Irkngthand

'The location of this fucking Dwemer Ruin is a stone's throw away from Windhelm... I should invest in divination magic so I can find this shit out sooner' Complained Yuri. He was currently sitting in the exact sort of carriage he wanted to avoid, next to Karliah and across from Brynjolf. He was not about to help them warm up, either.

6 hours of sitting on a wooden bench in a rickety cart had put him in a sour mood even if the cold couldn't. Mercer was going to die and die real good.

"So what kind of abilities does this traitor have?" Asked Yuri, a bit late but still had time.

"He's just a thief-" Brynjolf was about to say before Karliah cut him off.

"The same as mine, even a bit better at illusion and manipulation magic. He will first attempt to use a rage spell to get us to target each other. He's also an incredible swordsman. Best keep your distance, mage" Karliah directed her gaze toward Yuri this time.

"At a distance is where he will die" Yuri replied. Bombardment? Easy enough. He just wanted to make sure the key wouldn't pull some incredible asspullery out of this guy, but he would keep his guard up.

The carriage was making its way through a clearing of trees and one could see the ruin site that plunged deep into the earth from a distance.

"Ambush" Yuri spoke calmly, but the driver had no time to react. A 'thunk' was heard and an arrow tip sprouted from the back of his head. They hadn't made it out of the clearing when a troop of mercenaries sprang from the trees.

"Get down, it seems Mercer is using his money well." Said Yuri while a hail of arrows attempted to drown them. They all hung in midair before they could reach their target. Yuri spotted them all, fifteen on each side yet further forward than anything. "Get off the carriage and stay behind it. Karliah, provide cover fire. I'll handle this"

The hail of arrows had long stopped, and the 20 or so close-range warriors were approaching while the 10 others were waiting to pick off anyone who came in sight. Yuri leaped off the side of the carriage and moved forward.

He held a furious cluster of lightning in his hand and flung his own version of chain lightning to his left, then moved right. Karliah should be able to handle the few that were left over there. It wasn't a single bolt, but a tree of lightning branches that stretched its way to the men at light speed and threw them back with incredible force after stopping their hearts. 4 men fell, then 6 more after they branched to the archers behind them.

Yuri didn't have a close combat weapon, but his arms hardened into steel underneath his suit, and his hands held mana construct short swords in each grip. They were thick and shone with obvious brightness.

A fireball made its way to his location in a second as the only mage in the five-man long-range troop revealed himself. Yuri could feel it and teleported out of its range and behind the line of close combat attackers that were walking toward him. A stab in the back from his two short swords was his first flesh and blood kill. It felt no different than the Jyrik, save for a bit squishier.

The 9 other 'closes' officially found him behind them, and the archers plus mage were not keen on attacking so close to their comrades. The archers pulled out their swords and prepared to join them, the mage stayed behind.

He had teleported to the end of the line, so all 9 were looking at him from a single file. With one stroke, he brought his sword to take the head off the next contender. The mercenary blocked, only to find out it didn't matter. Yuri overpowered his both hands with only one, and his blade continued in the same direction, sending a head sky high. This even surprised Yuri.

'How strong is 40 points, again?'

Next merc took an overhead swing with his greatsword, which Yuri used his left blade to sweep away and close the distance. With his right, he cut diagonally across the man from shoulder to hip and he fell to his knees.

The five men furthest were fanning out and closing in together, followed by the archers who were joining the enclosure. CQC number 7 decided to swing his ax horizontally over the head of the kneeling number 8, trying to cut Yuri in half. Yuri backed up, then used gravity magic to throw numbers 7, 6, and 5 back and stop this enclosure prematurely. To his now left lay one of the archers at the end of the forming circle. Yuri raised his sword from 10 feet away, confusing the archer before it horrified him. When he swung down, a blade of wind erupted from the path of the blade and cut the man in half cleanly. Yuri didn't watch the pieces split, he teleported behind archer #2 and decapitated him as well. Archer #3, who just watched his friends get divided one way or another, backpedaled in fear.

"This isn't how mages fight, who the hell is this guy?!" Merc Mage screamed to himself while charging a Fire Brigade in a frenzy.

Yuri smirked, this guy was fucking crazy.

He teleported out of the way before a blast resounded like a cannon fire, followed by three more. Highly condensed bullets of explosive flame erupted from the mage's hands, aiming at Yuri wherever he teleported. Unfortunately, that's what he wanted.

