Chapter 7: Bleak Falls Barrow
Katie was astonished as, for the second time in her life, she felt her wounds closing up all the way by magic. Her cuts sealed themselves, her bruises faded from existence; the deeper wounds made by some of the arrows of her enemy filled and closed, as though they'd never been, and at last, as she put the empty potion bottle back into her bag, even her skin and hair felt smoother than they had that afternoon. She looked just as if she'd never been wounded in her life. Still, although she felt better than she ever had, she still had some regrets about using her first potion so soon. She might have been able to take on another bandit, but she wasn't as sure as she had been before.
As soon as Katie had entered the barrow, she'd found herself in a big cave with a lot of dead skeevers, an altar, two dead bandits, and unfortunately, two living ones. Neither of them had hit very hard, but they'd worn her down quite a bit before she'd managed to slay them, almost doubling the injuries she'd received in her last fight. That was why she'd taken the potion.
The bandits had some gold and some gear on them, which she could probably sell later, and they also had a chest, which, when Katie smashed the lock open with her spear, contained some low-level potions for healing and magic. However, what she most took an interest in were the skeever tails.
The skeevers were a lot like large rats, the size of dogs, and their tails were causing her magic bottle to glow. Still, when she opened her book to investigate, she discovered that while the tails did have uses, they were very poisonous, and for a while, she hesitated to touch them. In the end, though, she did eventually start cutting the tails off the skeevers and putting them into her bag, along with all of the other things she'd gathered. Then, she headed off down into the cave, traveling through a tunnel at the far end; away from the entrance.
The tunnel continued on into the mountain for quite some distance, past urns, bookshelves and large torches, and through some disgustingly-thick webs, until at last, Katie found herself at an actual doorway, sculpted out of the stone. Still, as she looked through, she saw someone on the other side; probably another bandit. He was standing in the middle of the next chamber; another rather large area, and approaching a stone pedestal; which was about five feet high, in the middle of the room. Katie couldn't see much of the rest of the room from where she was, and she was afraid to move, for fear of drawing yet another enemy's attention.
Soon, however, the bandit had placed both hands on the stone pedestal, and just like that, there was a hissing noise from inside the chamber, a scream of pain, and the bandit had fallen over on the floor.
Katie didn't even stop to think about the danger. Grabbing the door frame with her left hand, she quickly slid into the room and rushed over to where the bandit was lying on the ground. She felt his arms and wrists for a moment, then looked into his eyes. Last of all, she held one of her bottles up to his mouth and took a look at it. There was no fog at all on the outside of the bottle, and that could only mean one thing. There wasn't any breath left in his body. The bandit was dead.
It was only once she realized that, that Katie began to think of the danger. Quickly, she looked up from where she'd been looking the bandit over, though it seemed that whatever had killed him wasn't aiming at her; at least not yet. Still, it only took her a few moments to discover how the bandit had died. No less than five small needles were protruding from the skin of his neck and torso, and a dull yellow liquid was dripping from them onto his skin.
Quickly, she got up and looked around. She couldn't see where the needles had come from, though she suspected that they'd been fired from inside the walls somewhere. She had to wonder if it was the kind of trap that, once spent, was out of ammunition, or if it was reloading itself at that very moment. In the end, though, she decided that either way, she was better off being safe than stuck by poisoned needles.
In another moment, Katie looked at the top of the stone pillar, and began to realize just what had activated the trap. On that pillar, there were three small levers, made of metal. Obviously, the bandit had activated the trap by pulling the wrong one, or else, by pulling one in the wrong way, or at the wrong time, or perhaps in the wrong order.
Katie had seen levers like those before. A system similar to it blocked off the inner sanctum of the temple of Dibella in Hammerfell, but she'd never bothered with trying to figure out how to crack a puzzle like that.
That was when she realized just why the bandit had touched the levers, because as she looked up from them, she realized that aside from the door that she'd come in by, there was only one other door, leading out of the room, and it was blocked off by a thick, iron gate. Those levers, she realized, were the only way to open the door, or at least, the only obvious way.
Then again, she thought, why should the designer of that chamber make it so obvious? Maybe the real means of getting past the gate was hidden somewhere, or maybe the levers really were the means, but there was some trick to opening them.
