Chapter 38: The White Phial

[19th – 23rdof First Seed4E 202]

Next morning we slept in, and when T'mara was awake, she looked deep into my eyes and commented with an alluring and purring voice: "Was I able to demonstrate sufficiently last night what special kind of a pussy cat I am?"

Recalling the activities we had engaged in the night before in bed, I smiled and hugged her and happily confirmed: "Oh yes, indeed! But now I believe its time for breakfast."

We met Tolfdir at breakfast and mentioned the remains we had found at 'Journeyman's Nook', supposedly belonging to a former student of the college called Borvir. Tolfdir looked concerned and commented: "Yes, about a year ago or so we had sent him and a few other students out for an excursion. When they failed to return after several weeks some of us went looking for them, but did not find a clue; we probably looked in the wrong direction. Maybe we did a mistake by not sending a wizard or maybe a mercenary with them. We had been hoping that they would join forces and learn how to work together as a team, but obviously this has not worked. You have not seen any remains from the others by chance?"

I shook my head and said that we had indeed only seen references to Borvir, but not the other missing students. Urag gro-Shub, the Orc librarian, also joined us for breakfast and mentioned that he was looking for some special books:

"Have you ever heard of Shalidor? He was an immensely powerful mage, back in the First Era. Had an understanding of magic few have ever matched. He holed himself up in Labyrinthian, and devoted all of his time to research and study. Wrote more than you could imagine possible. Since then, his writings have been scattered all over Skyrim, but are little use to anyone who can't translate them. I'm one of the few who can. I've heard whispers of more of his works having turned up, most likely in a place called 'Forsaken Cave'. If you can track it down, it may prove useful to us."

I replied: 'Isn't that cave close to Nightgate Inn in Heljarchen, south of here?"

T'mara had our map out and soon confirmed that our target was indeed located there. I was thinking about going together with Ria, as she would have to travel in that direction anyway on her way back to Whiterun, and I decided to bring up the idea when we met Ria today.

As a matter of fact we went out to see her after breakfast, and we placed ourselves around a table in the inn. "When do you plan to travel home again, Ria?" I asked her.

"Well", she responded, "I feel quite fine again, and I guess that I can start the journey home tomorrow, if you do not mind; ideally I might hop on a carriage."

"It may be difficult to find a carriage here in Winterhold" I commented. "T'mara and I have potential business in a cave close to Nightgate Inn, and I wonder if you would like to join us for another quest. Once this is done, you're halfway to Whiterun already and we can return here. What do you think?"

She smiled and nodded: "Yes, I would like that. Let's start tomorrow morning?"

I looked at T'mara, and she nodded as well: "Yes, let's do it. We can be at the inn before dusk and enter the cave fully rested day after tomorrow."

We spent some more time showing Ria around town and introducing her to Brina, the shopkeeper. Ria was able to sell most of the loot we had acquired recently. We spent the afternoon with some more spellcasting training and finally went to bed early to be prepared for our trip the next day.

While we started off in the morning with a minor snowstorm as usual, we were lucky, as the storm abated soon, and once we had passed 'Whistling Mine', the sun started to come up and warm us up. We quickly moved forward until we got close to 'Fort Kastav'. We were not sure if the fort was occupied by regular troops and thus approached cautiously. T'mara, with her Khajiit eyes, soon noticed that the people she could see were clearly not soldiers, but looked more like conjurers and necromancers. For today we decided to focus on our current quest and try to sneak around the fort. This was not exactly an easy task as the main road passed close to the fort, but fortunately we could soon hear a faint call for lunch from within the fort, and most guards disappeared from the walls and balustrades. We took advantage of that and actually managed to sneak around the fortification without being noticed. As soon as were out of sight we sat down to have our own lunch and rest a little.

