"There it is," Aela broke hours of silence, pointing to two ancient stone towers rising over the low mountains along the road. They cast dark shadows against the warm sunset sky. "We'll be there soon enough. Let me take the lead."

"Isn't this supposed to be where I prove myself?" Ulfric asked. It seemed counterintuitive to have the woman who could split arrows without breaking a sweat taking the lead.

Aela nodded. "Yes, but I think I can get the shards without any bloodshed," she said. "We're still gonna kill the bandits, but I'd rather have them safe in my pack before we cut them down."

She didn't strike him as a grand negotiator, or even an adept conversationalist. Ulfric wanted to protest, to say it would be simpler to search their bodies than give away that they had an eye on one of their possessions, possibly one that they thought was nothing but scrap ebony. Gods, what if they had already melted it down? He let silence agree with her.

As they approached, the foot of the closer tower became apparent, guarded by two…Legionnaires? The disguised bandits lounged in chairs around a campfire, jumping to a poor approximation of attention when they noticed the pair approaching. "Hail, citizens! What business have you, and to where are you travelling?"

"Cut the shit," Aela said. "We know what game you're pulling." Alright, Ulfric may have overestimated her negotiation skills.

She had taken the bandits by surprise, one of them composing himself. "Citizen, I'm afraid you're mistaken. We have orders directly from the Emperor to collect tolls to fund the war, and-"

"We can do this the easy way, or the hard way," Aela said. The further bandit placed a hand on his sword. "We're Companions, and lucky for you we don't have a contract to kill you. You've just got something that someone wants back."

The two drew their swords. Ulfric noticed a bow peeking out from a window high up on the tower. He reached to draw his own sword, but Aela tapped his arm. "I've cleared this tower before. The nearest tower is three floors tall with a hidden chest behind the stairs on the second floor. It's got a mace trap guarding it, too, triggered by a tripwire on the last stair. In the far tower a false floor leads to a basement where you keep the 'tolls' and other things you've been stealing. Come on, boys, don't be stupid. I've killed hundreds of your lot in my time. Don't make this hard for yourselves."

The bandits turned to each other, and one jogged inside. The other kept his sword drawn and pointed at the two. Ulfric watched the bandit run across the bridge to the other tower and disappear inside, returning a minute later trailing a hulking Orc. He leaned out of the window, taking the place of the drawn bow. "What's all this?" The Orc yelled down, his face a green and pink mess of scars.

"We're Companions!" Aela yelled back. "We don't want any trouble, we're just looking for some bits of ebony you took from a courier about a week ago! We'll let you continue on with your business if we can get that."

The Orc laughed. "You think I'm stupid? You're not getting shit from my crew, little girl."

Aela sighed and crossed her arms. "Look, I'm not going to kill you unless I'm getting paid for it. Can I just get the damned ebony?" The bow reappeared in the window. Aela took one step to the side to dodge and drew her own bow. She released an arrow; it went through the steel helmet of the nearest bandit. He crumpled, his sword falling and tumbling down and off the cliff. Aela cursed. "Well? What in Oblivion are you waiting for? Get in there!"

Ulfric drew his sword and kicked open the tower door, hearing the twang of bowstrings above and behind him. He crashed up the stairs, taking a second to step over the trapped one. Oh, so that's why she wasted all that time talking.

The second floor was small and crowded with four people, even with the tiny Breton archer nearly falling out the window with her bow. The Orc was worth two people on his own; bulging muscles and a chestplate fit for a horse. The fake Imperial soldier rushed Ulfric. He easily dodged and let the man tumble down the stairs. The Orc pulled a nasty-looking warhammer from his back, glowing green with enchantments.

Ulfric wished he had gone against Aela's orders and worn his ebony. The Orc swung at Ulfric. He dropped to his knees, rubble from the struck wall raining on his back. Ulfric shot up, aiming his sword below the Orc's chestplate, driving it deep within his abdomen.

The Orc growled, pulling his warhammer from the wall and not as phased as he should've been with a sword sticking from his gut. He swung again in a high overhead arc, burying his weapon in the floor. Ulfric jumped out of the way towards the archer, slamming into her. She fell from the window, landing with a moist thud.