As Katie puzzled over the secret of the levers, she bend down to look at a large inscription on the side of the stone pillar, although it was in a language that she couldn't read, and probably wouldn't have helped much, anyway. You don't, she reasoned, leave instructions on how to open a door that you've installed death traps to guard.
Katie spent the next few minutes pacing around the chamber, looking at the carvings on the walls, looking back at the levers again, and finally, circling the stone platform a few times as she puzzled it over. The curious lock was aggravating, and she was just starting to wonder if she could count her brief journey as a full exploration of the barrow, when she noticed something about the carvings on the walls; on four of the six wall panels, there was a tiny carving; no bigger than a potion bottle, which looked like the head of a dragon, and on the remaining two panels, there were large carvings, drawn to look like swords, standing upright. Those carvings, she thought, might be a clue.
Dragons, of course, represented death and the end of the world, but also colossal power and a gift of the gods, as her father had once told her. Which of those things, she wondered, did the dragon carvings of Skyrim represent? What was the meaning of the sword? If pressed, she might have thought that the dragon carvings represented Akatosh, but she wasn't aware of any god represented by a sword.
Though she had misgivings about it, and she was starting to feel afraid that at any moment, one of those sword carvings might start firing poison needles at her, Katie reached up for one of them, and gasped in shock. The sword carving had moved under her touch, shaking loose a cloud of grit and dusk; as though it was only loosely connected to the rest of the carvings on the wall.
Soon, Katie had pulled the sword carving out as far as it would go, finding that it was connected to the wall by concealed hinges, and would fold upward, but that it was impossible to remove it from the wall completely. When she pulled the sword carving up, there was a snapping noise, and it slid about an inch into wall. Fortunately, though, no traps were activated by that, and soon, she'd done the same thing with the second sword carving, hearing another snapping sound as she did so. Clearly, whatever she was doing, it was having some kind of effect, though she couldn't tell what it was, until she turned to look at the dragon carvings again, and stared in wonder.
Two of the dragon carvings had opened their mouths, as if to breathe deadly flame right into the chamber, and, Katie found, they were the very two dragon heads that the sword carvings, which were sticking right out of the walls by that point, were pointed towards. That was when an idea of what she needed to do began to dimly form in her mind, and soon, in spite of the danger, she was standing at the pedestal in the middle of the room, with her hands on the levers that were there. The ones on the left and right, she saw, were shaped like the hilt of a sword.
Perhaps a bit too readily, Katie yanked on the left lever; not to try to pull it back, like the bandit had done, but to try to turn it around. She'd been developing a theory about the levers, and sure enough, the one on the left was rotating in place; its hilt turning in a new direction, and she kept turning it until it faced a third dragon sculpture.
With a snap, the third dragon head opened its mouth, and that confirmed everything.
In seconds, Katie had begun rotating the right lever as well, turning it to face the last dragon head. She wasn't sure what to expect once the dragon's mouths were all open, but it certainly seemed as if she was closer to solving the door's puzzle. However, at last, when the last of the dragon mouths opened, something began spilling out of the mouths of the dragons; some kind of green smoke, which she didn't recognize, though she hoped it wasn't another kind of poison.
However, the main reason why she was unfamiliar with the sight of that green vapor, was because she was largely unfamiliar with magic. Otherwise, she might have noticed that a sort of illusion spell was being cast on the chamber. In seconds, she could hear a voice that seemed to be coming, not from the dragon heads, but from the swords.
"Miss?" the voice asked, sounding both gruff and uncommonly deep "Just what do you think you're doing here?"
Though she suspected that the voice wasn't real, and she was starting to get a little scared, Katie spoke up a moment later, addressing the voice as boldly as she could, "I'm here because I have to be; because my parents, and the people of my hometown need help."
"Sounds like a dangerous mission." the voice replied, sounding almost amused as it spoke, "You really think you're up to that, miss?"
Katie swallowed, because the voice was very intimidating, and the way it had replied to her seemed to prove that it wasn't any normal illusion. Still, she gathered up her courage and spoke her next words carefully.
"I don't know, but I have to do the best I can. I've just had my whole life snatched out from under me, and I realized, even if I die, I have to protect my family. Even if I have to fight, I'll fight for them. I know that may sound silly, but I have something worth dying for."
