
Was this yet another trial laid before him by the gods? A test of his resolve, to see if he would balk at the collateral damage? Or was this road—paved with good intentions and ancient oaths—actually leading him not to redemption, but deeper into a different kind of sin?
He looked once more at the dead around him, then at the sliver of daylight above. With a slow, heavy breath that did nothing to lighten the weight on his spirit, he adjusted his grip on his scimitar and followed Torin up the stairs.
The path was chosen. The consequences would come.
All he could do now was walk it, and pray his destination was worth the price of the road.
...
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