BLEAK FALLS BARROW
Katjaa
The webs compressed around Rimion before the spider even appeared.
Up until then, the group had been unstoppable.
All bandits that dared attack them were almost immediately put down. Rimion's magic and Katjaa's daggers did their fair share of damage, but the main force was Arenar and his steel sword.
He fought like it was an art. Each strike found its target with masterful precision. The rare times his opponents managed to lash out in retaliation, he dodged or parried effortlessly. He basked in the blood and sweat of his foes.
His crazed smile that appeared every time he felled someone reminded Katjaa of her own. Seeing him happy after watching him almost die in Helgen was a nice change of pace.
Bleak Falls Barrow was the first ruin Katjaa had ever entered, yet it looked exactly as she'd imagined it. Dust and cobwebs covered nearly every square inch of the interior. Carvings of ancient, nameless Nordic figures were inscribed in most objects they passed by. Rusted objects used by the ancient Nords that built the place showered chests with equally-rusted locks.
Some things took her by surprise. A couple chests held fairly new objects, such as Septims and jewelry. Maybe these are the things the bandits stole?
Giant rats Rimion called "skeevers" constantly appeared from nowhere and hopelessly attacked the group. It was almost laughable how little a threat they were.
Another surprising feature was the first trap. The only bandit no one in the group killed had died from a puzzle meant to keep out trespassers and grave robbers. In the middle of the room was a lever to open a locked gate. The Nord pulled it without caution. Immediately, poisoned needles shot from the walls without mercy, killing him before he hit the ground.
As it turned out, the puzzle was easily solvable. To the left of the lever were three rotatable pillars with a symbol inside each of the three facets. Statues baring the same three symbols hung over the door locked by the puzzle. One of the statues had fallen sometime ago, but the symbol of a snake could still be made out. They matched the pillars into the same order the statues appeared in then cautiously pulled the lever.
The gate lowered into the cave floor, and the group nearly charged through it, fearing the trap that killed the Nord could be faulty after such a long time and fire upon them anyway.
A little while after solving the puzzle, as they walked down a spiral staircase, a faint voice began calling out for help. It was barely audible to her or Arenar, but Rimion determined the voice was male and, based on the accent, belonged to a Dunmer.
"Do you think that's Arvel?" Rimion asked.
Both Katjaa and Arenar shrugged. The first bandits they'd encountered inside the ruins mentioned a Dunmer named Arvel going ahead of his underlings. If it is him, how did he get past the puzzle without disarming it? Or did he re-arm it?
Further in, the screaming Dark Elf growing louder and louder all the while, a doorway in front of the group was completely closed off by a thick wall of webbing. Beyond the doorway, the voice was so loud Katjaa guessed whoever was in trouble was in the blocked off room. Portions of the wall near the doorway had collapsed over time, allowing Katjaa to look into the room ahead of her.
Much of the floor and ceiling were covered in the same thick webs. Giant egg sacs sat in one corner of the room. Great. More giant spiders. Katjaa gasped when she looked above the sacs to find man-shaped web cocoons suspended from the ceiling. None of them were squirming, so whoever might have been trapped inside were either immobilized or dead.
If it was Arvel shouting, she couldn't see him; the hole in the wall wasn't large enough to view the entire room.
"Hello?" Arenar called out.
The shouting ceased instantly. "Who's there? Harknir? Bjorn? It's me, Arvel! Get me down from here!"
"Your fellows are dead," Katjaa informed Arvel.
A short, silent pause. "I don't know those people."
Rimion chuckled. "Smooth," he whispered, "Who'd have guessed someone who leads a group of bandits would be a bad liar."
"We heard them name you as their boss before we put them down," Arenar informed the eld. "Do you still have the golden claw?"
"How do you know about that?"
"You stole it from The Riverwood Trader. Along with healing potions that nearly cost me my leg. I'll ask one more time: Do you have the golden claw?"
"Yes, yes! It's in my pocket."
"If you hand it over to us we'll spare your life."
"I can't!"
"Why not?"
"Come in here and you'll see!"
Rimion sighed. "He might as well say: 'Something trapped me here. Come kill it.'"
"If anything, it's probably a giant spider, like the ones under Helgen," Katjaa suggested. "The largest one was killed almost immediately by fire."
"That makes sense," Rimion said. "Most spiders in Skyrim are frostbite spiders. They hate the heat. Good idea to live in this country if that's true."
