Chapter 7

Everything was going wrong. Well, that's not true. Not everything. I suppose I should back up.

We had just crossed the bridge when it had, predictably, collapsed. Quite rude, if one were to ask me. The good news however, is that I seem to have gotten a new 'Checkpoint'! How do I know? Well let me tell you!

I. keep. Dying.

These god forsaken spiders! They aren't even that tough! Most go down with a swing or two. But they keep surrounding me. And they're venom fucking hurts!

With only the three of us, we keep getting overwhelmed. With only Aerana able to cast midrange spell, myself and Ralof keep having to defend her until one of us inevitably gets bitten, or we get overrun. We've tried just running. We've tried setting up a choke point in the tunnels. We've tried brute force.

One if us always dies. Usually me. Have you ever been eaten alive? I fucking have? I don't fucking recommend it!

Ok, deep breath. This problem won't be solved by freaking out. What haven't we tried? If we could just get one more mid ranged fighter, we would be able to hold them off long enough to flee. Probably.

Opening the sack, I took note of our stock. Robes, meat, cheese, book, potions-WAIT! THE CHEESE! No. The book! Of course! I could just learn the spell! I have an infinite amount of time. I could just learn the spell, one page at a time.

Why didn't I think of it before. I took a deep breath and sat down. I dutifully ignored the strange looks I was getting. Hmm, I'm getting a bit too comfortable with doing that. Oh well!

Time to get into the studying mood. This could take countless lives. But I'm ready for it. First page! Here we-OH GOD IT HURTS FUCK SHIT WHY! MY EYES! MY EYES! THEY'RE MELTING! MY BRAIN IS MELTING! FUCKFUCKFUCK! SOMEONE HELP ME! PLEASE! OH GOD! HELP ME! WHY ISN'T ANYONE HELPING ME?!

-Meanwhile from Aerana's perspective.-

What is he doing? He's just sitting there, drooling onto the book. Is he on drugs? Is that what's going on? Is that how you become a sear? Just a ton of moonsuger mixed with ninroot? Probably. Mamma was right. Damnit.

-Meanwhile from Ralof's perspective-

I should have warned him that would happen. Nothing good ever comes out of a book, that's what da' always said. Poor guy. Damn things left his brain leaking out his ears. You were right pa'. Them books would rot our brains. Nothing you could find in one you couldn't find by talking to people.

-Back to Sheo-

WHY?! SWEET GODS OF THE GUMDROP KINGDOM WHY?! WE WERE LAMBS TO THE SLUGHTER! LAMBS TO THE-oh hey I know sparks now.

Electric coursed across my finger tips. And I couldn't hold in my grin. Experimentally, I shot a blast forward. Ralof jumped in surprise.

"Hey! Watch the magic!" he griped.

Aerana looked interested in me. Then she looked down to my lap and frowned. Well that was rude. I looked down as well to encourage the little trooper. Wait, hold on. Oh I see now. The book had turned to ash. That made sense.

"Does that usually happen?" I asked her.

She cocked her head like that wasn't a very normal question. "No." she said lamely.

"Weird. So ready to go?" I asked.

"About time. I thought we'd be sitting here forever." Said Ralof, picking his shield up off the cave floor. "Why are you so worried about a few frostbite spiders?"

"It's an entire nest. Like 10 of them." I said back. I wonder. "Hold on, I wanna try something." I took the long exasperated groan Ralof made as a sign to go ahead. Was there any reason I couldn't wear the enchanted robes over the chainmail?

I tried it. I could feel the effect. Like a balloon that had been given more air. Nowhere close to popping, just more to work with. Cool. "Ok, now let's go."

"Are you sure?" Aerana cut in. "Don't have to tinkle or anything?"

I paused, mentally checking if I indeed needed to tinkle.

…

…

Nope. "Yep. Let's go."

"Well now I have to tinkle -err piss. Damnit woman!" Ralof said

Dude. Wtf? We're doing something here. Time and a place! We're on a crunch clock here. At least Aerana thought it was funny. When Ralof was done with his tinkle, we moved forward.

We approached the nest carefully. Quietly. With care for every placed foodste-

Crack.

Fuck, kicked a rock. And so then around 80 eyes looked at us. And we went forward into glorious battle. Where we fought valiantly. And definitely didn't just run away screaming and throwing magic behind us. That would have been dumb and embarrassing.

And if we happened to wake a cave bear in the process, well, it fought valiantly as well as it overtook us in it's desire to flee the horde of 80 angry legs.

Truly, it was a battle for the books. Sadly, we all took a vow of silence. And our epic battle would be taken to our graves. Anyway, at the end of it, we escaped out into the wilds. The bear long gone. The spiders seemed hesitant to leave the shadows of the cave. They chittered angrily, before seeing they were outmatched and retreating. Overhead, Alduin flew northwards. That probably had nothing to do with the mass retreat.

Alduin kept going until we couldn't see him anymore. Then a bit further I assume. Probably to go scream at his relatives corpses. It was still light outside. With all the time I had spent in their, I expected it to be dark. But the fact that only an hour or two had passed in the present meant that it was only a bit into the afternoon.

"Well, I can't say this has been fun. But at least we kept our heads." Ralof said as we watched the horizon. "I don't suppose you lot would like to see my hometown of Riverwood? It's a stone's throw from here. My sister Gurder runs the mill there. She might be able to help you out."

"I'm sticking with the protagonist." I said firmly. "Cool shit always happens with the protagonist."

Aerana gave me an odd look, not sure what that word meant, but getting the gist of it to figure out it wasn't an insult, rather a title. "Supplies would help. I'm a bit aimless at the moment. I left home originally to escape being married off by my mother. Adventuring sounded fun. So I ran away. Shame I didn't grab any papers. Would have saved me a lot of hassle." She side eyed me. "And head ache."

And with a nod from Ralof, we followed him down the road. Later that evening, residents of Riverwood would claim to have heard a loud voice, possibly a ghost, screaming " Unlimited Power! " but nobody could say for sure.

On an unrelated note, Lucan was happy buy a few slightly singed wolf pelts from the pretty elf, and her strange companion.