Chapter 2 - Ulrise
"Call me Mistress," my ass!" Ulrise grumbled while breaking through the thick forest undergrowth.
"Every client I met made up some dumb generic nickname. How many Masters have I met so far? Nine? I lost count already."
As she stepped out of the forest, the Karth river meandered in front of her. According to the map, the location of the cave was a couple of miles away.
Ulrise adjusted her travel pack and moved forward. She was making good progress since she left the Forsworn lands. So many days lost carefully creeping forward and avoiding the attention of the savages at all costs. The illusion magic served her well, so she managed to invisibly slip through without disturbing the tribes.
She was looking forward to finding this cave. This would be the first step in doing the contract that will earn enough money to finally quit the world of backstabbing and treachery. Also, having a roof over her head would be nice after many nights of sleeping in the wilderness.
Finding the cave took some time. Without knowing the place, it could be missed easily, entrance hidden in an inconspicuous crevice.
When the white-haired assassin entered the wide opening of the cave, the first thing she noticed were skeletons. Lots of skeletons. Carefully walking between them she quickly realized none of them were human. A bunch of wolves, a couple of humanoid-looking ones but with canine skulls, which she figured were werewolves. Most of the skeletons had signs of violent death - bones broken, skulls crushed.
She stopped in front of a hulking bone colossus three feet taller than herself. Three eye sockets indicated this was a troll, and its massive form utterly dwarfed the short woman. She reached with her hand and touched the bones. Not a shred left of flesh or sinew.
"No scavenger can pick bones
that
clean. And what is this pink crap?" Her glove was covered by a thin layer of pink dust. She traced her finger over a bone again and confirmed the suspicion - the skeleton was covered in it.
She quickly checked it - not poisonous, but surely somehow enhanced.
"I should gather some as a sample and check it with an alchemist." She produced a vial and carefully gathered some dust from the bones. Looking back, Ulrise noticed her footprints on the floor. It also was covered in a thin layer of this pink crap!
"I wonder if it is safe to breathe here. I better move forward." She fetched a piece of clothing from the backpack and made an improvised breathing mask, just in case.
As she advanced, signs of battle became more obvious: furniture was thrashed, and doors forced open. She also found a lot of empty cages, some quite spacious. Ulrise was not one to be intimidated easily, but this cave definitely had a sinister feeling to it.
The cave ended in a massive circle room where most cages stood. There were very few skeletons though. Ulrise figured that someone was using animals in the cages to make experiments, probably magical. This would explain the pink dust and absence of flesh on the bones. But then a hostile force showed and the cave owner released the monsters on them.
Judging by the number of skeletons, it did not help. She spotted a peculiar one and approached, genuinely curious. It was a husk of an enormous charus exoskeleton, its legs broken off. Ulrise encountered these creatures before, but never had an opportunity to study one's corpse.
"This is one ugly fucker." The words rang in the cave, echoing and jumping around. She retrieved one of the vials given by Mistress and gulped it down. The taste was as good as she remembered, rich and sweet.
Now fully convinced there were no enemies in the cave, the assassin sat and tried to detect this particular source of magicka from the potion around her.
It was everywhere, but something was off. Not as pure as it was in the potion, as if diluted somehow. She took a bunch of pink crap from the charus husk and it felt like holding a handful of warm and dirty sand, contrary to the pure radiance from the Mistress.
"So my target somehow got affected by this magic. Were they in this cave, one of the people who fought the monsters? I doubt it. By the traces of combat, it looks like there was a squad of fighters, they all would be affected if this was the case. And I know for sure that I am looking for a single person."
Ulrise slowly circled the room when she suddenly felt the same magic emanating from behind the wall. Another room, perhaps?
After some finagling around, she discovered a hidden switch. A good chunk of the wall slid to the side and revealed what looked like a working cabinet.
She walked noticing stacks of papers perched on a table, soul gems lying everywhere, and a collection of magic books on a shelf.