"In that case..." Arenar stepped back and shoved the Arch-Mage forward. "The master of Destruction spells can go first."
"Oh, you don't want to kill it like everything else?"
"You can take the lead this time, my friend."
Rimion snorted. "Gee, I'm flattered." A small ball of fire appeared in the Altmer's palm. He aimed his hand at the webbed door and a wave of fire erupted upon it. The webs disintegrated into ashes at his feet.
The group entered the room and stopped near the back wall. A couple yards away was a small Dunmer trying to break free from webbing that trapped him and closed off a second doorway. Katjaa almost laughed at seeing the bandit leader kicking his legs back-and-forth, attempting to fall back on to the ground.
Arvel stopped struggling once the group entered the room. "Get me down from here!"
Rimion stepped forward. "Where's the spi—"
A net of web shot down from a hole in the ceiling, striking the High Elf and trapping him to the floor. As Katjaa and Arenar drew their weapons from their sheaths, a spider twice the size of the giant one from Helgen dropped down from the ceiling. It made a horrible shriek and spat a green fluid at Arenar.
He spun away from the liquid a second before it would have struck him. It landed on the ground behind him and it began to sizzle and melt the stone floor.
"Don't touch it!" Arenar warned.
Duh.
Katjaa retreated into the shadows and began sneaking behind the spider. Meanwhile, Arenar was performing quick stabs into the arachnid, dodging and ducking everything it threw at him: sharp legs, constrictive webbing, and acidic spit.
An explosion of swirling fire surrounded Rimion, burning the web that bound him to the ground but leaving him completely unharmed. Another wave of fire spewed from his hands on to the spider, but it continued to fight Arenar without pause.
"It's not working!" Rimion yelled. Sweat began to drip from his forehead. Katjaa hoped it was because of the heat, and not a sign of slowing down because she was just a few feet away from the spider.
Arenar hacked at the leg closest to him and cleaved through it. The spider shrieked again—louder and far more agonizing than before—and lunged on top of him. He moved too slow and couldn't avoid being toppled. It began to drool on him, melting his cuirass in several places.
Katjaa signaled Rimion to halt his spell. He complied then she leapt as high as she could, landing on the spider's back. Its focus now trained on her, it tried to buck her and ignored Arenar. He picked himself off the ground, luckily unharmed as the acid hadn't burned all the way through his iron armor.
She plunged her daggers into its head, one after another. Several repetitions later, the spider slumped over, dead.
"Nice job," Arenar congratulated as she cleaned her daggers on its back and climbed down.
The fire circling Rimion disappeared in an instant. "Damn thing. I'm gonna find webs in my hair for a week. Why couldn't it do that to you two?"
Arenar wiped the blood off his sword on the spider's head. "You should consider yourself lucky." He sheathed his sword and turned him. "We've run into spiders with acidic webbing before. It would have burned straight through your robes and into your skin in the same time that you took to cast a flame cloak."
"How's your armor holding up?" Katjaa asked.
"Better than I would have expected," Arenar admitted. "Glad it didn't drool on my stomach. Alvor decided to leave that unprotected. I swear this thing must have been his first project when he was just an apprentice, considering how impractical it is."
"Good job to all of you!" Arvel cheered. They all turned around to see the Dunmer smiling gratefully at them. "Especially you, young lady. Not many women could have done that. I'm surprised you didn't hurt yourself."
Asshole. "Golden claw. Where is it?"
"It's in my back pocket! Cut me down and I'll give it to you!"
Katjaa sighed. "No games." Arvel quickly nodded. "Okay. Arenar, help me with this, will ya?"
She and Arenar approached the man with their blades out. A couple of minutes of cutting through the thick webs and cursing at the surprising difficulty to do so passed before the Dunmer was free.
"I probably could have burnt him out," Rimion pointed out. "Dunmer have a high tolerance to fire spells, after all."
Both she and Arenar turned to look at the mage. "That's not exactly moral, even if he is a bandit."
Arenar nodded. "Plus you might have damaged the golden claw." He looked over his shoulder to where Arvel fell. "So can—"
The Dunmer was gone.
"Dammit Rimion! You let him get away!"
Arenar ran through the door, followed by Katjaa and Rimion on his heels. As they went through the different corridors and rooms Arvel had escaped into, the Imperial and Altmer argued about the bandit.
"It wasn't all my fault he got away," Rimion said.
