Serenes can't see the body, but she recognises the voice, and, more than that, the smell. It's Chzar-Thees, a particularly aggressive and boisterous Lilmoth Argonian who'd she'd played with when young. He had no great prejudice against outsiders, and was never one for politics and religion, but it's no surprise to find him as part of the Argonian occupation forces - he was utterly convinced of his own glorious destiny, and even as a youth was making plans about just how he'd distinguish himself on the field of battle. Finding him here - wounded, alone in a foreign land, with no-one but cliff racers to witness his glory - seems darkly appropriate.
Something about the whole situation seems wrong, though. The voice is recognisably Chzar-Thees' (at least she thinks that's his name), but it's hoarse, croaky, broken. It could be that his throat is parched, his sensitive mucous membranes scorched and rasping without access to water; it could be that he's in immense pain. But something still seems off about him. His movements are strange, too - a sick, gravely wounded person might be expected to shudder feverishly, but his strange jerky movements don't look quite right. She can't see - or sense - his face, which is turned away, curled up in a foetal ball. An arrow notched on Kavori, she steps forwards a few places into the dusty square, wind whipping around her.
Serenes has compensated for her loss of sight admirably, and has an exceptional grasp of her surroundings. The thing is - even when augmented by a bat-like quasi sonar sense - it's only good for picking out quick, darting, moving things. Still, quiet, waiting, watching things are a different matter all together. With this in mind, where is Serenes focusing her attention, and 'looking', right now? Is she focusing in on Chzar-Thees - or what sounds and looks like Chzar-Thees? On the boarded-up buildings around the square? Or on the sky and tree canopy above?
~ ~ ~
The broken pile of rubble that had passed for a road begins to firm up as the little party travels along the road to Blacklight. Moving out of the marshland helps a lot, but a lot of this work seems to be recent. Earthworks have been raised around the edges of the road, with long slip-ways down into the water. They've seen incredibly heavy use over the past few days, with heavy wheel-rims, footprints, and stranger tracks carved into the mud. A lot of war materiel has been brought up here - seemingly out of the sea - in the past few days.
The rest of the party forges on, glad of the easier track to follow to Blacklight, but Chahin remains worried, remains suspicious. His searches reveal nothing of great interest - which in itself is worrying. There are a few nix hounds, but they're all several days dead, their carapaces blotchy with internal rot and marked by deep puncture wounds. The Nord's aware that the sons and daughters of the Hist have different metabolisms from other races, and their trail-spoor might look different, but, he can't find any evidence that an Argonian war-host has passed this way - except for the fact that they clearly have, judging by their many footprints. But they might as well have been atronachs, given the way they haven't left any turds, scraps of food or broken bits of equipment in their wake. Strange. He also doesn't see anything more of the figure that was plaguing him earlier - although that's almost more troubling …
~ ~ ~
After some time, it's clear that you're on the edge of a military camp - or the remains of one. Small, neatly organised cookfires that barely put of any heat at all smoulder in little mossy cairns, and pikes and glaives lie in obsessively neat piles around partially collapsed tents. Whoever left here either left in a hurry, or simply didn't care much about their possessions. The eeriness of the north Morrowind marshes has nothing on this town of abandoned tents.
Well, not quite abandoned. A party of six Argonians, bedecked in mismatched military equipment - come stumbling out of one of the larger, still-standing tents. They brandish wicked-looking harpoons and javelins, their flukes smeared with some sort of black tarry substance, and, despite the glazed, distracted look in their eyes, they look perfectly capable of putting one past your defences and through your chest. They form up in front of the little group, then begin to imperceptibly fan out and flank you, weapons ready. One - the leader, judging by his magnificent crest - steps forward, and addresses you in extremely halting Cyrodilic.
'Hold! Hive of Black Light - ours! Right of conquest! Rite of ordering! Get back! We warn once only!'
He's clearly used to being obeyed. There's clearly a reason why the real fighters left him behind. He lowers his weapon, and his guard as he speaks, reacting with only a puzzled bemusement as the orc casually walks up to him and puts a fireball through his face. He reels back, shrieking in agony as the delicate frills of this crest are charred to the bone, and can't even think of defending himself as he's eviscerated on a razor edge of quasi-real force.
'Why? Because I felt like it, that's why!'
Lugag's words are the only sounds to be heard - the Argonians are too stunned to react at first. But his cruel, mocking laugh spurs them into action. His fireball goes wide as a harpoon sails past him, grazing his left arm, but as the soldier moves forward to capitalise on his strike, he's caught a vicious blow by the backswing of the orc's sword, that floors him. Trying to retreat, to get a better vantage point, to get an understanding the battle, Lugag steps back a few paces, away from the whirling blades of the melee. As he does so, though, he's suddenly struck by how heavy his arm feels, how weak his whole left side has suddenly become. The poison on the harpoon! Looking down, he can see that the wound is swollen but bloodless - not obviously infected or necrotising - but there's something there that makes his blood run cold. Beneath his skin, he can see thin, wiry tendrils of - something - burrowing into the flesh of his arm, spreading and ramifying before his very eyes.
Seeing Lugag withdrawing from the immediate fight, the Argonians redirect their attentions to Alistair, knowing they can stick him like a pig as he flees with their javelins. But they don't all attack the Breton sorcerer at once - they've spotted that tattoo beneath his eye, and this has suddenly become interesting. The Oblivion Crisis may have been over two hundred years ago, but an insane, bitter hatred for all things Daedric lurks within the heart of every Argonian, and that symbol brings back bad memories for them. One warrior steps forward to face this degenerate servant of the Prince of Destruction, and it's clear that he's some sort of shaman or religious leader. A score of Dwemer gears and other pieces of scrap metal are braided into his long serpentine tresses, and his skin is alive with glowing tattoos like organic circuitry. In a single flowing motion he draws his blade - an unconventional scimitar-like weapon - and aims a scything blow at Alistair's throat. He's far too far to land a blow - a good two-or-three sword-lengths out of engagement range - but his sword uncoils, snakelike, lashing out with a mind of its own to cross the gap between the combatants. Alistair can barely bring his own sword up in time, and it takes a near-superhuman effort to turn aside the blow. The Hist-Priest slips past his guard, lands a clawed kick to his solar plexus, and then withdraws, raising his snake-sword in a flourishing, mocking salute.
Valus, is still outside the melee, a few long strides away. He hasn't even got his blades fully out of their sheathes, and it'll take a few seconds before his adrenal glands manage to close off all higher functions and cloud his vision with kill-or-be-killed bloodlust. Standing back, standing aside, he spots … well, something, up on a rocky bluff above the combatants, swathed in a powerful layer of chameleonic magic. It has the look of some strange hybrid of man and beast - a vaguely humanoid shape, with something long and thin cradled in its arms - not quite a staff, but close. A single glassy eye watches unblinkingly from above the length of the creature's snouth, which waves back and forth in increasingly narrow arcs over the skirmish. Its motion is tracked by a razor-thin beam of green light, that sweeps over the fray, before finally coming to rest in a tiny green dot on the centre of Lugag's chest. Valus can't quite make out what this means, but something about the furtive nature of the unknown watcher, and the ominous precise promise of that little green dot, makes him deeply uneasy.
No-one else seems to have spotted the figure up there on the bluff, as they're all too busy participating in or watching the fight. That guard - Chahin, was it - seems to be in a good position to strike, but seems to be looking over his shoulder every few paces, and looks a little distracted. Dagvar's following Valus' gaze, and has spotted the figure too, but hasn't yet worked out what it means or how much of a threat it poses. The moment is Valus', to do with as he will.
