Chapter 28: Lake Ilinalta
[20th – 21st of Hearthfire 4E 201]
Once Lydia had fully recovered from her earlier injuries, Fiona, her housecarl and I had started to travel in the direction of Falkreath, and we first stopped in Riverwood for lunch with Alvor, Sigrid and Dorthe.
When we had eaten and proceeded with our journey and followed the road southwest of the town, just past the farm fields, we encountered a pack of wolves, and they actually dared to approach us. Fiona was quick to react this time and managed to kill one of them with her bow, while Lydia took the remaining two with her sword; I had prepared my flames spell, but the tough housecarl did not require assistance at all. It was impressive to see her fight, and I told her so. She did not reply, but seemed to be proud about it a little bit at least. But of course Lydia had probably been trained to fight for many years, and she'd better be good in it.
Soon we got to the Guardian Stones, and I explained what I knew about them, specifically about the supposed blessing they were providing. I did not know, of course, if it worked like in the game, and thus I claimed that to be a legend. When we had been on our way from Helgen, we had passed the stones as well, but had not taken the time to deal with them, as we had been in a hurry to get to Riverwood. Today, we could spare a few minutes, specifically as no detour was required to get there. Fiona touched the Mage Stone, and there was indeed a blue light shimmering around the stone and her for a few seconds. Encouraged by her success I touched the warrior stone, and I was rewarded by my own light. Lydia refused to touch one of the stones, stating that the effects of the stones were a myth only, and that a true Nord and true warrior did not need such gimmicks. Of course, I had no way to know if the glowing was just a nice visual effect or actually made something change. I mean, I certainly did not feel anything, like when Popeye ate his spinach and had his muscles grow all of a sudden.
Right here at the stones we had a quick discussion about the road to take, and once we had consulted the map, we decided to take a shortcut down to the river shore and find the road further west again rather than passing through Helgen or following the road on a large arc around the cliffs. We met a fishing woman and chatted with her a little. Fortunately she had a little bit more to say than just 'I've been hunting and fishing in these parts for years', and she seemed to enjoy the place at the border of the lake. Further southwest, the shore was blocked by a cliff and some rocks, so that we had to step into the river, but we managed to stay close to the shore and thus only got our legs wet. Once we got around the cliff, after maybe a hundred meters, the shore was accessible again, and we got our feet dry again. We stopped for a moment for some cleaning and drying – myself, not wearing boots, being at an advantage here – and followed the shoreline for a few more minutes before we eventually found a path up to the road again.
Lake Ilinalta started to expand before us, and I halted my steps again to take in the scenery from the vantage point we found ourselves at. Sunshine reflected from the clear blue water, water lilies and some other plants grew close to the coastline, mountain flowers of different colors and lavender showed along the road, and I could even see some ducks and swans on the water. The shallow waters close to the coast harbored lots of fish, and I almost felt tempted to dive in. On the left side of the road we had bushes and trees, and bees and other insects were heard and seen in some places; large dragonflies buzzed around close to the lake shore. Overall, this was quite a scenic environment, and it reminded me a lot of the nature hikes in my former life. There was one detail this environment did not have compared to my former home, fortunately, and that was garbage; no plastic bag was seen somewhere in the grass and no empty bottle was dropped behind a bush.
I would have loved to stay here for an hour or two just to enjoy the scenery and the environment, but we had plans, and this would have to wait for another time. Soon after we had found the road again and started to walk west, we noticed a small clearing to the left with some kind of altar centered in it, and a person clothed in a dark robe had their hands raised to cast some kind of spell on a corpse on the altar.
"Beware, a necromancer or conjurer!" Lydia warned us.
The person had heard that, turned around, and raised their hands in our direction now. I reacted, more by instinct than by conscious thinking, and started to move forward with a speed that surprised me. The person blasted a frost spell in my direction but missed the moving target; the blast partially hit Lydia instead, but she was a Nord and not impacted a lot. Within a couple of seconds I was close to the enemy, cast flames on them, and raised my paws. Under the hood a pair of dark eyes flashed at me, and I recognized a male wizard, most likely a necromancer.
"Surrender or die!" I shouted.
Lydia was now next to me and just rammed her sword through the man's body, who was distracted by my fire attack, telling me:
"Forget about that; we can't let a necromancer live."
"But can you be sure that all necromancers are bad people?"
"Khajiit, necromancy by itself is a very bad thing. There may be some sense behind investigating the black art to understand it and the dangers related to it better, but this can only be done safely in a group under proper supervision. I do not dabble in magic myself, but a lone necromancer cannot be a good person."