"Whose is it? Katjaa's?"
"Don't bring me into this," she begged.
"Someone should have kept an eye on him."
"We had our backs to him while talking to you. You, however, were facing us, so you could have easily watched him."
"So?"
"So why couldn't that someone keeping an eye on him have been you?"
"Because I cannot be held accountable for important things," Rimion said in a teasingly. I don't think he's actually arguing.
Arenar didn't seem to realize it. "What in Oblivion are you talking about? You're the damn Arch-Mage of the College of Winterhold! How can you say something like that?"
"By having others take care of my duties, of course."
"You're really annoying sometimes. You're aware of this, I assume?"
"Of course I am," Rimion assured, "since I'm doing it on purpose, in this case."
Arenar didn't say anything else after that. Katjaa couldn't see his face but she thought he likely felt embarrassed by the trap Rimion caught him in. Rimion, on the other hand, was laughing his ass off.
A little while after he'd stopped laughing, the group heard the sound of screaming. They sped up, entering a catacomb filled with many decomposed bodies of ancient Nords.
Just in time to see a decomposed body slice off Arvel's head with a battleaxe.
"What the—"
All three of the walking dead faced the group at once.
The shambling corpses were unnerving to look at. Their skin was so dried out it looked like leather, but was grey in color. Bones and muscles were clearly visible—an obvious side-effect of being dead for who-knows-how-many years—in every place not protected by rusted and degraded armor. The ancient weapons they held were in a similar state. Beards that could only be grown by Nords had grown wildly from each one's face. Katjaa found the creepiest part was their eyes, which were bluish-green glowing orbs of light focusing on her and her companions.
She couldn't say for certain, but their intense staring were ones of hatred.
The corpse with a battleaxe charged at Arenar—seeing as he was at the head of their group—with a surprising speed for a dead man. Behind it the other two corpses ran at the Arch-Mage and Katjaa. A shield carrying corpse ran for Rimion and Katjaa's came at her wielding a longsword. She ran to the empty side of the catacomb to give herself more space to fight. The corpse promptly followed.
Its longsword swung down on her with deadly intent. She blocked the attack with her daggers, nearly falling to the ground from the sheer force delivered by the strike. Not pausing to let her attack, it immediately followed up by aiming for her throat. Katjaa ducked and thrust a dagger in between the creature's ribs. It cried out more in anger than in pain—if it could even feel pain—then swiped its empty hand at her face. Its long fingernails dug into her skin.
Katjaa kicked the undead Nord away, knocking it on to the ground and giving her time to regain her composure. She brushed the fresh wound on her cheek. It bled only a little, but stung like crazy.
From behind her she heard another shout, sounded like it came from one of her allies. Followed it was the sickening smell of burning flesh. Despite her instincts telling her not to, she peeked at the battle behind her.
Arenar was using the creature's slow striking against it. Each time he dodged the battleaxe, he would quickly stab its unprotected chest. He faced a similar problem as Katjaa had; nothing seemed to actually hurt the corpse.
Rimion was having better luck. Another flame cloak protected his body while he fought the corpse that used a shield and mace. He was firing off ice spells at the creature, but the fire orbiting him, singeing the dead man each time it got close, seemed to do more damage than the frost magic.
She returned her attention to the corpse she was fighting as it returned to its feet. It swung for her head but missed by a small margin. Her daggers found their way into its eye sockets, twisting and turning in hope of causing whatever internal damage could be done.
It went limp and fell to the ground. She waited for it to get back up, but it never did. Guess these things can die. Again.
"Go for the eyes!" Katjaa advised. She turned around to see Arenar take her advice, plunging his steel sword through his creature's left eye after dodging a swipe at his stomach. His adversary also collapsed instantly.
Rimion kicked away the burnt body assaulting him and shot an ice spike from each hand into the creature's eyes. It died as well.
"I haven't seen these things since Solstheim," Arenar said.
Before Katjaa could ask what they were specifically, Rimion must've understood the expression on her face and said. "Draugr. Ancient Nords who've decided that they rather liked Tamriel. Or so I believe, anyway. I've fought a few in the past, but I never did think to go for the eyes. Have you fought them before?"
She shook her head. "Just did it in hope of blinding the thing. I didn't expect the eyes to be such a fatal place to attack."
