[sub][i]Music cue: [url=https://open.spotify.com/track/4Tj23tbO77B7fxNOOxpcDy]Spotify[/url] | [url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-xfn3l8xZYw]Youtube[/url][/i][/sub]

“Father?” 

Her voice was small and soft, and she found herself looking up at his silhouette on the other side of the dark room. Niernen recognized it as the dining hall of the estate of her family in Blacklight, designed and furnished in the typical Dunmer fashion, but it was deprived of all the symbols of wealth and prosperity that usually adorned the walls and decorated the long table. It was cold and the silence was so oppressive she could almost hear it.

“Yes, child?”

His voice was hoarse and frail, barely a whisper, and Niernen felt fear. He was so old. She looked down at her hands and saw those of a child, unblemished and tiny. How could that be? If she was young, her father wasn’t old yet. He wasn’t [i]young,[/i] of course, and had not been young for more than a century, but he was firm and daunting. Not like the husk that stood there in the gloom, face shrouded in shadow, motionless except for slowly swaying from side to side. Niernen opened her mouth to speak but no sound came out. 

“Where are you?” her father asked then, and she heard he was afraid too. “I cannot see you, or feel you.” 

“I’m right here, papa,” Niernen said with some difficulty. She felt tears on her cheeks and heard herself sob, a wretched sound that echoed sharply in the unnatural hush. It was like her body wasn’t hers to control.

The silhouette shook his head. “No, no,” he murmured. “You are not here. You are far away. Why are you so far away? Where are you going?” 

“Papa!” Niernen squeaked, her throat constricted as she continued to cry. Or was that sound coming from behind her? The room seemed to elongate around her and her father stretched away, out of sight. Something malevolent rapped its talons close to her ear. 

“They’re coming, Niernen.” 

“Wake up, Niernen!” 

Her brother’s face slowly drifted into sight. Confused, Niernen blinked. She wasn’t home anymore, that much was certain, but she couldn’t tell where her dreams had whisked her off to now. 

“We’re under attack! Get up!” 

Mumbling unintelligibly, Niernen tried to sit up straight but almost fell out of bed instead. Was she on a ship? She looked up, squinting, and saw that Narzul was fully decked out in his armor, his helmet under his arm. Reality snapped into focus and she was struck by immediate clarity -- the [i]Kyne’s Tear,[/i] the company, their voyage to High Rock, she remembered now -- and fear. “Under attack?” Niernen replied and clambered to her feet. She hadn’t bothered to undress, so fastening her cloak around her shoulders and wrapping her utility belt around her waist was all it took to be battle-ready. 

“Just follow me,” Narzul said, and Niernen shivered at the tone of his voice. This was serious. No time to talk. She nodded and did as he asked. 

Emerging onto the deck, Niernen was stunned by the scene of carnage and natural violence that greeted them. A fierce storm rocked the ship and blacked out the sky, but much more alarming were the enormous chains that descended down from gods-knew-where and had the ship in their grasp. Lowering her gaze, Niernen saw horrible chitinous creatures battling sailor and mercenary alike. “Dreughs,” Nazul hissed and unsheathed his blade. He had fought these things before. 

That’s when the werewolf leaped overhead and barreled into another crew-member in front of them. Niernen yelped and recoiled as a jolt of primal terror shot through her limbs. “What the fuck is that?!” she screamed, eyes wide, her hands over her ears to drown out the sound of the werewolf’s bone-curdling roar and the equally horrifying screech of the dying sailor. He was ripped to pieces mercilessly. 

Narzul grabbed her by the elbow and dragged her up the stairs to the quarterdeck in search of a better vantage point. “It’s an undead werewolf,” he said matter-of-factly after they scaled the steps and looked out over the rest of the ship below them. “You have fire, Niernen. Burn it. I’ll hold off the dreughs.” Niernen nodded. It seemed like a good plan. She saw some of the other mercenaries converging on the werewolf, like Daixanos and Adaeze, while a big woman in armor she’d only seen once or twice before grabbed its attention. 

The air shimmered with purple, ephemeral energy, and a Fire Atronach coalesced into shape next to Niernen. She took a deep, shuddering breath and drew upon her magicka again, steeling her mind and focusing on the task at hand. Fear clawed at the fringes of her consciousness and she could feel herself standing on a knife’s edge. There was a terrible pit in her stomach and tightness in her throat, and it was hard to breathe. “You can do this,” she whispered to herself, and fire flickered to life in her hands. The Atronach, its featureless face watching her, followed suit. 

Behind her, Narzul turned around and scanned the aft of the ship for dreughs. As if on cue, several of the creatures descended from the chains that were hooked into the ship there and dropped onto the deck, chittering and screeching. It looked for all the world to see like their claws and legs had been replaced with golden prosthetics. There were three of them. Confident that Narzul could take them on, he brandished his blade and pressed the attack. The dreughs accepted his challenge with animalistic glee and charged. 

