Bravil...

  Even after all my travels and experiences during my time in the legion, there were few places that the memories sat uncomfortably in my mind. Of all the slums and shanty towns I had resided in or woken up in the gutter of through the years in Vvardenfell, they had nothing on the city of Bravil. A suppurating wound in the marshes of the northern Niben, the city festered and decayed like a bloated corpse freshly pulled from the polluted waters that surrounded it. This was no Skingrad, with its perfectly designed streets crowned with gardens overflowing with life and colour, or the wide-open plazas and courtyards of Anvil filled with space and laughter. Bravil was slum on a mass scale, clinging to life like poisonous moss and yet somehow still managing to survive year after year. Despite the best attempts of the city-consuming conflagrations or district ravaging plagues there was nothing that seemed capable of reducing the stain of such a settlement.

  Bereft of strong leadership by an increasingly corrupt and indifferent linage of Counts, the city had fallen to ruin until only the callous and selfish remained. Crime was rampant, and there were only the handful of individuals who refused to fall into the deep levels of villainy that bubbled up from the underworld like the polluted waters of the Larsius River that struggled to reach the purer waters of the upper Niben. The river itself was nothing more than a muddied and polluted latrine in the shape of a city, filling the air with rot and pestilence until every centimetre of flesh crawled with the noxious sensation.

  Shacks and shanties, built in increasing numbers and cramped conditions jostled and pressed into each other. The mutual weight and poor workmanship ensured that several a month would collapse or otherwise sink into the morass that flowed beneath the duckboards and jetties. Stone was an expense that few could afford and its extra weight only seemed to hasten the inevitable slide into the depths of mud and excrement, so wood was exclusively used everywhere. With the exception for the towering walls of the castle, and the poorly maintained curtain wall long since rendered obsolete by the ever-expanding suburbs it was a city made from the corpses of trees.

  Built into the marshes, the only industries able to survive in such a place were those who used the bogs for its supply of peat, or those that used the bubbling sources of tar and pitch that stained the surface waters black and sticky. Handfuls of fishermen plied the deeper depths of the Niben, proving a supply of food to keep the thousands within the slums from starvation but with no other sources of income the inhabitants quickly took to crime to survive.

  Protection rackets, muggers, thieves, smugglers, highwaymen, moneylenders, gambling halls, skooma dens and countless other lowlifes lived, plied their trades and usually died violent deaths within the festering boardwalk suburbs and lean-tos. The guard were inefficient or corrupt or both; ignoring the plight of those who should have been able to rely on their presence and rarely leaving the more affluential districts clustered around the castle.

  Our boots shuddered the boardwalk threateningly as we made our way through one of the many districts clustered like a cancer in the heart of the City. Wet rot, mould, effluent and decay clogged our sinuses as we travelled; a horrid stink that would take days, if not weeks of bathing to completely scrub from our skin and clothing.

  "By Shar, what is that stench?" Viconia snarled as we moved through a portion of smell so powerful I resisted the urge to draw Sunchild to cut a passage. "Is that you, or something rotting?"

  Whatever she could smell, I was uncomfortably aware that my enhanced senses were not a blessing in such a place. Increased several-fold I could pick up individual scents in the plague-strewn streets not matter how hard I tried not to. The taste of a weeks-old bloated corpse surfacing in the mud and sewage below the platform made me almost wish that I was back in the horrid depths of Nornalhorst surrounded by the detritus of a vampire coven.

  "Something dead." I replied honestly, stepping to one side as a beak-masked plague doktor made his way with his bag of instruments and smouldering censer hanging from a wrist. The smell of burning rosemary and sage was a pleasant relief from the constant assault of the city on the sinuses despite what the hooded and cloaked individual represented. In the days since our arrival we had seen several of their kind wandering the streets as yet another plague continued to make itself felt.

  Viconia's expression of interest didn't change until the doktor in his long beaked, potpourri filled mask turned around a corner and vanished from sight. Even in a place such as this, her interest in the surface world wasn't dimmed despite the best attempts of the city to dampen it. In the days since leaving Glenvar a dark mood had consumed her and Bravil wasn't helping her attitude. Constantly seeking a fight or argument we had snapped at each other on occasion over the previous week, and while it hadn't been as serious as the argument we had the morning I retrieved the Light of Dawn the threat of another remained, simmering beneath the surface like a rotten corpse.

