A changeling's visit to Skyrim

*Bong* sounded a noise like a muted drum in the darkened space.

*Bong!* it sounded again slightly louder this time.

With a screeching of metal, the dark interior of the dwemer ruin which was normally lit only by the ancient and broken down spark braziers was suddenly flooded with light as the massive metal doors were pulled open. In walked a company of thieves, followed by an elf and her buggy friend.

“Maybe you should leave kicking in doors to me, huh Stross?” Fenora said with the slightest smirk as she watched Stross limp forward.

“I… don’t care! I’m gonna… tear Mercer’s… non-existent heart out!” Stross yelled as he continued hobbling forward, reaching the front of the pack and scanning the area like a wild, starving predator.

He took to the air and began noisily tearing apart anything laying about the room in his bloodthirsty search; dwarven machinery, dwarven metal pieces, more dead bandits, the beds those dead bandits were sleeping on. All the while he loudly muttered curses about Mercer, stray patches of flame still clinging to him in places after his earlier outburst waiting to be rekindled into his burning halo once he finally found his prey.

“Stross, cool it will ya lad?” Brynjolf called “We’re tryin’ t’ hunt a man down, not announce we’re comin’ for him.”

“I’m too pissed off to cool it!” Stross yelled and chucked a dwarven urn across the room when he found Mercer was not hiding within.

Fenora walked over, yet kept her distance due to the intensity of the flames. “Stross, please. I’m pissed too right now, we all are. But all you’re doing right now is wasting energy, literally.” Fenora warned him “Just… I don’t know, bottle up your anger until we’ve found Mercer.”

“Oh I’ll bottle it up all right.” Stross said with his voice full of hate “I’ll bottle it up and when the time is right I’ll whip it out and slap him across the face with it. I’ll use it to bring that bastard to his knees. I’m going to unleash my rage all over his face! I’m gonna get it in his mouth and shove the whole giant flaming thing down his throat!”

“What am I hearing over there?” Vex called as she scouted ahead.

“Blatant sexual innuendo!” Stross yelled, shaking his fists in the air.

Not too much further into the ruin, the company stopped.

“Well would ya look at this?” Delvin said as he wiped the dust off an old treasure chest sitting atop a table directly in their path “Let’s see what bit of loot yur hidin’ little boxy friend.”

Karliah’s eyes went wide as she realized it was an obvious trap. “Delvin, don’t!” she shouted.

But Delvin had already popped the lid and immediately a ticking began. Delvin scrambled away while everyone else jumped back and held their breath, waiting for something to happen. Only nothing did. Several seconds later the ticking ran out, and Delvin crept forward to peek inside the chest.

“Oh ain’t that just a kick in th’ pants? It’s just a bloody windup toy!” he threw the cheap plaything to the ground.

“But that doesn’t make any sense,” Karliah muttered to herself “Why would… Oh no…”

The chest turned out to have been a distraction, and the real trap was up above them all along, hung from a great many strings to delay the time spent as they burned. Two dozen large urns of dwemer oil fell to the ground as the fuses suspending them burned and snapped, dousing our company of heroes in the rancid burning liquid.

Fortunately, just down the hallway, they saw their salvation in the form of an ancient boiler room whose water tanks had burst long ago, flooding the room waist deep.

All seven of them ran as fast as they could towards the pool of glistening clear water, plunging themselves in and allowing it to remove the still-burning oil from their bodies.

“Fuck!” Fenora swore as she came up for air “Are you kidding me with-” She stopped her sentence however when she and a few of the others noticed the device dangling from the ceiling. “Is that a toaster?”

As if on cue, the gigantic dwemer toaster powered up. The soul gems and gyros on its side started whirring and the whole thing erupted in sparks as the first of its suspension cables snapped.

“Erryone oot of the water!” Brynjolf yelled.

But as he said that the gates to the boiler room to slid closed with a heavy clang, blocking their exit.

“Shit! Catch it; don’t let it touch the water or we’re fried!” Vex ordered.

Maul and Dirge being the largest, sloshed their way through the water as another suspension cable snapped. The two were joined by Delvin, Brynjolf, and Vex by the time the electrified box had finally fallen. The five of them together just barely managed to catch it and stop it from landing in the pool, but were straining greatly under its weight.

“Hold on!” Karliah yelled and began pulling pieces of metal from the device.

Stross joined her, ripping out the gears and soul gyros. And yet the machine persisted, throwing sparks everywhere. “It’s no good, we can’t stop this thing!” Stross yelled as the thieves’ felt their knees begin to buckle.

“I’ve got this.” Fenora said and pulled herself out of the water, standing on a ledge above them as she spoke the words “Fo… Krah… DIIN!”