Ulfric dodged again, the fake Legionnaire rushing up the stairs behind the Orc. A mace fell from the ceiling, connecting with the man's face and pushing him back down. Ulfric reached for his sword, just missing a grip on the hilt, slick with the Orc's blood. How much blood did he have left in his body?

Ulfric stepped up to the third level, the warhammer crashing down and ruining the bottom three stairs behind him. "Come down, little man!" The Orc yelled from the foot of the stairs. He didn't make an attempt to climb them. He didn't have to; there was no other way down. Ulfric looked out of the window towards the other tower, seeing three bandits crossing the bridge and two archers standing near the entrance.

He looked around the room. Cheap, dull iron swords and a broken bow. Great. Ulfric grabbed the sharpest-looking sword and put another one on his hilt, just in case the Orc could survive two swords through his gut. The way he was taunting, Ulfric didn't doubt it.

"Ulfric!" Aela called from outside. He moved to the window and saw Aela standing with her hands on her hips. "Can you hurry it up?"

"You're not going to help?" An arrow flew through the window, missing him by a wide margin. "Can you at least deal with those archers?"

"This is a test you meathead!"

Ulfric cursed. No help, huh? Ulfric threw the broken bow down at the Orc. It didn't do much, but his legs were coated in blood and he was breathing heavily with every growl and roar. Ulfric ducked below the window when two more arrows flew through. He quickly stood and Shouted at the archers. "Zun, haal viik!" The two were pulled forwards a step before their bows wrenched from their grasp, falling down to the White River.

The Orc grimaced and shook his head as the Shout echoed through the stone tower. Ulfric launched himself down the stairs sword-first, putting his entire weight behind pushing the dull sword through the Orc's face. The sword smashed through his nose with a sickening crunch, sticking out straight. Ulfric landed with his feet on either side of the Orc's waist, staring down the last three bandits.

"Fus, ro dah!" The two nearer bandits slammed into the stone walls and crumpled, the furthest one went flying off of the platform, screaming as he fell. Ulfric pulled his sword from the Orc's abdomen, stabbing a bandit down through his collarbone. The ebony easily sliced through his fur armor and the leather of the second one. The archers at the other tower had pulled their daggers and begun to cross the bridge, instead turning and fleeing back inside.

Ulfric wiped off his sword on a clean bit of the bandit's fur armor, replacing the iron sword with the ebony. Aela appeared behind him, silently climbing the stairs. "You left two," she said. Ulfric shrugged. "Other than that, not bad. Not bad at all." She looked over the corpses on the floor, her eyes settling on the puddle of Orc gore. "Ugh. You make a bigger mess than Farkas."

Aela walked across the bridge without a care that one misstep would mean slipping down into the rocky rapids a hundred feet below. Ulfric followed, ready to catch himself, just in case. "Come out!" Aela yelled inside the second tower. "I'm not gonna kill you!"

"Isn't that what you said earlier?" Ulfric muttered.

"I didn't kill them. You did." Aela listened for a response and sighed heavily when she didn't get one. "I'll start looking in the basement for the shards. You search the tower for anything of note." Ulfric nodded and drew his sword, moving up the stairs and giving the second floor a good scan. Nothing but scattered armor and bedrolls. Same on the third floor. He holstered his sword and went to join Aela in the basement.

The two archers lay across from each other, each with a single arrow through their eye. Aela handed him a torch and directed him to search one side of the basement in sacks of gold and food. Ulfric wondered if all bandits were as profitable as these; hundreds of Septims jostled around assorted jewels, fine fabrics were folded in a corner, pots of honey and fine wines sat around.

"How many shards did you say you had?" Aela asked. Ulfric looked over and noticed her pack was a lot fuller looking than it had been on the road there. She looked back at him, kneeling before an open crate.

"Three."

"Then we're in business. Grab the gold and let's go," Aela said. She pulled out three giant shards and placed them in a sack, tying it to her waist. Ulfric shoveled a few handfuls of Septims and gems in his pack. He wondered who it had been taken from, who's inheritance it was. He suddenly realized he'd never learned the final casualty count from Windhelm.

