Hey guys, here's a new chapter! I wanted to have it out much earlier, and I had it almost ready too, but I think I might have accidentally knocked the computers battery loose when it was in my bag. As a result, I lost all of this chapter, and part of chapter 8 too. I'm not sure whether this chapter is better or worse, but here's hoping!
Anyway, I would just like to address something that I've noticed about my commenters.
Which is that you're all awesome as hell.
Seriously, I did not expect any of this when I first posted Kicking the Storm! Not only have you actually been reading this story, which is crazy in itself seeing as I completely expected it to be buried amongst all the other Skyrim stories, you actually liked it, and said so many nice things that I'm not sure I can even take it all! Special thanks to Koal/DragonKoal, who I'm pretty sure might be the same person, who has been commenting with helpful ideas since nearly the very beginning! You're awesome!
Also, to RamenKnight, you'll have to remind me what crackfic actually is, because I've completely forgotten.
So don't forget kind readers, above all else, your reviews are what sustain my existence, and a lack of reviews would cause me to literally fade away into nothingness.
Oh, and before I forget, I've been having trouble with the use of those dumb lines to separate things on word and stuff, so if you see anywhere you think one should or should not be, I probably thought the same thing, and my computer just decided to screw me over.
I've forgotten what I was talking about before, and I'm too lazy to scroll back up now, so yeah, disclaimer time.
I don't own anything Bethesda has made. I wish I did, but I'm just a condensed cloud of people's opinions with next to no physical presence, and thus is not well suited to the handling of money.
Chapter 9: The road ahead
"FUCKING DAMN IT!" I shouted as I ran and tackled the draugr before it could fully climb out of its sarcophagus.
We landed on the ground below the platform, and wrestled around on the ground for a moment before it managed to kick me off it.
I rolled about a metre, but managed to roll onto my feet and regain my balance, before charging at the piece of shit.
Hey, hey, calm down a lit-
"NO!" I shouted, ignoring the fact that I didn't actually need to say it. I drew my iron sword in my left hand, my steel sword in my right, and brought them down in an overhead strike.
"IT" It blocked my swords with its battle axe.
"WAS" It swung back, attacking from the right, and I barely managed to duck under it.
"MEANT" I brought my iron sword around and swung it into the unprotected left side.
"TO" It barely flinched, but it was just enough time to let me give it a vicious kick to the knee.
"BE" It swung back to the left, and while I didn't manage to dodge it fully, I was at least able to get close enough for it to only hit me with the haft instead of the head, knocking me to the side instead of killing me.
"ME!"
This time the draugr was the one to close the distance between us, and I wasn't able to dodge away from its next swing properly, getting a decent cut to the upper part of my left arm.
I didn't even care though.
I was too far gone.
The shouts were literally one of the only possible ways that I would be able to survive against the super powerful assholes in this place.
And there were a whole fucking lot of super powerful assholes in this place…
Like… at least three!
I suddenly realised that I was beginning to lose focus when I had to dodge away from another swing. I had to end this, and fast.
I swung both swords into the draugrs ribs from either side, figuring that it would only be able to block one. It worked, and it blocked my steel sword, allowing the iron sword to imbed itself in its side.
In response, it let one hand off its axe and backhanded me with a surprising amount of strength, knocking me back from the creature and causing me to lose hold of the iron sword, which remained stuck between its ribs. It walked up to me and rose its axe above it, and my blind rage bled away as I realised that I was going to die.
Oh god, I was actually going to die…
"JOSEPH!" A voice shouted, and an arrow flew into the draugrs neck, forcing it to stumble back from the impact. I turned my head to see Hadvar nocking another arrow into the bow he had taken in Helgen, as Ralof sprinted towards us with his axe in his hands.
But they were too far away, we had already moved too far from the platform, to the point that we were almost at the entrance to the room.
And then I had an idea.
Using the adrenaline from my newly renewed fear of death, along with the draugrs current lack of balance, I leapt up and rammed my shoulder into it, and continued pushing it until it I accomplished my goal.
Pushing it into the gap in the world.
Unfortunately, my current momentum and lack of balance caused me to fall in with it.
Realising what was happening far too late, I only just managed to stretch my arms out and grab the side of the floor, as the draugr fell howling into the grey void below.
I looked up, steadily stressing out. I tried to grab anything further up, to help me pull myself out of the gap, but the unfortunate state of my physical fitness prevented me from getting very far.
Not to mention that I couldn't use my left arm properly.
I was getting tired.
I tried to reach out and grab a nearby rock.
I slipped.
I couldn't grab hold of anything, and I fell too far from the edge.
