AN: This is the Helgen chapter. I understand completely if you feel the need to not read yet another Helgen chapter, but do note that this will be told from the perspective of a terrified Outlander who will have no farking clue what the hell is really going on. Dragons *and* spiders the size of small cars? Recipe for some post-traumatic stress if there ever was one. It's kind of long, but will likely be the most detail I go into for any in-game quest with this story.
Chapter 10 – Dungeons and Dragons
I blinked a few times. Seated in front of me, arguing with the Romanesque cart-driver, was a strongly-built, dirty, blonde man wearing some sort of uniform and sporting a braid in his hair. He spoke the same language as Thrinn, but I barely understood him. I thought it due to my apparent head injury and overall exhaustion. Next to me in the cart was an even larger, older man with strawberry blonde hair wearing much nicer clothing, hands and mouth bound as mine were. Across from him was a skinny man in rags. I looked down at my own body, because I had felt cold and wondered why, since I had left the cabin wearing several layers of clothing. I had been stripped down to my thin hide underclothes – a ragged top and leggings with the bottom cuffs torn off. From the prickling feeling I felt against my left breast, I knew that I was still wearing my bra, and still had Thrinn's map tucked into it. Whoever these Romanesque soldiers were, they had stolen everything from me, including my hide armor and fur coat. A chill ran over my body causing goose-flesh to form; even my nipples ached from becoming taut in the cold breeze. My head throbbed and I was dizzy and nauseated. I wondered if this is what a concussion felt like.
The large blond man sitting across from me turned and said something in a kind voice to me. I was about to say something, but he just kept on talking. His voice then turned gruff, and he nodded toward the skinny man sitting next to him. I watched their conversation, straining to hear over the sounds of the horses and carts and the thumping of my own heart. The skinny man turned to me and spoke. I knew he was talking to me, but I was distracted and could barely make out da ath zeik, "you and me". You and me, what? Who the hell are you? I wanted to ask.
The skinny man and the large blond bickered more, and the cart-driver spat back at them. I closed my eyes. It hurt to listen to a conversation that I couldn't understand. I just wished the guy sitting across from me would shut up. His voice was way too loud, and every word was like an ice pick to my ear. I heard the skinny man say the name of the city Windhelm, but beyond that I had given up understanding anything. When the skinny man sounded like he was about to cry, the large blond man finally lowered his voice. He sounded sad. I opened my eyes and we shared a glance. The blond man continued a solemn conversation with the skinny man, all the while gazing at me.
I turned my head away from the man to look forward; appearing from behind thick forest were the walls of a town. I watched as the cart ahead of us, holding four more prisoners, rolled through the entrance. It was my first glimpse of a real town in this world. It looked extraordinarily Saxon, or Norse, or Icelandic, or something along those lines. I supposed that made sense. The blond man sitting in front of me looked like a proper Viking, even more so than Thrinn did.
The carts pulled to a stop near a wall. I looked to my left and saw that the enormous strawberry-blond man was hunched over, defeated, his eyes radiating both sadness and fury. To me, he looked like a mortally wounded prideful lion – dying, but waiting to lash out at his captors one last time. The blond man across from me nudged my hands to get my attention, and said something about bithig par os, "waiting for us", then stood. My thighs screamed as I pushed myself to a standing position. I didn't know what was happening, but I followed the rest of the prisoners out of the cart. The skinny man whined something - I heard the word nei - and the large blond man said something in a gruff voice. I heard the word dath.
Death.
Death.
Death.
So this is how I die, then.
Not in a cave with a bunch of barbarians, not from being attacked by a troll or after being raped, but after being attacked by Roman wannabes.
I stood behind the enormous lion-man and the skinny man, with the blond behind me, listening to a redhead man read from some paper. The lion-man stepped forward – did they call his name? – followed by the blond from behind me. The skinny man was next – he protested, I thought, because a second later he bolted from the guards toward a house. A dark-skinned woman in full metal armor – impressive, shining armor and very Greco-Roman – shouted something loud enough to make my ears ring. I watched in horror as an arrow buried itself deep into the skinny man's neck, killing him instantly.
When the dark-skinned commander-woman turned to me, I began to cry. The redhead with the paper and quill addressed me and asked for my name, nefn. Whimpering, I stepped up to the man; he pulled my mouth gag forward, allowing me to speak.
