Dragon of the East - Arc 2, Chapter 19

• Posted by Okan-Zeeus August 4, 2015 - 1,248 views

  Falura

  ~ ~ ~

  Tirdas, 9th of Hearthfire 4E 201

  Ustengrav sat in Skyrim’s version of a swamp. It wore the familiar pine trees of Skyrim’s forests mixed with murky water and burgeoning fungal pods. A light mist hovered above the cool wetlands. It was a perfect environment for crustaceans, namely mudcrabs, and all manner of unflattering creatures.

  Reinhardt planted a boot on the head of a frostbite spider and pulled his sword from its abdomen, casually continuing our conversation.

  “Now… what part was I at again?” he asked.

  I approached him tentatively. “You mentioned something about a wheel of cheese…”

  “Ah, that’s right! So my friend left the rest of his cheese wheel out in the woods. A noise woke us up in the night and we went to go take a look-see. His face when he saw that black bear! Ha! Ran back to the village like a headless chicken, screaming for help! Gunnar had us eating bear meat for days.”

  The Nord was retelling a tale from his youth. I don’t remember how we arrived at the particular topic. What I do recall were the spiders that appeared suddenly from the swamp as we neared Ustengrav and Reinhardt saying, “This’ll just take a second.”

  “Was… Gunnar the one who lost his arm?” I asked in dismay.                   

  “What? No, that was Fjorn. Completely different story.”

  Reinhardt started cleaning his blade with a cloth. He was quite handy with a sword, but his… sensibilities were most definitely the product of his culture. Given my unfamiliarity with the Nords of Skyrim, I admit that any exposure to their culture had its value. The more I learned about these people, the better I could mingle amongst them.

  What I had to ask myself was whether or not I actually wanted to.

  My companion smiled proudly at the clutch of dead spiders around him. I redirected his attention to the burial mound that appeared to be Ustengrav. It was a ring of stonework bulging up from the ground like an ant hill. We came to its upper lip and found a depression within, stairs leading down to a rotting wood door with iron reinforcement. It was hanging open on a single hinge.

  “This crypt has remained here since the first era,” I said. “This is rare opportunity for us, to glimpse an image of the past. Ancient Skyrim.”

  Reinhardt cautiously walked down the crumbling stone steps. “I’m having second thoughts about this…”

  I balked at him jokingly. “Reinhardt, I’m shocked. Is this fear I’m hearing?”

  The Nord grunted. “Fear? Not a chance. It’s just that… I was always taught to leave the dead in peace. Now we’re just gonna rummage through some old man’s tomb?”

  “The Dragonborn might have already had the honor. Do remember why we’re here.”

  “Oh, I know why we’re here.” Reinhardt pushed aside the rotting door to the dark catacombs. “Got to find out if our dragon killing lizard’s been in this neck of the north…”

  I stepped into the musty tunnel behind him, striking the ground with my staff. A flame appeared on its crystal head, illuminating the path. The tube-like corridor of stone was covered in a grimy film. Tree vines crept down along the walls. We commenced our descent.

  “Please abstain from using that term until we know for certain it’s correct,” I said stiffly. Lizard. Reinhardt had clearly been convinced by the accounts of the Dragonborn in Whiterun.

  “Are you still on about that?” The Nord groaned. “Ysmir’s beard… I heard Vilkas say it himself. Aela saw him too! The Dragonborn’s an Argonian.”

  “That is what the evidence seems to suggest. But I shall not be convinced until I see it.”

  “Lots of people saw it. They can’t all be liars.”

  “Lies are beside the point. I’m a scientist. I consider it my duty to question the nature of all things. Every Dragonborn in recorded history has been human. It is a clear, established pattern. To propose a deviation requires substantial proof.”

  “Proof? What, my word not good enough for you?”

  I stopped and looked at my companion sternly, but with a smile.

  “Reinhardt, your word has as much weight as anyone else’s. This has nothing to do with you or the other Companions. I’m simply being the stubborn crone that I am. You’re not going to change that, so let’s return to the matter at hand.”

  The burly Nord grinned back. “You’re the boss.”

  I did not care what the Nords of Whiterun thought they had seen. I had to know for myself with certainty the Dragonborn’s racial identity. If he was indeed Argonian, that raised a very grave concern. I knew a great deal about their kind – more than most Dunmer.

