11th Sun’s Dusk, Ghostgate, Tower of Dusk
It’s been an exceedingly pleasant couple of days, excepting the last one, but I’ll get to that later. For now, I’ll take a few depth breaths, keep to my corner and try to drown out the incessant prattling of my oh-so-undemanding charge.
The Dwemer scrap metal was astoundingly easy to get and all my worries of bronze automatons cleaving me to the bone were for nothing. I stopped at the Ald’ruhn alchemist to see if I couldn’t sell off a few mortars and pestles that I’d picked up in my spree in the Mages’ Guild and was flooded with relief to discover that she had quite a bit of scrap metal for sale. We conducted our business and I thanked her profusely, shaking her hand a little too vigorously before going on my way.
Aengoth paid me extremely well for the metal. After that, I felt like I’d earned a bit of a break. I spent a bit of time in Caldera spending my bounty training with a master sneak whom I’d met with on a previous visit there. He was a great companion in those long hours spent in the inn room, always laughing at my jokes and passing me his skooma pipe (I took a puff once, but didn’t much like it).
By night, I stole into homes and shops, making a great sport of what I could get away with in the use of my new skills. When my education came to an end and all my stolen goods were exchanged for cold coin, I lay back on the verdant hill outside the city, nibbling on a blade of grass and thought, “Why not walk back to Ald’ruhn?” The day was beautiful, the air smelt of flowers, the road beckoned to me and I’d seen so little of Morrowind since I’d arrived. I realized that I hardly knew a thing of Vvardenfell’s flora and fauna. It was all so bizarre and strange and unnerving. I’d been keeping myself busy for months in familiar-looking alleyways and seedy shops in order to stave off homesickness. It had been so long since I’d just laid back, relaxed and learned. I thought that if I stood still for just a moment, the homesickness would overtake me and wash me away. The longer I kept to familiar things, the longer I could pretend that I wasn’t miles away in a fiery, volcanic land populated by insects too massive to exist anywhere else.
But now, nearly four months into it, I think I’m finally coming to the realization that Morrowind is home now, like it or not. And I’m surprisingly fine with that. There were friends I had in Cyrodiil that I’ll never see again due to my own foolishness. There were places that I loved and haunts that were my home. But I can never go back there again. At least, not in this century. When the injured parties are dead and forgotten, maybe then can I return to the place of my youth at last.
I think that the Guild had quite a lot to do with it. They’d received me with an open arms when I was just a beggar wandering in to ask for directions. They’ve helped me grow and taught me what I needed to know to survive here. I’ve made so many new friends to stave off the loneliness.
Gods damn it.
Will she not shut her craw while I’m trying to wax sentimental?
There we go. Silence at last, if just for a minute.
“I’m not doing it tonight!” I yelled across the room at her, “We’ve made excellent time and if there’s one thing I absolutely won’t do, it’s walk through the Ghostgate in the dark!”
Her name is Viatrix Petilia and for tonight, we’re most unfortunately roommates. I met her on the road, on the way back to Ald’ruhn. She looked alone and lost, not to mention extremely wealthy. As I passed by, she called out to me, saying that she was on a pilgrimage to Ghostgate and if I’d escort her, she’d give me a tip. Still filled with the spirit of adventure, I thought “Why not?” and took the job.
It was an adventure just getting here. The road was thick with blighted creatures and filled with danger. Several times I had to heal some nasty-looking scrapes sustained in fights with diseased cliffracers or kagoutis, thank the Temple I’d thought to learn that spell months ago, back in Balmora. Viatrix merely complained about her dress being ruined and how a good bodyguard shouldn’t let that happen in the first place. I tuned her out and kept on. We were making record progress, though I didn’t quite know where I was going and was mainly relying on the occasional road sign stuck in the charred, cracked earth.
When I turned a bend and sighted the Ghostgate itself up ahead, I froze in my tracks, not knowing what it was and afraid to step any closer. Viatrix had a field day laughing at my naiveté and I wish I’d known what to expect if only to have been able to avoid amusing her, though that would have been a sheer impossibility.
Once we got closer to it, my fear and loathing turned to wonder. It’s made of a beautiful blue glow that tingles when I touch it. The sound it makes vibrates in the depths of my ears and down to the soles of my feet. It gives me a headache if I stick around too long, though my curiosity always keeps me near to dangerous things regardless.
Viatrix smiled genuinely, for the first time, upon reaching it. She looked down its length with the awe of a tourist and told me how the entire thing was a monument to devotion and steadfastness. Which were of course, things that a person like me couldn’t understand, she finished, reverting right back to her snobbish self.
But I have to agree with her on that, though I’ll never say it aloud. There’s so much that I don’t understand. I know so little of the history of the ground that I stand on or of the beliefs that run so deeply through the veins of its people. I know fear of the unknown well enough. I know of profit and caution. I pray when I’m afraid, without regard for creed, to whoever might be listening. But of the wider world, of spirits and ancestors, gods and daedra, I know next to nothing. I wonder why there is such a thing as a Ghostgate. I wonder how gods can walk and live among mortals in Morrowind. I wonder at what manner of life I’ve been thrust into in being dropped off here.
For tonight, I’ll merely get what sleep I can, seeing as how Viatrix claimed the room’s one bed for herself and insisted that I sleep on the floor. I’ve promised that I’ll get her to the shrine just inside the gates in the early morning. It shouldn’t be too bad of a journey, though I’ve no idea what to expect when I pass the threshold.
Storms rage beyond the gate constantly. Dust beats on the roof and walls of the tower and I can hear the building’s foundations shift with every gust. I’ve brought an old skirt which I’ll dampen with a bottle of water and wrap around my nose and mouth come morning, so I’ll at least be assured of breathing once I enter. But I don’t know how much protection that’ll be from the blight. I try not to worry about it. I remember that the tower’s right here, fully stocked with Temple healers who probably deal with that sort of thing all the time, if the worse should come to pass.
Perhaps I’ll pray at the indoor shrine before leaving anyway, though Viatrix will most likely hurry me along.