[center][@Leidenschaft] and [@Chrononaut][/center]
[center][h3]Someone Dies at the End[/h3][/center]


The massive dwemer Centurion focused uncertainly on the stalactite. It knew it was a stalactite, I mean, it was standing stock still and had dirt on it. But when it looked at it from the corner of its vision, it saw a mortified Imperial woman. Then it would focus in again and another stalactite. This was deeply unnerving. 

Raelyn had heard that Dragons couldn't see you if you stood stock still and while this was certainly untrue it seemed to work for this thing. It seemed to be waiting for movement and she was just happy not getting involved in any of this nonsense. She couldn't see how she or anyone else could possibly profit from engaging in this fight. This was a very appropriate and Imperial mindset, which famously lead to the Great Emperor Talos realizing there was no profit in a jungle. So he had all Imperial lands transformed to what was more or less a forest retreat. Why he hadn't decided to get rid of all the dangerous and volatile Dwemer ruins was anyones guess.

This was all well and good, up until the moment the frenzied Ashlanders decided to try to charge past the Centurion, which began flailing its arms about, not sure who to smash first. Raelyn was watching this with some interest, when she realized far too late that a Dunmer man with a spear had managed to get within "Oh, gods, there's a Dwemer monstrosity behind me and some woman in front of me, I'll take my odds at the front thanks" distance. It probably wasn't profitable to stab random women in garish clothing, but he wasn't an Imperial so this wasn't a problem for him.

Raelyn felt, for a moment, a sudden pressure in her abdomen that all things considered was alarming but didn't reach the full apex of alarm until she hit the ground. Then she hit the ground because the weight of a spear jamming into you at ten miles per hour isn't anything to scoff at. The intense, burning pain didn't come up until about the moment she lifted a bloodied hand. Something in her brain that had been ignoring what just happened until this point realized that she was at least dying, or at least she thought she was.

At first she tried to rationalize. She hadn't been stabbed, that was just...well, damn that wasn't working. It also hurt, way more than a universe guided by Talos's benevolent hand should. Then she went past the other stages of being stabbed straight to clutching at the thing and doing what she thought, due to her lack of any medical experience, was a good idea: trying to remove the spear. That just made it worse and she let out a scream that she noted madly, wasn't in tune. Her hands were shaking and she just knew for a fact she wouldn't achieve her life long goal of seducing the Dovahkin into telling his life story to her so she could write a better song than that hack garbage, The Dragonborn Comes. She should have apologized to Brittle for teasing him, teasing a man like that was like pulling a steak away from a dog at the last second. She was about to regret conning those peasants in Dawnstar out of their hard earned coined but then thought better of it, that was hilarious. 

Solveig's shield let the blade skid from it, she grimaced at the bolts of pain that shot up her arm as she took the hit. Her spear lanced out from under the rim of her shield and caught the man just above his groin and she could hear him yelp. She yanked her spear out of him with some effort, butting him away with her shield and the length of chitin once again struck out, this time catching him twice around his lower chest in quick succession. The man dropped and she backed away a couple steps, wary. The steam was starting to cling to her skin and made her clothes stick to her. It was uncomfortable, to say the least, but the biggest discomfort was the giant machine prowling the mist. The working of its joints, the hissing of its movement echoed throughout the chamber even as the sounds of periodic struggle lended the whole scene with a morbid ambience.

She heard a scream behind her and she turned, her vision only barely making out what was an Ashlander fleeing, leaving his spear dangling in another figure. She squinted, panicking at the possibility that one of her comrades had died, dreading if it was Sadri. But she remembered it was a girlish scream she'd heard and Sagax wasn't with them. She rushed through the mist, the wet air lending a difficulty to hauling in each breath, and she threw her shield aside and replaced her spear on her back. It was Raelyn, the eccentric bard, but that did nothing to quell her mind. The crimson blooming on her blouse around the long shaft of the spear sent her mind reeling and dried her mouth, and she could only imagine Raelyn's sentiment on the situation. Raelyn's quick breaths and wide eyes screamed panic. This was no crossbow bolt or arrow's shaft, no, this was much more.

She didn't know what to do, she tried not to lock eyes with Raelyn, but she probably saw that the young Nord felt as helpless as she did. "J-Just..." Solveig swallowed, letting out a whimper that was supposed to be the start of something reassuring but instead, she put a hand to Raelyn's stomach. "Help..." She whispered, looking around, it was only her and Raelyn, "Hel-Help!"

