The ruins of Rthaalzalht were humming quietly throughout, with the distinctive sound of dwarven gears and cogs turning. Lyle could hear the mechanisms working through the walls, for quite a distance, thanks to his sensitive wolf ears. The nightwolf had spent almost an hour in the ruins, and had avoided all the traps and dwarven automatons he had seen so far, besides one spider robot he was forced to destroy- Luckily he had accomplished this without the other machines finding out. While sneaking through the corridors and halls, Lyle had snatched a few odd gem stones and even found three diamonds in a tightly locked dwarven chest. But the reason he was here, that one artefact, still eluded Lyle. He had already invested alot into finding it, having to play errand wolf for the new Archmage of Winterhold for three days to earn the key into the ruins, not to mention how much it had cost him to bribe a spellcaster to create a portal to Tamriel for him. He was not going to leave empty handed! Hopefully the bandits who had somehow found a way into the ruin without keys hadn't found it already.

The nightwolf carefully peeked around the corner of the hallway he had almost cleared. No robots, no anything. Just a door, which was slightly ajar. Lyle looked through the gap in the door and once sure it was safe, pushed the door enough to slip through. Early into the dungeon, Lyle had noticed a sudden rise in temperature, and blaming steam at the time, ignored it. But, the wolf had been feeling warmer the deeper he traveled even when there were no steam producing machines nearby. The temperature, along with Lyle's natural high body heat, had caused the wolf to work up a sweat just from walking slowly, and he was starting to feel dehydrated, and hungry, also. But, the only potion he was carrying was a certain explosive potion for- Snap!
Lyle just managed to jump behind a dwarven statue in time to hear two pairs of steps coming his way. The nightwolf listened carefully and held completely still as the two unknown people passed, and mumbled to each other.

"The boss thinks we can swipe the sword from the pedestal if we can distract both of those centurions, Arvald. I don't suppose you'd be up for the task?"

"The sword..." Lyle thought. It was the sword. It had to be!

"You take me for a fool, don't you? We only have seven people left, two wounded, there's no way we can keep those things busy long enough. Besides, how do we know the sword isn't jammed in too tight to be removed, Randar? It's been there for over a thousand years, Talos' sake!"

"Maybe, but- Do you smell something?"

Lyle froze.

"...No, now let's get back to the camp. The boss will be thinking we turned into cowards and went home if we're not back soon. That, or... Dead."

The nightwolf allowed the two humans several strides before slipping out from his hiding spot to follow them. Lyle reached to the back of his waist and grabbed two kunais, ready to silence both bandits should they decide to look back. They didn't, however, and continued through a narrow room, to an open door which they walked through. Lyle slowed down as they went from the small room into a huge hall, where the nightwolf saw several bandits around a campfire. The two he had followed walked down a set of stairs from the hall's middle floor down to the low floor, and joined their companions. The nightwolf decided to consider a plan of action before taking them on. Would his skills be enough to defeat all seven at once, would it be better to wait for them to split up, or would...

Lyle thought on it while scanning the room for treasure to steal. There were the usual pots and metal pieces one sees in the standard dwarven ruin, but nothing more, besides a note on a table, weighed down with a dwarven ingot. Lyle approached the table, which looked like it had been used recently, having to plates of mostly eaten fruit on it. Lifting the ingot off the paper note, he smiled.

The paper showed a crude sword drawing, with barely legible words.

"...sword was made by a daedra she tells us... illusion magic enchantment... dwarves locked it away, stupid dwarves... why not use the thing like what it's made for..."

The messy, scribbled text abruptly ended about halfway down the page, but, Lyle noticed, there was more written below, in different, better writing.

"The dwarves locked it away because the thing is a cursed daedric artefact, for the love of Talos. It's evil. I don't know why the boss won't just forget about it, we've been down here almost two days and three of the men were killed by those spiders already. It's not even that fancy a sword- if the old dwarven book we have is right, all it does is make you invisible for a while. Fifty septims will buy you a potion that does just that! But the sword, its enchantment works differently.."

Lyle scratched his chin. So, the sword was powered by a daedric enchantment

"There I was expecting Dwarf science, or something... Techy". He said, looking back to the paper.

"... Supposing the book is correct, the enchantment takes effect when the blade tastes death- So, it casts an invisibility illusion when you kill someone. A perfect weapon for an assassin, and how fitting it would come from a daedra."

Lyle dropped the note on the ground, and went back to the door, sticking his head out halfway. The bandits were still corralled together around their fire, with no signs any of them would be moving soon. Surveying the hall, Lyle thought about what the note had said.

"Kill an enemy, and the enchantment works its magic on you..." he whispered. He had been hoping the sword would have had an on-off switch, or something like that. After all being unnoticed usually meant no attacking.

"But still useful" Lyle said. He looked up to the third floor of the hall, and his eyes found a pipe he could easily climb to get up there. From there, Lyle would be impossible to see to anyone on the lowest level of the room. But then, as the nightwolf's eyes were drawn back to the bandit's fire, his belly rumbled. And just then, he smiled, having come up with the perfect plan to get what he came for, and some snacks to boot. Cautiously, Lyle entered the hall and quickly, stealthily, the nightwolf hid himself behind a stone pillar only a few dozen feet from the fire, without alerting any of the seven bandits to his presence. He took his only potion in his right paw- His throwing paw, and read the label stuck to it.

"Exploding: shrink effect. Lyle, use responsibly please!"

