My Little Prequel: Friendship is Oblivious

by GroaningGreyAgony

Chapter 6

This story contains spoilers for the game Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion and the webcomic Prequel.

Katia hadn't had much experience with the Dogs, at least none that she was prepared to confess to in polite company. As a race, they spent most of their time trying to excavate more gems from the bottoms of abandoned mines, abducting people to force them to excavate the gems instead, and conducting tribal wars.

Katia did know that where there was one Diamond Dog, it was likely that there were more—but why would anyone tolerate a pack of Dogs living under the city that housed the Empress's royal residence? Perhaps this one was just an escaped prisoner? Katia resolved to be cautious, nonetheless.

This dog was a brown-and-white pug-nosed mongrel, and in addition to the door key and a set of lockpicks, it had some potions and scrolls! Katia was pleased; so far she was doing fairly well at outfitting herself from other people's leavings and trash. She unlocked the door, readied her bow, and passed through...

***

As she wandered further through tunnels of natural rock and roughly finished stony rooms, Katia sensed a theme of rats.

Rats. Rats and rats and ratsandrats and A FUCKING SHAMBLING CORPSE and more rats. The last one had been blasted by a fiery flare—she had run out of arrows and gotten backed into a corner.

As she walked around collecting the misspent arrows, she got a good whiff of the roasted rat and her stomach growled.

Okay, the other rats weren't even cooked... but this one was. Cooked evenly. Under the sharp bitter smell of burnt fur, it smelled... not good, but perhaps non-poisonously acceptable. She was salivating freely. She hadn't had meat in so long... just vegetarian prison gruel or hay-infusion soup.

And where else was she likely to find any food at all in a decaying dungeon?

She looked around her guiltily. The dead glassy eyes of the many rodents she had slain seemed to glare at her in surprised rebuke. The zombie was just chilling, or attaining room temperature, more likely.

Fine. Fine. Just this one. Just this once.

Using the tip of Roanault's katana, she skinned and gutted the corpse, then tried a drumstick. It tasted like chicken, if the chicken had been raised on rat meat and garbage. But hunger overwhelmed her and she quickly finished off the rest.

She left the rat bones in a neat pile and set off on her way... And in the very next room, after slaying a few more rats, she found a few passable heads of lettuce and cheese wedges lying under an open grate.

Other than that, things were actually going swimmingly for someone who was trapped in a foul maze of fierce monsters. She was getting some practice in hitting a moving target with a bow without letting the bowstring strip the fur off her forearm. She was finding some pre-opened chests, which, granted, were often full of useless crap, but she was picking up more potions along the way. After some careful sipping, she had determined that she was carrying several healing potions, a couple of fatigue potions, and (best of all) a precious potion of magicka restoration! And she hadn't had to use a single one yet; by now, the rats were barely making her break a sweat.

Her mood was improving, and as she marched along munching a lettuce and cheese sandwich, she found herself on the verge of humming a happy tune... until she reached a room with an ominous closed door, surrounded by strings of dangling pony skulls. Dark stains around the jambs and threshold, and a nose-curling urine stench, told Katia that she'd found the lair of the other Diamond Dogs.

Katia stood for a long while before the door, offering a silent prayer to the Nine. If ever there was a time that she needed her natural Khageet sneaking ability to work, this was it.

She opened the door as quietly as she could...

***

"Scutsniff!"

"Yes, Whinepiddle?"

"Chief said to reset the log trap today, you yapper! Keep 'em rolling!"

It was not quite appropriate for Whinepiddle to address Scutsniff as a 'yapper,' for the boxer-like Scutsniff was two feet taller than the chihuahuaesque Whinepiddle, and also much burlier. But the social hierarchy among Diamond dogs was not determined by size, but by voice quality. Since Dogs were sensitive to high sound frequencies, the Dogs whose voices were the most piercingly high and nasal got to give orders to the others, on pain of terminal annoyance.

Scutsniff growled and started to roll another log up the slope. When he reached the very top, he lifted it with a grunt and laid it on top of the precarious pile, then dusted off his paws and went to grab another log. A puzzled frown crawled over his face.

"Say, Whinepiddle, I got a coupla questions."

"What are they, you lazy mope?"

"Well, uh, why do we have the log trap set up here? Since when do we have any enemies that come this way?"

Whinepiddle rolled his huge, brain-excluding eyes. "Scutsniff... do we have any slopes anywhere else in our territory?"

"Uh, nope..."

"And do you not need a slope to build a rolling log trap?"