"Deb," I said, neglecting to say my full name. When I gave my full name to Thrinn all those months ago, he had mistaken me for some sort of goddess, he later told me, laughing at himself. I wondered if I should correct myself, tell my full name to this soldier, and maybe have him freak out on me, too. "Deborah," I said against my cloth gag. I decided it couldn't hurt, since I was apparently going to die anyway.
The soldier called me a Nor – that's what Thrinn called himself. It's what the people of Sky-Rim were called. I was surprised the man thought I was one of these people. I never thought I looked very Scandinavian. He spoke some more words to me, and then to the commander-woman, who snapped back at him. I wanted to protest, but my mouth was gagged. Too exhausted and distraught to scream, I just cried, and shook my head. The soldier said more words to me, something beginning with beka, "sorry", but the rest I didn't understand. He motioned for me to follow the commander-woman and join the Viking-like soldiers, who were lined up in front of a stone tower.
In front of a headsman.
With an axe.
A really, really big axe. I gulped. My body tightened.
A man who looked strikingly like a Roman war general spoke to the enormous lion-man. The lion-man growled in response.
How fitting.
While the Roman General spoke, I heard something else roar, but not a person. At first I wondered if it was an airplane about to crash down on all of us, kill me and my captors, or wake me up from whatever horrible coma-dream this was. I wondered if this was perhaps purgatory, a la "Lost".
Others heard the sound too, but continued to do whatever they were going to do to us. I watched a woman in orange-yellow robes raise her hands in prayer, but she was interrupted by a Viking guy, dressed the same as the blond guy that I shared a cart with, when he walked up to her, shouting something too quickly for me to understand.
The Viking guy kneeled down in front of the chopping block, shouted something once again, and then the axe came down.
I vomited against my mouth gag.
I choked on my own mess, attempting unsuccessfully to spit it out, and was forced to swallow the majority of it. I was sobbing openly now, surely a wreck in the eyes of my new captors and the Viking-like people who were being executed.
Over my sobs I heard the large blond man say something about dath and lafa, "death" and "life".
The roar from the skies came again, louder; it was definitely not an airplane. My eyes were on the sky until the commander-woman shouted something. I looked over in her direction and she was staring directly at me.
"No," I said in their language, or tried to, but my mouth was gagged and I was positive they couldn't understand what I said. I shook my head vigorously as I cried. The commander-woman stared daggers at me.
Shaking, crying, and stinking of stomach acids, I walked up to the chopping block. The commander-woman shoved me down. I turned my head to my left to watch the headsman.
I wanted to see everything that happened before I died.
Then I heard it again, the roaring. Out of the corner of my eye I caught movement in the sky. With my eyes blurred from tears I thought it was an eagle or some large bird until it soared toward the tower in front of us.
No.
No.
I stared wide-eyed in terror at the enormous flying creature that landed on the top of the stone tower. I couldn't believe I was actually watching this happen. My breath stopped as the black beast simply sat there, staring at me.
When I saw the dragon begin to inhale, I knew I was going to die in a blast of fiery dragon breath. I closed my eyes, and waited for the inevitable.
I heard a loud, thundering blast, and instead of feeling like I was being burned alive, I felt the ground shake and a wind start to pick up. I opened my eyes. What had been a calm sky had turned to a threatening, turbulent grey. The dragon continued to stare at me, and I watched as it inhaled once more. It bellowed, shaking the ground and forcing its breath in my direction at a high speed, knocking me over, and making me dizzier than ever.
After my head stopped spinning and my vision cleared, the large blond man came over to me and helped me stand. He shouted at me to come with him, and started running toward another tower. I followed, slowly, teetering still from my possible concussion and recent debilitation-by-dragon.
Inside the tower, the blond man stopped to talk to the lion-man, looked around for a moment, then turned to me and urged me up the stone steps, telling me to go. At that point I was too exhausted and weak to care what happened, and let him take command. As we scaled the stone steps, the wall imploded, and the dragon breathed fire into the tower. I jumped back and slammed my back against the stone wall and screamed, ushering in a fresh round of sobs.
The large blond man rushed over to me and gripped my upper arms. He shouted, but not angrily, but encouragingly. I felt him untie my bound hands and remove my mouth gag. He then grasped my chin with his fingers, begging my attention, and I gave it. He looked into my eyes and pointed at the hole in the tower wall, and tugged on my arm until I followed him. He pointed down at a damaged house. It now had a hole in its roof, and I could see the wooden floor. He made motions with his hands while talking.
The blond man stared at me and nodded. I looked once more over at the house. He wanted me to jump.
