Chapter 56: Wolfskull Cave

[12th of Evening Star 4E 201]

Athis, Antonius and I had been listening to Viarmo, headmaster of the Bard's College, reciting some sections from King Olaf's Verses in the Blue Palace, and Jarl Elisif had been impressed enough to allow the 'Burning of King Olaf' ceremony again, not only once, but even on a regular basis. In the evening, I had been declared an honorary member of the college. The Jarl՚s steward had asked us to investigate something odd going on in a cave, and we had agreed to head there on the next day. My housecarl had friends on the pirate ship 'Red Wave', and some of the crew were going to join us today.

Athis woke up almost at the same time as I did. We got dressed quickly and went down to the taproom for breakfast. In addition I purchased some food and water for a few days and filled my backpack with the supplies; I still had plenty of potions for health and magicka. When we left the city, we found our companions already waiting at the side of the road, where the branch road lead down to the stables and the docks. Both Antonius and Sabine looked like they had not had enough sleep, but that was understandable, assuming that they had engaged in the activities I suspected. Eris, a female Nord, asked:

"So, where are we going?"

"We are headed for a place called 'Wolfskull Cave'" I told her. "The steward marked it on my map, and we should best turn right next to Meridia՚s statue down there."

She nodded, and our group started to proceed southwest on the main road. Hanni and Nanni jumped all around us happily, and soon they got a chance to catch a breakfast for themselves by chasing rabbits close to the road, which we merrily followed southwest of the city. We passed the hills with Meridia՚s temple built into it, and then we turned right into the side road. The road rose upwards and the temperature dropped, until we had a few occasional snowflakes coming down. I was a few steps ahead of my companions, and suddenly a male Khajiit in shabby clothes, likely a highwayman, stepped out from behind a bush, pointed a dagger in my direction and claimed:

"Give me all your valuables, now, or else…"

I was not intimidated at all and replied while showing a smirk:

"Or else? Are you sure? Have you noticed that I am not alone?"

Apparently he had not, and he now looked at the party coming up behind me. He cleared his throat and was gone much faster than he had appeared, dropping his dagger in the process of doing that.

The pirates laughed, and Xander, a male Imperial, complained:

"What a pity; my sword is getting rusty."

"Guys, I am positive that there will be plenty of work for your weapons later today."

They liked to hear that, and we moved on. A little time later I recalled that I not also wanted to pay attention to my environment more, I had also completely forgotten about something I had wanted to find out about my body since the first days – what could I do with my tail? At least on first glance it did not seem to be suitable to hold a weapon or tool, unless I constructed some kind of sleeve for it, but that seemed to be not practicable. In the Whiterun school, I had shown that I could wrap my tail around a child's waist and lift it, but I had also started to play with the idea of spell casting; maybe I could make my tail do some magic? It would be really cool and helpful to have that capability, and although I could not recall this to be mentioned anywhere in the game or lore, I decided to do some exercises in that direction. Thus, while walking, I prepared the spell for shock, which I had already learned from the recently purchased spell tome, and tried to fill my entire body with it rather than casting it. By doing this, I wanted to find out if I could somehow control which parts of my body were suited for spell casting. I mean, maybe I could also cast with a foot, or with a knee, or from my snout? Okay, those were quite wild guesses, but the tail would be really cool and even practical, like when I needed both of hands for weapons, and I tried hard to make the spell energy go there; I could not really see if it worked, though, as the tail was behind me.

Once I had practiced for maybe half an hour, Antonius was suddenly next to me and asked:

"My Thane, are you feeling all right?"

"Sure, I am just a little bit absent minded as I am focusing on something."

"Okay, but is your tail all right?"

My tail? I looked at my housecarl, urging him to elaborate, and he told me:

"Well, for the last twenty minutes or so we could see it twitching more frequently than usual, and for a few minutes there was some kind of energy flow around it, like a blueish aura, or maybe more like small sparks or so."

"What? Really?"

I decided that I needed to see that for myself and moved my tail in between my legs so that it protruded from there in front of me. Walking like this was not very comfortable, though, and I quickly decided that I need to change the approach and wrap the tail around one of my sides instead. This worked much better, and once a few more minutes of exercising had passed, I could indeed see some blueish light around the end section of my tail, maybe the last 20cm or so. It did not look dangerous, and it stayed where it was, but when I touched it, I felt some prickling, like an electrostatic discharge. That reminded me of a reference, and I decided that this must be similar to an effect called 'St. Elmo's Fire'. That might not be very useful by itself, but it was a start at least, and I decided to continue my exercises in that direction when I got a chance.