"Uh, yep..."

"So that's why it's here! Next question?!"

"Uhm... next question. Uh, can I just stand one of these logs on end for a minute? I gotta... use it."

"No! Enough goofing off—get back to wor..." Whinepiddle broke off and perked his cute ears. "Do you hear that?"

From far away, they heard a shrieking and noise of galloping hoofpaws. The noise got closer... Then, from up beyond the pile of logs came shouts of anger and a confusion of shadows. A wailing Khageet dashed around the log trap and ran down the slope past the astonished Dogs, pursued by two of their comrades. Scutsniff and Whinepiddle stood in shock for a moment, then barked joyously and joined in the chase.

Katia ran around a corner, then circled a huge pillar, nearly blinded by fear, as the Dogs shot arrows at her and snapped at her tail. She doubled back, ducked around the corner, ran back up the slope and reached the pile of logs. In a paroxysm of panic, she scrabbled at the logs and climbed over them with the Dogs in immediate barking pursuit... and the logs gave way under her. Katia screamed and danced on top of the collapsing pile as the logs pinched at her hooves, then leaped over it to safety, fleeing in terror again...

She halted, frowning. The Dogs had all stopped barking and grown oddly quiet. And she couldn't hear her danger music anymore. (Whenever she was in trouble, she liked to imagine that stirring martial music was playing; it helped to keep her courage up.)

She peered back over the slope and saw stiffening handpaws sticking up from under the logs.

Well. That hadn't gone... too terribly badly. It seemed that she was perfectly competent to take on a gang of suicidally stupid enemies and prevail! That was something to be proud of, right?

She sighed, shrugged and looted the area while she calmed down, then tried to prepare herself to move on. No one seemed to have heard the commotion, or cared. Still, she crept quietly up beyond the large pillar to the next doorway, and peered into the next chamber...

She saw a very large cave, with a central depression containing a rat farm, and archer Dogs strolling about on the upper level. And at the far end, she saw a small grey schnauzerish bitch bearing a very tall staff with a skull mounted on it. She was probably their Chief.

Katia withdrew her head, then closed her eyes, trying to psych herself up. They were just a pack of Dogs, and probably not very bright... And Katia had a nice sword, and a bow, and magic weapons, and potions and scrolls to fall back on if things started to go too terribly wrong...

She plucked up her rabbity courage. Dogs weren't dangerous! She should just go out there and fight!

She drew herself up into a hero's stance, and strode into the cave.

***

Haurus knelt and wiped his katana clean on the robes of another assassin. He glanced up at Glenbay. "I think that's the last of them. Let me take a look around." He walked slowly about the chamber of finished stone. They had come far, and the exit to the Imperial Sewers, and safety for the Empress, could not be very distant.

The Empress Celestia stood at the room's center, in communion with stars unseen. She could sense the great panorama outside, the constant wheel of fate that encircled the world in fiery constellations, the influences of the Lunar Lattice... all were strings or chains pulling her irresistibly to her appointed fate. And of the myriad threads that formed her destiny, there was one of bright brassy gold, gnarled and discordant, that twisted through the skein and disappeared into the great dark. She knew what that thread meant here and now, but could not guess at where it went in the future.

Haurus completed his circuit of the room, and joined Glenbay to report to the Empress.

"Have you seen Katia?" she asked.

"The prisoner? No..." said Glenbay. "Your Majesty, we have to go now."

Celestia stared upward into the dark recesses of the room. "Not yet... just a moment longer..."

The moment stretched out into minutes. The Empress and her Blades stood silent and watchful.

Then a strange keening wail filled the room. Both men of arms readied their weapons...

From a black recess above, a distraught shape fell through the air, dashing to the ground at Celestia's feet. Haurus and Glenbay jumped forward, ready to strike, then stood astonished.

Katia had faceplanted onto the floor, and the weight of her accumulated items had caused her saddlebags to slide down over her head. Her butt and hairless tail stuck up in the air as she wiggled her rear legs and tried to right herself. As they watched, from the ledge above a skullstaff, probably enchanted by a Dog shaman, fell and landed on Katia's rear, zapping her with a bolt of energy. She yelped and jumped to her feet, snout bloody, rattling her rear hooves on the ground in a drumroll of shock and pain...

"It's that prisoner again," said Glenbay, dryly sardonic. "Shall we kill her? She might be working with the assassins."

"We should be so lucky," said Haurus. They snickered together.

Comments

[Fernin]

Lol, poor Katia...