"So, please explain, why exactly are we here?" Aerana asked me as we messed with the pillar puzzle of Bleakfalls Burrow.

"Because it's going to save time." I said for the forth time. Or maybe the second time. But who, aside from me, was counting?

Ralof had led us to along the path to Riverwood. Along the way, he showed us the standing stones. He seemed a bit miffed when I choose the mage stone, and Aerana choose the thief stone. I wonder if that was gonna come up later?

After that, I may have gone a bit overboard when we were attacked by a small pack of wolves. In my defense, shooting lightning from your hands was freaking awesome.

We dropped by Ralof's sister's. She was nice. Told us to inform the jarl of the dragon and Helgan. So, obviously, when we came across a road sign that said

Left Bleakfalls Burrow

Right Whiterun

I began walking left. Aerana tried to correct me, but I assured her we would be saving time in the long run. She looked at me, then the cliff, then the sign, then back to me. Finally, she sighed, before heading left.

A few generous bandits later, and we were decked out in fur lined iron armor. It was an improvement to my steel and chainmail armor. And I could in fact wear the robes underneath it.

Also, I learned something amazing.

-Flashback-

"Are you just going to leave that laying on the ground?" Aerana asked, looking at my discarded boots and chainmail.

"Yeah…I can't exactly take it with me." I said back confused. What was I supposed to do, get a back pack?

"Why not just store it in Oblivion?"

What.

-Flashback end-

As it turns out, everyone on Nirn has the ability to store belongings in Oblivion. Everyone with magic, so literally everyone, had a personal plane of Oblivion they could access. In fact, it was possible to access other people's Oblivion and steal their stuff. But it was also easy to detect as the Plane of Oblivion was literally a part of the person. And was therefore sensitive. People's personal pocket hole was sensitive. Go figure.

Carrying too much stuff if your personal plane could cause the weight of it to drag on you however. As if the weight of it all was trying to reenter the real world by latching on to you.

This explained so much! I listened to her explain with rapt attention. Though, I think she believes I was just messing with her.

But back to the present.

"If you know so much, isn't there a short cut for all this? If this oh so important treasure is at the end of this long ass cave, couldn't we just enter through the exit?"

I paused. Wait, why couldn't we? We could totally do that. In the game, a cliff stopped us from doing so. But this was real life. We could just climb it. But…

"We could. But do you really want to miss out on all the adventure?" I asked, my eyes sparkling.

She did. Spoil sport. So we went back down the mountain, and back up towards the standing stone. It still smelled like charred flesh, and that made me smile.

I waved as we passed the hunter, he waved back hesitantly. We made our way up to the cave entrance. I said hello to Sally, the skull. We climbed up the ledge. Then I remembered the door…oops.

Thankfully, Aerana didn't think this was as much an obstacle as I did. "So it's just a stone door. Nothing else?"

"I mean, there's a draugr overlord on the other side, but yeah. Just a stone door."

"Thank the Divines" she said. I was confused what she meant before she placed her hands on the door and her palm glowed green. Then, in a wave moving outward from her, the door began to turn to sand.

"That's cool" I said.

She scoffed. "This is the first thing they teach in the school of Alteration. I'm Just making one big rock into a bunch of little rocks." The door sagged into nothing. Wow. This world was terrifying. The implications of that are terrifying. Fuck thermal dynamics I guess.

We made our way inside, and I could see the word wall, as well as the tomb.

"Ok, so as soon as you walk over there, the Overlord will wake up. So we can prepare some-hey! Are you even listening?" she was not ,in fact, listening. Her eyes were locked on the word wall. It was odd. I could see the Thu'um enter her, but I couldn't hear the chanting. Cool. Pretty colors.

What I did hear was the sound of the Overlord's sarcophagus bursting open. And so did Aerana. He was faster than I thought he would be. I blasted him with lightning, and went in for sword thrusts when I could, but he was much more focused on Aerana. Her fire flayed his flesh. I never really understood why fire was so effective against undead in fantasy games. I just knew it was a trope. But seeing it in action made all the difference. How can you swing, if your muscles have burned off. How can you grip a weapons if your bones had melted together. It was, disgusting is the word I would use.

But he was still a tough fight. We were lucky we made our doomed trip to the top of the mountain. More than once, our armor had saved us from a death blow. The fur lining keeping away the worst of the Draugr's frost enchanted weapon.

Eventually, he fell. And on his body, within his personal Oblivion, was what we sought.

The dragonstone of Bleakfalls Burrow. "A rock" she said.

"A rock." I confirmed."

She looked at me.

I looked at her.

"Cool, we got the thing I guess." Aerana panted, absolutely done with today. "Can we go now?"

And go we did. We looted the large chest for goodies, but it only had a measly 50 septims. We split it down the middle. 25 each. That night we paid for room and board at the sleeping Giant's inn.

And if drunkenly mistook the dog for a frostbite spider and cried in the corner, well, good luck finding any witnesses.