image [https://i.imgur.com/7ZQbE80.png]

My first day crossing the blight was spent in uneasy silence for the bugs and birds which bring the desert air to life do not dwell in that place. I wandered grim faced between heaps of brick and ionic pillars that held up naught but the sky, mounded at their bases with sand. Everywhere was sand, small, grimey, and stinging like salt when it blew against my injured ear; it curiously squelched underfoot as loose sand first gave in to my weight, before it hardened into an unsteady compacted sheet beneath the balls of my feet — always I felt as though I wandered precariously over floating rafts that at any moment could give way and see me consumed beneath.

But I was not alone. I felt tiny eyes on my shoulders as sure as raindrops, for the Blight of Ourobe is not desolate in the usual way, or so I had heard in second-hand legend from Do'Qanar. The place teemed with a life not of our world — for it is said that Ourobe was once the jewel of an ancient empire of a serpent beastfolk who in their decadence dared to enslave some minor Daedric prince whose name is now lost to time.

The shattered remnants of that city rose around me. I walked past rubble, cornerstones of long forgotten stores or homes, now bearing only a tall bank of sand swept neatly in by centuries of wind. What was once a high palace garden terrace rose only to my hips, bare cobblestone and pots that now knew no keeper. In time came the pyramids as well, and half fallen lanes of pillars and columns under which armies vaster than any the mane’s had mustered had surely matched in grand parades.

I made camp that first night in a collapsed manse. Unbeknownst to me, I had been staggering over its ceiling for some time when I spied a hole exposing the dark hollow beneath me. I eased down, spilling of gravel down with me to see its once palatial sunlit halls crushed by time into a twisting underground oubliette better fit for rat than man. Yet a decent alcove remained in one portion such that I was able to barricade the crawl hole with stone and sleep fitfully on a gradual inclined floor until I woke face down on smooth pearl tiles.

Surfacing at daybreak like a desert varmint, I found the sparse ruins more oppressive than ever. The silence, so welcome at first, grew deafening as it seemed to reverberate back off of the harsh stone remains. The dark sand which once offered reprieve from my blinded eyes now felt filthy, soiled, as it twisted under my corpse-gray stained feet so that my calf muscles were knotted and required rest and massage at regular intervals to be coaxed to carry me further.

It was noon when I first saw it — a Daedroth whose nature I could scarcely conceive. It stood atop a distant temple to some long forsworn god, the copper roof had collapsed into a verdigris crusted rampart from which a lone pillar rose. On that pillar it stood at the height of a man (or so I estimated at some distance) and so still that I would have taken if for a statue had it not been the fleshy color of a mole's flowering nose but with sunlight creeping around the the dark blotches in the exposed membrane of its bat wings.

I felt the heat of its gaze but pressed on at a comfortable amble across a sandblown expanse and into the shadow of a solitary arch wherein I paused to rest and massage my aching calves in shaded privacy. As I pulled pebbles from my feet I saw a flash of it in the corner of my eye, and turned to see it land on a distant rubble heap.

I have spoken to you before about the limits of my power against the darker things of this world; at this time a terror grew in me again for alone against any manner of Daedroth, any flare of fire I could summon would be as a candle held against a tidal wave.

I pressed on, scaling heaps of rubble that had shed all semblance of their old form and jogging across sandy or rockstrewn clearings. But everywhere was exposed to the sun, and everywhere was in the creature's gaze as it glided silently behind me from pillar to pillar at a dwindling distance.

At some point it must have tasted my weakness, for it began to circle me and fly low overhead, an apparent ball headed tail swinging beneath as it laughed maniacally, its cackles resounded off the bare sand and stone.

There was no choice but to run at full tilt for the only nearby cover, a ziggurat with cruel beak-like appendages extending off its four corners. But it stood in remarkable condition, a tiered pyramid of sorts, and breathlessly I scaled its many steps as the Daedroth flew so low overhead that I felt the warm air tremble about me as though in a rising storm.

I held the treatise to my breast and ran up wide steps to broad wooden doors now hardened by time to a gray stone, ancient engravings warped by centuries of wind and calcification. I pushed them, praying the hinges still worked so that I might escape the flying creature by putting a roof between us. With a horrible groan they did budge a thumbs-width, crumbles of dry grime pouring over my face. I threw my shoulder against, each blow squeaking it wider and pain ringing like a punch down my arm.

As I toiled the Daedroth dropped to the ziggurat no more than a dozen steps from me. Stunted legs of naked muscle, an inhumanly elongated mein, I dared not even look long upon its horror, and redoubled my efforts as it stepped closer.