With the words of frost uttered, a blizzard formed in the boilery. The freezing gale overtook all before her and the ripples in the water finally stopped in the wake of sub-zero temperatures. Once the winds had stopped and the frost had settled, Fenora stepped down onto the icy surface.

“Okay, the water’s frozen. You guys can drop the thing now.” she told them.

“Sh-s-sh-sure lass. But now we’re f-f-frozen t-too!” Brynjolf managed to say through shivers. “Ya d-daft b-b-broad!”

“Oh…” Fenora scratched the back of her head “Sorry?”

So while Fenora’s snap decision had technically saved their lives, being blasted with a gale of cold while drenched from the waist up, and at the same time being frozen from the waist down, was not the most pleasant experience. Something Vex was eager to remind her of.

“I’m just saying. Think twice before you give us all the literal cold shoulder.” The imperial woman said with an icy glare as Stross and Fenora worked on defrosting them all with their magic and thu’ums.

“What, not used to getting cold feet? Or do you just not like to chill out? Didn't you tell me a thief needs to be cool under pressure?” Fenora snarked. “Ow! Okay, I deserved that.”

“Man, been a while since I’ve been that cold.” Dirge commented “I think I felt my balls shrink back into my body.”

“I know, like reverse puberty.” Maul agreed.

“Why do you guys have to keep saying stuff I can never unhear!?” Vex yelled.

“We must keep moving, before Mercer can escape us.” Karliah said and started to move on without them.

“Escape us?!” Brynjolf gawked at her “Were ya here a few minutes ago when this happened? He’s just toyin’ with us! If anathin’ we need to escape him before he gets serious aboot killin' us.”

“No way.” Vex said with steely determination “He set up some traps and we fell for them, that’s all. He knows us, and he knows what we’re like. So no more mucking this up; no more pinching shiny things, no more ignoring obvious traps, and… though I hate to say this, no getting mad and rushing in once we've cornered him. Alright?”

Each on the others gave their nods of agreement and started picking themselves up.

"To think I've been telling the rookies this all the time back at the Flaggon." Vex said to Fenora "I swear it was true that you're the first new recruit to take anything seriously."

"Well, great minds think alike." Fenora responded with a knowing grin "And they also tell the not-so-great minds to shut up and listen."

The two of them shared a chuckle as the last of the ice melted off their clothes.

The next area they found themselves in was less of the sophisticated and steam-punkish metalworks, and more of a cave filled sporadically with odd tents and various dwemer constructs. But most amazing was the ceiling of the cave; it was like someone took ore and gemstones and used them to paint the night sky on the ceiling of rocks.

“Would ya look at that?” Delvin asked the others.

“Never seen anything quite like that before. Eh Drige?” Maul asked his brother.

“Maybe when I was takin’ skooma.” Maul told him.

“We’ll have t’ come back later with some ladders and picks.” Brynjolf said to himself, already drawing up plans in his head.

It was at that point that Stross noticed something moving in the distance. Staring through the metal grate they were all currently behind, he saw some form of creature wander out of one of the oddly formed tents in the shallow chasm below.

“What is that?” he asked as he watched the gangly pale creature sparsely covered in chitinous scales stumble out across the ancient stone floor. “I thought Skyrim didn’t have changelings.”

“That isn’t a changeling like you. It’s a Falmer.” Karliah told him “They were once the prosperous snow-elves that lived in Skyrim long before the Nords came. When the wars with man left until them scattered and on the brink of extinction, they turned to their brethren that dwelt below the earth. It was their one chance to survive, and the Dwemer betrayed them; they became the victims of cruel experiments, tortured and mutilated until they became the blind monstrosities you see now.”

Stross kept looking at the creature below, pity for the poor wretched thing overtaking him. He could feel a great deal of sympathy for it, as the Falmer and changelings were not so different in his eyes; both were once great and prosperous races brutally destroyed and changed forever, albeit by different methods and for different reasons.

But then something gave him cause to smile, as another of the pale-skinned creatures scampered over. The two Falmer greeted each other through a series of screeching noises followed by a mutual head-butt. Afterwards one left, but returned shortly, dragging behind it the carcass of what looked like some large mammal, likely a deer.

Though the sight and noises the Falmer made as they tore into the animal disgusted him greatly, Stross found it warming (in a morbid kind of way) to see the two savage creatures enjoying a simple pleasue together. So enthusiastically devouring the bright red… gushing meat with their… bare talons… getting the blood all over the floor-

*Ghm-Blehrg*

“Oh by Celestia, at least cook the thing first!” Stross yelled after he finished spewing resin into a nearby dwarven urn.