I hoped that I was correct in remembering that when jumping from a high level, you're better off not trying to land on your feet, but rather should try to tuck and roll your body after the fall. Of course, that might just be for jumping from a moving vehicle, but the tower was so high up I figured I'd be fucked either way.
So, I jumped.
I crashed through the remnants of the roof and landed directly on my right thigh, bellowing out in pain. The blond man followed soon after, and helped me stand. How he landed without injury, I'd have to ask later, if we survived. We walked, cautiously, together out of the house and into the burning, chaotic town. We rushed as fast as we could, forward and to the left, dodging falling burning parts of houses and keeping our eyes at all times on the sky. We stopped at a door to a large stone building and he opened the door for me. Once inside I sighed and sobbed in partial relief, but then realized the blond man had stayed behind. I waited several moments until the door opened and in stepped the blond man.
He grasped my upper arm again and led me forward quickly, but stopped short when he saw a man lying dead, dressed just like him. He dropped my arm and walked up to the man's body, said a few quiet words, then turned to me. He said words I didn't understand, speaking too quickly or using words I never learned. He then, thankfully, found a rag for me to clean myself with. As I cleaned my neck and chest of vomit, he walked up to his dead friend and began to remove his armor.
"What you do man?" I asked the blond man with what I assumed was awful Norren grammar. I pointed to the dead man to make my question clearer.
I still had trouble understanding the man, but he said something along the lines of, "He's dead, take his armor."
"Armor, me? Is no small?" I asked. I doubted the man's armor would fit my curves.
The blond man squinted at me, trying to understand, or perhaps he was wondering why I spoke so poorly. He finished removing the dead man's blue cloak, leather tunic, and chain mail shirt, then handed them to me. I turned down the chain mail, doubting I would be able to walk far while wearing it, but gladly pulled the leather tunic over my body. It fit, just barely, obviously not cut for a curvy and buxom woman's body. I cringed at the ick factor of putting on the dead man's boots, which were too big but would have to do. The blond man helped me finish donning the armor, tucking the blue cloak around me and under a belt which held a small pouch and a scabbard. He handed me a heavy axe that his friend had been wielding.
An axe. What the hell am I going to do with an axe? I swung it around tentatively, wincing at the pain I felt in my hip and thigh. Luckily for me, the axe was light enough for me to swing around. I really hoped however that I would never have any need for it.
I realized my hopes were fleeting when I heard shouting approaching from further within the building.
I gripped the axe tightly and watched while the oncoming Romanesque soldiers attacked my new companion. With only the same small axe, the blond man took out the two attacking soldiers, but not before suffering a hard blow to his chest. I ran over to the blond Viking and held my hands against him. Immediately I felt warmth between my palms and his chest, and saw once again that swirling, yellow light. The blond man stared down at his chest and then at me, his brow creased in confusion.
"Is that magic?" he asked.
I nodded.
The man moaned - the kind of sound you make when you put your feet up after a long day. He then grabbed my wrist and pushed my hand away. "Enough," he said, before turning to go where the two Romanesque soldiers had come from.
We continued in this way through the depths of the stone building, encountering more Romanesque soldiers, who died quickly. The blond man handed me a knapsack and told me to gather food and lyf, whatever that was. I rummaged through drawers and cabinets but didn't find much, just some bread and what I guessed was wine, which I didn't take. The blond man shouted something at me, walked over to the table and cabinets, grabbed some small bottles and handed them to me. I stared at him blankly, not knowing what they were, but for whatever reason he thought I should have them, so I put them in my knapsack.
"Done? Let's move," he said. We then encountered a woman and a man, wearing the same blue cloaks, fighting two men in what looked like a dungeon. Before we could intervene, the newly-encountered blue-cloaked man was run through with a sword. I squealed, really wishing I hadn't witnessed the entire scene. When the last Romanesque man was finally killed, the blonde woman and my Viking companion looked up at me as if I'd said something awful, but I ignored them. I squinted and tried to force the image of a sword gutting a man out of my brain.
While the two blue-cloaked soldiers rummaged through the dungeon, I noticed a book on a table, next to a knapsack, which I immediately retrieved. I opened the book, recognized nothing, but put it in one of my knapsacks anyway. I also bagged the dagger that was sitting next to the book.
"Are you coming?" The blond man asked me before leaving the dungeon area. I nodded, and followed behind them.
We arrived at a cavernous inner structure with bridges and walkways, defended by several Romanesque soldiers. The blue-cloaked soldiers charged at them, leaving me behind to fend for myself. I decided to follow behind them as close as I dared, just in case I could heal them with this "magic" that I apparently could wield.
