Chapter 4

Chapter 4

I wasn’t wrong. 

     Most adventurers like me hired a follower to help fend of draugr and falmer attacks while exploring the deep ruins of Skyrim.  I preferred to sneak through the tunnels, giving me a chance to see enemies before they caught sight of me.  Frea, on the other hand, seemed to enjoy making as much noise as possible.  She kicked old rusty weapons out of the way, making hideous reverberating clangs that made me wince and slink along like a scolded cat, paused to comment on the history of the temple at the most inopportune times, and sneezed loudly once or twice, complaining plaintively about the quantity of dust in the corridors.

     At least she wasn’t like my previous follower, Marcurio.  He apparently had the thinnest skin in Skyrim and was forever complaining about being too cold, then asking if ‘it would be foolish to stop and light a fire’.  I had lit a fire in a draugr crypt once, and it wasn’t an activity I ever want to repeat.  Something about the warmth and light must have attracted the bony things because every single draugr in the entire hole had woken up and come at me at once.  Not a very comfortable situation, I can tell you.

     The only thing I could really say Frea did well was avoid traps.  She repeatedly noticed ones I didn’t, to my carefully disguised annoyance.  The bloody things were everywhere!  Dart traps, battering rams, swinging blades, fire plates….  You name it, this temple had it.  I had encountered traps in many of the barrows and old forts I had explored, but whoever had set these up could teach anyone a thing or two about subtlety.  Even the many cultists we met and fought seemed to be unaware of many of the lethal traps. 

     I suppose that since there were that many traps in the temple that was a stupid time for me to be reminiscing about past experiences.  I shook myself out of my reverie and followed Frea through two chambers, the second of which had nothing but a handle, which I pulled then jumped back very quickly to avoid any darts or otherwise potentially lethal devices.  But there was nothing, and a section of rock wall opened up.  Beyond was a sprawling room full of sarcophagi, and I could just see a throne with the figure of a sitting draugr reclining on it.  There was almost always a high leveled draugr or something of the sort guarding the best treasure in these places, so this came as no surprise. 

     Frea, however, did come as a surprise.  Instead of briefly mapping out a plan and possibly attempting a surprise attack as I usually did, she simply yelled a war cry and charged into the room.

     I really wanted to stay behind just long enough to roll my eyes, but instead I dashed after her.  She went straight for the seated draugr so I fought instead to keep the smaller ones off her back, thinking unkind thoughts even as I leveled a stroke at one’s neck.

     I had to admit, this fight didn’t take very long.  Between the two of us we eliminated all the draugr in just a minute or two, no health potions necessary.  I might have to consider reevaluating my opinion of followers. 

     I didn’t feel like looting the bodies at the moment, so I pulled the chain that couldn’t possibly have been in a more obvious spot, jumping back once again to avoid any traps.  But there was nothing but a gush of stale air as a door opened, revealing a long, serpentine path beyond.  “Over here,” I called, since Frea was still doing Divines know what in the other room.  Not waiting to see if she followed I continued on, looking around me with unease until the corridor opened up into a small round room.  My attention was immediately drawn to the center of the room where there stood a pedestal with nothing but a single black book resting on top of it.

     A book.  I just spent all this time creeping through a trap and draugr infested temple to find a book.  Typical.  Still, maybe it was a valuable book or contained information on Miraak.

     Frea brushed past me to gaze at the book.  “This book….  It seems wrong, somehow.  Here, yet… not.  It may be what we seek.”

     Here, yet not.  If only I could use words with such eloquence and clarity.

     I resolutely reached for the book and flipped it open to some page in the middle, intending to take a quick look at it here before we left the temple.

     Have you ever tripped and rolled down a hill?  No, really.  Believe it or not, this isn’t a random question.  I did once, back when my parents were alive and I’d had a less adventurous life.  I was playing tag with a neighbor’s daughter and she decided that since I was faster than her she would simply tackle me.  We ended up both rolling down the hill almost into the river.  I remember clearly the way the sky, trees, and wildflowers seemed to melt into a confused blend of bluish green streaked with red and yellow as I tumbled head over heels.

     This is how I felt the second I opened the book, except that the blur was less colorful and more of a dark green with black spots.

     I didn’t even have time to concentrate on the words before long green tentacle things reached out of the pages to wrap their slimy way around my entire torso while I couldn’t move.  The next instant the entire room vanished and I found myself standing in some place I had definitely never been before.  I got a brief impression of a wide open space, tall pillars, a horrible stench, and strange floating creatures I had never seen before I noticed the man standing in front of me with his back to me.

     “The time comes soon when….  What?”  He turned around as though he had sensed my presence. 

     I reached for my sword, disoriented but not willing to go down without a fight.  The weapon didn’t even make it out of its sheath before the masked figure sent a withering bolt of lightning at me that surged through my body ad made my legs decide they were too weak to support me.  I came crashing to my knees, twitching with the aftereffects of the shock. 

     “Who are you who dares set foot here?” he demanded. 

     Well, at least I found Miraak.

     “Ahhhh,” he drew out the word for an annoyingly long and gloating time, “you are Dragonborn.  I can feel it.  And yet-”

     See?  He did sense my presence.