Being happy for now I turned around to see if my companions were all there, and I saw them all smiling. Obviously, my attempts had contributed a lot to their amusement. Had they seen me walking with my tail between my legs for a few steps?

About one hour later we had reached the cave entrance. Before we stepped in, I summarized our task and what to expect for all of us:

"So, just to repeat: People have reported strange magical effects, noises, and lights around here. There have been rumors related to Potema, the Wolf Queen, and their may be a group of misguided people planing to summon her. If so, it will be our task to stop that, if we can."

"Do we just rush in and attack everything that moves?"

"No, I do not think so. Even if we find bad guys, we will try to attack with long distance weapons first to even out the odds, if we can. We do not know how many enemies we are going to encounter and how strong they are. I will use my crossbow, Antonius will use his bow, and whoever else has a bow can also do the same."

They nodded, and in we went.

As usual for most caves, we stepped into a narrow tunnel which was lit by a few torches. After a few turns of the passage it opened up into a medium sized room, and before we had a chance to look around, somebody shouted out:

"Intruders! To arms!"

So, we had been detected. The pirates used the opportunity to attack, and the three bandits who had lingered in the room were dead quickly.

"Why are there bandits in here? Shouldn't we expect necromancers and conjurers mostly?"

"Good question, Athis. Maybe they are paying the bandits for protection?"

The area had not much to look at. The bandits had been sitting around a campfire and there were plenty of empty bottles around. We found a few pieces of partially eaten grilled meat and some mushrooms in corners, and finally there was a small coin purse with just a few septims in it.

"I hope that ain't all we're going to find here!" one of the pirates complained.

We followed the passage leading further down and forward, disposed of a few draugr, and eventually entered a second section, after we'd had to partially climb and partially jump down a big hole in the ground; it might be challenging to get back the same way, but there likely was a back exit. Once we had made sure that all of us were in good condition, we proceeded.

Quite soon we found ourselves on some kind of ledge, looking at and into a very large underground hall with a big fortification on the other side. The rocks on our side dropped down sharply to a valley floor with a small creek passing through it, but the top level of the fort was even higher up than we were, so that we could not see well what was happening there. Some colorful swirls indicating magical energy were seen around the top of the tower, and we could see vague shapes moving around both at the top and down in the valley between us and the fort.

We were very quiet, and we could hear faint voices from over there:

"Wolf Queen. Hear our call and awaken. We summon Potema!"

"We summon Potema!"

"Long have you slept the dreamless sleep of death, Potema. No longer. Hear us Wolf Queen! We Summon You!"

"We summon Potema!"

Some of the shapes we could see were not human, and I asked my companions about it. One of the pirates recognized them:

"Death hounds, I am sure. They must have a vampire or two around as well."

"So, let's even the odds, shall we?"

I got nods, and those of us who had a bow prepared it; I aimed my crossbow. Aiming and hitting properly in the semidarkness and over quite some distance was not easy, and many of our arrows and bolts missed; my crossbow had a superior range, though, and I actually managed to hit a target close to the top of the tower a few times. However, the distance also prevented our enemies from seeing where the attack came from, and we could lose projectiles without interruption for several minutes. Eventually somebody over there got the idea, and two shapes moved up the steps in our direction. My two cubs and Spirit, though, distracted them, so that two of the pirates could easily get them down with their weapons.

Athis and one of the pirates volunteered to stay up here on the ledge and cover us as much as possible with their bows, and the rest of us ran down the stairs. Down at the bottom we had to defend ourselves against a few death hounds and draugr, before we could proceed close to the walls and find the entrance into the fortification.

A wider staircase lead up, and it was guarded by several draugr and a necromancer. The draugr were not a big issue, but the necromancer swiftly evaded most of our attacks and could also heal himself. He managed to injure two of my companions before my two saber cats managed to claim his attention sufficiently for me to sweep my big axe through his body. I handed out potions of healing, and we moved on.

We could hear voices from the top again:

"Yes! Yes! Return me to this realm!"

"As our voices summon you the blood of the innocent binds you Wolf Queen!"

"Summoned with words. Bound by blood."