"Miss..." the voice said, starting to echo just a little more in a threatening manner, "That's not good enough. I'm sure you don't want to die. The question is; do you want to win? Are you willing to spill blood? Are you willing to strike first, and strike hard? Are you willing to fight your enemies by making sure they're terrified of you?"
Once again, Katie wasn't sure what to say, but as she thought about what she'd just been asked, she realized that the answer was much simpler than she'd suspected; much simpler than she'd ever thought possible.
"For the sake of my family..." Katie responded, her own voice trembling just a bit as she spoke, "yes. I will."
Just like that, the mist that had been pouring from the mouths of the dragons stopped, and Katie could feel the effects of the enchantment beginning to wear off. She was so stunned by what she'd just been through, that she barely even noticed what had happened to the third lever on the pedestal. One half of the lever had split open, revealing a tiny, metal stud on the inside of the switch. Katie only hesitated for a moment before she reached forward and pushed it, then watched in amazement as the great, iron gate in front of her unlocked, and began retreating into the ceiling above the doorway. She still wasn't sure what had just happened to her, or what sort of wizard had designed that trap chamber, but she didn't waste time worrying about it, continuing on through the once-blocked door.
Katie soon found herself in a small room with a treasure chest in it, containing some gold, which she took along with a healing potion and an odd-looking gem, then she moved down some thick, wooden stairs to a hallway filled with thick webbing, and it was there that three skeevers made their attack. However, Katie was able to crush one in a single blow, and after only a moment, skewered the other two with her spear like a shish kebab. All together, only one of them had even managed to bite her, and it had only been a very minor bite, doing almost no damage.
She'd just finished collecting the tails of the skeevers, when suddenly, Katie heard a voice from further down the web-filled hallway; the voice of some man who sounded absolutely terrified. He was shouting for some of his friends, as though he were afraid that they'd all died and left him alone.
Katie wasn't sure whether the terrified man was a friend or an enemy, but he sounded like he needed help in any case, so she continued down the hallways, towards the sound of the voice, cutting through another disgusting web barrier as she went, until she found herself in one of the most revolting rooms she'd ever seen in her life.
The entire room was like the inside of a spider's nest. Three-foot-tall egg sacks stood upright on the floor, and web seemed to cover every wall, and the whole ceiling. However, it seemed that the terrified man had noticed her, because he'd begun to shout to her in desperation.
"Look out! Up above you!"
It was only then that Katie noticed the massive shadow on the floor, and tried to get out of the way, but the thing that had cast that shadow could fall a lot faster than she could move, and she was knocked over as a massive spider; bigger than any horse she'd ever seen; came crashing down, waving its forearms like claws. Fortunately, though, she was able to keep hold of her spear, and used it to right herself a moment later, though the spider had time to fire a poisoned web ball at her while she was getting up. It didn't, however, get to launch another attack before she'd driven her spear into its head.
Katie could hear the shrill, rapid clicking as the spider tried to retreat in pain, all while lashing out with its arms, but although it got in a good hit or two against her, it was quickly becoming obvious that the beast had been injured before she'd even got there. Its strength was pitiful for a creature that size, and it seemed to be very tired and afraid. Fortunately, Katie was much too strong for the beast in its weakened condition. In just another moment, her spear swung around again, skewering the monster, just like the skeevers she'd fought in the hallway. Then, just like that, the fight was over.
She had to spent a couple moments getting the body of the spider out of the way, which wasn't easy because of the thing's size and how much it weighed. Still, she was eventually able to push the thing to one side by using both hands, and that was when she saw the man who'd been shouting at her, and realized just why he'd sounded so afraid. He was cocooned almost completely in spider webs.
Getting him out was the next thing, of course. Katie didn't even bother talking to him first, to try to find out who he was, or what he was after. He was in danger, and he needed help. That, to her, was the important thing. Cutting him out of the web was hard, though, because her spear stuck to the webbing if her jabs weren't quick enough, and yet, she had to make sure that they weren't -too- quick, and accidentally hit the man who she was trying to help. At last, he was able to wrench his way loose from the rest of the web, and after taking a few seconds to steady himself, he stood up to his full height and looked her in the face with a curious expression.