     “- so you have slain Alduin.  Well done.  I could have slain him myself, back when I walked the earth, but I chose a different path.  You have no idea the true power a Dragonborn can wield.  Mul- Qah Div!” he Shouted, shaking the ground beneath us.  This was a Shout in which I didn’t recognize the words or the effects.  A fiery halo seemed to envelope him momentarily, but just as quickly encased him in protective, glowing-red armor. 

     I had to admit the effects were impressive.  Well, I had to admit that in my mind.  No tortures he could concoct would have enticed me to say it out loud, of course.

     “This realm is beyond you,” he stated with cold certainty.  “You have no power here, and it is only a matter of time before Solstheim is also mine.  I already control the minds of its people.  Soon they will finish building my temple, and I can return home.”  Turning away as though he would deign to speak with me no longer, he said to two of the floating creatures, “Send him back where he came from!” 

     They began floating toward me in a mass of tentacles and green moss-like hangings.  As they neared me I realized the horrific stench came from them, and belatedly began struggling to get up.  Well, I thought I was, but then I realized that I couldn’t even move, let alone struggle. 

     “He can await my arrival with the rest of Tamriel,” Miraak stated, probably for effect as he got on a dragon I somehow hadn’t noticed until then.  I couldn’t tell for sure in my current state of near panic, but the dragon seemed to be of a different type than the ones.

     I didn’t notice much more after that.  The two creatures lifted their thin arms and sent wave after wave of unfamiliar magic pulsing in my direction.  I began to understand what Frea meant by ‘here, yet not’.  It didn’t hurt, but I felt as though bits of my body were no longer there.  Afterward, the best thing I could describe it as was feeling like a sponge, with multiple tiny holes forming all throughout my body.  Whatever it was, eventually I could no longer see at all and entered into the same whirling kaleidoscope as I had upon entering, just without the tentacles this time.  I shut my eyes against the whirling greens, and when I opened them again, I was back in the temple, holding the book.  I released it instantly and allowed it to thump back onto the pedestal unceremoniously.

     “What happened?”  Frea’s impatient voice startled me and I spun around, staggering a bit in a moment of lightheadedness. 

     “Maybe you should tell me,” I suggested weakly.

     “One moment you were here, then you were gone.”

     So the book had actually transported my entire body to what appeared to be an alternate world.  I had heard of the possibility of such things but never expected to experience it myself.  It took a few minutes to explain everything to Frea, and afterward she stared at the wall with a glazed expression.  “So Miraak is indeed the source behind all of our troubles.  I am not surprised to know this, but I had hoped perhaps we were mistaken.”  She thought for a minute more, then suggested, “We should speak to my father, Storn-”

     “-the shaman, I know,” I finished tiredly, pressing my fingers against my temple.  “You go on.  I’ll catch up in a day or two, after I finish some business.”

     “Hurry.  Miraak’s power grows with every passing second.”  With that delightfully cheerful remark, she exited through the door to the left after quickly marking the location of her village on my map.  I gave her about a two minute head start then also left, blinking as I came out into the bright sunlight.  These places always had a secret exit near the end of the passages, for escape in case of an attack, as I suspected.  Although I guess that really wouldn’t make sense for burial crypts….  Whatever.  I started the long trek back across the ashy ground to Raven Rock, intent on getting a good sleep in the Retching Netch before heading to the village of the Skaal.  I would also, I decided, ask around a bit and find out a little more about the Skaal.  I was slightly surprised to find a village of Nords on Solstheim, which was under the dominion of Morrowind.  It had been a part of Skyrim before the eruption of the Red Mountain, so I supposed that could explain it.

     I was so preoccupied on my journey back to Raven Rock that I tripped over rocks twice, almost face planted into a tree, and failed to notice some kind of giant attacking grasshopper until it leapt into by back.  By the time I finally slogged under the wall and managed to convinced the guards that I wasn’t an ash spawn (there was some similarity between the glowing red parts of the Daedric armor and the rents in the ash spawns’ skin, I suppose) I was in a mood similar to that of a sabertooth cat that had been poked out of a restful sleep.  The innkeeper sensed this and quickly showed me to a room, inclining his head on the way out.  I dropped my helmet on the floor, running a hand through my hair in an attempt to get it to stop lying flat on my head, then shrugged off the rest of my armor down to my leather undershirt.  Sometimes I forgot how good it felt to not lug around 60 extra pounds with me everywhere I went.  Maybe I should wear Thieves’ Guild armor for a while.  Light armor wasn’t my specialty, but it wouldn’t hurt to wear it at least while I was in the Skaal village.  Laying down on my back on the bed, I stared up at the plain ceiling that wasn’t unlike the dozens of other ceilings I had stared at in the past years. 

     I had tried to settle down in my house in Whiterun once, but given it up in just a few days.  It seemed all anyone in Whiterun did was stand about ‘lollygagging’, as the guards put it, and drink ale in the Bannered Mare.  Normal life, to put it simply, bored me to death.  I loved the caressing touch of the wind from the back of a cantering horse, the majestic danger of the snow-capped peaks that formed much of Skyrim’s northern wilderness, even the stony depths of the deepest barrows where few went and even fewer survived.  How could a city ever compare to the wild beauty and wonder of the unsettled regions?

     Even in my own mind my thoughts were starting to sound like a poet’s drivel, so I quit thinking about the scenery and went to sleep.