In every position Yuri left right before a Fire Brigade struck, a charred archer or warrior would appear from the resulting explosion.

Fire Brigade is a powerful spell, a little bit beyond the range of an Expert, but like all fire spells it was not friendly to friendlies. A good mage will change a battlefield situation, hence why the College of Winterhold demands its graduates avoid the civil war in Skyrim. A bad mage will end up as a cheap mercenary and kill his allies in a panic.

Fire Brigade also stopped the mage from moving during the spell and made them take a small cool down before they could cast again. Yuri gave him just enough time to let his actions settle while the spell took its toll on the caster before appearing right before him and punching him in the solar plexus.

Yuri felt ribs break and the mage coughed up blood on the arm that hit him. "Yuck," Yuri said before reaching up and snapping his neck.

'6 left' Yuri checked. They were barely getting up from the blasts. He gave a quick check to the other side of the carriage and found Karliah already retrieving arrows for the best-looking bow he had seen yet.

He took a look at the staggering men, then realized that they were turning around already and trying to flee.

'I see. Well, they were paid to do it, no need to give chase' Yuri returned to the carriage to find Brynjolf hadn't moved and still received an arrow in his shoulder.

"Too much excitement?" Yuri asked him.

"I prefer to do my fighting with pockets and locks" Replied Bryn. Yuri would've advised him to go home, but he had promised that he could provide expert trap guidance and their driver was already dead.

The Dwemer ruin was just over the ridge, and Karliah had retrieved all her arrows, plus the one in Brynjolf's shoulder (not hers). They could afford to walk, but there were 30 other mercenaries who were sitting around behind the entrance of the place.

"There's another ambush behind that gated wall. Let me take care of it," Yuri told them before lifting himself off the ground with telekinesis Magneto style. In 300 feet, he had already gotten over the once beautiful Dwemer Castle and was looking down on the merry band.

He amplified his voice with Alteration before looking down and, "Surrender or die" He yelled. The sound echoed along the walls in their circular area, so it took a while before someone found Yuri and motioned upward in a panic.

A man in full scale armor, seemingly the leader, pointed up and said, "Levitation is illegal in the empire!"

Yuri resisted the urge to laugh out loud.

"So is murder, but you don't seem to care about that. Now surrender or die" Yuri repeated.

"Or what, you going to drop stones on us? Ahahaha! Archers!" The leader shouted while his men joined him in laughter.

Ever since the ban on flying magic, Skyrim had forgotten how terrible an airborne mage could be. Yuri was perhaps 75 feet above them, which was difficult but still in range of a bow. But as the archers reeled in, so did Yuri.

Arrow after arrow of mana constructs joined him in floating beside him and made the sky above them glitter with blue. The mercenaries quickly quieted.

"Stones, no. Sticks, however, I have plenty" Yuri grinned.

"We surrender!" "Then drop all your weapons, armor, and gold and try to get luckier jobs next time! I'll know if you skimp on me!"

───※ ·❆· ※───

When Yuri landed back toward the carriage and motioned the duo to follow him to the entrance gate, all they saw was 30 nearly naked men walking out of it in a crowd of dejection. Yuri and Co. passed them on the way out, and they scattered along the road to find luckier jobs or unlucky wildlife encounters. They went past the gate connected to the cracked white stone wall and found a pile of armor, weapons, and coin sacks in the corner by a campfire that was still warm.

Brynjolf resisted the urge to clap. The boy was a natural thief.

But it was his turn to shine. He hadn't seen a man fly, ever, and didn't want to let down Erebus in any way. They climbed the stairs that led to a gilded copper-colored door and opened it with a screech after Brynjolf motioned there were no traps.

After opening it, a dome-shaped automaton with four pointed legs the same color as the door with an obvious opening in its front middle section lifted itself off the ground. With the sound of a sword drawing, it fired a 3 foot long and terribly thick ballista bolt toward Brynjolf.

Yuri caught the bolt just before it touched the thief's nose, eliciting a fearful gasp from him.

Yuri could have caught it much sooner. In fact, he felt it beyond the door before the 'animunculi' felt them. Yuri mentally shrugged. 'The hardest lessons stick the longest, and he's gonna need it when I keep their lucky key for myself'

Yuri spun around the bolt and threw it back into the hole from whence it came, jamming the next shot from being fired.