However, that expression soon turned from confusion to avarice, and he began to back away from her.
"You saved my life." he muttered, "I should probably share the treasure with you... But... Sorry, miss. You're on your own."
Then, just like that, the man was off down the passage like a shot, and Katie knew what must have been going through his mind. Somehow, he'd gotten hold of some kind of treasure in that dungeon, and had thought about giving her part of it, before he realized that he could have just outrun her, and gotten away with the whole thing.
As much as she wanted money, to help her survive in that land, Katie would have probably let him keep whatever treasure he'd found. However, she was still worried about him; running full-tilt through a dangerous dungeon, which had already proven enough to trap, or even kill him. That was why she was so sad, when she realized that she could never catch up to him, at the rate he was going, and worse yet, that he probably wouldn't listen to her if she tried shouting to him.
Still, Katie headed off down the passage, nonetheless, following the man at her own maximum comfortable speed, until at last, she turned a corner, and just as she'd feared, there was the man who'd just been running from her, lying in a pool of his own blood, and surrounded by three undead nords, closely resembling zombies. She didn't know much about nord zombies. Apparently, though, in Skyrim, they were called draugr. They tended to be faster than most zombies, tended to be armed, and were always eager for the kill. They all noticed her immediately, turned on her and attacked in unison.
It took Katie a moment to respond to their initial attack, but soon, her spear was out, and in one, wide swipe, she'd knocked all three back. One, it seemed, was weaker than the others, but all three were back on their feet in a moment, so she needed to make her next move quickly, skewering one of the larger draugrs, and picking its body up with her spear, she swung him around into the other two, satisfied to see that none of them were moving after that brief fight, although they'd given her some injuries in the process, and she was aching all over as she moved over to examine the body of the poor man who'd tried to run from her so recently, and brought about his own downfall.
However, as Katie examined the fallen man's possessions, she discovered two very interesting things. The first was a strange sculpture, about twice the size of a human hand, which was made in the shape of a claw, and seemed to be made of gold. The second was a journal, in which, it seemed, the man had written his plans and recent experiences. In spite of her hurry to complete her mission, Katie decided to read the journal, just to see if it would give her some clue about what to do next in that barrow.
Unfortunately, the journal didn't give her any of the answers she'd been looking for, but it did contain a passage that piqued her interest. It was an entry describing the claw that she held in her hands.
"I still can't believe how long it took to find the Golden Claw, but we finally have it. That fool Valerius had no idea what he had, although even if he'd known, I don't think he would have tried to use it. After all, what use would he have for the power of an ancient, nordic hero? Merchants don't care about that sort of thing, unless they can buy or sell it."
"The Hall of Stories holds the door that this key unlocks. I don't think any of the others really know what we're after, but I do, and as the fastest, I'll be the first to reach it. I can feel my fingers trembling, just thinking about it. The lost power; the Dovah-slayer."
Katie wasn't sure what to make of the journal entry. It seemed obvious that whoever that man had been, he'd been after some kind of special power, and was planning on using the golden claw as a sort of key, to reach it from a place called "the Hall of Stories," but as for what was meant by "Dovah-slayer," Katie wasn't sure. She suspected the term referred to a very powerful or special weapon of some kind, although there was no way to be certain about that.
Still, her own objective had to be further on in the barrow as well, so in a moment, Katie had taken another step forward, over the body of the dead man, and found a large, metal barricade, covered in sharp points, swinging around into her.
Perhaps the barricade had been intended to swing hard enough, and fast enough to impale its victims, or even to knock them into a wall, but Katie had reached up both arms to try to protect herself, and ended up grabbing the steel trap by two of the metal bars that composed it. The spring-loaded mechanism, which, it seemed, had caused it to swing in her direction, was still pushing against her, but she was pushing back. First, it was all she could do to hold her ground, then she began to slowly move it back the way it had come. She could hear the sound of the springs giving as she shoved the machine back, slowly, and with breaks every so often, until finally, she was able to slip past it, and released the mighty gate, letting it swing all the way around with a clang, as over-stressed screws and bolts fell to pieces behind her.
Katie's arms had gotten a little scraped-up as she'd been pushing the grating back, but compared to an arrow or a sword wound, it was nothing she couldn't handle, and pretty soon, she was continuing on, down the next tunnel.