"What! What are you doing?! You fools! You cannot bind me to your wills!"

"Summoned with words. Bound by blood."

"You ants don't have the power to bind me!"

The last statement gave me the creeps, and I got a feeling that the summoning process might not exactly work as intended; I could only hope that the whatever they did at the top did not release an evil too great to contain; we'd better hurry up.

The next couple of platforms were guarded as well, and now I sneaked ahead a little and operated my crossbow. That worked much better, but we had to repeat the procedure on each level, and healing injured comrades was frequently required. Eventually we managed to get to the top platform and looked around cautiously. We were noticed, though, and somebody called out with a female voice:

"Something is wrong. There is an intruder!"

Well, the main fight was on, I guessed. From our ledge a few arrows came down, and one of them hit the speaker. I used the opportunity to attack, and Hanni and Nanni and Spirit helped me. My adversary was not easy to kill at all, and I had to work without any further support, as my companions were focused on the other conjurers. I managed to get wounded, not seriously, though, and once again my two saber cats enabled me to kill the master conjurer – the 'Ritual Master' as I would learn later. When she fell down to the ground, with no life in her any longer, the blue swirling light was gone, and there was silence around us. The disembodied voice was no longer heard, and I could only hope that we had been able to stop it in time.

Most of the fighting around us had also stopped, with my companions having defeated their opponents, except for Antonius, who a vampire fighting him. My brave housecarl was in trouble and already wounded, with the vampire draining health from him. I sent a quick fireball directly into the vampire as a distraction, and when he was turning towards me, one of the pirates attacked from behind. The vampire turned yet again, and I jumped forward and swung my battleaxe with all the force I could muster; this ended the fight. The axe had not broken, and I was glad that the enchanted glass battleaxe I had received from Jarl Balgruuf was sturdy and robust enough to endure.

Now it was time for healing and looting. I handed out potions to those who needed them, and two of the pirates used the opportunity to find the mechanism to drop a raised drawbridge close to us; it lead to a small number of chests with more than enough valuables to make them happy.

We sat down for resting and ate and drank something, and once we all felt properly rested, we stood up again to leave, with the intention to pay close attention to anything we might have missed in our hurry to get up to the top earlier. Two floors down we passed a door we had not noticed on the way up, and it opened when we were close. A bandit came out, but before he could do more than draw his sword, his skin got pierced from two sides and he was dead. We looked into the room he had come from, and it appeared to be some kind of torture room, with various tables and scary looking tools along two of the walls and two suspended iron cages hanging from the ceiling, one of them being occupied. Two more bandits were sleeping on bedrolls in a corner, and for now we simply bound and gagged them.

I had to admit to myself that I was a little bit curious about the torture tools. I had seen some of those, such as a torture rack, in various places in the game, too, like in the basement of the Thalmor embassy, and looking at the various items in this room here made me shudder. Who was going to be tortured here, and for what purpose? For now, though, my attention got focused on the one cage which had somebody in it. The person in there was sitting with their knees close to their chest, as the cage was not large enough for any other position; it was probably not a comfortable position at all. The person in the cage did not move, and I could not even tell from out here if he or she was still alive. I found and operated the mechanism to lower the cage; the cage was locked, though, and no key to be found anywhere in the room. Maybe the person inside might know? I looked closer, and the person opened her eyes. Indeed, in there was a young woman, clothed just in a few rags, and even in the very dim light provided by the campfire and a few torches in the room and with all of the dirt on her skin she appeared to be quite beautiful.

Sabine, the pirate, offered:

"Let me do that; I am quite good in picking locks."

Within a couple of minutes she had the lock open, and we carefully pulled the woman out and placed her on one of the bedrolls in the room, with her knees still close to the chest. She did not look injured, just exhausted, and thus I gave her a stamina potion. She was weak, and I needed to hold the potion to her mouth to allow her to swallow it. A few minutes later she started to recover a little bit, moved herself to a sitting position with obvious effort, and looked around. She seemed to be surprised to no longer find herself in the cage, but her facial expression showed concern and some fear. Well, she could not know our intention, and we could as well be another group of bandits, ready to torture her or transfer her somewhere else rather than setting her free.