It was only when I realised there was no chance of getting out of this, that hands grabbed my arm.
I looked up again to see Ralof lying on the ground beside the gap, holding my arm and trying to pull me up.
Just a few seconds later, Hadvar dived to the ground beside him, grabbed my hand and begun to do the same.
I was saved.
As I looked down into the grey void around me however, I felt something. It was like a weird pulse inside my skull.
And then the pain began, like all my blood had been taken from my veins and replaced by pins, needles, and razors. Pins, needles and razors that had all been superheated in a volcano.
I don't think I even had time to scream before everything went black.
I jumped when I woke up, kind of like when you wake up from a dream where you were falling. I instantly regretted it, and gingerly touched my left shoulder. It still stung, and I guessed I probably reopened it. I was still pretty surprised by the lack of bandages though.
I pushed myself up into a sitting position to see where I was, and realised that I was in Alvors house. In one of the beds in the top room. I looked over to my side, and saw that Leone was sleeping in the other bed. She was shaking, and looked kind of pale.
What happened to her?
"Oh, you're awake!"
I turned over to see Alvors daughter, I think her name was Dorthe?
"Yeah." I answered tiredly, confused about why the kid looked so excited. "Is Hadvar or Ralof around?"
"Oh yeah!" She said. "They're in the Sleeping Giant! I'll go get them!"
She ran out the door, slamming the door far too loudly in a house filled with people who need rest and healing.
Before too long, the door slammed open again.
"Calm down Joey…" I muttered to myself. "She's only a kid, she might not know any better…"
"Joseph." Hadvar said, as he and Ralof walked into the room. "It's good to see you're ok."
"Yeah," I answered, "thanks for saving me in there. What's wrong with Leone?"
"We were actually hoping you could help us with that." Ralof said. "I'm guessing you probably didn't notice, but while you were fighting that draugr, she had some kind of fit. She wouldn't stop shaking, and then she fell unconscious. We thought she was being possessed!"
"You thought she was being possessed." Hadvar said, lightly punching Ralof in the arm.
"Anyway," Ralof grumbled, glaring at Hadvar, "we figured that seeing as you said you've seen this before, you might know what was happening."
"Hmmm…" I said, rubbing my face in a way that might have looked cool if I had any facial hair at the moment, but just looked stupid on my currently shaved face. "Ok, I think I've got it… But first, you'll need some explanations. What do you know about the dragonborn?"
"The dragonborn is a being who has been gifted with the dragon blood by Akatosh himself." Hadvar answered. "Some of the greatest heroes throughout our history have been dragonborn. The Septim line were also said to be dragonborn, all the way down to Martin Septim."
"That is correct, Hadvar." I said. "But did you know about the dragonborns inherent knowledge and comprehension when it comes to the dragon language and the Thu'um?"
"Wait." Ralof interrupted, only mildly annoying me because I was pretty sure he was figuring it out. "Are you saying what I think you are?"
"Probably." I answered. "If you think I'm saying that Leone is dragonborn, then yes."
"But…" He continued, looking troubled. "Will she really be alright? That's a lot of power, a lot of responsibility! I've known a lot of great people who ended up getting completely warped by that kind of pressure."
"I know, and yet you still follow him…" Hadvar muttered under his breath.
"I know." I said quickly, trying to prevent another fight. "But there's some real bad shit coming up, and if anyone in all of Nirn wants to survive the next few years, she'll need to be ready for it, because she's going to be one of the greatest heroes in Tamriel's history."
There was a long moment of silence, as the gravity of the situation really sunk into the two.
"What do you need us to do?"
"What?" I asked, turning to look at Hadvar, who stared right back at me with a look of determination.
"What, do you think we're going to leave her to face this by herself?" Ralof said, and I looked back at him to see that his expression was almost exactly the same, plus a small, cocky grin. "I like to think that I'm not such a terrible person. Hadvar, maybe, but there's no way I'm going to abandon you two like that!"
"Ignoring what the dirty stormcloak next to me just insinuated, I'm not abandoning Leone either, just like I know you won't. While we may not be the best people to say it, you can't abandon your friends."
Friends.
These people, these awesome, strong people consider me their friend.
And they're asking me what we should do next.
"Ok, I think I've got a fair idea of what we should do." I said after a few moments. "The first thing we'll need to do is wait for Leone to heal, and also maybe me, because I have no idea if whatever happened will have any consequences in the future. When we're both healed enough to move, which shouldn't take too long, we'll need to head to Whiterun with the dragonstone as fast as possible, because a dragon is going to attack one of the watchtowers. We'll give Farengar, Balgruufs court wizard, the dragonstone, and that should be the point where word of the dragon reaches Dragonsreach. Oh, and we should probably give Lucan Valerius his golden claw back too. Have you got all that?"