The tunnel went on, down some stairs, and into some more draugrs. Their blows did hurt, but soon, all three were dead, just as before, and Katie found herself faced with yet another trapped hallway, wondering just how anyone was supposed to get past it. Some sort of mechanism was causing large, metal blades to swing back and forth across it at regular intervals. Too regular, in fact, and too close together. There wasn't enough space for her between the swinging blades, which meant that if she wanted to get past them, she needed to stop them from swinging somehow.
Katie got the glimmerings of an idea after thinking it over for a minute, and a much more concrete plan had formed in her mind just a few moments later. Quickly, she pulled out her spear again, and shoved it down the hallway. Soon, there was a mighty "clang," and she could see that all three blades had been stopped in mid-swing by her spear, and by one another. They seemed to still be groaning as they pushed against the spear, but that spear had been very well-made, and in just a few seconds, the groaning turned into a high-pitched whine, then a creaking, then the sound of something breaking, somewhere in the ceiling. In another second, down came the blades, falling out of their ceiling-mounted housings and clattering to the floor. That was it; the trap was sprung, and she proceeded down the tunnel unhindered, although she did still find the edges of the tunnel to be somewhat narrow and cramped.
Still, the tunnel opened up soon enough, into a larger hallway with oil on the ground and a lantern hanging over it. Katie could also hear more draugrs in the hallway ahead, so she began to unhook the lantern and took a step back, waiting for one of the draugrs to step into the oil before throwing the lantern into it. At once, every drop of oil in that chamber ignited, and the draugr was incinerated by the blaze that resulted, but unfortunately, there were two more behind it. Neither was very strong, though, and soon, Katie had continued through the hallway, and into an enclosed, rock chamber with a waterfall, a small river, blocked off by a metal gate, a large chest and a coffin, which, as she entered the chamber, unsealed itself. In moments, she was under attack by another Draugr, but it was dead soon, and after taking the meager contents of the chest, she moved on to the metal gate. Fortunately, there was a chain built into the wall right next to the gate, which, when pulled, caused it to open, so soon, she was on her way again.
Through cold tunnels and across a snow-covered path with an open ceiling, Katie continued on, slaying two more draugr as she made her way to a large pair of double doors, which opened easily enough, leading into another small chamber, another stone hallway, and a larger chamber filled with coffins. Soon, she was under attack by three more Draugr, but they weren't any stronger than the ones she'd fought already, though she did get an arrow or two in her skin during the fight. Then, she'd continued on, up some thick, wooden stairs and across a raised bridge to another doorway, and beyond that, a short hallway with sculptures on every wall. At the end of that hallway, however, Katie found herself faced with yet another puzzle; a door, from the looks of it, although it certainly wasn't like any door that she'd ever seen.
The door seemed to have been sculpted into a sort of mural, made out of many dozens of circles and spirals, with a series of small holes in the center which, when she took a moment to think about it, had probably been designed for the golden claw to fit into. After all, the journal entry that she'd recovered from the dead bandit had referred to it as a "key," so her first move was to try to put the golden claw into the holes, though as she'd suspected, nothing happened when she did so. Apparently, there was more to getting the door open than just having the right key.
That was when Katie noticed that some of the circles surrounding the keyhole had images on them, and when she reached out to touch them, she felt the images shift a little under her fingertips. Soon, she'd found that there were actually three stone rings, surrounding the keyhole, each of which could be rotated, to display different images. The images, however, didn't seem to mean much at first. There were basically three; a dragon head, a sword and what looked like a longbow. It looked like a simple kind of combination lock, which she might be able to figure out with just a few minutes worth of trying different combinations. Still, she suspected that there was some additional trick to it; maybe even a deadly trap, like the one that had accompanied the last puzzle room she'd visited, so she decided that it might be best to figure the puzzle out in her head first, before resorting to trial and error.
For several minutes, Katie puzzled over those symbols. The sword and the dragon she remembered from the first puzzle room, where she needed to point the sword towards the dragon, so that seemed to indicate that the dragon image should be positioned below the sword image, which was pointed downward, towards it. The only question was what the bow image was for, and whether the correct combination even had a bow in it at all. For a moment, she considered putting the dragon on the bottom, and two swords above it, but eventually decided against that. After all, in the first puzzle chamber, only one sword had needed to be pointed towards each dragon sculpture. No. It made more sense that the bow would need to be positioned somewhere in the combination, but where?
