Let me just say right now, I hate draugr. Hate them. Falkar had spider issues - I'll talk about him later, and Ralof wasn't a fan of those either if you recall. Me, it’s undead. I would fight dragons every day for an eternity before I would ever want to step foot in a hall of the dead, and to this day they still give me the creeps. But the thing about Skyrim is there are a lot of barrows; Nords make it a personal goal to die in battle, and they never seem to rest easy.
Thankfully ignorance is bliss; we do not know our futures and I had no idea where that court wizard was going to send me. When I entered his rooms, I found him conversing with an older woman; blond hair only just going grey, wearing a simple innkeeper’s dress. I’m pretty good at reading body language – old habits again – and my instincts starting to sing just watching them speak together. It was a stilted conversation which seemed to me as if there were a lot of details being left out as soon as they realised I was in the room. More to the point she didn’t move right; I know most of the Nord people are tough and even an innkeeper can be expected to pick up a dagger and defend themselves, but this woman moved like a hunter. And the wizard even seemed to offer a bit of respect and deference to her...not the sort of attitude someone would expect to show to the housemaid bringing a tray for the lunch repast. Still I knew the direct approach of asking who she was wouldn’t get me anywhere, but I memorised her face best I could when she walked away. Who knows, I thought, it could pay to remember her.
My attention however was now turned to the wizard himself. Like most scholars, he was more intrigued by knowledge than any sort of common sense, and he quizzed me for longer than I cared to talk about the dragon and how I had encountered it. That I had been running for my life and escaped an execution by a hairsbreadth was immaterial to him. I figured he wasn’t even remotely interested in why I had been captured, but just wanted to know the finest details about the dragon itself. Of course there wasn’t much I could tell him, and even less than I cared to admit. Those burning eyes, staring right at me…
In any event, Farengar had a job for me – he wanted me to seek out something called a Dragonstone. He knew of its existence, but he had no idea what it actually was, or what it did. Not exactly a huge lead. It also wasn’t exactly a job I wanted to do. Farengar may have been young and unbearded, but he wasn’t stupid, and he watched me rather shrewdly as I stood in stony silence, trying to decide whether I could make my way out of the gates and them perhaps just hit a few houses between here and the coast before making my way back on open water.
“I am sure you think it’s not your problem. You’re a Bosmer, and we’re a neutral city. No Stormcloaks, no Imperials,” Farengar said smoothly as he turned the pages on one of his journals. ”Well, that may be true, but you may have noticed that wood elves are rare in Skyrim. Word travels fast in my country. I don’t know what you were doing in Helgen, but I’m sure someone would want to know where you may have ended up.”
“Is that supposed to be a threat?” I scowled, going for the intimidation angle. I could have spared myself the show; I wasn’t on my own ground, and he knew it, merely regarding me coolly from beneath his wizard’s cowl.
“No, it’s not a threat at all. It’s merely an observation. Stay here and help, and the Nord people will care for you in return. Turn your backs upon us and think only for yourself? Well, that won’t go so well out here. Skyrim is big, but you’ll find there’s not many places to hide.”
Match to the wizard, then. I glared, then sighed and shrugged. ”Fine…what do I have to do?”
And so, several hours later, I found myself in Bleak Falls Barrow, covered in bone dust and cobwebs, shaking in my boots and wishing I had brought a small army along with me. Every single skeleton in a crypt seemed to be staring at me, and I never knew which one was going to decide to shift, stand up and walk, shambling toward me with glowing eyes. I was half-mad with terror and yet there was nothing more to do but go on; I was hopelessly lost.
There was also signs here and there that someone else had come down this way. A trap or two had been set off, and there were scuffs through the dust and dirt on the floor, looking rather recent too. Someone else was down here, and while it could have been argued it was more of those blasted undead, I was hoping and praying it wasn’t. After all, draugr didn’t need torches, and some of the sconces along the walls were lit.
Squinting in the gloom, I could glimpse some spiderwebs ahead which were woven so thickly, I’d have to cut my way through. That I could deal with however – spiders, ironically, were a welcome change from draugr, although the spiders of Skyrim were so big they rivalled the ones back home. I checked my quiver for arrows, readied my blade and stepped forward to cut my way through into the chamber beyond, then froze. Someone inside was calling for help. Someone alive.
I was lost and scared out of my wits…but I also had a shred of compassion too, I suppose. Maybe this one would know the way out and guide me, or we could combine forces. Who knew? In any event, this was the one corridor still going inside the barrow I hadn’t tried, so I’d have to deal with the spiders anyway. Bracing my sword arm, I cut my way in, dispatching two of the spiders on the ground and then pressing myself against the wall and looking up. Being from Valenwood, a Bosmer always knows that danger isn’t always on the ground, and in this case the rule held true.
Hovering in ambush by a thread as thick as my wrist was a large spider. Huge, actually; I was pretty impressed. The cries over to my left grew more strident.
“Kill it! Quickly, before it eats me!”