Arenar walked over to Arvel's body and rolled it over. He reached into the Dunmer's pocket and retrieved a small four-fingered claw, completely made of gold. Three of the fingers ended in sharp, curved points while the fourth looked more like a thumb. He handed it to Katjaa who placed it in her pack. Rimion treated the cuts on her face and then they delved deeper into Bleak Falls Barrow.
More draugr came at them, almost every time they entered a new room or passageway, but the group fell into a regular pattern. Rimion would take out as many as he could from a distance then Arenar and Katjaa would stab the eyes of however many were left standing. No one was injured using this strategy.
A set of wooden doors eventually appeared. Katjaa hoped that they would lead into the main chamber of the ruins so they could grab the Dragonstone and go. They'd been in the ruins for hours, and she was missing the sun and fresh air dearly. They'd taken several hours to even reach Bleak Falls Barrow, so she guessed the sun had already set outside. She swung the doors open eagerly, only to be disappointed when the doors merely seemed to separate one part of the temple from another.
Another hour of traveling deeper into the ruins and killing draugr eventually brought the group in front of another set of doors.
"Hope that we can get that Dragonstone soon," Rimion said, rubbing his eyes. "I am really tired, and I'd rather not sleep in here if it can be avoided."
"Agreed," Arenar said. He pushed open the doors.
This time, instead of the usual crumbled walls of an ancient Nordic temple, what was on the other side was a long well-lit hallway spanning before the group. How are those braziers lit? None of the bandits made it this far, and I doubt the draugr care much for light.
Unlike the rest of Bleak Falls Barrow, this hallway was well-preserved. If not for the cobwebs, the place could have passed for brand new. On either side of the hall, the walls were engraved with the same image: men—presumably Nords—walking towards a woman in robes. After a couple of steps the scene was slightly altered. A man in robes holding a staff in each hand replaced the woman.
"What is this place?" Katjaa wondered.
"This is a Hall of Stories," Rimion answered. "I guess this confirms that this place was built during the Dragon Wars, though likely in dedication to a Dragon Priest instead of the beasts themselves."
"How can you tell?" Arenar asked.
"These images—" Rimion pointed to the wall next to him "—depict dragon cultists bowing before such a priest. If this was made at any point after the death of Alduin, no Nord would even think to worship them."
They continued down the long hallway, with the walls constantly changing who was being worshiped.
"Who was Alduin?" Katjaa asked.
"In Nordic lore, he is the first-born of Akatosh and the God of Destruction. He was supposedly the strongest of all the dragons, and as such was the highest ruler during the Merethic Era, when dragons ruled over men and mer in Skyrim. His Voice was law, and only fools would defy him."
"His Voice?" Arenar asked.
"You two don't read much, do you? Anyways, the Voice—or Thu'um, in the language of the dragons—was the ancient magic that all the dragons possessed. A dragon could speak a single word and set the world aflame. People say that a battle between dragons was just a deadly verbal debate."
"The dragon in Helgen did something like that. It roared into the air and the sky began to rain rocks and fire down upon us."
"The Voice was a power only available to the dragons at first. But when the mortals rebelled against their masters it is said the god Kynareth—as her Nordic aspect Kyne—gave mortals the ability to use the Voice. That is supposedly how the Dragon Wars ended: the Voice was used against Alduin and killed him. After that, the remaining dragons fled. Eventually they were hunted down to extinction."
"That would be useful now," Arenar mentioned. "If someone could have just killed the dragon in Helgen."
"Well, those mortals—called Dragonborn by you and me—are now given this power by Akatosh, born with the blood and soul of a dragon. The last recorded Dragonborn I know of was Tiber Septim; unless you count the rest of his bloodline, then Martin Septim would have been the last one. If so, that still doesn't change anything since he died two hundred years ago." Rimion's face became disturbed by this realization.
Katjaa noticed it. "What's wrong?"
"It is also said that only a Dragonborn can truly kill a dragon. Without one, the beast's soul lingers until they somehow return in a physical body," Rimion explained. "Perhaps the dragon at Helgen is one that found a way to return?"
They stopped talking when they got to the puzzle door. Unlike the gate from the early puzzle, this door was made of stone. In the middle of it was a circle with three rotatable rings with the same symbols as those on the golden claw. The rings were centered around an etching of a claw. Three holes that looked made for a key were at the talons of the claw.
"So could this be anymore obvious?" Arenar asked.
Rimion chuckled. "I'm sure you two would have figured it out without me... after a while."