Ancient Nords were stupid, stupid people that had no idea how to make a logical layout for a city. Nariilu rubbed her knee; she landed on it hard when she crashed through a seemingly-solid wall she leaned on in what was once a alchemy lab. Old glass vials and ingredients long turned to dust shattered around her. Instead of landing in an overgrown back greenhouse, or an owner's home, or anything that would be logically connected to the back wall of an alchemist, she sat on the floor of a crypt lined floor to ceiling with five layers of burial shelves.

At the very least, the bodies were wrapped in disintegrating gauze, with no lit torches around or offerings of flowers or embalming oils. The shelves were coated in spider webs and mold, disrepair that no Draugr would allow their dead to fall into. Nariilu stood and touched one of the mummies, the wrappings turning to dust and getting caught in the thick strands of webbing.

She'd take a spider over a deathlord any day. But the giant hole left in the wall would be an easy point for any search parties looking for her, and there was no guarantee that this section of the crypt connected to wherever the Dragon Priest was. It was obvious that no Draugr had been here in decades, centuries, maybe, but was that to avoid the spiders, or had the wing been blocked off in a collapse, or was it simply forgotten?

Nariilu cast candlelight and sighed, walking through the dark crypt. She kept an eye on the ceiling, and another on the shelves for any skeletons or Draugr that looked in better condition than others. At each crossing, she pulled a body from it's resting place and pointed it in the direction she had traveled, wanting for a piece of paper to make a coherent map, instead.

Eventually, she ran into a group of spiders in a large chamber, and didn't dare Shout fire at them, instead taking them out with a frenzy spell that only worked on half of them, but it was enough to send them biting each other. They weren't immune to their own poison, and Nariilu only had to dispatch of a dozen stragglers herself.

Past the spider den, the Draugr were better kept, but still out of action. Dust replaced webs on the corpses, and those that had been standing at attention in upright sarcophagi had fallen to the floor in odd angles. Every exposed corpse and skeleton got its head chopped off, just to be safe.

She paused in a small burial chamber populated by one grand sarcophagus inlaid with rubies. It had once been guarded by four Wights, leaning up against an embalming table like they were only taking a quick rest. Their skin had peeled back from their faces and cracked off in big, leathery flakes. Nariilu decapitated them and blocked the door, jumping up on the embalming table to take a rest and eat another part of her rations.

Food would be an issue, as would water deeper within the barrow. Crypts weren't so big as to warrant more than a day or two of exploring, but a city-sized place such as this could take weeks to navigate the winding passages. It didn't follow much of the same architecture from other barrows; but Skuldafn did date back to the First Era, maybe even earlier. Judging by the treasure in this chamber alone, whoever had been buried here had lived back when coins had been cast with a simple diamond design, instead of the dragon design common since the Second Era.

She pocketed a few handfuls. She decided to make Odahviing fly her back here to collect all this gold; the age would make it worth more to a historian, the average merchant wouldn't care either way. Gold was gold, after all. A dragon could carry so much wealth, Nariilu wondered if she could figure out a way to strap a few carts to Odahviing's back. He wouldn't like it, but she had promised to make him her slave, a promise she more than intended to keep.

And, with Odahviing under her control, his entire army would likely come as a bonus. Gods, a dragon army to bow to her every whim. Tamriel would be hers without breaking a sweat.

Nariilu lost track of how long she'd been walking through the crypts, marking her path with corpses and back tracking whenever she hit a dead end. Even worse, Draugr were beginning to walk through the corridors, few and far between but becoming increasingly common. Nariilu picked up a bow made of petrified wood from one of the slain Draugr along with a dozen of it's arrows. She only had two magicka potions left and no idea of how much longer she'd be stuck down here.

But the halls were narrow enough that she would have a hard time missing, and only an arrow or two left the Draugr she did find still and dead, actually dead.

The problems were the wide chambers that opened from the corridors, lined with decorated sarcophagi of strong warriors and decorated with sturdy dining tables and couches for the long-dead to relax at. With nowhere to hide and a multitude of the dead to alert each other if they happened to be in fighting condition, each open room set her on edge. Even more so when Nariilu reached the first chamber that was lit beyond a dim ember of a burnt-out torch.

She saw the glow well before she made it to the room, and made every attempt to split down another path. Unfortunately, the only corridors off the main hall she traveled down were auxiliary chambers of floor to ceiling crematory urns, treasuries long forgotten by the living (she made ample note with bones as to which halls led to these), and small tombs.

