Chapter 25

Day 76

Our footsteps on dirt and stone resounded in the courtyard. When we stopped to look around, nothing but silence was around us. Destroyed buildings, fallen corpses, scorched walls and ground. The ruins of Windhelm had been scattered about the frozen lake and surrounding land. In the two days we had been searching through the ruins we had found just two survivors. They had been too shaken to even speak, it had been hard enough to move them from where they lay in the fetal position. Mjoll recounted that she had to knock them out in order to get them to stop screaming.

Today however my group had been taken off guard duty and sent to recover any kind of supplies we could find. Farian and his sister Ryona where young yet they handled seeing this destruction well enough. They had witnessed Riften overrun after all. They moved rubble away from a doorway then drew their blades. Shavari was a brown Khajiit with a large black spot around her right eye. She had volunteered into the jarl's service after the events in Riften. She moved into the building after the siblings had removed the debris, an arrow notched and ready.

I motioned for Farian and Ryona to follow in after her. I stood by the doorway and kept lookout. Hundreds of undead had lay siege to the castle. It had been going well for Ulfric until we believe the masters of the undead arrived and wielded their magic. If they where able to amass such an army we all felt that it wasn't impossible for them to level a castle the size of Windhelm. As I looked out over what remained of Windhelm my body began to shake. The thought of anyone having that much power scared me beyond anything that I had seen so far in this world.

"Nothing in here either." Shavari reported as the group came out of the home. There had been a few buildings that stood but so far we had yet to find any new survivors or even salvageable supplies such as food or weapons. The once grand city now lay empty and ruined. I had been there recently and there was no end to the fear in my heart as I continued walking through the streets.

"This place is like a graveyard."Ryona said quietly. Her long brown hair fell in front of her face as she tried looking around. It took her a few tries to try and move it out of the way so she could see better. Normally I'd have found the action funny but i needed everyone on the look out for undead or their masters.

"We have trouble!" Shadr, a young redguard stable-man, came running up to us.

"Report." I ordered the others to stop moving and come closer together.

"Marsh-Walker and I ended up in the graveyard. The graves and the Hall of the Dead are empty!" The man had to catch his breath before being able to finish. "Marsh-Walker is waiting just outside the tombs."

"Lead the way then." The news unsettled the other three. I was also unnerved by the news and wondered what these necromancer's end goal was. Did they attack the city just to take the corpses from the city's graves? I also noticed that there weren't any bodies in the streets. There weren't even any under rubble. It's as if the necromancers had searched through to reanimate corpses. Maybe they attacked the city to add to their ranks? There could be any number of reasons but it ultimately didn't change anything.

We turned the last corner after the flight of steps and met with the heavily armored argonian. He had scavenged a steel helmet from the smithy and it covered most of his features but you could still make out the large scar that ran from his face to the base of his neck. Marsh-Walker was the oldest of everyone in my group and seemed to have traveled much more than Shadr. Marsh-Walker claims that he traveled to and from different lands before settling in Skyrim. The dark green argonian never gave his reasons for why he chose Skyrim or what adventures he had. But his skill was unquestionable and we all looked to him for guidance.

"You've finally arrived. I had feared that Shadr might have gotten distracted." He joked before drawing his sword and leading the way inside. Shadr cast his gaze to the ground and followed after.

"Farian, with me. Ryona and Shavari, you two go in with them." Farian and I watched the entrance as the others would explore the Hall of the Dead.

"Do you think Ulfric survived?" The teen asked out loud as we waited outside the entrance.

"I'm not sure. We still haven't been able to calm down the two we found." I sighed heavily as I looked around. There must have been many bodies around at one point. All of them now part of the horde that was last seen marching West. Mjoll had seen the mass of undead leaving the city and reported before she could even get a fix on their numbers. She had said that they wouldn't stop pouring out of the remnants of the gates.

"I'm no stormcloak but I really hope he did. He could help us all survive. I would prefer if the dragonborn showed up to save us though." My curiosity got the better of me when he mentioned the dragonborn. I had seen the dragonborn once before, adorned in full armor and mysterious. I had only watched through a wall of flame when she saved Kharjo and I from the dragon.

"What do you know about the dragonborn? I haven't heard anything in my travels." I still needed to keep to my story that I had just recently arrived to Skyrim. It wasn't really a lie but not the full truth.

"Well, I've never actually met her but I hear she saved us from the dragons and even stopped the war from escalating for a time." So the dragonborn was a female. I thought back to the time I had seen her.

"Is the dragonborn a Khajiit?" I adjusted the grip on my sword and shield, still keeping on guard and listening out for anything inside the Hall of the Dead.

"Yeah. They say she really cares about the Khajiit race and even holds dragons in really high regards. She prefers not to kill them but knows that she can't change their nature."

"For someone who has never met her, you really know a lot about her."

"Well she came to Riften for a time and Mjoll told me all about her. They had adventured together for a small time before the dragonborn needed to go off on her own." That made sense. I hadn't yet really been able to sit down and talk with Mjoll about anything. So far all I knew of her was her skill with a blade and the few times we had fought together. When Laila Law-Giver held "council" I was rarely needed as most of the decisions where left to Mjoll, Zaynabi and her. New Riften, as we have now taken to calling For Amol, has just recently started to come together. We have set up regular shifts for my group as guards and Mjoll sends escorts with the volunteers who cut wood and gather food from the woods.

"She sounds very noble." I said with a smile. "Maybe she's out there now, trying to find a way to end this." I sent a prayer to Akatosh, hoping I was right. We could use some good news, even it was just knowing that the dragonborn was alive and fighting these things like us.

"Maybe. But I feel like she's done a lot for Skyrim. I wonder if she gets tired of helping everyone all the time?" I personally wondered the same thing. What exactly had the dragonborn in this world done? In the game there where so many things that you could do and be a part of. Had the dragonborn joined the dark brotherhood? Was she a werewolf? A daedric worshiping cannibal?

"Darius!" I jumped as Marsh-Walker came out of the hall. Thought the helmet covered most of his features I could tell that his face looked grim. Ryona, Shavari, and Shadr all had similar looks on their faces. "You should see this."