At least it's not nearly as cold as the Hebra, thought Zelda as her teeth chattered in the mountain air. So far, Link's plan of sneaking up to the mountaintop tomb was working, if only barely. How were any of them supposed to expect a whole tower of bandits halfway up? They had almost been caught, but Gwilin had sensed movement in the snowfall and redirected the party towards a route less traveled – over the ridge itself. The slopes were just low enough for the party members to carefully climb.
Despite not explicitly knowing the land, Link led the way, though he clearly struggled. Zelda had not seen his supposed stunt in Helgen, and she had not asked for all of the details, but his hands still clearly hurt. Burned to a crisp then subjected to frostbite, she thought, we may need to talk about the extremes in which you perform your heroics. She knew it was pointless though – as dangerous as Link's methods were, they were often necessary to the success of their plans.
Aryll had not said a word to either her or Link since entering Riverwood, but Zelda helped her up the mountain all the same. It's the least I can do: it's not her fault that she's ill-prepared for this. For her part, the strange woman must have been too busy focusing on pushing through the cold to complain. Otherwise, she might have done a lot more than scowl at her brother and the princess.
"We're here," Gwilin whispered at one point, but he did not need to; the gigantic stone tomb loomed over them, and they were still several yards away from the steps. "But, there's more of them leading up."
"If we walk towards the entrance from the side," Link proposed, "we might be able to bypass them."
"If there's not one directly in front of the door."
"At this height, and in this temperature, surely, they aren't expecting company," said Zelda. "Especially when some of the bandits were posted up the main path. I would expect their watch to be a lot sloppier from here on out."
"We have the snow up here to partially obscure us," said Link. "We shouldn't count on it that heavily, seeing as how Gwilin could see one of them at the tower; but we can still attempt to use it to our advantage."
"Mhrmm…" Aryll grumbled.
"Would you like to add something, Aryll?" Gwilin asked.
"Nothing much – just that they're bandits and that they're armed to the teeth and we're not. And, oh yeah, what if they attack?"
"We're just going to have to hope and pray that they don't see us."
"And if they do?"
"They won't."
"But, if they do?"
"Strictly speaking, the dragon should have killed us anyways," the elf sighed. "We're lucky to have lived this long. If they do see us, I guess I'll see you in Sovngarde."
"What exactly is this Sovngarde everyone keeps mentioning?" Zelda asked.
"When we die, you'll find out," Aryll said.
"Ary!" Gwilin smacked a hand to his face.
"What? Am I wrong?"
"Let's just try Link's plan, okay? It can't hurt. Link, you're up." The Hylian Champion gave a curt nod and began sneaking up the hill, past the main stairwell.
"It can hurt," Zelda heard Aryll grumble. "Especially if one of us gets shot by an arrow or stabbed in the back. I imagine that hurts." As Zelda pulled her along, she could not help but think how famously Aryll would get along with Impa. They both certainly have a dry sense of humor.
Thankfully, the plan went off without a hitch – the mountainside and tomb entrance conveniently leveled with each other at one point, rewarding their stealth tactics with zero violence or bloodshed. As they crouched by the door to the entrance and looked back at the bandits below, Zelda's eyes widened.
"How are they not freezing?" she hissed. "I don't think they're even wearing undergarments under what scant armor they have." She thought she saw Aryll smirk at her bewilderment, but it went away in an instant.
"The important thing is they haven't seen us," Gwilin said. "Hopefully, the worst is behind us; but I get the feeling that once we go through these doors, there will still be a couple we need to get around."
Sure enough, only a few minutes after they entered, they came across a firepit with more of the grave-robbers encircled about. Although the gathering looked casual enough, they must have been meant to guard the interior doorway, which was stationed right behind them.
"This could be a problem," Link mumbled.
"And how, oh great master sneak," Aryll said, "do you plan to evade their sight? We can't get past without them seeing us."
"Technically, we can as long as they aren't near the fire. We can slip past them if we have a diversion."