Nariilu swallowed her apprehension at continuing towards the lit chamber; the Dragon Priest would be nowhere that wasn't well-kept. It was a good sign that she was heading in the right direction, no matter how unpleasant fighting her way through a city's worth of dead was. She paused at the arch to the room, blinking until her eyes adjusted to the flickering sconces and bright oil lamps dangling over the main floor. She took off her sack and left it hidden on a catacomb shelf.

This corridor opened onto a balcony path, seemingly encircling a lower floor. Nariilu noticed other paths along the balcony, and a dozen Draugr wandering the main floor below. More, definitely, in the huge chamber, but she didn't stick her neck out too far from the balcony. At the very least, she didn't catch any horned deathlords in the crowd, and nothing was on the balcony. Yet.

She crawled towards the edge of the balcony, ready to jump back if any of the Draugr gave sign that they'd noticed her. Nariilu brought her hands to her chest and pushed them towards a far corner of the room. Her rune glowed a soft blue, matching the color of the Draugr eyes. "Zul, mey gut," she Shouted, throwing her Voice far from herself, and the Draugr growled, drawing their weapons and moving towards her rune.

Two frost Atronachs appeared away from whichever Draugr had cast them, one of them disappearing into a pile of snow as her rune was triggered, and the closest five Draugr were encased in ice. The others flew back from the explosion, hitting the walls or floor in loud metallic crashes. Sarcophagi below the balcony slammed open, more groans and growls joining the others.

Nariilu cast her rune trap again, Shouting another taunt at the sigil. The millennia hadn't been kind to their intelligence; a group of Draugr gathered around the rune before one of them stepped on it and set it off. The explosion shattered the already frozen Draugr and more froze where they stood. Eleven down; one, two…at least seven to go.

A Draugr stomped its way up the balcony ramp, it's helmet ornamented with thick, tightly curled horns, marking it a Scourge. Nariilu ducked back into her corridor, pressing herself against the archway to hide. "Daanik volaan!" it taunted. Its footsteps alternated between a metallic clang and a dry slap as it approached her corridor, pausing to look inside briefly before continuing on to patrol the balcony. Nariilu poked her head out to look for any other Draugr on the balcony and, seeing none, crawled out to fire an arrow at the Scourge.

She missed. Nariilu cursed and nocked another arrow as the damned corpse turned around and cast a frost spell in her direction. Hulking footsteps behind her let her know the Frost Atronach was well on its way, along with the growling Draugr hurrying towards either ramp.

Nariilu's second arrow caught in the Scourge's shoulder. He dropped his sword and roared at her, using his newly freed hand to join in on his casting. She blocked her face with her forearm, rolling out from under a heavy stomp from the Atronach.

Nariilu threw another rune at the nearest ramp, catching two Draugr as they hurried up to join the fight. The Scourge sprayed her with ice, turning the stone beneath her slick as she struggled to catch her footing with one hand grasping the bow and the other holding a weak ward to the frost. The Atronach thrust one of its sharp arms down. She slid towards the edge, catching the lip of the balcony with one heel and just barely keeping from tumbling over.

The Atronach's arm shattered around her. "Zun, haal viik!" The Scourge Shouted. Nariilu's bow was torn from her grasp, twisting her fingers painfully as the ancient wood hurled across the chamber.

"Joor!" Nariilu Shouted back, flames spewing from her mouth and scorching the Draugr in front of her with a disgusting smell. It fell in a smoldering pile, the Atronach behind her melting along with its summoner. She shook out her hands before drawing a sword and charging the remaining half-dozen Draugr.

She hadn't realized how much she had been relying on her enchanted armor until she sank to the ground surrounded by a pile of frozen, dismembered, smoldering Draugr. Nariilu missed the vitality of it all, how her chestpiece had healed her wounds, how her bracers and boots kept her from feeling the strain of sore muscles, how her helmet kept her head clear of fatigue, her mind alert to all dangers. Damn if these enchanted rings weren't nearly useless in comparison.

After she got back, she swore she'd send her armor to Turrianus with enough Septims to make him shut up about the hassle of it all. Maybe even learn a thing or two so she could finally get around to enchanting her own equipment outside of jewelry.

Stormcloak had better be enjoying his armor.