She was probably right, but it still felt wrong to me to kill a person without giving them a chance to surrender. I knew that necromancy had been banned from the Arcane University two hundred years ago, but there had been different opinions on that. I did agree that studying of necromancy, if at all, at least needed to be done in controlled environments, and here in Skyrim the only place I knew for that would be the College of Winterhold, which I did plan to visit at some time in the future. I was not keen at all to get the event chain started there, but I absolutely had to go there sooner or later, even just to admire the architecture and meet the Orc librarian.
Further ahead on the road we could now see a small village, and according to my map this was most likely Oakwood. The village was already in Falkreath hold; it was about the size of Riverwood, and it had an inn. After we had quickly talked and decided on our priorities, we first entered that inn and booked two rooms for the next night. However, rather than eating in there we looked for a nice place outside to have a picnic, once again; the sun was still up, and we wanted to take advantage of the almost cloudless sky and the comfortable temperatures. There was a wooden walkway crossing the water to a small island where two people were busy working on ore veins, but this small island was quite dirty and not so inviting for a rest. A little bit further west I noticed another island with a lot of green on it. We waded over, and it was only inhabited by a lone fisherman, his tent and his boat. The man did not mind our presence at all, and we found ourselves a nice patch of grass for an early dinner. Bees buzzed around and visited the plentiful flowers, and the evening sun still warmed the air. All in all, it was nice place, and I much preferred it to the stifling air inside an inn.
When we had eaten, Fiona was curious about our future plans:
"So, we stay here for the night and get to Falkreath tomorrow?"
"I think so, yes. Lydia, do you know if Falkreath is close enough to get there within one day?"
"Easily, yes."
Fiona had more questions, but all of a sudden there was a roar in the air and a dark shadow blocked the low sun for a moment. This reminded me of the events at the Western Watchtower and at the Valtheim Towers, and before my mind could make the connection, one of the miners on the next island shouted out:
"A dragon! By the Divines, a real dragon!"
The beast seemed to consider us a nice target and started to blow frost on us from above. So, it appeared to be a frost dragon rather than a fire dragon, although it was about the same size Mirmulnir had been. Lydia kept standing and had her bow out, and I pushed Fiona behind a big rock. While the dragon pulled up, a few guards from the village showed up at the shore, and two of them also used bows. Recalling the dragon fight at the Western Watchtower I realized that it would be difficult to hurt the dragon much while it was airborne, and I shouted:
"Target the wings and the joints!"
The archers seemed to follow my advice, and after a few attack rounds the dragon crashed into the water very close to the island we were on. I prepared a potion of magicka and blasted fire against the beast as soon as its head was above the waterline again, assuming that a frost dragon might be easily hurt by fire. When my magicka was exhausted, I swallowed the potion and continued until I was almost running out again, and the beast was now clearly looking injured. Lydia grabbed her sword and started to cut into one of the wings; the dragon opened its maw to blast at her, and Fiona took the opportunity, like she had done with Mirmulnir, to shoot an arrow into the gaping maw. That was not yet enough to kill it, but it distracted the beast from Lydia's attacks. The dragon swallowed, pulled in a deep breath and pushed out a large frost cloud at Fiona, who had come out from behind her rock for the shooting. Fiona just stood there with open mouth and watched the quickly approaching frost cloud, maybe not realizing the danger the rapidly closing freezing cluster implied. I jumped on her and pushed her to the side, so that the frost cloud only grazed us; nonetheless I felt a chilling impact on my body, and my reaction was slowed down significantly for the moment. The guard archers continued to release their arrows, though, and the beast turned around to face them. Lydia renewed her own attacks with her sword, and as soon as I had recovered I joined her and hacked at the dragon's other wing, so that the beast was undecided to which side to turn first. Finally it turned around again, just to be hit with another one of Fiona's arrows. Once again, she had been able to deliver the finishing blow; the dragon raised its head, roared one last time, and had the head splashing down into the water for its final rest, sending small waves to the islands and the shore.
Despite being mostly in the lake water, the corpse started to combust and the soul swirled into Fiona, so that both the miners on the island and the guards on the shore called out: "She is the Dragonborn! The Dragonborn has killed the dragon and saved us!"
She got all of the credit, while the fight had really been a team effort. But all right, that was how it worked, I guessed. I was actually more of a shy person myself, and if somebody else stood in the spotlight and had everybody's attention, that was okay from my point of view. Fiona herself, though, looked at me and said with a strange look on her face:
"I can't believe that you've just saved my hide again and spared me from getting frozen into a block of ice – thank you."