  "This looks like the place." She said simply, looking up to the sign that dangled from the overhanging roof by a single rusting chain. The name of the establishment was burnt into the wood with a piece of heated metal many years ago, and I paid it little heed as I pushed the door open, stepping inside the gloom and allowing my eyes to adjust to the light.

  The Lonely Suitor Lodge, while technically an Inn or boarding house was like everything else in Bravil; a poor front for other activities. As a combination of a gambling hall, skooma den and brothel; it smelt and looked as such and our appearances drew the attention of nearly everything within.

  Roughly hewn walls of various marshland and mangrove forest wood, the walls, floors, ceiling and furniture appeared little more than ruined scraps washed downstream hammered together into vague shapes of furniture and structural supports. There were dozens of tables and chairs scattered about everywhere and few placed into shadowed alcoves for those that wished a little more privacy with their activities. Despite the hour of the morning there were over two dozen individuals in the room, ranging from the brutish orc who owned the lodge and his equally enormous greenskinned bouncers to the various patrons lounging about. Members of every race were in the dank building, the air stained with soot and smoke and with the hint of burnt skooma making itself felt over the smell of unwashed bodies, stale sweat and even staler beer. A handful of women of various ages and appearances made their way in between the tables, blank expressions plastered on their faces of years of suffering and I felt my hatred for the city continue to build.

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  Armoured and carrying everything of value we possessed we cut an unusual sight within the lodge and immediately upon entering two of the Orc bouncers tensed and watched our every move carefully. Gang violence was a common enough occurrence in the city, and although it was usually in the form of back alley stabbings, it was known to leave buildings as blood soaked slaughterhouses from time to time.

  Striding through the press and ignoring the way that several individuals hurried out of our path we walked over to one of the shadowed alcoves, spotting the one person who we had travelled to this den to meet.

  "Kurdan gro-Dragol?" I said simply, seeing the heavily muscled Orc lounging behind a table with his back against the wall look over Viconia and I with the faint look of annoyance.

  "Well, well." His voice rumbled out of a barrel chest that would have put most legionaries to shame. "What brings the 'eroes of Kvatch to these 'umble walls?"

  "We're looking for someone." I said simply, seeing the way that his jaw rolled back and forth as he gnawed on a fat stick of chewing tobacco. "Word is it that you are the one who knows where he is."

  "Oh?" Sickeningly he twisted his head and spat a dribbling stream of black juice in the vague direction of a spittoon. Most of it splattered down his chin and the front of a heavily stained tunic from a tusked mouth not made for spitting. "An' just who might this feller be?"

  "Aleron Loche." Viconia's eyes were hard glints of light in the flickering twilight of the lodge and her voice was as cold as a Skyrim glacier.

  The dark expression palled the brute's face as he glowered at the both of us. Angrily he wriggled in his chair, making some vague motion under the table before shuffling backwards.

  "Never 'eard of 'im." He snarled, staring at us even as one of the women of the lodge crawled out from under the table. Jamming another chunk of stinking tobacco into his mouth before proceeding to chew loudly he tossed a copper septim to her. "Make yerself scarce darlin'."

  "Word has it that he came to see you to discuss his debts a few days ago. Now he's missing, and you were the last person he saw."

  "People go missin' in this city all the time. It's Bravil for fuck's sake."

  My smile was terrible and the threat wasn't lost on him. "But you are the local moneylender, are you not?"

  His hands slapped down on the table loud enough that eyes were drawn to us before being hastily adverted elsewhere. "That's none of yer damn business. I'd tell yer if I liked yer... an' I don't."

  A towering shadow of green muscle and leather armour appeared behind us and I glanced back at the sight of a hundred and thirty kilograms of orc bouncer. He stood taller than all three of us and I only just came up to his forehead in my minotaur leather boots.

  "I think you two need to leave." The threat hung in every word as the orc gripped Viconia by the shoulder, the meaty green paw encompassing her entire pauldron, shoulder and collar.