Finally it was wide enough. I fled beyond the door to a staircase down into darkness, backlit only by the crack I had beaten in. I ran down the steps, my bare feet aching on against hard stone as they patterned downward.

Behind me its body blinked out the light before it began running down after me — its stunted legs pumping as it seemed better suited to descent than climbing — all the while the halls reverberated with its gibbous laughter. I redoubled my efforts, ny knees jabbing rapidly up and down as I hammered down the steps, as the pendulous knob of what I now realized to be its manhood, cast a swinging shadow over the far wall.

Summoning a magelight to hand I reached the lower stone landing and picked one of a pair of smaller calcified doors, giving silent thanks when it opened easily and I found a simple crank lock on the far side. I slammed the door shut and rammed the crank lock and sealed the horrid creature outside, frozen and breathless as it fell on the door so that it rocked back and forward on ancient hinges.

My mind raced on whether to stay and fortify the door or flee while I had the chance, when suddenly the light beneath the door went out. Something or someone must have closed the door above and I heard the Daedroth fill the darkness with curses in its foul tongue, a voice like cloth ripping, and it began scrambling back to the surface.

I remained frozen for another moment, and it's entirely possible I may have wept to alleviate some of the pent up anxiety and as a means of fortifying myself. I soon set to walking however, as I was certain that with time the Daedroth would be able to force the door. And so I wandered, lost for some time, through a maze of low passageways and grand halls.

Gemstones still lined the walls, glittering constellations of topaz between fist sized rubies protruded in a repeating pattern underneath mosaics of serpent-men lording over great numbers of either men or mer — I could not distinguish which, only that they were not Khajiit. I ran my palm over tiny tiles as even-patterned as if laid the day prior.

Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.

The air grew moist and sulfurous in my nose, a stink not unlike the bogs of Dwynnen near Anticlere, although I feared far worse than giant snails dwelled there as a the air itself began to quake under long melodious snores emanating from the heart of the complex.

Next I passed the grand banquet hall, and released my magelight as sunshine poured over a long table of calcified wood laid out in ornate detail, dishes and cutlery brought to a spit-shine, as if the dinner bell could ring at any moment were it not for the total absence of food.

Basking in a beam of sunlight sat a shrine carved into the form of a giant cobra twisting around a platter upheld on its tail. On the platter sat a pair of perfectly curved daggers, counterbalanced by massive rust hilts, and a ring even more ancient looking in its construction than the ziggurat, with glowing blue runes that shimmered the air around them, and a pair of chalices as well — one of them crude and uneven of chipped wood and the other of reflected my ragged face back at me in seamless gold.

Each a treasure of unimaginable power, but I wouldn't touch one for all the mead in Skyrim, for even before I began my formal studies I had learned not to tempt fate.

Instead I pressed on, back into darkness. By amber magelight I navigated twisting halls that often ended in a collapsed mass of bricks, requiring a great deal of backtracking. Throughout my wanderings the snoring sound grew louder, shaking the air as it came and pulsed down the long pitch black corridors like a weak heartbeat.

I must have wandered those halls for well over an hour, and lost all sense of which way I had come or gone on account of the circuitous nature of the temple complex. I began to panic until I finally reached an unfamiliar sight — a hall of doors, each emblazoned with great golden knockers and opening mechanisms in the form of a head, horribly misshapen head either on account of time or perhaps a cruel God who had formed the model they were based on.

Behind several were naught but dead ends, hoards of gold coin heaped atop ancient chests of tribute — malachite, topaz, sapphire — useless. I began to lose hope until I cranked one open and as it swung back on its hinges, striking me with a mighty stink, wet and gaseous, which blew over me. Before me, lay a milkwhite supine beast around which a half dozen creatures, midget-like with misshapen heads, either lay or suckled on overlong teats. The beast continued to bleat on horribly at regular intervals, but the midgets did not acknowledge me or my light.

Despite the terror pressing down my chest I noted of patch of sunlight on the far wall. It came from another hallway into the milking chamber. I steeled myself, weeping in that silent way that all great men do, and with a trembling lip managed to worm my way around the creatures by tiptoeing with my shoulder to the far wall. I crossed at one point within arm’s reach of the pale beast, tasting the rancid heat of its bellowing horse mouth on an eyeless face.

Once clear I set to running, bellowing groans chasing me, up that impossibly long corridor towards the pinprick of light at the end.

Before I exited the ziggurat, I knew freedom lay ahead when I began to taste the clean air. I slowed to save my stamina, and noted one of the malformed creatures behind me, no taller than a child and seemingly shy as one too. It simply stared at me and did not answer my calls out to it, so I pressed on.