Katie couldn't piece it together, so she turned away from the door and started pacing, but although she thought about the puzzle for several minutes, she couldn't find that one clue that she was sure she was missing out on. Finally, she looked up, and, for the first time, truly noticed the beautiful sculptures that covered the walls of that hallway. She'd seen them briefly on the way in, but hadn't taken time to really look at them. They were very well-sculpted. The one right next to the door showed a warrior with a sword in one hand and a banner in the other, standing on top of the bodies of his defeated foes.
As she continued to think, Katie moved on to the next sculpture, which was a picture of three men, all attacking; a warrior in the foreground of the sculpture, and in the back, two more men, one of whom was throwing fire from his hands, and the other, an archer taking aim with a bow.
The next image that Katie saw was of those same three men, all charging forward, into a sea of vicious enemies, all heavily armed and armored. Katie briefly took a look at the other sculptures, on the other side of the room too. One showed the murdering of a king by a large barbarian with an axe, but the other two were scenes of battle; usually with the soldiers and archers doing most of the fighting, as their commanding officers urged them on from atop their horses. They were apparently sculptures, intended to depict the life cycle of a war or battle of some kind, but what they meant for the combination, or if they even meant anything, she couldn't seem to figure out. She stood there, looking at the carvings and pondering the combination for several more minutes, her head hurting from the fruitless puzzling.
Finally, however, something did occur to her, and she rushed back to the carving of the three attacking figures, to look at it again. Something about the barrow had been bothering her since she'd first entered it, and she'd finally begun to realize what it was; it was all about combat. Her first puzzle had been all about aiming swords at dragons; combat. The man who'd died at the hands of those draugr had been in pursuit of some powerful weapon; combat. Finally, every last one of the sculptures in that room seemed to be centered around combat in some way; how combat starts, how it ends, the life cycle of combat. It was, she reasoned, clearly the mindset of whoever had designed that place.
Then, she began to have an inkling of what the puzzle was about. Obviously, the sword pointed to the dragon, but then, the question was, where would the bowman be? At once, Katie headed back to the doorway and started turning the rings again, until the dragon was at the bottom, the sword right above it, and above that, the bow. It was, she reasoned, the only answer that made sense. The dragon attacks, the swordsman lashes out against it from up close, while the archer fires from a distance. With a big, broad smile over having figured out the answer, Katie inserted the claw into the keyholes and twisted it.
However, for some reason, the key still wasn't turning. It was the right combination. Katie was sure about that. She must have missed something, or forgotten some step. However, just as she was reaching up for the dragon ring again, she noticed that something had changed about the symbols. Where once, they'd simply been protruding carvings, there was suddenly a bit of space between them and the surrounding stone; not much, just a crack. Still, when she touched the dragon carving, she could feel that with only a little effort, it could be pushed into the door like a button of some kind. It surprised her, but before attempting to push it, she looked up at the other two symbols, and sure enough, the same had happened to the bow and sword.
Katie was starting to wonder what that meant. Was it asking her what kind of person she was; a monster, warrior or archer? Was it asking her whether she preferred to fight in melee, ranged or supernatural combat, or, she was a little scared to think, was it asking her what she'd be most prepared to face; archers, warriors or supernatural beasts?
In any case, she realized, her answer would have been the same, and in just another moment, putting the claw back into the keyholes, she pressed down on the sword image, and felt the claw starting to turn. She'd had no way to be certain that her choice was right, but it seemed like the best answer she could give, and soon, she heard a click from within the door, and the huge thing began to roll back, into a recess in one of the walls, allowing Katie to pass before it slammed shut behind her.
She hadn't been sure what to expect from the chamber beyond the locked door, but it was well-lit, at any rate, if very cold. She was glad to have her fur-lined coat, and soon, she found herself stepping forward, into the chamber. As she moved on, she noticed that large stalactites had formed into big, stone pillars in there, and holes in the stony roof were letting in the light of the sun from outside, which was the main reason why the place was so well-lit. There, beyond the pillars, she could see a set of stone steps that were either natural, or designed to look that way, leading up to a raised platform with a coffin near one edge. She was starting to get a bad feeling about that coffin, but regardless, she proceeded up the steps towards it, and sure enough, as she neared it, off came the stone lid, shattering to pieces on the stony floor, and another draugr was on the attack.