"And, I suppose one of us will have to be a sacrifice? Who did you have in mind?" Zelda knew by her tone that this comment was meant to hurt, and she wanted to stand up for Link, but the latter looked back at her and shook his head. We don't have time for this, he seemed to say.
"We need something clunky," he said. "Something we can throw that will make a loud-ish noise. We can't use the dagger, because we might need it to defend ourselves. Same goes for the shield. We can't use any of our shoes, because we'll have to get out at some point, and we don't want to get more frostbitten than we have to." Zelda scanned the nearby shadows and caught sight of some kind of small vase.
"Would something like that work?" she asked. The expressions of the other three varied greatly: Gwilin shrugged with acceptance, obviously in favor of trying; Link's eyes had lit up with that mischievous glee again; and Aryll, upon seeing her brother's face, just rolled her eyes, as if she were silently demanding the heavens, WHY?!
"That," Link grinned, "should do nicely." Zelda passed it to him, making sure it was empty before he threw it. "On your mark," he whispered, the pot gripped near his ear, "get set… and go!" He threw the urn as far as he could towards the back corner of the tomb, shattering it to pieces. As figures emerged from the fire with the sharp inquiry of "What was that?", the party started forward, making their way along the wall past some strange, table-like structure perched amid hundreds of years-worth of rubble.
At least, Zelda thought it was a table. It wasn't until they were passing behind it and she felt something cold and stiff brush against her head that she began to suspect otherwise. Though she wanted to scream, she held her tongue and pressed on with the rest of the group until they were through the doorway and all the way down the steps of the crypt's first level, out of earshot of the distracted bandits.
"Nice work, you two," Gwilin said to the Hylian couple. "Pretty sure the worst is behind us now, so we can take it easy from here on out."
"Is nobody going to talk about the not-mummified corpse on the altar?" Zelda asked.
"You saw that too?" Link asked. "What do you think the chances are we're not the first to come across these guys?"
"Skyrim's known for all kinds," Gwilin said, "mages, warriors, shielders – and adventurers, who often end up in places they shouldn't."
"So… what you're saying is the chances are fairly high," Zelda said.
"I'm sorry you had to see that." He was trying to sound reassuring, but even he looked queasy. "Hopefully, we won't have to deal with something that gruesome again."
"How do you know?"
"I don't. I'm just guessing. Besides, most people don't like to delve deep into the tombs unless they absolutely have to. They go on forever, they smell like death, and… well, there are legends."
"About what?" pressed Zelda.
"I wouldn't worry about it. It's just a bedtime tradition for parents to tell scary stories about the 'walking dead' to their children."
"Great," Link mumbled.
"Even if there's merit in the tales," Gwilin said, "what's a mummy going to do? Groan us to death? I'd be surprised if it could even stay in one piece." While Zelda knew he had a point, she still felt strange – as if something within the tomb had just heard their entire conversation. She glanced over her shoulder, but the bandits were nowhere to be found.
Instead of feeling better the further they traveled, Zelda only continued to feel worse. There's some kind of evil down here, she thought. She expected every crypt they passed to burst open, but they remained closed.
How old is this place? she wondered. Gwilin had said they went a long way. Tombs are only as long as the amount of dead that occupy them.
They were approaching a staircase now, leading to an open doorway, when someone practically tackled her and pushed her down. Zelda found she wasn't the only one victim to the sudden attack – both Gwilin and Link were smushed with her, all held together by two shaking arms.
"There's someone in the next room," Aryll whispered before letting go. Sure enough, when Zelda looked, an armored figure was pacing about the room in front of a small pedestal. From his appearance, she discerned that he must have been another one of the bandits. "Whoops," she heard Gwilin mumble.
"You had no way of knowing," she told him.
"What's he doing?" asked Link. "He doesn't seem to be on patrol. It looks more like he's searching for something."
"Perhaps a way forward," Zelda said. "Look." Through their slightly obscured vision from the stairs and all the way across the room, she could see an iron gate, blocking another doorway.
