Bleak Falls Barrow
The warrior's breath misted faintly in the barrows chill air. Bleached bone fragments shifted underfoot, the sound echoing around the cramped tunnels and dusty chambers. Eerie lighting falling from above cast the maiden's bare upper arms in a pallid ghostly light, glinting on the fresh nicks on her iron breastplate. Her hardy Nordish body was tense as a spring, fully alert for the slightest sign of danger.
Human voices at the other end of the chamber. Probably the bandits the Valerius man had spoken of. Under the metal her heartbeat quickened. One hand traced the lengthy grip of the greatsword at her back.
An arm reached around her body like a snake, pinning the warrior against her ambusher's thick torso. The accumulated stench of ale, leather and sweat was overpowering.
"I'd gut you right now if it wouldn't be more fun to take it slow-"
The Nord spun sharply and slammed backwards, buffeting the man between the stone wall and her iron plate. With a grunt he loosed his hold, and in an instant his intended victim leaped free, drawing her sword in a single movement and bringing the blow round. The cold blade sang through the air, striking deep and true. Dark blood spurted over the stones. Growing up in an Orc stronghold, one picked up a few things.
As his body fell to the floor Nord maiden froze.
She kept her sword at the ready. It was almost five feet long, designed for the powerful, stubborn fighting style she preferred. Not many got back up after a double handed swing from one such as this. Yesterday she had forged it, cobbling together the few coins she had to her name in this country for iron. The blacksmith had looked her up and down and proclaimed that such a girl would never be fit to lift the blade, let alone wield it. She had spent the next ten minutes proving him wrong, and winning a hundred-septum wager into the bargain. When the burly man had finally conceded, sweat pouring from his brow, the maiden simply walked away. Her winnings were left as payment.
The other two bandits, hearing the commotion, had drawn their own weapons. Another Nord like herself armed with a battleaxe and a Redguard woman with an arrow already knocked to her bow.
The warrior smiled grimly to herself. This she could handle.
The game changed when the first of the ancient dead sat up and took a swing at her. She parried on instinct, a moment later feeling the blank, icy glare of its long emptied sockets. The sight chilled her to the bone. Its features were stretched thin over the angular skull, the dead flesh translucent and brittle. Armour still hung from rotted straps over its emaciated frame, etched with strange markings the Nord had never before seen.
She stood transfixed. Then a withered hand wielding an axe swung round, and her body reacted is if it were just another opponent. The great blade came to bear, and it seemed that the dead could be twice-slain after all.
Draugr. The second came easier after that, and the next, and the next, as long as she didn't meet the glow of the hollow eyes.
Though the most horrific, the undead were not the only dangers of the barrow. Twice mouldering ropes gave way, loosing hot lanterns into pools of oil and setting blasts that shook the walls. The maiden had flung herself clear in time, but the ferocity of the explosions was terrible. Hidden plates released swinging axes, large enough to cleave a troll in two. The hot rush of adrenaline as the warrior flattened her body to the wall set her limbs a-thrill. Realising the fact that she was grinning, the Nord had questioned her own sanity, but the fact remained that this was the most alive she'd felt in an age. Helgen… that was a dark dream, but this, this was a road she had chosen, and it felt good.
But after several hours in the stifling gloom, every other corpse reaching for her throat with its wizened fingers, the feeling faded. The Nord dared not loose the death grip upon her sword hilt, and the pressure of being constantly on the alert began to eat away at her. She began to wonder just how far underground she had come, and if she could find the way back if she turned around now. The pressure of the mountain above was almost a tangible sensation.
After what seemed like days but what cannot have been more than eighteen hours without sleep or sunlight the tunnel widened, and a long hallway carven with strange figures spread out into the darkness before the wanderer. Warriors, creatures, mages and demons, all frozen in amber stone. They almost seemed to shift in the flickering torchlight, carrying on their eternal silent dance of conflict and pain. There was a door, with a central keyhole and three wheels that still turned with a shove, despite the dust of years. There was something about the keyhole…almost like the indentation of a claw…The claw! The bandits had had a pile of treasure, but the one piece that had mattered was a golden trinket, shaped like a dragon's claw. That was what she had been hired to recover, and recover it she had. Now to only escape the depths of the barrow with it. Looking closer, the underside of the claw was carved with three totem animals; an owl, a moth, and an ice bear. When the three wheels were turned to the corresponding animals, the key clicked into the mechanism and the door fell open.
At once the scent of fresh air flooded her nostrils. Light, spilling down from cavities in the cavern roof, pooled around a raised dais. A stairway, leading upward, promised to return the warrior to the surface world. Greenery had even sprung up, and a slender stream wound its way through the cave.
Throwing caution to the winds, the Nord ran forward. She could almost feel the snow on her lips, the caress of the chill breeze tugging at her hair. Her sword slack in a one-handed grip, she clattered up the steps. Just as she reached the dais, however, a roaring in her ears almost knocked her dizzy. A thousand voices, chanting, singing, calling to her. Almost without knowing it, her footsteps were dragged toward a wall. A wall covered in strange markings, almost slash wounds in the rock. The maiden's vision blurred and she sank to her knees as a force, visceral in its intensity, hummed through her bones. The chanting became a roaring of the blood in her ears, as a blinding silver light burned into her retinas. Her stomach churned, her bones shuddered and her eyes watered, as one sole single word filled her consciousness:
FUS…
The crack of the sarcophagus lid splitting open almost didn't penetrate her stunned reverie. The walking corpse-lord lurched toward the kneeling woman, raising an ancient two-handed blade above her head, but the Nord parried at the last second, looking up from where she knelt into the rotting face only inches from her own, held separate by the virtue of the two crossed blades, one cold and age-old, one but two days forged and barely scarred. The Draugr snarled like a raging beast, its corpse-breath foul and choking. A maggot writhed in the hollow of its left cheek.
Seasoned soldiers have quavered at such a sight; the nerves of the most battle-hardened Sellswords of Tamriel have broken under the glacial gaze of the northern dead. But the red-headed swordmaiden, clad in new-forged iron without a septim to her name, on that fateful day beneath the rock and bones of Skyrim, stood firm.
Her head was full of voices chanting a tongue she knew not, her heart was full of sky and wind and sunlight, and her sword was a thunderbolt as the parry became a shove with all of her might, staggering her assailant backward before the blade continued its motion and bit deep into the ribcage of her foe with a sickening sound. She yelled like a hunting hawk in triumph as the Draugr's spine was sundered, but her victory was too swiftly assumed, as the broken, impaled body cast aside its weapon and dragged itself further along the blade, reaching for the maidens face with gnarled, dry, claw-like fingers until its stomach touched the crossguard. It grappled for a chokehold, but the warrior leaped back with a cry of dismay, pulling the sword free and swinging it back around to cleave the helmed head from the corpse's shoulders. It spun through the air and landed with a scuffle at the bottom of the stairway. For one hideous moment, the cold blue eyes continued to bore into her own from the severed head, before their sickly pale light went out.
Pausing only to gather up the cold Draugr blade, the Nord hurtled up the stairway and at last filled her lungs with the taste of Skyrim snow.