That draugr was larger and stronger-looking than all the others she'd faced up to that point, and it had gotten the drop on her with a swipe of its sword. Still, Katie recovered quickly, jamming her spear into the beast with all her might. That was when the monster opened its mouth, and shouted.
It wasn't like any kind of shout that Katie had ever heard; as loud as a bullhorn, and made to sound even louder by the way it echoed through the whole cavern they were in. In seconds, however, she started to realize what the shout had been intended to do, as she felt strong vibrations start to buffet her from the front. It started out at just a strong, shaking sensation, then quickly began to feel as though an angry bull were repeated slamming into her stomach, face and chest. However, she braced both legs against the ground, taking the full force of the strange, magical attack, and refusing to be bowled over by it, which seemed to have surprised the draugr. More importantly, through it all, Katie had managed to keep hold of her spear, which was far more difficult than remaining standing in the face of that maelstrom. Each was an impressive accomplishment, though. A lesser person would have been flung against the far wall by the attack, and lost their spear in the process.
Thanks to that, Katie was able to make her next attack quickly, jabbing out with her weapon, and just managing to deliver a clean blow into her enemy's midsection. Still, it seemed that the draugr had decided not to try the shout again, since it clearly wasn't working, and leapt forward, slashing into Katie as far as it could, though its attack wasn't as devastating as her next jab with her spear, forcing it back again.
The creature seemed to be on its last legs, starting to buckle under all the damage it had taken, but the unnatural glow that streamed from its eyes made it hard to doubt that it would continue its attack for as long as it could. Draugr, after all, were not animals. They were undead, and they didn't have any instinct for self-preservation.
Once more, the undead creature launched into an attack, swiping away at Katie, and cutting into her one last time, before she split it open with an upwards swing of her spear, and the fight was over.
Katie was aching a little, but really, the hardest thing about exploring the barrow had been getting past the bandits guarding the entrance. After that, she'd somewhat overestimated how difficult the job would be. Better yet, as she slowly searched the disgusting remains of the draugr, she found the very thing she'd been looking for; a tablet of stone with a series of strange symbols on it, which, she guessed, must be the one that Farengar had been after. She scooped it up quickly, then turned to look around one last time. The area where she'd fought the draugr was a large, raised platform of stone, with a shelf, an empty coffin, and a large and fancy-looking chest. Still, what really drew her attention was the wall that was in the opposite direction, just slightly away from the platform. In just a few seconds, she'd descended towards it, and there, she could see that what had seemed, at first, like a simple roughness along the wall was, from closer up, actually a series of strange letters, which had been carved into the stone.
Katie looked over the letters for several seconds, but they didn't seem to be pictures of anything, and they weren't in any language she recognized. She couldn't make any sense of them, though she suspected that Farengar might have been able to.
After that, she was just starting to notice the exit; a disappointingly-long staircase, when she remembered something important; she hadn't searched the shelves or gone through the treasure chest yet. For some reason, Katie found it a little harder to get back up onto the raised platform than she had the last time, but she was still up there within a minute. She was just about to open the chest, when suddenly, a strange thought entered her head, seemingly unbidden. She found herself wondering if it wouldn't be best to look through the bookshelf first.
As odd as the thought was, Katie did back away from the chest a moment later, but looking through the shelves only took a few seconds. She found some odd-looking gemstones there, and was just about to leave...
Suddenly, she remembered the treasure chest again, and she began to feel scared. It was the third time in a minute and a half that she'd forgotten about or turned aside from that chest, as though some will other than her own was trying to keep her away from it. Even as she stood, staring at the chest, she could feel a pounding, growing urge to turn away; to leave the cavern and forget about the chest and its contents. There was a strong sensation, that whatever was in that chest, it was meaningless, or perhaps evil or dangerous; too dangerous. Unreasoning fear was just beginning to well up in her heart, almost to the point of banishing rational thought from her mind, when she shook herself angrily and lunged towards the chest, flinging it open in one motion and reaching inside, then grabbing the first item that she could.