"If we keep watching," Gwilin said, "we can see how he opens it and follow from a distance." The man was reapproaching the pedestal now. "Maybe that's the lever. Why didn't he try that first?" He was interrupted by the sudden clicking of a mechanism as the man cried out in pain and fell to the ground, motionless.
Everyone in the party was gaping as the mechanism finally went silent and the room became still once more.
"Ah," was all Gwilin could muster. Zelda was the first to run forward and examine the body.
"No pulse," she said. "He's down." His skin had been pelted with tiny, needle-like arrows, and she picked up one that had managed to not hit him off the ground. The minute she sniffed it, she cringed. "Poison. At any rate, I'm pretty sure regular darts aren't supposed to smell as nasty as this, no matter how old they are."
"What do we do now?" Aryll asked. Link was already kneeling by the body and searching through its pockets and pack. "What are you doing?"
"It's like you said," he replied, "the bandits were armed to the teeth. Chances are, he was too."
"You can't just steal a dead man's belongings!"
"I guarantee that if the situation were reversed, he would be doing the same to us. Not that he would find anything." After a quick search, he had uncovered a few gold coins, some strangely colored bottles, some arrows, and a weathered bow. Zelda could see the relief on his face as he slung this last item across his back. "Now, we're a bit more prepared," he said.
"But, for what?" Aryll pressed. "The door is still shut, and the man who tried to open it just died in front of us."
"Maybe he went about opening it the wrong way," Gwilin said, eyeing something across the room. Following his gaze, Zelda could see three pillars etched with various animal carvings. She ventured towards one of them and examined it from all sides.
"There are three different animals on this one," she said, "a bird, a snake, and a whale." She checked the next. "Same with this one, and the other." I wonder. She wrapped her arms around the pillar and twisted. Sure enough, it spun in place. "It's some kind of combination."
"And he must have gotten it wrong," Gwilin caught on. "Zelda, set that pillar back to what he had it on. Maybe we can find where he made a mistake." She did as she was told and stepped back to examine all three. The bandit had taken a wild guess and turned each one to the bird. Why not the others?
"There has to be a clue around here," she said. "Let's split up."
The search actually seemed fairly quick at first. Aryll found the image of both the snake and the whale on the level above. But there are three pillars, Zelda thought. At least, she was beginning to understand the bandit's reasoning by now – with the snake and whale depicted above, he had opted for the animal that was missing from the combination: the bird. He made all three of them the same animal, she thought. Maybe that was where he erred. But, maybe wasn't good enough. "Keep looking," she encouraged. "There must be a hidden one."
They searched for a half hour, but their efforts were fruitless. Eventually, they came to a stop and regrouped, Aryll slumping onto a rock by the closed gate, the rest standing around the pedestal.
"Now what?" Link asked.
"If there's a combination," Zelda said, "there must be a way to open it."
"But three pillars and three options for each means that we have nine possible outcomes," Gwilin said.
"And eight of those lead to certain death," Aryll contributed.
"The good news is that we know one combination that doesn't work," Zelda said.
"That leaves seven deadly failures, and one success," calculated Gwilin.
"Maybe there's a way to try all of the combinations and not die," Link suggested. "Three of you could man the pillars from the back, and I could protect myself with the shield."
"The darts would hit you from the other side," said Aryll. "You'd be dead before you had time to acknowledge your failure." It was a harsh statement, but it was true.
"I'd rather not turn back," Link said. "We've come this far, after all. Maybe there's a way to force the door open? Break the mechanism? It shouldn't be that hard if the tomb is as old as you say."
"The ancient Nords were supposedly master builders." Gwilin shook his head. "It could be worth a shot, but I don't imagine it will amount to much but more frustration." Zelda's eyes fell on Aryll, who had stiffened and was now feeling the surface of the rock she had sat on. She was tracing something small, her eyes wide.