  Mistakenly identifying me as the greater threat and thinking that threatening Viconia would make me more pliable, the orc and everyone else in the vicinity was utterly unprepared for Viconia's sudden explosion of activity. She twisted in his grasp, wrenching his wrist around painfully before reaching up, gripping him by his own shoulder and using her lower centre of gravity to trip and pull the giant down. The sickening thud and crunch of gristle and teeth reverberated through the entire room as his face smashed into the side of Kurdan's table on the journey to the floor. The table itself was only saved from destruction from its surprisingly sturdy construction and the way it had been nailed into the floor. In a split second it was over, the giant orc bouncer was unconscious on the floor, flagons, mugs and coins left chiming on the nearby tables from the impact and a shocked silence filled the lodge's interior. Kurdan was left glancing between Viconia standing there like nothing had happened and the hunk of broken tooth left quivering in the table's surface.

  She casually stepped to the side where the orc was left stretched out and I turned as several more shadows began moving closer as they looked to their employer. The owner, staring in amazement at how Viconia had floored one of his employees waved the others off with a curt gesture and a shake of the head, choosing to leave Kurdan to whatever he had found himself involved in.

  "Well... Fuck...." He said simply as he pushed a saliva moistened chunk of tobacco back between his lips. "Me'be I know 'im, me'be I don't." Hardening perceptibly his expression changed from shocked to outwardly calculating, and wasn't the sort of expression that I felt comfortable with. "But since yer so interested, I know somethin' that could jar my memory."

  "Which is?" I asked carefully, crossing my arms and ensuring that he and all the others could see the way that my armour twisted and bunched together with an archer's strength.

  "I just learned that a family 'eirloom; the Axe of Dragol, which one of my stupid relatives lost, is located on Fort Grief Island in the Bay."

  "And let me guess, you want us to find it for you."

  "Exactly..." Purposely drawing the word out, his grin grew even more threatening and calculating. "Yer with the Fighter's Guild, doin' jobs fer coin and all that aren't yer? Yer do a job for me and yer get paid...

  I glanced at Viconia and she merely sneered, shrugging her shoulders and looking completely disgusted with remaining in such a place. Kurdan continued talking, choosing to ignore us for the moment.

  "My informant tells me it's 'idden in the main keep at the centre. Dunno what's guardin' it, but I'm sure yer can 'andle it. If yer go there and brin' it back to me, I'll tell yer exactly where Aleron is."

  Interest immediately piqued and knowing that my instincts on him were accurate I returned his grin with one of my own. "And what's stopping me from letting my companion here have her way with you?"

  There was the tiniest hint of fear in his eyes as he glanced at the Drow by my side, but he squashed it with remarkable willpower. "Then Aleron may not be comin' 'ome from 'is... ahhh... journey, for a very long time. Like permanently."

  "What do you think?" I asked Viconia, seeing her foul expression only deepen.

  "Razing this hovel to the ground would be pleasurable."

  "But unfortunately, that won't get us anywhere." I turned back to Kurdan and nodded. "We'll get your axe."

  "Ha!" He rubbed his stained hands together and rose to his feet, momentarily rummaging and rearranging the front of his trousers before walking around the table. "Tat's what I like to 'ear. Whenever yer ready, and it better be soon if yer catch my meanin', I'll 'ave a boat waitin' for yer to get to Fort Grief Island. I doubt that you feel like walkin' out there in that fancy armour of yer's and I'm guessin' yer don't have available transport on 'and..."

  I shrugged, non-committedly as he briefly told us where to meet him with his boat. With nothing else keeping us in such a place we made our way back to the door, ignoring the way that all the patrons and staff gave us a wide berth.

  "How can you trust srow like him jaluk?" Viconia hissed as the door slammed closed behind us. Ever since Glenvar she had fallen back into her old terms and insults when talking to me and for the most part I ignored it.

  "I don't trust him as far as I could piss him." I said simply, my hand finding its way to Sunchild as I nervously ran my fingers up the ruby red hilt.

  "Then why do this?"

  "Because this is the contract we were given, and I can't think of any other way to find Loche."

  The darkening scowl on her face deepened further as we made our way to what passed as the city docks. "I still think that we go back and tumble that place in around his head."

  "If he double crosses us, then that will be plan B."