His shield blocked the golden claw of the first dreugh to reach him and Narzul wasted no time in executing a devastating counter-attack. Just like the blow that had split the wooden support beam at the end of his prayer, Narzul’s ebony blade ran right through the dreugh’s midriff. He pulled his sword free and left the dreugh to collapse and screech out its last breath. Like a scene from a nightmare, however, the deck was suddenly crawling with more and more dreughs -- he hadn’t even seen where they came from, but he could tell that their almost humanoid skulls were looking past him, right at Niernen. Were they able to sense her fire magic, and the danger it posed to the werewolf? Narzul glanced up at the bizarre airship that hovered above them and cursed. These obviously weren’t ordinary dreugh. They were being controlled. Something much smarter than the base intelligence of these animals was telling them what to do. He inhaled and exhaled sharply through his nose and brandished his blade with a flourish. The odds were massively against him, being outnumbered ten-to-one, but he had no choice. 

“Over here!” he bellowed. As one, the dreughs turned their heads to look at him. “Let’s dance, n’wahs!” 

His enemy obeyed him without hesitation. The dreughs sprang into action and surrounded him within seconds, a jittering mass of claws and legs that moved in unison, so much unlike the beasts he had fought before that it made his stomach turn and the hair at the back of his neck stand on end. He was in deep trouble now. A big wave rocked the ship right at the moment that Narzul prepared to defend himself and he was thrown off-balance -- naval combat was new to him and his sea-legs betrayed him at the worst possible moment. Four of the dreughs attacked him at once from four different directions as he stumbled and then fell onto his back. Even so, he was able to deflect two of them with his sword and his shield, but he still had to grit his teeth against the pain as he smacked onto the deck and felt the two golden claws pierce his armor and cut into his skin. “Hyah!” he yelled and kicked with his legs, feeling a satisfying [i]crack[/i] as his iron boots slammed into the carapace of one of the dreughs and forced it backwards. But that was only one, and he had to raise his shield over his head as the massed dreugh stabbed their claws down at him, each seeking to separate his head from his body. Narzul’s eyes widened in fear as the tips of the  claws thrust through his shield, stopping a few inches short of his face. 

If he did not call for help now, he would die right there and then, he realized. “Niernen!” Narzul yelled, abandoning his pride in favor of his will to live. “Help!” 

Niernen, for her part, had done her best to ignore the sounds of combat behind her and focused on striking the werewolf with a salvo of fireballs, while simultaneously taking care not to set the ship ablaze -- or her allies. That was harder than it seemed, however, as the werewolf was absurdly fast and the vicious melee it was embroiled in with the other mercenaries made it hard for Niernen to get a clear shot. She fired off a few fireballs but they missed, each harmlessly detonating against the deck before fizzling out in the torrential downpour and the waves that crashed against the ship. When she heard Narzul call her name, however, her head whipped around immediately and she gasped for breath. She couldn’t even [i]see[/i] Narzul beneath the writing mass of dreugh carapaces. 

“NARZUL!” she screamed, raised her hands and immediately began spraying liquid fire over the insectoid monsters. Sensing Niernen’s will -- [i]save Narzul at all costs[/i] -- the Atronach soared towards the dreughs and threw itself at them, who cut it down without a thought. Like all Flame Atronachs do when killed, it detonated violently when it was impaled by three different golden claws and most of the dreughs were thrown clear by the force of the explosion, the sound of which rolled down the length of the ship like a peal of thunder. 

Narzul, whose armor saved him from being cooked alive, hastily clambered to his feet, vision swimming, boots slick with water and blood running down his legs, just in time to see Niernen being thrown onto her back as one of the dreughs leaped on top of her, scything claws rearing upwards, ready to strike. “NO!” he roared and charged, sword raised and ready to disembowel the creature, but it saw him coming and dodged in the nick of time, Narzul’s ebony blade harmlessly whistling through thin air. He turned and shielded Niernen with his body as the dreughs momentarily retreated and regrouped. “Get up,” he hissed and prodded Niernen with his boot without taking his eyes off the enemy. She moaned and groaned, but she did manage to pull herself up by the quarterdeck’s railing. The dreugh’s sharp legs had stabbed into her thighs when it landed on her and the back of her head had been smashed hard against the deck. Narzul, for his part, had also received several puncture wounds in his limbs and shoulders, but he had managed to protect his vital areas with his shield. The Venim siblings were battered, bruised and bleeding, but they were still standing. Three dead dreughs lay slack on the deck, one slain by Narzul and two killed by Niernen or the exploding Atronach. Seven dreugh remained. 

“This is so fucked up,” Niernen whispered. 

Narzul nodded. “Let’s kill them all.”