"Zelda," she called, "step back to the entrance of the room." The princess was surprised that the previously distant girl had called her by name. "Go." Zelda made her way to her appointed position and waited. "You see the two pictures above?"
"Yes."
"Pretend there's only one level and I'm sitting next to the pictures. Where would I be in the line?"
"At the beginning. Where are you going with this?"
"I think the combination is snake, snake, whale," she said. Everyone stared at her. "Zelda was right. There was a hidden one – one so small you would barely notice it. Unless," she tapped the section of rock she was sitting on, "you were this close to giving up." Gwilin walked up to her and looked at the spot she was pointing at. After a moment of hesitation, he nodded.
"Are you sure about this?" Link asked.
"It's a better lead than nothing," said Gwilin. No one could argue with that. Link, still insisting to turn the lever in case something went wrong, remained at the center of the room whilst the other three went to turn the columns.
"Ready?" the Champion called. There was a soft mumble of agreement before he took a deep breath and activated the mechanism. Zelda could hear clicking from somewhere within the walls.
I suppose there are worse ways to go, she thought, preparing for the sharp punctures of the poisoned darts.
Thankfully, the only thing that moved in that moment was the door, which slowly raised until it was neatly set in the wall above the doorframe.
The widespread surprise was evident in the stunned silence of the chamber.
"We're not dead," Gwilin said. "Right?"
"I don't think we are," Aryll muttered. "I'm pretty sure Sovngarde isn't supposed to be this dingy, and unless someone in this room sold all of our souls to a Daedric lord, I like to think we're in the clear."
"Daedric lord?" Zelda pressed. Aryll sighed and shook her head.
"It's nothing important. Just a joke."
"Suppose this means we go onward," Link said.
"There's something bothering me about this," said Gwilin. "A locked door should have indicated that no one got further than this room. But, you searched him, and he didn't have the claw."
"With our luck, the door's on a timer and will close on us after a few minutes," Aryll said.
"That's possible, which means that someone could have figured out the puzzle in advance and delved deeper into the tomb," agreed Zelda. Deciding it was better to hurry through the door before the mechanism reset, the group continued forward. Before leaving, Zelda could not help but look back at the dead bandit on the floor as the door closed.
He might have been someone's brother, she thought, the tomb feeling darker than it had felt before. She turned away and pressed forward, but the image was still there, merged with a memory of her own. He may have even been someone's father.
oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
Aryll knew she was being harsh, but she didn't necessarily care – at least, she hadn't until she saw Zelda glance back at the new corpse.
She looks ready to cry, she thought, before reprimanding herself. No. Stop it. You're mad at her. She took your brother away. She's the reason you witnessed that nightmare alone. And, she was fully convinced this was true. But, that wasn't enough to stop the pity she now felt towards the princess.
Aryll had been there when the world practically ended. Granted, all of these years, she thought she had made the whole scenario up; but now that she knew it happened, she knew that everything she had seen and felt had been real. The smell of smoke, the screams of terror, the carnage…
"That's all I dreamt about for so many years of my life," she found herself saying. Zelda glanced at her. "The day the Calamity came. That's what you were thinking about, right?" Aryll took her companion's look of surprise with a grain of salt. Of course, she's shocked. I'm shocked. It wasn't supposed to come out that sappy. "I always felt like life in Ivarstead was too perfect," she went on. "We had a good life, living off the land. I never experienced death, not so abruptly. At least, that's what I originally thought. But, realizing I did once… having that knowledge isn't enough to reassure you, is it?"
"No," Zelda admitted. "If anything, it makes it worse."
"Hm." They walked on, leaving some space between themselves and the boys.
"I know you're angry," the princess said. "And, you have every right to be. You aren't the first one to blame me for the Calamity." Instead of feeling better and further justified in her behavior, Aryll just felt more rotten, even though there was that voice inside of her scolding her for feeling this way.
"He really thought you needed him," was all she said.
"I did, but so did you."
"I lived."
