Chapter 1: Ivarstead Screams, the Rift Bleeds, Part 1
The Shrieking Sleepless
Excerpt from Expeditions Branch Official Report, authored by Zeldava Ellis.
Its official, the Expeditions Branch has completed our first contract. It’s an odd feeling, I’ll admit. This isn’t just something we said we were going to do anymore. It’s real. We’ve made money from it. People bled for it. I somehow was responsible for giving orders today.
Weird fucking world isn’t it?
Oh, shit, this is an official report. I should get to it, yeah?
The contract began with some early scouting work on my part. Building contacts, officially putting our name in the hat for the contract, doing some research. That happened weeks ago, in an earlier report, so I’ll skip straight to Sundas.
Scouting Ahead.
The day started much differently than I expected.
Two new members, Saewyn, who I’d met previously in the Aetherian Union, and Azazel, signed up with the company, just in time to join us on our work for Ivarstead. It still surprises me that people are so eager to join up with a branch ran by me, but both joined Expeditions.
CRAP that’s not the kind of thing you say in a report is it?
After the interviews were completed and I gave the assembled members a quick reminder of our goals, we departed, arriving midday in Ivarstead. We arrived earlier than expected thanks to one of the Investigation Branch members, Ina, and her portal work.
The words ‘Gods portals make my stomach’ turn are scratched out hurriedly.
The first task was to inform Constable Gerrun of our arrival. A few of the members, specifically Ascela, Abdul, and Ghorza accompanied me inside, and it was clear immediately how a swear word is scratched out with heavy ink bad his day had been. He looked as though he’d been through a war.
He greeted us by looking up from his mug, haggard, his smile thin, stretched to the breaking point, forced. "I expected more of you." His words were quiet, perhaps too quiet for others to hear. "We needed a lot more."
I suppose, in some ways, he had been through a war.
For as strange as she can be sometimes, I was glad Ascela accompanied us. She and Ghorza took the lead in asking the Constable questions, gathering information about the dead and what’s been happening to them.
"What did the bodies look like? Do you know where the bodies are at? I speak of the corpses, of course. Can we examine them? How long has each disappearance lasted until the body has been recovered?" Aescela tilted her head, her rapid questioning befuddling the already bewildered Constable.
He gave us answers, telling us things I’m not sure I wanted to know. Those who were taken didn’t always show up dead in the river, but those who did were found to be missing various belongings, some valuable, some not. The dead were being kept in the barrow, and the afflicted were being cared for in the barn. Whatever was abducting the villagers was causing the family members of the victims to lose their ability to sleep.
There is a note in the margins about reminding Abdul that drinking on the job isn’t a good idea.
Speaking of the family of the victims, our questioning of the Constable was cut short as all of us in the Tavern froze.
It was strange to hear such a calm and beautiful day shattered by screams.
By the time we arrived at the barn, the source of the screams, the air was alive with magic as Verr finished a ritual.
He yelped, grabbing his head and stumbling back like some kind of drunk is crossed out man in severe pain. He shook his head several times, and winced. "Daedric, definitely fuckin daedric." His nose was bleeding just a bit.
My blood ran cold at his words. Some part of me had known there was more going on in Ivarstead than just a lack of guards, but confirmation that it was daedric had a chilling effect on the conversation at hand. Ascela further found strange results, finding a purple liquid coming from the afflicted.
Aesla’s words pulled me from my thoughts. "Would you reckon the guards know more about this, then?"
I scratched at my scar as Ina consulted with Ascela on her strange vial of stranger purple liquid. “The guards may know more, that's not a bad idea, despite Ascela's best efforts to imply otherwise. We could ask them while we still have daylight left, while Ina and others with more knowledge, investigate the magicy daedricy.... stuff."
Valtire, if you’re reading this report, please don’t judge me too harshly. I swear I’m not a dumbass.
“Should we split the tasks among us?” Azazel asked.
“We would occupy more land that way.” Aesla said.
“It’s Zeldava’s call. Either that or we focus on one task at a time.” Azazel’s words froze me.
Everyone was waiting on my order. Me, giving orders. Gods, the fuck happened where people started looking to me for orders?
I nodded and grinned. "I do like occupying land. Let's go find a guard, shall we? Anyone else want to get in on the 'question people who know things I can comprehend without a degree from the Mages guild?'”
This is why people shouldn’t ask me for orders. I’m fucking awful at them.
The group split again, this time Ascela, Ina, and Azazel staying behind to continue investigating the afflicted. The rest of us made our way back into Ivarstead.
“I’m going to ask around the town and do some sleuthing with Wyrd magic,” Ghorza stated simply, splitting off from the group heading into town. “Don’t wait up for me, this will take a bit of time to pin down.”
I was glad to know she’d be investigating from her own angle. Even if I didn’t quite understand everything Ghorza did, I knew from my time in the Union with her that she was good at it.
I stopped the first guard I could find, a tired looking Nord trouncing through the center of town.
If you have any details to share about whats going on, I believe we had some questions about what's been happening to Ivarstead. We're the Company that's reinforcing you tonight on patrols."
The guard stared at me with the look of a deeply haunted man, but nodded. "I don't know much, but I'll do my best to answer ye."
I leaned against a lamp post behind the guard, eying the assembled Company, probably spending a bit too long on Lucy if I’m being honest, waiting for them to ask a question.
Oh… shit. I wonder if they thought I was testing them. There’s a piece of paper torn off where it’s clear she took a reminder with her to tell them that she was not, in fact, testing them.
Verr was the first to ask a question. "Have ye noticed anything strange? Drops in the temperature? Dying plants or crops? Foul smells or feelings of dread or uneasiness?"