The first two Romanesque soldiers were bested quickly, but a third proved more difficult. I ran forward with my axe, screaming as I landed the blade between the Romanesque soldier's neck and shoulder, killing him instantly. My screaming stopped, and I dropped the axe which remained lodged in the soldier's body. I stepped back, wide-eyed, staring at the man I had just killed. The blonde woman yanked the axe out of the man's neck, wiped the blood on his red and leather armor, and handed it back to me. I stared at her, terrified, but she only laughed, and then turned to follow the blond man who had already started walking toward the next passageway.
I vomited again, this time not on me but rather, unintentionally, on the body of the dead soldier. I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand and moved on after the two blue-cloaked Vikings.
The blond man turned to the blonde woman and said something about going somewhere, but the woman replied with something about "here". The man nodded and urged me to follow him. I looked back at the blonde woman who gave a weak smile before turning back the other way. The blond man began to run in the opposite direction, so I followed, quickly.
We walked over slippery rocks, working our way through a cave, finding skeletons of dead men and their belongings, which the man and I looted. As we walked away from flowing water, the blond man jutted his arm in front of my chest, stopping me from advancing. He looked ahead warily, and I followed his gaze.
It was hard for me to see what he was looking at, but what I did see was massive spider webs.
And then the massive spider came.
And then another. And another.
I lost count after the third pony-sized spider scurried toward us from the dark cave.
I screamed, or at least made some sort of sound similar to a scream before leaping behind the man's back. I heard myself whining, sobbing, shrieking.
The blond man rushed forward, sending his axe and a spare sword into the enormous, squishy thoraces of the mammoth arachnids. I watched in horror, never even wanting to step on a large house spider for fear of seeing its gooey insides on my shoe.
I didn't see the spurt of green ooze flying at me until it was too late to duck.
I screamed again, this time with words. I screamed for the man to help me, come to me, and that I couldn't see.
I was blinded by the green ooze.
I felt around, whimpering.
I heard awful squishing and spurting noises a few more times, and then the man came running to help me. He said something about getting stuff in the eyes. He tried to wipe my face clean, but I still couldn't see.
"I hate those feikan things," the man said. "Too many eyes, you know?"
He held my hand as we walked around the giant, oozing spiders which smelled like sewage. I was thankful that I couldn't see them.
The man stopped again. "There's a bear ahead. Wait here."
I stayed put and listened as the man crept forward. I heard the sound of an arrow being notched and a bow being drawn, and then the unmistakable sound of an arrow penetrating flesh. And then another. The bear groaned, and the man stepped back toward me.
"Can you still not see?" he asked.
"No," I answered.
"Vel, I suppose we must wait here a while. Come," he said before taking my hand and leading me somewhere. "Sit here, I'll fle the bear. It can be our dinner."
Bear for dinner? My stomach did another pirouette, but I didn't complain. This man saved my life, so I would do just about anything in return, including eat what was likely a beautiful, furry bear, just defending its home.
"Here's some water, try to wash your eyes," the man said. I did, but it didn't help. I could see, but only faint movements of light and shadow.
"No good, I wait," I said.
All I heard in response was silence, not even the sounds of someone skinning an animal. I jumped when I heard the man speak very close to me. "What's your name?"
"Deb," I answered.
"Deb," he repeated. "Hmph. They call me Ralof." He walked away from me, and I heard him begin to cut the hide off of the bear. "Where are you from, Deb?" he asked while letting out faint grunts as he struggled with the hide.
"From? Not here. Not Sky-Rim."
The man, Ralof, laughed. "Vel that's for sure. I can't place your hrem. Not Nor, not Harsten, not Harfaed, not Rathgaet…. Or perhaps something blandt?" The man laughed again. "Were you vakt by frekir?"
"Frekir?"
Ralof laughed, and then proceeded to howl like a wolf.
Frekir. "Wolf? No, no wolf. What wolf?" I was confused.
He laughed again. I heard the splashing sounds of innards being gutted. The things you learn when you're an archaeologist….
"Vel at sist you understand most of what I say. Can you see tho?"
"No, no see."
The man sighed. "I'll try skapa a fire. We can sleep here tonight."
I was surprised by how good the bear tasted, despite my uneasy stomach.
Some time while we slept, my vision cleared, but I was woken by severe pain in my abdomen. I cried out, and Ralof knelt at my side. "Calm, calm," he said, pressing something between my legs. "You're bleeding."