"This room does not appear to be thrashed. Someone gathered their stuff and retreated in an orderly manner." She checked an alchemist cupboard to discover a bunch of reagents lined up in good order. "Yes, whoever marauded the upper levels did not reach here. This is good. This is my chance to figure out what this magic is and maybe find some clues. And stuff my pockets," - she thought, spotting a big glowing soul gem.
All books on the shelf were related to the sources of magicka. Ulrise was not educated properly, mostly stealing books and figuring out her talent by experimenting. But she got the impression that it is common knowledge among mages that the source of all magicka is Aetherius, which is another world or plane of Oblivion or something. She was not interested in the dry theory of the Art, mostly content with Illusion magic to hide her and Destruction spells to annihilate enemies.
She quickly skimmed the books - lots of speculation on what alternative sources of power could be out there. Some gruesome stuff, like extracting it from blood or enslaving Daedra. "A cave full of bones and books about bloody sacrifices and how to summon demons. Lovely. I still do not see how this pink crap fits into this.
"I guess I have to dig through these," she sighed, looking at randomly scattered sheets of paper.
The researcher who lived here sure loved to write down everything. She flipped through sheet after sheet, diving deeper and deeper. It looked like she was about to get some answers.
The mage believed it is possible to harness the life force of a living being and turn it into pure magicka. Similar to blood sacrifices, but actually working. She carefully read the numbers - extremely low values of magicka after draining a wolf, more from a troll. No way to store it, and if not ingested by a mage immediately it just disappears. The ritual involved drugging the animals with some serum. Within the list of ingredients of this concoction, one was highlighted as "the secret one."
More and more intrigued, Ulrise reached for the next sheet. In a rush, she slid a finger over it, sending the sheet flying to the floor. Cursing, she caught it awkwardly. The assassin hissed from sudden pain when she cut a finger with the thick paper edge. A long red scratch immediately started oozing blood.
"Damn! I do not want to stain the paper with blood." Without thinking, she put the finger in her mouth, licking the blood away. Something was off with the taste though. Blood is supposed to be salty, but there was an unexpected sweet undertone. The mystery was resolved instantly when she licked her lips in confusion.
"Fuck, my mask did not work! This pink shit is on my face! I have to clean it off. The more I read these research notes, the less I like this dust."
She wiped her face and then used her limited knowledge of Restoration magic to stop the bleeding. This will have to do for now.
The story of morally dubious experiments continued in the papers. The mage tried to develop a solution to store the extracted magicka, but the best he was able to achieve was converting it into physical form. The pink dust. It was what their flesh and blood turned to.
She leaned on the back of the chair, feeling sick. So, the stuff she just scrubbed from her face was what is left of some wolf? Or the charus?
Not without some hesitation she continued reading. The author theorized on how to distill the dust in an alchemical potion for future usage. There were also speculations of using other life force-carrying components of a living being to achieve more 'sustainable' harvesting that did not kill the host. The papers ended with a note saying that the mage is about to use a new formula on the 'pets'.
The white-haired assassin reached the end of the research notes and contemplated what she read. This source of magic sounded like a poor deal. Even if it worked, the magician would need to drug the victim with alchemy, and then somehow consume their life force immediately. Generic magicka potions were cheap to produce and easy to carry and use. The method they developed here felt overcomplicated.
"Still, someone became affected by this stuff and they did not dissolve into dust like trolls. I can still feel them, somewhere to the north from here.
"It is highly doubtful that one of the monster killers picked up this condition. Either someone discovered this cave before me or one of the monsters escaped and did Gods know what to pass this to a human."
She searched the entrance of the cave and has not found any traces of anyone entering it recently. This left her with one option - some of the monsters escaped and spread this magic.
"I hoped I would not have to track a beast in the woods. Damn it. Okay, it is getting dark. I will spend the night in the study room, it looks safe enough and clean of this pink crap. Tomorrow morning, I will look at the tracks. Good gods, it is a huge mess, warriors' and animals' footprints mixed wildly."