The guard shook his head. "Nothing like that. Just... a few weeks back, there were multiple sharp cracks in the evening, like a lightnin' storm, followed by splashes in the water. After that, every night, people have been vanishing." He paused, scratching at the rough beard under his helmet. "Though I suppose there be singing sometimes too, late at night.”
Abdul seemed troubled at that comment. “Singings? like Nereids? Do you know if there is any relation between the missing folk and the proximity of their houses to the river?"
Verr added a further question, “Where did you first hear the singing?"
The guard shrugged, "The missing have been taken from all over town. The first one to go was a guard, Ned, I think was his name. I only got here four days ago. I normally work in Riften. I'm afraid I don't know where the singing started."
Eventually, the guard directed us to the docks, the last place he’d heard the singing. We arrived and began looking around. I’ll admit, something about the eerie stillness unnerved me. Knowing that it may have something lurking just beneath, it was… uncomfortable.
Which is why hearing Aesla say "I have half a mind to jump in, myself” caused a twinge of red to sneak into my vision.
“Don't do anything stupid,” I said. “My job is to get you home safe." You’d think that me saying that to Aesla would be sufficient for everyone to follow it, right? Me too, which is why I moved on to preparing for our actual job for the night. “Its getting dark, so we should get organized into patrols.”
"Patrols? Like to ensure none of the town's folk go missing again?" Lucy said, leaning up against the crate behind me. I wondered for a moment if he always completely ignored everything I said, since this was the third time I’d mentioned we’d be patrolling.
I scratched my scar. Right, it was Lucy. Of course he did.
"Aye, that's our job tonight. There aren't enough guards to ensure the town's safety. We're here to fill in for them." I paused, a grin spreading across my face, despite my best efforts to stop it. "And if we happen to kill some creepy singing water creatures, that's just extra."
“Where do you want me lass?” Verr asked.
"Why do I have the feeling that we're about to meet the culprit tonight,” Aesla said, wandering back from her place on the lower half of the docks. “Whether we want to, or not?"
I grinned at Aesla, my hand instinctively gripping the dagger on my hip. "You imply we don't want to." It took a second to sink in. It was accelerated by Aesla’s disgusted look. I turned to look at Lucy, eyebrows furrowed. “Wait, what did you say?”
He looked at me, equally surprised we’d said the same thing at the exact same time. He repeated himself. "You imply we don't want to, blondie."
Remember that thing I mentioned earlier, about assuming stupid people would heed my warnings?
In a world where that were true, I’d have a moment to figure out whether Lucy and I saying the exact same thing was romantic or horrifying. In the world we live in, I had zero time to figure that out, though thankfully Lucy would answer that question for me later with some of the stupid shit he pulled.
There is a very long string of crossed out sentences, all with a significantly greater number of swear words than any reasonable person should put into a report. The last, uncrossed sentence is very short.
Abdul jumped in the water.
For a moment, it seemed like he might be fine. Then the singing started, and everything seemed to go into slow motion. The sound erupted from the water as two ghostly figures appeared beside him. Their hands tore at him, dragging him beneath the water. Aesla leapt in after him for reasons I still don’t understand. Ascela cast some kind of illusion. I think Ina tried to kill more than just the nereids with her lightning magic.
By the time I’d figured out what to do, Aesla was alone in the water, gasping for air, as Abdul pulled himself onto the dock.
And fuck me, I guess I am a dumbass after all, cause I jumped in after her. I dragged her to the docks, narrowly avoiding the clutches of the Nereids on my way out of the water. There would be time to deal with their stupidity later. For now, I needed to solve the Nereid problem.
Somewhere far away, I heard chanting from the afflicted villagers, their screams in unison, their voices far deeper than any Nord voice should go. At the time, I hadn’t cared nearly enough to pick out words. Later, others would tell me what they’d said: “he walks among the screams of the damned! His being will devour all! The time of the Dreamer is at an end!”
The fighting seemed to blur things together. At one point, Lucy jumped off the dock onto a Nereid and grappled her the words ‘by the tits’ are very angrily crossed out and I think I got elbow-slammed by a flesh atronach, though I’m not sure who summoned it. Whoever did managed to decimate the docks, sending Lucy, Aesla, Abdul, and myself back into the water with a severely wounded Nereid.
The fighting lasted what felt like hours, but was truly only minutes. Eventually, Aesla and Ina finished off the Nereid controlling the villagers, and Abdul solved the problem he started with an arrow through the second Nereid’s eye.
And then… silence. Well, until the villagers started screaming again.
I hauled myself out of the water, glowered at Lucy standing on the docks, towering above me like always…
And I fucking punched him. “Don’t fucking grope Nereids, dumbass.”
With that business settled, I checked on the rest of the company members. Some of us may have been battered and shaken, but we were alive. The sun rose as we trekked back to the Tavern, all thankfully in one piece.
With that, our work for Ivarstead was done. We’d vanquished the cause of their disappearances, performed the patrols we were asked to do, and satisfied the terms of our contract.
But…
I can’t shake the feeling this is going to get worse. The villagers afflicted by the curse weren’t cured when we dealt with the Nereids. We didn’t even see a daedra that could have caused it. The Nereids themselves hadn’t died so much as dissolved into the same purple goop that was coming out of the afflicted, the goop spreading through the Rift’s rivers.
I’m worried, to say the least. I fear we may not have heard the last scream of the Sleepless.
Members in Attendance and Deserving of Coin Disbursement:
Abdul Suleiman
Aesla Stout
Ascela Levazon
Azazel II Egnia
Ghorza Vrch
Ina Ensinma
Lucien Lex
Saewyn Ivymire
Verrjord Jotunsonr
Council Members in Attendance:
Zeldava Ellis
