"What even counts as well behaved in this scenario?" he asked as he warily eyed the bright blue serpent that lunged at the meat in my fingers aggressively.
"It doesn't bite or struggle when handled. It's completely calm. For a venomous snake that is about as well behaved as it gets. Honestly it's probably because this one is young enough and has been handled enough to understand the difference between a threat and it's owner just handling it. In this regard whoever it was deserves a lot of credit, it was well cared for." I said casually as I let the greedy thing take the meat from me as it's fangs uselessly scraped over my skin.
It swallowed the morsel and looked at me as if judging if that was it or not. I retrieved another piece of meat and it's gaze locked onto it with zero hesitation.
"If it wasn't obvious that it couldn't hurt you to begin with I might be concerned with your disregard for it's fangs." he said shaking his head.
"I'm not stupid enough to risk this without first having prepared an antidote for it's venom. Even before I started trying to train out it's food aggression I milked it to create an antivenom on the off chance it somehow managed to get a fang into my flesh." I say nimble moving the meat out of the lunge of the snake and bopping it lightly on the snout for the attempt.
"Still aren't snakes supposed to be aggressive with their food?" he asked confused.
"Of course. But, and this is important, it's not a wild snake that is hunting it's own food. It's a pet at best and I provide everything it needs so it frankly has no need for this behavior. Perhaps training it out is an effort in futility but it also reinforces my status with the thing so it's not like theres no gain here. I own it and it knows that in whatever primitive way things like it conceptualize such things." I say letting the snake take the meat this time before picking it up gently.
It coiled around my wrist and it's wings fluttered lightly as it got comfortable there.
"See. Well behaved." I say showing him.
He eyed the serpent that was in turn also watching him from it's position like any predator might a strange existence in it's environment.
"Can you just put it away already? Unlike you I don't have skin as hard as metal. Another thing that's frankly ludicrous to understand. I understand how an alteration spell might cause that temporarily but a permanent change like this is entirely foreign to me." he said with a sigh that was hilariously common as he came to know more and more about my capabilities.
'I can see why Uncle Sheo enjoys subverting peoples grasp on reality so much. This is kinda entertaining to watch.' I thought amused as I sent the snake into it's designated area of my storage plane.
Once we restored our stored water we set off from the oasis towards the Dragontail mountains once more. It was another four days to reach their foot but I breathed a sigh of relief as the air there cooled from the desert temperature and the trees along the rocky road further in provided a freshness that I dearly missed. I held one of my frankly hideous dwemer resonators that I created with scrap and a lot of failure during the nights that I didn't sleep.-
It's purpose was very simple, it detected nearby dwemer metal and guided us towards it. Unlike in the game where you could tell instantly if there was a Dwemer ruin nearby on account of the obvious stone structures sticking out of the ground the actual Dwemer were a bit more secretive than that. If a Dwemer ruin was visible from the surface it was either because the Dwemer there used it as a way to trade for topside items or a simple declaration of "here we are, try us if you dare". The Dwemer were an arrogant race in general so this sort of methodology when they built their cities or workshops was common.-
The really important stuff though? Hidden in plain sight and nearly undetectable without an accident to expose it or a Dwemer tonal resonator like what I made.
"Are you sure that thing even works? It's just been making the same low hum this whole time." Alontar asked as he eyed the resonator on my hip.
"If I didn't muck up the calculations that I ran FOUR times, yes. The reason it's not made any other sound is because we aren't in range of any sizeable Dwemer metal sources. The moment we do enter that range it will make a different sound and then we only have to follow it as it gets louder until we reach the point of entry." I said calmly as I steered my toad up along this uneven path.
He looked like he was about to ask another question when the resonator beeped lightly.
"Is that it?" he asked curiously.
"Should be. Now we just have to follow it." I say as I push my toad to move a little faster.
Alontar still had to worry for his horse but my toad had soft flexible claws that made it well suited for moving along the rocky terrain. As we moved further along the path the beeping got louder and more often until it got incredibly loud right in front of a blank mountain stone face with moss and weeds covering it. I put away the resonator bringing silence to the surroundings once more before I started oscillating my magika in different frequencies until one got a reaction.
"GRMMMM!"
The stone face became to rumbles as a hidden mechanism activated and the stone dissolved into sand revealing a grand bronze colored metal door with Dwemer written above it announcing the name of this place.
Btharzmar