As we had walked quite fast for most of the day, we reached the inn mid afternoon, earlier than planned. Hadring, the innkeeper, had two rooms available which we took and paid for two nights, and we also ordered dinner. While waiting for our meal, I asked Hadring for rumors and news of the area, and he was happy to provide some, when I started to ask:

"What can you tell me about the inn?"

"This old place? Been here forever. Built by my great grandda. Run by him, then all the way up the line to me."

"Do you get a lot of business?"

"Nah, not so much. The odd traveler on the road. But mostly just old Fultheim, come to drink away a lifetime of bad memories, I'd wager. Course there's the Orc. Long-term tenant, that one. For what he pays, I could afford to shut this place down."

"Heard any rumors lately?"

"Have you seen that Shrine of Azura? They say the dark elves built it after they fled from Morrowind. Sight to see. Got to take care of your dinner now; anything you need, just holler."

Actually, yes, we had seen the shrine, as it was not so far from Winterhold, but we had not made the trip yet. Soon we enjoyed our dinner and retired to our rooms.

The next morning saw us walking briskly towards our target, 'Forsaken Cave'. The entrance seemed to be guarded by a couple of flame atronachs, and I briefly wondered how those creatures managed to survive in the cold. Well, naturally we attacked with frost blasts, and before the two atronachs had a chance to properly retaliate, they were defeated and only left a few fire salts to collect.

Once inside the cave, we found that we were mostly moving through ice caverns and passages, at least at the beginning. The paths were flanked by lots of urns, but few creatures and enemies, and progress was good; a few draugrs and a couple of trolls could barely slow us down. After following a number of winding passages, defeating a now increasing number of draugrs and disabling or circumventing a few traps, we found ourselves entering a new area. According to a barely readable sign this was 'Forsaken Crypt'. Although the name was not really encouraging – why couldn't we find some places being called 'Cavern of Joy' or 'Mine of Relaxation' or so for a change? – we proceeded nonetheless.

The first part of the crypt was easy, and we found a few potions to collect. The next catacomb area sported a number of draugrs, and we needed to be a little more careful. Ria wanted to improve on her sneaking and asked to take the lead. She actually managed to hit a few draugrs with arrows before being detected, but a draugr overlord was too strong and powerful for her; it soon detected her and hit her badly before we managed to help. T'mara killed the draugr with a shout, and I worked my healing spell on Ria. It was good thing that we had had some practice in restoration, because I had almost exhausted my magicka before Ria was all right again. "Good thing that I need the practice to improve my healing" I joked.

We fed a healing potion and a stamina potion to Ria to fully restore her to perfect condition, and after a quick rest she was good to go again. For the next part we sent Bran and Pammy ahead, until we reached a series of swinging blades. T'mara managed to squeeze through and disable them from the other side, and we proceeded carefully. The next room was a larger one again, and a stone sarcophagus was placed in a prominent location, with a number of draugrs resting against the walls. I whispered to my companions: "Not sure about that, but this looks like a 'boss room' to me – let's be careful!"

While we were still outside of the room, I shot a bolt at one of the lifeless draugr standing at the walls, which managed to bring it to live; my next shot killed it off. I managed to do the same with a couple of other draugrs, but finally the center sarcophagus opened with a burst and a dragon priest came out. Ria had not seen one of those before, but T'mara and I had. The dragon priest looked around and initially failed to see us, as we were hidden outside of the room. When he was looking in another direction, I hit him with a bolt and he turned around suddenly, slowly moving towards us. To make the situation worse, the few remaining draugrs were now also fully awake and started to attack as well.

T'mara suddenly had a bright idea: "Let's go back through the swinging blades and see how they deal with it!"

I agreed right away, and Ria and I were running back rapidly, taking Bran and Pammy with us. When we had passed the critical area, T'mara activated the blades with the lever and jumped through again with perfect timing. Of course the draugrs could have simply disabled the blades again, but I doubted that they were smart enough for that. Indeed they were not; the dragon priest tried to send frost blasts through the blades a couple of times, but none of them reached us; eventually it decided to proceed by slowly walking forward, and soon the blades cut into his body. As suspected, this guy was not killed easily, but when it stepped out on our side, it was stumbling and obviously hurt a lot. We blasted fire at it from two sides, and the dragon priest collapsed. The other draugrs were all cut down after the first and second set of blades.