"I've been writing it down." Hadvar said, holding up a small journal. "But I just have to ask you something…"
"Yeah?"
"When did your thought process become this… intelligent?" He asked.
"Why does everyone keep asking that?!" I shouted. "I do have a brain you know!"
"Yes," Hadvar conceded, "but it just seems like you ignore it a fair amount of the time."
"Yeah? Name one example when I haven't been thinking ahead."
"Oh, I don't know…" Ralof chimed in. "That time where you tackled a draugr into a grey, endless void might be a pretty good example…"
"Ok, shut up. Conversation over. Go give Lucan the claw." I said abruptly trying to distract them before they could think of anything else, before I remembered something from before. "And could you guys get me a journal too? I need it to use as a quest menu."
"Um… Sure…" Ralof said, probably confused by my use of game terms.
As they left to start preparing for the trip, I looked around the floor. I was glad to see that the backpack we had stolen from the necromancer was still there, and reached down to grab it.
"Time to learn some magic…" I said to myself, as I pulled one of the Shadow Clone tomes out.
As it turns out, spell books don't actually disappear when you read them in real life.
However, it may be possible that this is just the games way of representing the fact that you'll never want to read them again.
If I didn't already have my knowledge on Elder Scrolls lore to figure stuff out, I would have ended up quitting in a few minutes, likely shouting about how this was bullshit.
"This is BULLSHIT!"
I mean, I did that last part anyway. I just didn't do the whole 'quitting' bit.
Because it totally was bullshit.
No wonder Nords hated magic. There was no way in hell their stubborn, FUCK-YOU-I-CAN-DO-ANYTHING attitude would mix with something this confusing.
Of course, this could have had something to do with the fact that, instead of something like shooting fire out of my hands, or even just summoning life from somewhere else, this magic was actually creating sentient life, no matter how fragile and short-lived it was…
It was still pretty crazy that I was actually able to accomplish it, now that I thought about it.
I know how to create life!
Fuck yeah, I'm awesome!
"Murmph."
"Huh?"
I looked to the other bed to see Leone sitting up, eyes barely open, just looking blankly at the wall in front of her.
"Oh cool, you're up." I said.
"Bwah."
"Ok!" I said, getting up and walking over to her bed. "So you're not in much of a position to take in any information. I think I know what can help with that!"
I have to say, pouring some of my waterskin on a woman who I knew had very few complaints about killing people probably wasn't one of my best ideas, but at least she was awake.
But I swear her sword, which was thankfully still sheathed when it smacked me across the room, wasn't even near her bed just before.
"Oh, good." A voice from across the room said, and I looked over to the stairs leading down to the lower story of the house to see Hadvar standing at the top. "You're awake."
"Hey Hadvar!" Ralofs voice called from the bottom story. "Do I have another example to right down in the journal?"
"Yes, put it in!" He called back.
"I sincerely hope you're not the one responsible for this headache, Joseph…" Leone said in a silent, sinister voice that fit her way better than it should have.
"Ah," I started to respond, as I slowly and painfully got back up from my position against the wall, "I believe that is more likely the fault of the word wall in bleak falls barrow…"
"Word wall, what are yo-" She started, before she stiffened. "The wall."
"Yep, at least you still remember it." I said, taking note of that in my journal. "I was a little worried that it would cause some limited memory loss or something like that, but it's good to see we can cross that hypothesis off the list!"
She just sat there, probably reaching back to try and remember what happened, and the lack of conversation began to get awkward. Naturally, I tried to make conversation.
"Hey Hadvar, I know how to create life now."
"I'm not even going to ask."
"What happened with that wall?" Leone asked, ending what I believed would become a very interesting conversation.
"You absorbed knowledge of the ancient language used by dragons that was engraved into the wall directly into your brain, and you can unlock the ability to use that language in combat the way they do by killing them and absorbing their souls, but seriously Hadvar, life."
"Wait, what do you mean?" Leone interrupted again. "Why can't anyone else do it? Why am I the only one?"
"Alright…" I sighed when I realised that Hadvar just wasn't going to react. I guess he just hadn't fully comprehended how big of an achievement the actual creation of life was… "So, you are what is known as a 'dragonborn', and ca-"
"WHAT?!" She shrieked.