“Wait, what is that? Behind them.” Karliah asked as she spotted a shadow skulking around.

The silhouette seemed to notice them as well, as it perked up and gave a friendly wave in their dirention before turning its attention back to the Falmer, who were too distracted by their meal to notice it. There was a glint of metal and two screeches of pain and distress before the two Falmer fell limply to the floor.

The shadowy figure stepped into the dim light with the cockiest grin imaginable.

“Mercer!” Karliah pounded her fists against the grate.

“Bah, there’s no way t’ get to em from here!” Brynjolf cursed. “Oh look at thaht, yew mutha’ fooker!”

Indeed, Mercer seemed delighted in the chance to taunt them further, and had picked up the two dead Falmer, hoisted their limbs over his shoulders, and started dancing the can-can.

After he got tired of that he dropped the bodies unceremoniously off the ledge and gave a jeering salute, followed by flipping them the bird before once again disappearing into the shadows.

“That sonova bitch is just showing off now, I’m gonna kill him twice.” Vex muttered. “Someone find a way around this stupid cage!”

“I’ll do better.” Stross stated and flared up, burning through the metal grate with his bare hands.

By the time Stross had melted a hole big enough to climb through, Mercer had already had a decent head start. So when they found him simply standing in the middle of an archway, hands on his hips, it was almost enough to give them pause.

“Nocturnal, guide my hand.” Karliah whispered a prayer as she knocked an arrow and released it.

The metal tipped stick sailed through the air right towards Mercer’s face, but suddenly it stopped, mere inches from its mark. Mercer had caught it with nothing but his hand!

The thieves stood there in disbelief as he calmly picked his teeth with the tip. But Stross wasn’t about to let him get away.

“Mercer!” he yelled as he charged forward, his body aflame and his voice full of death.

Mercer stood perfectly still as the changeling rushed up to him. But as Stross wound his arm back and the flaming punch was thrown, the gears on the sides of the door suddenly stopped spinning. Spears of Dwemer metal shot up from the ground and Stross clenched his teeth in pain as his arm was impaled on one of them.

Mercer shook his head and wagged a finger at Stross in a disapproving manner.

“Screw you with a cactus!” Stross yelled and shot a cone of flame from his still impaled limb.

Mercer jumped back in surprise and had to back away in order to avoid the jet of flame, but he remained unscathed. Then as the rest of the thieves made it to the gate, he blew a raspberry at them and ran off cackling.

“Shit… shit… shit. Get back here and burn you asshat!” Stross shouted as he tried to pull his arm free, though all this accomplished was tearing a larger hole in his flesh.

“Stross! Hold still you crazy bug, we’ll get you out of there. Stop tearing your arm apart, idiot!” Fenora tried to calm him down, and failed miserably.

“Guys, we’ve got bigger problems.” Maul warned them as he and Dirge readied their warhammers.

Each of them turned to see at least a dozen eyeless forms stalking towards them from the darkness.

“Ah shi- there’s too many of tha buggers.” Brynjolf said as he drew his blades and eyed the falmer as they approached in hopes that there might be a break in their ranks “We’ll have to fight our way out.”

As Brynjolf and Vex joined Maul and Dirge up front, and Karliah readied her arrows, Fenora drew her blade and stood defensively next to Stross, hoping she could free him without resorting to chopping his arm off. The seven- er… six of them stood ready to blunt the horde of falmer closing in (Stross kept trying to pull his arm off).

The lead falmer who was wearing the most armor stepped forward slowly. It turned its head to the right and let out a high-pitched chirp. Once it did, another falmer on a higher ledge pulled a lever and the gears on one side of the door began spinning again.

The falmer repeated this gesture to its left and another lever was pulled, lowering the gate of spears and freeing Stross’s arm with only minimal slicing as the spearhead passed through his wound again.

“What the ‘blivion?” Fenora said dumbfounded and gave Stross a healing potion “Did those things just… help us?”

“That would be unheard of.” Karliah said, not lowering her guard “The falmer have always resented those who dwell on the surface; they only wish to destroy us.”

The thieves looked at the shifting ranks of Falmer, not really sure what to make of the situation until one of the pale creatures tentatively stepped forth. The thieves raised their weapons, hesitant to strike as the thing scrabbled along the ground towards them.

Karliah and Vex were both poised to strike as it passed by the front lines, yet the falmer continued forward without fear. It slowed considerably once it reached Fenora however, and it nervously teetered back and forth. Fenora was equally unsure of what to do, this falmer was unarmed and didn’t seem exactly hostile, and they’d just technically helped them. But that didn’t mean it wasn’t a murderous, foul-smelling, abomination-

“Hey little guy, come here. What is it?”