"Yes – we did." Zelda glanced around at the catacombs they walked through. "And, we watched others die in our stead." Aryll found it strange that she used the word "we", because it sounded like Zelda was referring to her rather than to herself and Link.
"I heard more than saw," Aryll admitted. "It was too terrible to watch." She could see Link's shadow, so small compared to Gwilin's. "I hardly saw their faces when I dreamed. I told myself that was the best part of my situation – not remembering, not seeing. But, it wouldn't have mattered if I recognized them or not. It was still something a child should never have gone through, especially not by herself." She stopped herself when she saw the girl stare at the floor, her face red with shame. "I am angry," Aryll said, "but that doesn't mean I blame you for everything that happened."
"Really?"
"Did you want the Calamity to come?"
"No."
"Did you personally invite Ganon through the front door?"
"No."
"Did you do your best to fight him?"
"I like to think so. If it's any consolation," the princess said, "you weren't the only one who was left to fight alone in the end." This reminded Aryll of the final bit of her nightmare.
"So, it's true? He died?"
"I don't know how you know about that, but sort of. We brought him to the Shrine of Resurrection – a project of one of our scientists – before he was completely gone. As it is, however, yes – he was badly injured."
"How long did it take for him to recover?" she asked. Zelda didn't answer this immediately.
"That doesn't matter," she said. "What matters is that when I needed him most, he was there." Aryll knew the princess was speaking from her own perspective, and that she most definitely had not meant to antagonize her; but that spark of annoyance and bitterness had returned.
"We should catch up before the boys leave us in the dust," she said, clomping faster.
Because he hadn't been there when she needed him most.
One minute the group had been wandering through a corridor that looked just the same as the last; and suddenly they were standing in front of a wall of webs strung across a wide doorway.
"Okay, seriously?" Aryll asked, causing everyone around her to shush her. "First bandits, now spiders?"
"There must be a lot of them to make a web this big," Link whispered.
"Not necessarily. One could easily get the job done," replied Gwilin at the same volume. Aryll almost snorted at Link's look of disbelief.
"What kind of spiders do you have here?" he demanded.
"Is that you?" a voice called out, causing Gwilin to squeak in panic, Aryll to clench her fists, Link to reach for his bow, and Zelda to jump a mile high. "Harknir? Bjorn? Soling?"
"Not the kind that would be finished off by our friends, apparently," Aryll muttered. "Okay. Gwilin, give me that dagger."
"I thought you were nonviolent," Gwilin said, taking a step back.
"These webs aren't going to cut themselves."
"Oh. Yeah. Right." He passed her the weapon, a look of unease still in his eyes.
"What did you think I was going to do? Stab someone?" she asked before finding a gap in the webbing and sawing at the threads. She thought she heard Gwilin mumble, "At this point, I'm not sure what to expect."
It took a few minutes, but a large enough hole was finally made for each person to file through, one by one. But before this was done, Aryll examined the room, looking left, right, and – finally – up.
"Normally, I wouldn't ask this, but we have very limited options. Are you actually good with a bow?" she asked Link.
"I would hope so. Dad taught… me." His voice faltered as Aryll glanced back at him. "Why?"
"Think you can make a stealth shot at the spider? Not to kill, just to injure or incapacitate?"
"You and Gwilin keep referring to these spiders like they're horrible monsters," Link said, moving towards the hole. "What makes them different from any other spider? Can't I just squish it with a boot?"
"I don't know what kind of spiders you're talking about; but, for starters, you wouldn't be able to reach," Aryll said, directing her gaze towards the ceiling. "And for another, you would need a very large boot."
"What are you… GREAT FAIRY FOUNTAINS!" This exclamation was whispered if just barely. Aryll knew he had located the giant spider crawling along the ceiling. "It's the size of a house!"
"Yep. Can you injure it enough for us to slip past?"
"You're not even fazed?!"
"I mean, it's a little bigger than the travelers made it sound."
"A little?!"
"It must be a queen."