"God, and people say I'm bad with interrupting them… Essentially, you have been gifted the blood of dragons. You have a natural understanding of the dragon language, and a natural ability to shout, both of which are skills that take normal people years and years of constant work and study to learn. Due to this fact, you are going to be one of the best people to fight against the dragons, who are kind of going to return and declare war on us all. We, by which I mean me, Hadvar, and Ralof, are going to follow you and help you in this task. I will warn you though, there are people out there who will not see you as a human, so much as a weapon. They're going to try to use you, and while we'll do our best to prevent this, we might not be enough. Are you understanding all of this?"
She nodded, shaking slightly.
"Yes." She said, before a slight look of confusion came onto her face. "How do you know so much about the dragonborn tho-… No, wait… I think I already know…"
"Yeah, it is kind of obvious…" I said with a small laugh. "In the dreams, I was the dragonbo-"
I barely ducked under the sheathed greatsword again.
"Why didn't you tell me about what would happen then?!" The enraged Leone shouted. "I felt like my head got stepped on by a mammoth!"
"Hey, I didn't know that was going to happen either!" I shouted, holding my hands up in front of me. "I never really felt any pain or anything in the dreams! It was more like I was controlling a puppet that just looked like me and pleaseatleastleavethesheathonOHGOD!"
"Anyway," Hadvar said abruptly, as he thankfully stepped in between me and the crazy woman, "what he's saying is that we're going to help you on this journey, and killing him would be a bad idea because he's the only person who really knows what's going on."
"ListentoHadvarbecausehe'stotallyright!"
Leone paused for a moment, before slowly sliding the greatsword back into its sheath.
"Fine."
She looked over to Hadvar.
"Alright, so what's the plan?"
"Actually," Hadvar said as he stepped out from between me and Leone and indicated towards me, "Joseph came up with a plan for us."
And I swear to god that behind Leone, who was currently looking at me with an expression which managed to combine disgust and dread by the way, Hadvar smiled and winked, all while giving me a thumbs up.
Did they even have that gesture in Tamriel?
More importantly though…
"Hey! What's with that look?!" I shouted at Leone. "You've seen that I at least know how to make a good plan!"
"Yeah, but I also saw you, albeit faintly, jump into a hole in the world with a powerful draugr! So forgive me if my faith in you actually using your brain isn't great!"
"Shut up." I growled, not at Leone, but at Hadvar, who was very visibly trying to hold back laughter at Leone's words. "Fine, so I make some dumb decisions sometimes…"
"Most of the time."
"Will you stop interrupting me?! Anyway, yeah I make some dumb decisions, but if Hadvar and Ralof trust my plan, doesn't that mean you can too?"
She paused again, and looked to Hadvar, who nodded.
He was still trying to hold back his laughter though.
The shithead…
"Anyway, this is the plan so far."
I explained the plan again to her, and while she still looked slightly apprehensive about it all, in the end she had to admit that it wasn't bad.
And not bad is victory enough for me!
That was when I heard snickering coming from the stairs, and walked over to see Ralof lying on them just out of sight, looking up at me with a perfect shit-eating grin on his face.
"She thinks you act dumb too."
"Shut up." I told him, fighting the urge to step on his face. "Is everything ready?"
"We've organised the carriage and secured enough supplies for the trip." He said as he got up. "We also got those books you asked for."
"Alright!" I said, and walked over to the other two.
"Ok you guys!" I said. "Everything is ready, so let's get everything together and bring it to the carriage! Leone, you get a break due to… I guess this would count as injury… and don't have to carry anything, which is fine, because I a way around it anyway!"
And as I said that last part, I finally cast the spell I'd been holding.
I'd been holding it back for dramatic effect, and it worked perfectly!
A man in ninja attire appeared, with a blades style katana at his belt.
I cast it again, causing two more to appear, as Leone, Hadvar, and Ralof stared in what may have been fear.
Of course, that might have been due to the fact that I was laughing like a maniac the whole time.
And why wouldn't I laugh?
I was creating life!
"Anyway!" I said, abruptly cutting off my manic laughter to start issuing orders. "You three, follow Ralof and start bringing supplies to the carriage."
"Hai, Joseph-dono."
Oh, shit. That was going to become a problem later on.
But at least I got to make Ralof very uncomfortable.
That would show him to make fun of me…
"Weren't you trying to convince us that you weren't a dangerously insane practitioner of conjuration a few days ago?" Leone asked, staring from me to Ralof, who was looking quite nervous as the three, identical men followed him to get the supplies.
"Yes," I said, before giving them a disturbing smile I had perfected through years of practice back home, "and a few days ago, it was true!"
And that would teach them not to make fun of me too!
"Now Hadvar, let's get hauling!" I shouted as I grabbed his arm and pulled him downstairs.
"After all, we've got a world to save!"
