Sander had barely been lucid as his companions struggled to rouse him, and was in an unfit state to make his own sally into conversation and meet their words as they prodded, poked, cajoled and finally hauled the knight to his feet.
He barely recalled stumbling across the bridge alongside Elsa, her hip thrust into his side to support the leaden weight of the knight and his armour bearing down upon her. "Gods, but she must be strong," he remembered thinking as she set him down.
The Redguard lay in the gathering dark, alone with his thoughts, which pressed in upon him, as thick, heavy and insistent as the shadows which now crept into the tower. The cold too stole into the ancient structure, permeating the surrounding stone and seeping slowly into Sanders armour. Instead of numbing it reinvigorated the knight with a refreshing chill; his thoughts became clearer, his mind more alert.
He waited for Elsa to fall asleep before hauling himself into a corner where he could sit up against the stonework. Watching the Nord, he saw her feral beauty dissolve as she slept, into something more tender, soft and fragile.
Elsa. He had often compared her to a creature of the forest, first the quiet, tentative grace of the doe, then the swift, powerful shapeliness of a pine marten, at once sleek yet savage.
There was only one hunter he had ever met who embodied all her qualities, who engendered the same passions in him with her wild, lonely spirit.
Adrift on the sea of memory, he returned again to that fateful day, when, crossing a glacier in the north-western mountains of Skyrim, bordering High Rock, he had lost his footing and fallen into a deep crevasse within the body of the ice-river itself. Following the trickle of meltwater which flowed there in the dim blue silence, punctuated only by the weird creaks, moans and sighs of the ice all around, the Redguard wandered the length of the glacial trench as the trickle became a flow, then a meander, and finally a freezing waist-deep current which rushed forth into the stark light of a forgotten world.
Sander had found himself on the banks of a stream, snaking softly through a wet, dripping wood filled by pale trees of a like he had never seen before. Their branches were pearled with moisture, limbs shrouded in the mists of that place, and their leaves were blood red, although retaining all the vibrancy and vigour of a leaf untouched by the seasons.
The ground was carpeted here and there by flattened lurid pink flowers, their splayed, fleshy petals putting him in mind of some bizarre, botanical sea star. In some areas, taller blooms took precedence over these, raising proud, glowing blossoms with necks like upturned bells, criscrossed by a web of violet veins, which shone with an azure light; clapper-like stamens phosphorescing brighter still.
Still making his path along the course of the waterway, he came across crumbled ruins from some bygone era, forming an arch over his head. Although the stonework was weathered, the craft and skill of the masons who created it were plain to see; the blocks might have stood here for an age yet the edges were remarkably clean cut. He marvelled briefly at the relict structure, wondering who had settled and built in this alien world, and to what end.
The stream gushed over granite and what looked to be some ivory flagstones, carved from the same rock as the archway, before spilling again beneath the twisted boughs of the trees and swirling straight into the heart of the woodland. Here, it collected in a deep pool, still and silent, before bubbling and cascading further downstream in a frothing foam at the meres far edge.
Kneeling to fill his waterskin and take a moments repose, the knight found the serene tranquility shattered by a savage snarl.