Ria looked at the situation and shook her head: "I almost cannot believe what I saw. How can those creatures be stupid enough to simply walk through swinging blades? Are their brains rotten or what?"

"Well", I commented with a smirk, "if you look at their skulls, there's not much of a brain left at all, so that I guess you are right."

T'mara volunteered to pass the swinging blades again and disabled them from the other side, so that now we could take our time and look around. T'mara heard some chanting voices and soon found a word wall, which made her smile. While she was absorbing the shout, Ria and I checked the room for loot. A nicely decorated chest indeed had the book we were looking for - 'Shalidor's Insights'. In addition, we fond a couple of more Skill books and lots of alchemy supplies. Finally, under the word wall a small corridor lead to an ancient bowl, which somehow looked familiar. T'mara approached to my side, looked at the bowl as well, and finally said: "This looks like the bowl Nurelion in Windhelm described to get the White Phial. Wait a second, didn't he claim that the Phial was most likely located in this cave here?"

"Now as you mention it", I replied, "I guess you are right. But what do we need to do?"

T'mara's memory seemed to be better than mine: "You may not have noticed, but when we were at his store, he handed me a small amount of a special mixture to pour into the bowl. Let's try that!"

My wife searched her pack and found the small vial with the mixture. She poured it into the bowl, and a hidden stone door lowered itself into the ground, opening a way forward. The narrow passage lead to another chamber, and in there we indeed found an artifact which looked exactly like the 'White Phial' had been described to us. It looked damaged and cracked, though, but we took it nonetheless.

Meanwhile Ria had located the back door which we expected to be there, and we this enabled us to get out quickly. As we had had enough of an adventure for the day, we all decided to go back to the inn and relax for the rest of the day. On the next morning Ria was taking her leave to head back to Whiterun, whereas my wife and myself started to walk to Windhelm and delver the White Phial. Windhelm was not far from here, and we owed it to Nurelion to bring back what we was looking for.

As Windhelm was only half a day away from the inn, we took our time and enjoyed the scenery while looking towards the nearby river and the partially ice covered waterfalls. We had almost reached 'Anga's Mill', when we heard the familiar dragon roar, and we immediately looked around. A lone fisherman was sitting on the other side of the river, and for some reason a dragon was heading towards the poor person. While T'mara shouted a warning, I got my crossbow out and loaded a standard bolt, as I did not yet know what type of dragon we had encountered. As soon as the dragon slowed down, I quickly fired my bolt, and it hit right at the time the beast breathed a large frost cloud. The bolt staggered the beast slightly so that the frost cloud just barely missed the poor fisherman. Now alerted, the guy dropped his pole and ran away, seeking cover. The dragon lost previous seconds making up its mind; apparently it could not decide if to go for the fisherman or fly over to our side. This gave me time to load a bolt of exploding fire and hit the beast again. The dragon got angry and started head towards us, so that the range was now close enough for T'mara – as soon as the dragon slowed down to attack me, my wife shouted 'YOL' and hit the beast fully in the chest. A loud roar was in the air, but the dragon again breathed frost at me. I quickly jumped aside and cast a ward, so that I was only hit a little. A couple of hold guards who happened to stop at the mill now also joined in and shot their arrows. Once again the dragon had a hard time to decide on whom to attack next, and I was able to hit it with another bolt. The beast breathed another frost cloud in my direction, but I was able to hide behind a big rock. I guess that I should be honored as the dragon clearly considered me to be the most dangerous enemy, but I did not really have the time to dwell much on that thought.