Katie had been terrified for a few seconds, because she knew that there was something intruding into her thoughts, some kind of powerful illusion magic, tempting her to go against her better nature; to panic for no reason, instead of thinking her actions through properly. The reasons why that terrified her weren't hard to see. Ever since childhood, her father had always warned her against impulsiveness. Always, he'd said, make sure you have a good reason for everything you do. Of course, it had been good advice, and Katie had a lot of practice at it. That was why she'd been so worried. It was horrifying to think of suddenly losing control of her emotions; the victim of some wizard's spell.
She suspected that it had been a curse of some kind on the chest, but whatever kind of spell it had been, its effects were starting to fade, as she grasped the contents of the old treasure box, and slowly pulled it out. The moment that she saw what she'd retrieved, however, she started to feel merely puzzled. She was holding a sword in her hand; a basic, one-handed longsword, from the looks of it. It was well-crafted, of course; without any abnormal grooves in the metal, as far as she could tell, and certainly, it didn't have any scratches or dents, nor was it rusted. In fact, the sword almost looked as though it had been made the day before. There was, however, one thing about it that deeply puzzled her. The entire sword, from the tip of its blade, all the way down to the end of its hilt, was made of some kind of black metal.
At first, Katie thought that the substance might have been ebony, but she'd seen ebony once before, at her father's forge, being traded for a full suit of usable armor, then sold to another blacksmith in Elinhir for an impressive sum. She remembered what the ebony had looked like, and it had been much more lustrous than the black sword she was holding. Still, in a moment, she'd tied the sword to one of the straps that her pouches hung from, and headed for the stairs, climbing up them, and into another small hallway, with an obvious lever, which she quickly pulled, causing the entire rock wall in front of her to slide into the ground, and revealing a path onward, which eventually lead past a small pedestal with a skull on top, to another opening in the rock, through which light from outside was streaming, and it was through that opening; just a little over two yards wide, that Katie left those tunnels, leaving Bleak Falls Barrow behind, and emerging out onto the mountainside again.
Beyond the mods addendum; Things you can't do in-game
1. You can't check the vitals of a dead person in Skyrim.
2. The puzzle in the first puzzle chamber (the one with the dragon heads,) is one that I invented, because frankly, the one that Bethesda put in the game was pathetically-easy; more of a delay than a puzzle, and would have made for boring reading.
3. You can't skewer multiple enemies in a row in Skyrim, nor can you lift enemies into the air or swing them into their fellows. This is just the kind of stuff that Katie does when she gets an 18+ on her attack rating rolls, with bonuses added in.
4. I rewrote the bandit's journal entry, because the way it was written in the game itself was -horrible.- By this I mean that in the game, the journal was exposition about the claw, and it -read like- exposition. No one could have mistaken it for a real journal entry.
5. The gate traps in the game can't be overpowered, regardless of the level of your character's strength in the game, and this, really, is part of a larger issue; namely, the whole handling of traps in Skyrim. They're designed so that really, there's only one way to avoid them; and that's to keep an eye out for trap triggers, and be careful not to trigger them, like a sneak thief. Why can't there be other ways to avoid or get past traps, for fighters and magic users specifically. Well, in this story, there are.
6. As much sense as it makes to be able to break dungeon traps, as Katie does with the swinging axe-blades, this is not possible in Skyrim.
7. This one bothers me. You can't pick up or throw the lanterns suspended over the oil. Sure, you can knock them down with a bow and arrow, or with a melee weapon (less advisable,) but the basic "grab" function of your hands? Sorry. Not possible.
8. The entire hall of stories puzzle is totally different, since again, the puzzles in Skyrim are an embarrassment.
9. In the game, the wall with the carved letters on it is written in the dragon language, and will teach your character a word of a dragon shout. For some reason, this is not a gift that Katie has, unlike the dragonborn in the game. Instead, she finds the black sword, another item that's not in the game itself.
10. In the game, the pedestal with the skull also has several flower petals on it, but as it doesn't make sense for flower petals to appear on a pedestal, deep in a dungeon, without rotting away, Katie doesn't find them here.