  We entered a large ruined chamber rife with rock slides and broken pillars. The glow from my staff barely reached the ceiling. A pattering of tiny feet and crumbling dust came from whatever occupants still dwelled in the catacombs. I saw light coming from an entryway ahead. A small fire was burning.

  “Someone’s been here recently,” I said. “A fire wouldn’t–”

  “Shhh! I hear something,” Reinhardt hissed.

  I sealed my lips. A high-pitched, throaty burble echoed from the inner hall. Reinhardt drew his sword as he stepped first into the firelight. Something touched his ankle. He yelped and swiped his blade at the large creature on the ground. Pale blue blood stained the floor. It was another frostbite spider.

  “Trolls blood!” Reinhardt exclaimed softly, lowering his voice as he looked around the room. “Falura… you’re not gonna like this. Remember those spiders back in swamp?”

  I walked slowly into the room, filled with a blurry haze of smoke. Glistening spider silk covered the walls. Sacks of small creatures wrapped in cocoons hung everywhere. There was one lying on the ground with a noticeably human shape.

  “Think we might’ve found where they came from,” the Nord said sourly.

  I did not speak, drawing closer to the human shaped cocoon. Reinhardt joined me and nodded as I requested that he open the sack. A human female laid inside, jaw slack, features paled and emaciated to the point of losing recognition. It wasn’t the Dragonborn, at least. We separated and searched the room individually for a time.

  “Spiders don’t know how to light fires, do they?” my companion asked sarcastically, eyeing a burning pot of coals.

  “Reinhardt, look over here,” I said. “These spiders are already dead.”

  The Nord came over and raised his brow. “Oh-ho. Those are clean cuts from a blade. Blood’s fresh too… These fellows haven’t been dead long.” He looked at me optimistically. “You think maybe the Dragonborn…?”

  “It is a promising lead,” I admitted. “Let’s follow it.”

  Further onward we went. The webs of silk became progressively thicker, encasing clutches of eggs the size of melons. The entire crypt had become a nest for frostbite spiders. I used my staff to clear the webs that stood in our way while consciously leaving the eggs alone. We passed rooms filled with large clay urns, many of which were smashed and looted. As we approached a door I saw a glimmer in one of the broken urns and stopped to take a look.

  What luck! A small trove of soul gems were nestled inside the broken bowl. They weren’t filled but that did not displace their value. Sad that I hadn’t the means to cast soul trappings; Reinhardt would have been perfect for that. I made a mental note to enchant his sword at the earliest opportunity. It was just a matter of finding a pentagram I could use. Having the Nord serve as a soul harvester would make him twice as useful.

  “Hey!” Reinhardt exclaimed, seeing me pack the soul gems into my bag. “Come on Falura, no grave robbing! You can’t just go and take those!”

  “It would be a waste to let these gems sit here collecting dust.”

  “Someone left them here for a reason. Don’t you elves honor your dead?”     

  “By burying them with their possessions? Most certainly. That doesn’t mean I don’t find the practice pointless.”

  “The dead were alive once. They had wishes,” he grumbled.

  “Precisely. Burials are for the living, not the dead,” I replied.

  Reinhardt swatted at the air. “Ah, alright… Take ‘em. I’m not gonna fight you over this.”

  I smiled. “It’s for a good cause, Reinhardt.”

  We entered a tall passageway. A bridge crossed overhead, connecting tunnels in the upper rock. There was a bizarre verticality to the crypt’s recesses. Several stone sarcophagi stood upright through the hall. Their lids had been opened, though nothing rested inside them. I counted six spiders of varying size. The flame of my staff disclosed our presence. They shambled toward us along the walls and ceiling. It was unnerving the way their pattering steps were almost silent.

  “More of them,” Reinhardt growled, gripping his sword. “Guess the Dragonborn missed a few. Watch my back, Falura.”

  “Settle down,” I said, holding an arm up in front of him. “I have a better solution.”

  I pulled a scroll from my tote bag. With an open palm pointed at the ground, I channeled the scroll’s magic and a deep purple vortex began to whorl in my hand. The spell cast on the floor with a brassy ring as it ripped through the fabric of Nirn.

  A dark portal appeared, summoning a creature from Oblivion, then resealed itself. In its place was a floating pile of rocks in the shape of a torso and head. Smaller stones orbited around it, some forming hand-like appendages. Electrified clouds cloaked the creature in a pulsing blue glow.

  It was a storm atronach, an embodiment of destruction magic.