I didn’t need encouragement – indeed, with all that yammering, I didn’t want him alerting the draugr to our presence, so it was going to have to be a fast kill, and the spider too was in a hurry, dropping to the ground and making its way quickly toward me. Frostspiders are fast and very venomous, so I had to do a lot of fancy footwork to stay out of the reach of its fangs. The fight took fairly longer than I would have liked, but eventually the giant spider was dead, and I made my way to the victim’s side. I found a rather lean Dunmer, wrapped up like a parcel and dangling in the spider’s web. He struggled, kicking and flailing and only making it worse. His armour was a mish-mash of whatever he could find, same as mine, so perhaps a thief, or an adventurer thinking to make some money on raiding the tomb before he was caught. Either way, I was so happy to see another living soul I didn’t think too hard about it.
“Hold still, that won’t do,” I admonished him, drawing my blade again.
“Quickly, please, cut me down.”
“Sure…if you’ll show me the way out.”
“Yes, yes, anything!”
I made quick work of the web, and he landed on his feet – and broke into a run. I couldn’t believe how fast he was, actually. Before I could reach out and grab him, he shot off to the right down a corridor, laughing. ”Fool!” And just like that, he was gone.
I cursed under my breath, then sighed. So much for having a shred of compassion. Still, the colder part of my brain reasoned it out – he was fast, but then so was I. The footpad obviously knew which way he was going, and if he blazed the way ahead, he might spare me a bit of bother by fighting everything ahead of me so I wouldn’t have to. I cleaned the cobwebs from my sword best I could and then crept along in the dunmer’s wake.
I could hear the ring of steel and the creaking of draugr rising from their crypts, the very sound bringing my heart into my mouth, but the treacherous elf ahead of me was fighting valiantly even so. He managed to make it a fair way before the walking dead did him in, and steeling myself best I was able, I ducked up behind the last draugr and slit its sinewy neck. The dunmer was lying at me feet in a pool of his own blood. Well enough, then! He had managed to get quite far, and at the end of the shadowy corridor I could see a circular door of some kind. Maybe in there…
I searched the dead thief’s body and found a curious thing; an artifact of some kind, shaped like a claw and made of gold. Three symbols were stamped into the interior of the claw, and with it was a book of scrawled notes written in a bold hand. It seemed the golden claw was some sort of key – and I probably couldn’t have gotten any further without it, it seemed. Very well then, it was worth having. I took it up and approached the door, eyeing the stone door somewhat warily.
It was a puzzle; three concentric rings with symbols all along the centre. I had to match up the symbols – and I quickly realised I could only do that by putting the symbols in the order of the same symbols on the claw itself, then resting the three claws into three depressions in the centre stone. At first, nothing happened, but then I could hear ancient workings whirring, dislodging the dust of centuries, and then finally the circular door sunk into the floor.
Before me was a large chamber, lit from above, and down below was a crypt. However…there was something else here. It set my teeth on edge, and the hairs on the back of my neck stuck out like wire. Something was here…something new, something I had never encountered before in my life. I warily crept forward, but I couldn’t have turned back if I had wanted to (and believe me I did!). It felt as if there was a huge hand at my back, propelling me forward.
I’m trying to remember it all…how it first felt to approach a Wall. Back then, I didn’t know what any of it meant, or why. All I saw was a large, curved wall, with harsh runes in a language I had never seen before carved into the very rock. Words, yes, but words I didn’t recognise or understand. I found myself moving forward, and my vision blurred. My heart was hammering in my chest, and still the wall pulled me forward, some of the runes before me beginning to glow. A wind picked up out of nowhere – I was in the bottom of a tomb, mind - and something flowed through me, and then…gone. Well, not gone entirely – I could see again, but something had happened. Something had changed. I didn’t know what…but it had.
Remember what I said about not knowing the future? Once again, ignorance is bliss.
I staggered, gasping and trying to come to grips with what had just happened, but there was no time. Behind me I could hear the dreaded shifting of a crypt’s cover – and there was no one in the room but myself. Well, no one living and breathing, anyway. I shuddered, gripping my sword and turning round to face yet another draugr, although this one was dressed in what must have been a richly ornamented set of armour, carrying a massive curved blade.
No time to think of anything…I just had to fight, and fight I did, hacking at the draugr’s limbs and choking on corpse-dust. It took time, for draugr feel no pain, but eventually I struck the blow which put it back down to rest, hopefully forever this time.
I gingerly stepped over the twice-dead corpse and fighting back the urge to be ill, searched inside its sepulchre. Inside was a shard of stone, it looked almost like a map on one side, and on the other were the same runes on the wall behind me. The Dragonstone, then…and the wall behind me was also something to do with dragons. But why had it drawn me forward, and what had it done?
Questions for another time; I was still in a barrow of the dead, and I had no desire to linger. I did have enough presence of mind to pocket a few of the burial trinkets in the stone coffin, and then I found a rusted chain on a nearby wall which thankfully let me back up and out into sunlight and open air. I lay on the ground, gasping and trembling, blessing the very sky over my head. Damn barrows. Damn draugr. Damn wyrd.
I shoved both golden claw and Dragonstone into my packs, then made my weary way back to Whiterun. I wanted a bath, and at least a jug of mead for each hand. If I could get drunk enough, I could maybe prevent myself from dreaming about draugr. I’d return the artifact to the wizard in the morning. And so, freshly scrubbed from the local inn’s sauna room and drunk enough to make the world spin, I flopped into a rented room’s bed and slept.
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