Katjaa moved the rings to match the symbols in the same place as they were on the golden claw: bear, moth, then owl. She placed the claw into the hole.
"Now what?"
"Turn it," Rimion answered.
She did as he said. The outer and middle rings spun on their own until they matched the owl. Following that were several clicks before the door slowly lowered into the ground.
The group climbed up the stairs behind the door and entered into a large cavern. After a few minutes of walking they entered an even larger part of the cavern. Across a stone bridge was a platform accessible by climbing a small staircase. A coffin rested in front of a giant wall; both sat on the platform. Next to the coffin was a chest. Behind the wall and in several other places were waterfalls emptying out into a small stream running under the stone bridge.
Katjaa thought the sight was breathtaking.
Rimion whistled, and it echoed throughout the open space. "I've seen those before. A Dragon Wall. Supposedly built by the ancient Nords while they were under the rule of the dragons. The writing on it is supposed to be in the dragon language, but it looks like someone carved random lines into it to me. Some historians have deciphered the language and even know how to speak it."
They crossed the bridge and neared the Dragon Wall. The wall was very tall; it was halfway to the ceiling of the cavern before it stopped. A large metal structure that looked like a dragon head took up the upper part of the Dragon Wall. Below that were seemingly random scratches in the stone, like Rimion said.
"I wonder where the Dragonstone is?" Arenar asked.
Katjaa didn't respond because she was still examining the wall.
"Maybe it's in the coffin?" Rimion offered.
None of it could be made out.
"You want to open it?"
Until some of the lines began to glow blue.
"It looks sealed tight."
Everything but the glowing scratches darkened around her until the light was almost blinding.
"Check that chest. It could be there."
The light left the wall and began to envelop around her.
"Nope, not in here. There's about fifty Septims in here though. Look fairly new, too."
A voice not her own began to speak in Katjaa's mind. "Fus. Force. Fus. Force. Fus. Fus. Force. Force."
"What do you think, Katjaa?"
A light burning sensation grew inside of her, though she couldn't pinpoint where. Not painful, but almost... releasing.
"Katjaa, are you all right?"
"Fus. Force. Force. Fus."
"Katjaa!"
Katjaa blinked, and the light was gone. The voice disappeared at the same time. Arenar stood in front of her with his hands on her shoulders. Pure fear was spread across his face.
"What happened?" she asked in a weak voice.
"I tried talking to you but you were unresponsive. Then I looked at you and your face was pale and cold. You weren't breathing."
"What was wrong?" Rimion asked from somewhere behind her.
"I'm not sure..." Katjaa considered telling them about the light and the voice, but she decided against it. They won't believe me.
"Can you walk?" Arenar asked.
"Yeah, I think so." She turned around and looked at Rimion, who was sitting on top of the coffin. "Did you guys find the Dragonstone?"
"Yes and no," Rimion answered vaguely. He patted the lid of the coffin. "Unless some time ago someone else came in here and took the Dragonstone, which is unlikely without the golden claw, it is in here. But the problem's that we can't get it open."
Katjaa walked a single step forward. "Maybe there's a le—"
The lid burst open and flew over the edge into the water below. Rimion flew with it, groaning soon after a splash was heard.
A draugr rose up from a lying-down position and stared at Katjaa and Arenar. This draugr looked much more imposing than any of the ones the group had previously encountered. For one, it was bulkier and taller than the other corpses. Its armor was in relatively good condition, considering how long the Nord has been dead. In its right hand was an axe that glowed with a red tint, indicating a fire enchantment.
In the other hand was a large stone slab with a carving of a map and more of the dragon language. Katjaa knew it was the Dragonstone immediately.
Katjaa instinctively charged at the draugr with her daggers out, hoping to stab its eyes before it could leave the coffin.
It just looked at her as she closed in. A couple of seconds before she would have reached the corpse, it took a deep breath. She cocked her head in surprise; none of the other draugr had drawn breath.
"FUS-RO-DAH!"
A wave of energy pounded against Katjaa, taking her off her feet and sending her through the waterfall next to the Word Wall. Her head cracked against a rock wall, her helmet almost doing nothing to cushion the blow.
Just before slipping into unconsciousness she heard one word.
"Katjaa!"
AUTHOR'S NOTE: I changed the name "Word Wall" with "Dragon Wall." To me Word Wall implies that they already know a shout is going to be learned from it. I don't like that. Instead I believe "Dragon Wall" implies that they are related to the dragons, which they are.