  The spiders advanced to no avail. Bolts of powerful lightning shot from the creature’s hands and hurled them across the room. There were soon none left to stand against it. The atronach hovered back to me, its summoner, and resumed its vigil by my side. It felt delightful to be in the safety of a conjured guardian. My adoptive father always kept a daedra bound to our estate for protection. It was a fire atronach in the years before I left to join the Telvanni. Before that it was a Clanfear, a shield-faced raptor-like creature. I have memories of my brother and I playing with it.

  “Our new friend will not be with us very long,” I spoke to Reinhard in a formal tone, “but he will ensure a much safer journey through Ustengrav. Come, let’s not be rude. We mustn’t waste his time.”

  The Nord sheathed his sword with disappointment.

  “Think your friend could, uh… save a few for me…?”

  We three descended deeper into the bowels of the crypt. The endeavor itself was relatively uneventful. My storm atronach dispatched the many spiders we encountered along the way. The Nordic crypt eventually opened into a vast chasm. We crossed a bridge that led to a corridor and came upon something quite unforeseen.

  A puzzle.

  “Oh, this won’t do at all,” I sighed, watching the iron gates at the corridor’s far end. They banged down heavily on the stone floor. The mechanism holding them up had released.

  Reinhardt lifted his foot off of a pressure plate. There were five plates built into the ground in an alternating pattern, like left and right footsteps, leading toward a narrow tunnel filled with a series of five gates. Each gate lifted by stepping on the plates in mirrored order. The plate farthest back opened the gate farthest away and vice versa.

  However, there were timers in place. Each gate would drop after a few seconds. If you failed to get through the gates fast enough, you’d find yourself trapped in between with no way to open them again. Skeletal remains lying in the tunnel conveyed a clear warning.

  To make matters worse, there was at least a ten foot gap between the last plate and the first gate, lengthening the time it took to even reach the tunnel. Running through all five gates before their timers ran out was physically impossible.

  If I had to hazard a guess, the puzzle was meant to be solved by a Dragonborn. Perhaps he would possess some ability, taught by the Greybeards, that allowed him to pass under the gates before they dropped. As elaborate as the puzzle appeared, though, it was exploitable. Two people could work in tandem to solve it: one pushing the pressure plates and the other advancing through the gates. But this presented a problem.

  “You know what this means, right?” the Nord asked.

  “Mm… One of us will have to continue on alone,” I said.

  Reinhardt snapped his fingers. “Wait, what about your floating rock man? Couldn’t he push the–”

  His timing could not have been better. As he spoke, the storm atronach fizzled out of existence. The magic that kept him in Mundus was spent.

  “Sadly no,” I replied. “Not anymore.”                                                     

  My companion swore an obscenity. A decision had to be made. Which one of us would continue onward through Ustengrav’s depths? Without knowing what was ahead or who would be best equipped…

  “Coin flip?” Reinhardt suggested.

  “Must we?”

  “It’s only fair.”

  “Very well…”

  The Nord pulled a coin from his pocket.

  “Tiber I win, dragon you lose.”

  “Reinhardt, please! Don’t be a child.”

  He chuckled. “Call it.”

  I sighed. “Tiber.”

  He tossed the coin up with a flick of his thumb, caught it and flipped it over on the back of his gauntlet.

  “Dragon,” he said with a grin. “Wish me luck.”

  I set myself near the pressure plates while Reinhardt assumed his starting position. I wasn’t going to have him run through the gates, goodness no. I opened them in order one at a time, letting Reinhardt pass through each slowly but safely.

  Once he was on the other side, I walked up to the gates. The light of Reinhardt’s torch shined through the tunnel.

  “Is there a way to open the gates from your end?” I called to him.

  “I don’t see anything,” he said.

  Curse it. That was too much to hope for… There must be another exit further within.

  “Remember Reinhardt, you’re looking for Windcaller’s coffin! Try to find where the artifact is kept. And don’t forget to record what you see! There might be other clues!”

  “Loud and clear, Falura,” he replied with a wave. The Nord disappeared down the tunnel. I held my staff close to my chest. Reinhardt was a capable warrior, but I couldn’t help but fear for his safety. I turned around and went back the way we came to wait outside. It was up to him now to find what we needed.

  I could not, however, have predicted what he would end up actually finding. Reinhardt returned to me on the surface later that day.

  He did not return alone.

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