'I've researched runes for Nord and Dwemer ruins in my free time, but magnetism magic would've been a good addition for this type of thing. Oh well'

He stuck to his roots and blasted the thing with a volley of Senator Palpatine-sized lightning concentration. It quickly began smoking and thudded its metal body loudly to the floor in defeat.

"Shall we continue?" Karliah had her bow drawn while Brynjolf was cowering back with a small dagger.

"Bows and daggers will do very little against the shell of an automaton. In the future, switch to a long blade if you have to, or lightning and ice magic if you can" Yuri educated. The books on Dwemer ruins were consistent with the games, save for some documents that swear Dwemer Centurions were hundreds of times taller than a man.

Karliah put her bow on her back and switched to a sword with a very incriminating design... The thing had Nocturnal's insignia on the hilt and was black in its entirety. She better hope Brynjolf accepts a new job offer in the future.

They continued down the hallways and met many more Dwemer spheres and spiders, Yuri proved the most useful here, but even Brynjolf threw an ice spell here and there like a true Nord. Karliah's sword seemed enchanted, but was doing little to her nonliving targets. She instead used it to expertly target the legs and spinal joints of the enemies to incapacitate them.

Yuri's impression of the Dwemer Ruins was that the outside looked like an Ancient Greek senate building, yet the inside looked like a steampunk submarine. Pipes were spanning the walls everywhere and spewed steam into the skittish face of their guild master comrade. Occasionally, the floor became a grate that separated a second layer of even more pipes that would have Dwarven Spiders working on them. Brynjolf would help them dodge the occasional trap hidden in the floor but would still jump every time a mechanical spider came out of one of the pipes.

The best thing about it was that these automatons were all giving him soul gems... wait why is an automaton powered by a soul gem? Don't tell me eternal servitude via soul entrapment was a common punishment.

It wasn't Yuri's problem. The gang weaved through hallways and storage rooms and council chambers and the occasional chest before approaching marble stairs that finally led to a change of scenery. The floors abruptly switched from marble to dirt, like the earth was trying to reclaim it. In their vision were rock outcroppings that overlapped each other, glowing mushrooms that stuck to walls and pale goblins!

They quickly ducked back down the stairs they came from, "Fucking Falmer!" Brynjolf harshly whispered. "The texts had no mention of this!" "Probably because the others couldn't get this far" Replied Karliah.

"This changes things. There were at least 20 of them and they love to hide and snipe from a distance. Some of them even use magic" Said Bryn.

"It changes nothing. Karliah, you're on bow duty. Shoot as far away from us as possible. Bryn and I are gonna switch to assassination tactics. You can finally use that dagger" Yuri planned, then used Shroud of the Hunter and immediately went invisible. Killing one would make him visible again, but these guys were blind. Recasting would be super easy. The only thing he wanted to avoid was a volley of arrows and ice spells flying towards his allies.

Yuri teleported to the back while Karliah took up a sniping stance and aimed at what she could see furthest. Yuri could no longer see his allies, but he could feel them. Brynjolf sought higher ground and wanted to clip off some stragglers before moving inward, just like Yuri. The outcroppings and mud walls were colliding in too many awkward places. He found a Falmer at the tallest mud platform and approached from behind it. This time, it wasn't a mana dagger he pulled out but a regular one.

Yuri snuck up behind the damn thing and grabbed it by the mouth before stabbing its jugular and gently laying it down. He then teleported even further to try it again, but unfortunately, Karliah shot an arrow.

"HHHHRRRARRGGHHH" Growled and spouted almost 15 of the damn things. Karliah's arrow found its mark in a very far Falmer, but the Falmer found Karliah by the sound of her arrow and went approached her quickly.

"Fuck it," Yuri said out loud and jumped in the air toward the group of Falmer that were rapidly climbing down to Karliah while she attempted to pick them off. Her arrows were hitting, but the damn things wouldn't die unless you hit the head or enough times in the chest.

"Rasengan!" Yuri formed one and blasted two of them into a bloody pulp with the sweep of his hand before throwing it toward a third. Brynjolf wasn't currently in danger, in fact he was away from it. Falmer were now surrounding him from front and back and had targeted him instead of the small strum of the bowstring Karliah was producing.

"All according to keikaku"