I broke into blinding sunlight at a run again, crying out with jubilation at seeing the clear sky. I had come out a great distance away from the ziggurat into what was once a broad commercial thoroughfare, now paved over with sand and littered with the masonry of a collapsed aqueduct.

Chest full of clean air and relief, I laughed until hearing the sound of some grit crunched under the weight of a body behind me. Turning, I prepared to face the flying Daedroth once more, but felt my heart fail at the sight of a true nightmare made manifest. The horror which had followed me over the West Weald.

It stood cloaked atop a rubble heap, that narrow slit of a mouth visible beneath its hood. Yet even covered it was more visibly emaciated, yet taller than before. The vampire hunters of Dune must have gotten ahold of it, however briefly, at some point since it had stalked by deviator brother, for its lower robe was singed and revealed a leg stripped of flesh, yellow bloodless bone in shadow.

Its mouth worked at the sight of me, but it may as well have been sand that came out for it was so faint. I ran.

I ran fast, looked back to see it stumble after me in a painful, swinging gait. I gained some distance, but remained panicked for what came next — I knew I would need to rest eventually and that the thing would not. It would hound me to the ends of existence.

It was then that I saw a solitary staircase rising from a dune and an idea struck me. The staircase quivered in the wind, broken down the middle and propped up only on a pair of weathered pillars. A jagged spire stood alongside it like an impaling spear.

I scaled the stairs and stripped down to my girded loincloth, and waited with the velvet roughness of the cover of Eophicles’ Treatise held to my bare breast. I positioned myself just above the narrow split in the masonry..

I threw the treatise down by my feet and I tied the ends of my gown together in a knot to make a hoop of cloth. With a mounting lump in my throat I watched the horror shuffle over dunes and rubble heaps after me. I centered myself mentally and muttered every incantation and rite of power I knew as I packed my waterskin into the debris, the mouth facing away from the creature.

It stopped at the base of the stairs and assessed me, making my bowels twist with urgency for fear it knew my tricks, but then with the stupidity of an animal it began to scale the steps.

I waited until it was closer still, muttering words of power to my waterskin. Eight steps from me, then four steps — the horror's eyes were overlarge, inhuman, over that tight slit of a mouth. At two steps I went silent.

At my release the power within the water skin ripped free in an explosion of fire and force at the heart of the stairs. A great crack boomed out and not waiting to see the results I leapt onto the side of the jagged spire beside us, throwing my gown about it to secure me. Even hitting the at side of it, the blow to my chest stole my breath and I can only credit my terror in holding my fingers taught around the loop I had crafted.

Hundreds of bricks shook loose like a box of playing tiles, clicking and rattling as they collapsed towards the shattered blown out center — sucking the horrible creature down like a whirlpool.

I hung on to the spire for more than a moment, both in panic and because I could scarcely stop coughing on account of all the orange dust which clouded the air. Eventually, after I collected myself enough to survey the carnage below, and assured myself that the creature was perfectly still and buried up to its neck with only one arm free, I began to repel myself down the spire. It was slow work, and without any clothing save for my nethers, painful work. By the time I planted my feet on warm sand again my thighs were dappled with blood droplets from over a dozen scrapes.

It was still alive. Trapped completely, but its free arm began to swing stiffly to an fro, massive eyes drifting about as if lost, its mouth struggling to speak to a ragged whisper.

I hoisted the largest rock I could find to crush the thing's skull in. With rock held overhead I froze. I recognized the creature's face.

There I stood, a bitter desert wind over my naked body with a rock ready to hurl down to kill the bookseller who had sold me Eophicles’ Treatise. His pale face was warped as he looked up at me — great owl eyes, ears that held back flowing white hair were now expanded and ridged like a bat's even as his mouth had drawn into a puckered crease.

The great rock I held fell clattering to the earth. I followed it, coming to my knees besides the creature's as it stared forward vacantly, hand still searching empty air.

"What have I done to you?" I asked.

"—my thing, where is my thing—" it muttered over and over.

It took me several minutes to locate and then dig loose the treatise, for I had left it atop the staircase when the explosion had gone off. Once I had it in hand I sat before the bookseller and began to read aloud from the first page.

With each turn of the page his flesh filled out as if I'd fed him for days on the fattest of roasts. Emaciated cheeks filled in and his eyes brightened and he began to take me in with something approaching his old demeanor.

After reading up to Eophicles’ departure for Elsweyr I closed the book and handed it to him. With a tired sigh I set to casting off the bricks that covered him. He chattered to himself: “My thing, my book. My treatise.”

When he was nearly loose, I put my hand on his shoulder. "I’m sorry that it took me so long, but I think I've learned how it ends."