“Oh Stross. Why? Just why.” Fenora face-palmed as the famler rushed over.

The pale, goblin-like creature sniffed curiously at the buggy goblin-like creature for a moment. It then started patting Stross all over, literally getting a feel for him. Finally it opened its mouth and dragged its slobbery tongue across Stross’s face.

“Daw, I think it likes me.” Stross chuckled.

“Oh great, not another one” Fenora grumbled.

The falmer raised its head and let out a gurgling call from its throat, and at once the others of its kind rushed through the group’s defensive line, scurrying across the walls and dropping from higher ledges so they could each get a taste of the changeling like a bunch of gangly hideously deformed puppies.

“Hehaha, get them off!” Stross yelled as he flailed on the ground under a pile of falmer “Heheh-ho stop it, it tickles! Hey, I- OUCH! That one bit me!”

Suddenly all of the falmer stopped, and after a quick conversation of hisses and growls each of them dashed off down the open hallway on all fours. All save for one, who stayed behind with our heroes and the group of thieves.

Stross stared at the falmer.

Not knowing what direction it was supposed to be facing, the falmer stared back at a wall.

“Do you… want us to follow you?” Stross asked, looking to the others to jump in any time “Or maybe we’re supposed to- Gah, okay! I can walk on my own! Put me down!”

Everyone else just stared on in disbelief as the little falmer grabbed Stross’s arms and slung him over its back before hopping off with him.

“Oh you’ve got to be kidding me. After them!” Fenora ordered them, a bag of popcorn somehow appearing in her hands.

It was pretty amazing how quickly the falmer could move in their own territory. By the time Fenroa and the thieves had caught up to the group of falmer that had changeling-knapped Stross, they had been led through several more abandoned dwemer halls ridden with spike traps and mushrooms.

Finally they came to a huge cavern with several levels of stone platforms and columns that reached towards the ceiling. Filling nearly every available surface in the massive cave was no less than an entire legion of falmer, clinging from the sides of the structures and clamoring together in a mosh-pit, their excited screeches were nearly deafening.

“Naow wha’ do ya suppose it is they’re goin’ on about?” Brynjolf asked as the group stalked closer for a better view, none of them bothering to be quiet due to the already prevalent noise.

“Whatever it is, it’s driving me insane!” Vex complained, covering her ears trying to shut out the grinding sounds.

From one of the higher towers within the cave, Fenora and Karliah were able to get a pretty good look at the situation. Every falmer seemed to be gathered before a cluster of tents slightly larger in size than the rest they’d seen. Out from one of these tents stepped a falmer far bigger than the rest, standing nearly as tall as a man even when hunched over as its kind did. It let out a deep bellow that echoed through the cave and into the halls.

Every other falmer went silent, and their leader turned back to the tents, giving a bark as if to beckon forth another.

And another did come forth, two actually. Fenora immediately recognized Stross among them, walking calmly to look over the horde of falmer, his eyes straight ahead. Next to him was a falmer in a cloth robe that dragged behind it as it limped. This one seemed older and much more frail, an elder perhaps.

“What is he doing?” Karliah asked.

“I’m not sure.” Fenora answered as she watched Stross stand above the horde, wondering whether to help him, or even if she could fight that many at once.

Stross took a deep breath and held out his right hand, which the elderly falmer took in its shaky grasp and placed upon its forehead. There was a moment of stillness, and then Stross began to speak.

“Falmer, snow elves of old, hear my voice.” Stross spoke clearly and firmly.

The elder then released a series of noises for every word Stross spoke, to which the gathered crowd listened intently.

“I have seen the destruction brought upon you, both in the past and the present, and I feel your sorrow. No living being should be forced to suffer so, and I shall not stand by and allow this misery to be inflicted upon you, not when you have already suffered so much.”

As Stross spoke, every word was translated through the elder. And though much was lost in translation, feeling was universal, and every falmer present would have begun to cry had they not lacked their eyes.

“I… I am not a god, nor any being of knowledge or power. But I wish to make right what is wrong, no matter how small the act may be. Should you trust in me, I shall lead you! For justice! For vengeance! Rise now, my heart-bound brethren!”

A bright green pulse of light emanated from the changeling, and a chorus of cheers and battlecries rang out in the cavern as the falmer raised their weapons into the air. They cheered even louder than before if that was possible.

“Holy ‘blivion, he’s just inspired a flipping army to follow him into battle.” Fenora said as she munched on the last of her popcorn, hardly believing what she was seeing “You’re just full of surprises, aren’t you Stross?”

At that moment, Stross looked up and noticed them all sitting there enjoying his speech. “Oh hey guys!” He waved to them while every falmer went quiet and turned to face them as well “I have minions now!”