While she looked, I tried to identify her race, and I failed. Although she was still sitting, she seemed to be very tall. I could see glimpses of long pointed ears between her raven black medium long hair, and her skin was medium dark. In addition her eyes had a strange almond like shape, almost like most Asian people had back on Earth; this was also matched by a smaller than typical snub nose. So, her skin color screamed Redguard, but Redguards did not usually have long pointed ears. Her size and ears said Altmer, but her skin color did not match. In addition, her eye shape and facial features did not match either. For now, I was puzzled, but maybe she would explain later. Or maybe not, as that might be very personal.

Naturally, she noticed me looking at her, and I saw her shivering a little bit; my staring probably made her uneasy, and I said in her direction:

"Lady, please do not be afraid. My companions and I entered this cave to stop an evil conjuration effort, and we operate on behalf of the steward of Solitude. We found you by accident, but we are ready and willing to get you back to civilization, if you want us to. It seems to be obvious that you have been a prisoner here, and we can help."

The young woman nodded, and she was obviously relieved to hear my words. While she started to slowly stretch her legs, which were probably cramped after the time in the cage, she spoke slowly, and with apparent effort, in a very low voice tone:

"I thank thee, and I would be much obliged to get back to a city, please."

She had an odd way of speaking, but a very pleasant voice. With some effort she tried to stand up and succeeded after a few attempts, but walking seemed to be a problem still. Wow, when she was upright I found the top of her head at level with my chin; she was quite tall for a woman, maybe between 205 and 210 cm (about 6'10"). She looked at me and asked:

"Can somebody also assist me in getting rid of that collar around my neck, please?"

Indeed, she wore a strange collar, which seemed to shimmer from time to time, almost like magic. Athis recognized it and explained:

"Of course; this is a special collar to absorb magic; it tortures the person who wears it by soaking up all magical energy, so that the wearer always feels like they have overexerted themselves and spent all of their magicka; every time some of it recovers, the collar takes it. Quite useful to make sure that prisoners cannot cast any spells."

Sabine was also able to pick the collar's lock, although she needed a few attempts for that, and the Redguard lady – lacking more data, I'd consider her to be a Redguard – looked relieved and rubbed her neck; she told the pirate:

"Thank you very much, my lady; wearing that collar for days was quite inconvenient and exhausting. Now, may I ask all of you for some support to get out of here, please?"

I was more than willing to provide that, and I caught a smirk from my housecarl. What? Did I do something wrong? I offered my arm, but the young woman slung her right arm around my shoulder, gaining a better hold than by just linking her arm with mine. I helped along by moving my left arm around her waist for additional support, and as her arms were bare and I had removed my bracers and gauntlets, our skin touched in quite a few places. I was not sure what was wrong with me; those touches, even with my fur, made me shiver a little bit and caused a strange fluttering in my stomach, but it was a quite pleasant feeling. We'd better get out of the cave quickly; maybe the air in here was affecting me.

Meanwhile the pirates had finished looting all levels in the fort. We had loosened the bindings of the captured bandits in a way to allow them to free themselves later on, and I had warned them to leave the area or else we might be back to kill them.

We slowly started to move out of the cave, and when we had mounted the long set of stairs and joined Athis and the pirate who had stayed on the ledge, we stopped for a quick break. I used the opportunity to state:

"We have not really done introductions yet. Lady, my name is B'lushona, the Dunmer is my Shield-Brother Athis, the Imperial on my other side is my housecarl Antonius, and the others are Sabine, Eris and Xander. Oh, and the saber cat cubs are called Hanni and Nanni, and they are mine. They are not going to bite you if you behave."

Actually, my girls were acting very friendly with the lady, more friendly than they normally used to be with strangers; Hanni and Nanni got closer to her and sat down next to her, licking her hands. The woman smiled; she appeared to enjoy the attention she was getting from my cubs and said:

"Thank you for the information, my good sir. My name is Janina, and I am about to travel to Whiterun. Or rather I was going to travel there before my journey was rudely interrupted by evil minded people."

"I did forget to ask you if you are injured; if so, please do let us know."

"No, I am not injured, just very exhausted and also starved."

"Oh – let me get something to eat for you."

I grabbed an apple and a few slices of dried meat from my backpack, and a few minutes and a stamina potion for her later we proceeded towards the cave exit.

[Author's Notes: I imagine Janina to look similar to the pretty Redguard warrior lady in the mod 'Legend of 1001 Nights SE', just with slightly different eyes and ears. Kudos to 'triptherift' for creating such an amazing and beautiful warrior lady.]