When no one came in what felt like hours in her cloudy mind, thoughts being muddied by her heart in her ears, she gritted her teeth, "Sadri! Sadri! Karth!" She snaked a hand under Raelyn's neck and her other hugged around her stomach. She tried to get Raelyn to her feet.

Raelyn was muttering something rapidly, possibly the lyrics to some love ballad but it was pretty unclear because she kept yelping mid-word. As Solveig easily lifted her, she didn't have much weight, she gave a soft shrill of pain. Her eyes darted wildly, the automaton was somewhere out there. Being smashed flat would be a mercy right about now.

She groaned, "I'm going to die aren't I?" There was the metallic clang and follow up squelch-crack of bone. "We're going to die." She had a terrible thought. "I'm not going to go to Sovngarde, am I?" she made a whimpering noise.

"No, no," Solveig said without looking down at her, her eyes set to the task of scanning the mists, "Nords only, and I'm not set at seeing it any time soon."

She turned to leave, trying not to jostle the spearhead lodged in Raelyn too much. The fast pace of her walk brought her back from where she and the others came, emerging from the mist and back into very relative safety, she put Raelyn down. She couldn't do anything for her, and if no one came to help her, she'd die. What happened in Windhelm still hung over her, despite how sweetly Sadri spoke to her that day at the festival. Having another death on her hands was not something she wanted at all.

She rose and turned, finding a dunmer holding a dagger out at her in a shaky fist. Her left foot slid back ever so slightly, a reflex. She'd left her shield in the chamber  with the others and she couldn't reach for her spear in the time it'd take him to jump on her and stab her to death. To make it worse, it wasn't just her she had to worry about, she had Raelyn. She didn't dare look back at the woman, keeping her eyes on the Dunmer's own, "You can walk away, I won't follow you."

The Dunmer said nothing, the most unreassuring silence she'd experienced. He shook his head, then lunged. Thankfully, she managed to catch his wrist with only a searing cut along the outside of her right forearm. She twisted his wrist and the Dunmer grunted, cracking her nose against his forehead, giving her a burst of brilliant light in her head. She responded by reaching up and palming him in the face with all her strength, sending him stumbling back. Before he could recover, Solveig was on him, the two rolling on the ground. They punched, kneed, threw elbows, he reached up to try to push her head back and she bit down on a finger that strayed too close to her lips.

She tasted the iron of his blood and wouldn't stop biting until her teeth hurt and he'd run out of breath to scream with. She spat the finger in his face, her hands holding both his wrists to the ground, she reared back with her head and brought it down on the Dunmer's own nose once, twice, three times. He lay there, breathing slowly, the fight out of him. Anyone else would have stopped, maybe, but this Dunmer had come for her life. She gritted her teeth and brough an elbow down on his mouth, making him cry out. Once more and he only gurgled his own bloody drool, she wrapped her hands around his throat as she got to one knee for some better leverage.

She lifted his head and brought it back down, up, down, up, down, until the floor was a red mess of hair and skin underneath his head as the dull thuds turned to wet smacks. She stood, breathing hard and kicked the dagger away from his hand for good measure. Her head was still blurry from headbutting the man and she wove an uneven path back to Raelyn, letting her back fall against the wall and she slid down to rest on the floor. "I'm so sorry." She said. She couldn't help Raelyn. She was bloodied and mighty sore herself now, feeling the trail of blood making its way from her forehead, down to join the one coming from her crooked, throbbing nose. "They'll be here. I'll wait with you." She said, placing a hand on Raelyn's shoulder, "It'll be okay." She couldn't tell who she was telling that to, herself or Raelyn.

Raelyn said quietly through terse breaths, "I think I'm dying. If they don't, can you burn my lute case?" she looked directly at Solveig, eyes wet and dazed. "I...it needs to be done." she sobbed, "I didn't want it to happen this way." Though she wasn't sure how she wanted it to end. Maybe surrounded by dozens of grandchildren weaving a blanket. 

"We're not burning anything," She bit her lip, knocking her head softly against the wall and trying not to wallow in how shitty this all was, "Keep talking like that and I'll have to hit you, woman." Though she could see Raelyn had lost a lot of blood. 

Gut wounds were the worst, took the longest to die from. She pounded a fist against the wall, each one thump accompanied by a, "Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck!" She put her hand to her face, "It'll be okay." Each time she said that, it felt like more of a lie.