"I will, Scale..." the nightwolf whispered, not waiting any longer to put his plan into action. Lyle quietly stepped out from behind the carved rock pillar, and aimed the potion bottle at the fire. Lyle smiled, and tossed it.

The bandits had no time to react to the potion hitting the flames. The glass vial exploded suddenly, and a bright, arcane blast bathed the room in a green light for a brief moment before vanishing. The fire was snuffed out, but the room was still bright and well lit with the light of the many dwarven lamps dotted around the hall. Lyle, who had hid behind the stone pillar as the potion detonated, stepped out again, and smiled, noticing the little shapes on the ground where the bandits had been.

The flash had taken the group by surprise, and it took them a few moments to regain their sight. Once their vision returned, they were confused and disoriented by the sudden shift in perspective. A few of the bandits tried to group together but before they could close the distances between each other, they felt a tremor.

*Thud*

Turning to the source, the bandits were struck with fear. The group began to panic as the titanic, black wolf made a stride in their direction, and the tiny, two-inch humans could only watch as he came closer with two more steps. One bandit screamed, and they all took that as a cue to run. The wolf smiled and closed in on the nearest of the little things, and raised one of his footpaws. The human screamed and his companions briefly stopped running, being drawn to look by his shout. They could only watch, next, as the wolf's paw descended on the unfortunate bandit and pinned him to the ground. The wolf allowed him only a second to squirm for his amusement, before pressing down and crushing the life out of him without effort. With a muffled crack, the human stopped moving.

This motivated the rest of the group to run for their lives, but it was, of course, in vain, for the wolf's much greater size allowed him to close in to his next target with two strides. The wolf reached down and grabbed the fleeing human, and brought him to eye-level for a brief moment to inspect his catch... before casually tossing the little thing into his maw. The human cried out as the wolf's mouth closed, sealing him inside, doomed. The wolf swallowed him down whole, and went about collecting the rest of the bandits. Three more he picked up, holding them all tightly together in one hand, smiling as he felt their worthless struggles. The two remaining, who had tried to hide, were found behind a leather satchel which the wolf lifted up and tossed away. The two bandits, one of which, to the wolf's surprise, was female, were left for a moment to gaze up upon the wolf's gigantic, powerful and toned body before the titan reached down to grab them. The male cowered, but the female grabbed the tiny blade on her belt and jabbed at the wolf's hand as it came close enough to touch her. The wolf chuckled and knocked the weapon from her hands with a flick of his finger, then wrapped his hand around the female, the paw surrounding her completely as she squirmed against the wolf's powerful grip. The one bandit left on the ground was quickly crushed underfoot and the wolf casually walked away from the remains of the campsite, and sat on a bench of stone at a table near the stone pillars in the center of the room.

Lyle put the female down on the table, and dropped the three captive bandits into a bowl, then picked one out and brought him to his mouth. The bandit struggled wildly but it was useless, for Lyle easily swallowed him. Sighing as the lump in his throat traveled down to his belly, the nightwolf turned to the female.

"I guess you're the one in charge around here, huh? Y'know, where I live, females learn magic, not fighting. They don't run bandit gangs either."

The female didn't answer the question, and shouted insults at Lyle instead.

"I take that as a yes... I'm looking for a sword here, and I think you know where it is, yeah?"

The human declared with more insults, that the sword belonged to her and she would never tell her captor where it was.

Smiling, Lyle grabbed one of the two bandits in the bowl and held him a little below his maw.

"Do you want to tell me now?"

The bandit leader only hurled more insults at the nightwolf.

"Well, okay, your call", he said, slipping the bandit between his lips and into his mouth. Lyle hesitated, giving the female a last chance to spare the other human, and when he was sure she wouldn't give up the sword's location, he swallowed. He reached into the bowl and took out the last bandit in it, and opened his maw wide, holding the bandit in front of it.

"No?" He asked the female, dropping the bandit onto his tongue when she still ignored his question. Lyle swallowed him too, then turned back to the female, and leaned back on his seat.

"Just the two of us, now. Care to share the secret now?"

The human female shouted at Lyle again, and he sighed.

"Hmph, fine. I'll just have to find it myself, then." He said, grabbing her between his thumb and finger gently then lifting her to his opening maw.

The bandit leader squirmed and, at the last moment, relented, agreeing to tell her captor what he wanted to know. She was put back down onto the table, where she informed Lyle of the passage one level below the hall, that lead to the sword's pedestal, the door sealing it off, and the key for the door, which was in the leather satchel. She even warned him about the centurions.

Lyle thanked her, and yawned, scratching his chest. He decided it would be best to rest a while before going to retrieve the sword, and picked up one of the bottles of wine on the table and drank from it.

"Now... What to do with you..." he said to the human, taking her in his palm to her surprise. "You'll grow back to normal in a couple of days when that magic wears off, but until then... I guess you're stuck here." He told her, smiling. "Well, I could carry you out of this old place, once I get what I came for. But, I'm going to ask a favor in return."

Lyle placed the female on the table again, and leaned against the back of the stone seat, and placed a footpaw on the table's edge.

"Y'know, my paws are tired from all this traveling. I could really go for a massage." He said, placing his other paw next to the one on the table.

"Get rubbing."

The bandit leader hesitated for a few moments, then did as Lyle said, approaching one of the paws slowly then, grudgingly, she began to rub his toe. Lyle smiled and moved a hand onto his belly, which he slowly scratched. He could still feel the tiny humans struggling inside, and tauntingly began to rub it, knowing they would feel it on the other side of his stomach.

"Gotta love when they squirm like that..." Lyle mused.

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