T'mara was now almost underneath the dragon and blasted fireballs at the beast, while arrows came flying from the other side, and eventually the dragon could not sustain flight any longer and crashed on the riverbank. We were all able to find cover behind the multiple rocks lying around and thus could continue to pester the beast. One of the guards did not hide well enough and the dragon managed to hurt him with frost, so that he went down with pain. However, a final 'YOL' shout together with my strongest fireball spell managed to deliver the final kill. T'mara absorbed the dragon soul, as usual.

Right away we ran over to the injured guard, who was breathing heavily. His companion obviously did not know what to do, so that T'mara and I took over the healing with our proven strategy. Soon the guard was conscious again and ready to move: "Thank you very much, Dragonborn and companion, for helping me, and also for bringing down that dragon – this will not be forgotten!"

T'mara smiled and replied: "You are welcome, soldier. Have a good day!"

Before leaving the site we also looked over to the other side of the river, as we had not had the time to check if the lone fisherman had survived. But we saw him waving from the other side and he shouted over his thanks for defeating the dragon, We shouted back a greeting and were happy to see that he was alive and apparently uninjured; thus we walked on.

Soon we passed 'Anga's Mill' and greeted the owner, and around lunch time we entered the city of Windhelm. We turned left right away towards the market area and first got some light lunch. When our stomachs were full we entered the shop 'The White Phial'. The owner, Nurelion, seemed to be not well at all, and we were greeted by his assistant instead. Quintus was delighted to hear the news and lead us upstairs where his master sat in a chair. When we showed him the cracked phial he looked disappointed and said:

"This... it matches every description of the Phial that I've found in lore. But if it can't hold liquid, there's no way of knowing. How did you manage to damage it, then? This is what I get for not retrieving it myself."

T'mara responded: "But it was already broken and cracked as we found it in the cave!"

Nurelion almost barked: "Figures – I doubt you have sufficient knowledge to harm the Phial even if you wanted to. Either way, this is the end of it. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm not quite in the mood to entertain guests. I trust you can show yourselves out. Here's for your trouble."

T'mara had received a meager five septimes for our efforts. Quintus lead us down again and added: "I want to thank you for your help. I know my master can be a bit short at times. I do believe you when you say that the phial was already damaged when you found it."

He also offered additional money, but we declined and suggested to use it on the shop instead. "If you need anything, just send word to us" T'mara finally mentioned as we left the shop again.

Outside she looked at me: "I guess it's too late for today to head to Winterhold. What about getting a room at the 'Candlehearth Hall' and retiring early?"

With the last words she had used her very special smile, and thinking about the dragon fight I knew exactly what she referred to, absorbed dragon soul and such.

"Well, I don't know about that", I started to tease her, "I am not tired yet. We might as well walk around and look for more adventures."

"Timotheus!" she objected.

"On second thought", I continued with a big smile, "suddenly I do feel a little tired. Finding a nice warm bed with a certain Khajiit in it sounds rather tempting after all."

"Much better", my wife responded with a smirk, "off we go!"

On our way back to the College of Winterhold, we took the same route as last time, through the snow and ice north of the city rather than following the road which made a huge detour. We made good time, only rarely being interrupted by ice wolves and snow bears, and soon reached the road again close to the 'Whistling Mine'. This time we could not resist Thorgar's pleas to help search for new veins in the mine: "Mining is hard work, but we pay a fair price for any ore you dig up."

We spent a couple of hours inside looking. Despite our best efforts, though, we could only locate a few iron ore veins, and we sold a few lone pieces of ore back to Thorgar outside. While he looked a little bit disappointed, he nonetheless claimed: "The mine will be the talk of Skyrim soon, you'll see. It'll be the stuff of legends."

Well, T'mara and I did not really think so, but wisely kept out opinion to ourselves.

[Author's Note: The hamlet of 'Heljarchen' has been restored/added around 'Nightgate Inn' by the mod "Cutting Room Floor", I believe]