"Yeah," Gwilin said. "Wilhelm says the few he came across were each the size of a goat. But, that's normal."
"You guys don't have regular household spiders? Like, the ones that are maybe this big," Link made a small circle with his thumb and pointer finger, "that you could splat just by looking at it?" Aryll tried to imagine a spider that small. And what does he mean by "household"? Do the people of their world keep spiders as pets?
"Can you do it or not?" Aryll asked. "So far, it doesn't know we're here, but that will change if Mister Noisy keeps calling out to his buddies the way he is. And then, it will likely spit poison at us."
"This doesn't sound like the kind of enemy you simply incapacitate."
"Do not kill it."
"Well, how am I supposed to 'incapacitate' something that spits venom and makes webs like these?" Link gestured to the spider web.
"We've seen enough death today. Injure. Don't kill."
"If you can get it to fall on its back," Gwilin said, "it will take a while to flip back over. Not forever, just enough for us to run past, rescue him," he said, gesturing in the direction the voice had come from, "and find out where the claw is." Link thought for a moment.
"I still think it would be easier to…"
"Do not kill it," Aryll repeated.
"Whoever's out there," the voice called, "would you stop wasting time and help me?"
"Now or never," Gwilin said. Before Aryll even had time to blink, Link was whipping out arrow after arrow, notching each into the bow before letting it fly at a leg. With all eight legs detached from the ceiling, the spider crashed onto its back, hissing in anger and pain. The four filed into the chamber towards a man caught in the spider's web.
"What are you doing?" he demanded. "Finish it before it kills us all!"
"No need," Aryll said as she began working on the webs. "We get through the doorway and we're home free. Something that size can't follow us."
"Are you mad?"
"How many people are going to ask me that today? I'm furious. Thanks for asking!"
"While we're on the subject of mad and a little furious," Link said, whilst holding out his shield to prevent the spider's poison from hitting any of them, "I don't suppose you know anything about a Golden Claw? There's a shopkeeper in Riverwood that's pretty bitter about being robbed."
"There's a live spider the size of Whiterun, and you're asking me about the Claw?!" the man said, along with many other choice words that Aryll knew would have had her practically eating soap had she used them in High Hrothgar.
"If he didn't know what we were talking about," Zelda observed, "he would have asked 'What Claw?'"
"Nice catch," Link smiled. Just then, the spider let out an ear-piercing shriek that shook the very cavern itself and caused everyone to wince in pain.
"Alright, ALRIGHT!" the man admitted. "Yes, I know about the Claw. I have it with me. I know how to use it. Once you get me out of here, I'll show you how it works."
"We will definitely take you up on that offer," Aryll quipped, slicing through the last bit of webbing. The man fell to the floor and scrambled to his feet. "We can move forward through the strands I sliced. Let's go." Of course, instead of being thanked, Aryll received a heavy shove backwards, causing a ripple effect that threw the whole group to the floor. If it hadn't been for Link's reflexes, which Aryll had to admit were impressive, and constant shielding, the whole company would have been completely drenched in spider venom.
"As if I would share the treasure with you!" he cackled before running through the doorway. I'm not sure what else I expected… hold on – what treasure? Aryll thought. Perhaps, she had imagined that bit, and yet…
"It's getting UP!" Zelda shouted, breaking her train of thought. Aryll felt herself being pulled to her feet and shoved – yet again – this time towards the doorway.
"Everyone out!" Link said, the last in line, his shield still at the ready. "Go!"
Author's Note: Bleak Falls Barrow is pretty much the easiest starter dungeon in the game, but it's a completely different story if you rely on sneak rather than offense. And, if you choose not to fight half of the enemies. I did change a small detail in the first puzzle room – the "hidden" symbol is usually a large picture of a snake on the side of a rock, rather than a miniscule detail. The reason I changed it is because I wanted the bandit to actually try a combination before attempting to open the door. It always kind of bugged me that he just waltzed in and pulled the lever without thinking.