"You are welcome, my lady Dragonborn!"
Upon hearing my reply, Fiona even smiled a little bit. When both the miners and we had arrived back on the shore, I found that one of the miners had been hurt in the attack, and I handed out a healing potion to him. The guards on the shore had not been injured, as the dragon had mostly focused on us on the island, and when we returned to the coastline, they escorted us to the inn; they were delighted to hear that we were going to stay for the night, and they insisted to pay for our drinks in exchange for hearing stories about us. Well, telling stories was clearly not something Fiona was ready for, but she had an eloquent housecarl, and Lydia spent quite some time telling the audience about the Dragonborn՚s achievements.
There had not been that much in that direction yet, of course, but apparently Fiona and Lydia had talked, and Lydia spun the story from Helgen to Riverwood and Whiterun and the epic battle against the dragon at the Western Watchtower, omitting the fact that today's fight had only been the second dragon kill Fiona had so far. When I saw Fiona yawning for the third time, I intervened and politely told the patrons that the Dragonborn needed to rest from the fight and the dragon soul absorption, and that was understood. Lydia pulled Fiona into the room they were going to share, and I retired into the small one assigned to me.
Before the two ladies got up, I used the opportunity to go for a quick morning run on the road along the shore, and although some of the guards looked at me with some curiosity, this was nice. While I stretched and exercised my long limbs, I thought about what we were doing for a few moments. I had more or less pushed Fiona to go to Falkreath and try to 'acquire' a second housecarl, but how would that work out? Sure, the letter the young Bosmer had received and shown to me did explicitly say 'if you are interested in becoming a Thane of Falkreath', but was it going to be as easy as in the game? Would the Jarl expect more and keep the Dragonborn busy for weeks or even months? Well, we'd have to find out, and worst case we could still decide to just leave, I guessed.
I had already had my own breakfast when the two ladies emerged, and it was about mid morning when we were on the road again. When we got to the road branch with signs telling us that Falkreath was south, I suggested to go for a detour northwest, knowing that the view from Half-Moon Mill was great, and my companions obliged.
For the past hour or so, a light drizzle had been with us, getting us all partially wet, but when we got close to the mill about one hour later, the drizzle stopped and the sun started to find a few gaps between the clouds. Upon our arrival at the mill we were greeted right away:
"Some guests, oh my! Why don't you stay a while? My name is Hert, by the way."
Lydia was curious:
"Do you like it out here, away from everything?"
"Other people just make things complex. Out here, my husband Hern and I can get everything we need from the occasional traveler."
"What locations does this mill supply?"
"We supply Falkreath to the south. Until recently we also supplied Helgen. Falkreath trades with the surrounding holds and without our wood they would have trouble keeping their prices low; the single sawmill they have in the city is not enough, and, you know, the owners are not the most hard-working ones."
We slowly walked around and found the wood chopping block close to the house. I pointed out:
"Sometimes you can do people a favor by chopping a little wood for them. Doing that may pay off at a later time, when they may recall the favor you did them earlier."
Fiona looked up at me and replied:
"That's an idea, actually. I know that I need to train my muscles, and I can start here as well, for a short time at least."
She picked up a woodcutting axe and got to work. Her housecarl, being well educated in all kinds of crafts, gave some advice on how to do that, and Fiona needed some time, but eventually she found her rhythm and stopped only twenty minutes later when she was sweating a lot.
"Ouch, that's exhausting!" she sighed, and I handed her a potion of stamina. "That's certainly not something I could easily do to earn my living."
Hert came over, saw the chopped wood and asked:
"Oh, wow, did you cut that for me?"
"We did, indeed" Fiona nodded.
"Your kindness will be remembered. It is rare to have guests like that nowadays."
We had an early lunch on the grass with a nice view on the lake and the surrounding hills, and then we resumed our trip. Once we had reached the road branch again we turned south and soon passed the old Falkreath Watchtower.
"So, are there local guards in there?`" Fiona asked when I mentioned the building's name.
"I do no think so" I replied. "Lydia, please correct me if I am wrong, but I believe that most of those old towers are ruins and usually inhabited by bandits and other dubious people."
Lydia nodded: "Sadly, yes. Even in our hold we have a few like this, not only towers, but also forts. If I was in charge, I'd occupy both Valtheim Towers and Fort Greymoor with hold guards and soldiers, but I realize and understand that Jarl Balgruuf the Greater has other priorities and concerns, with the Civil War and all."
While we walked on, I thought about Hert and Hern for some time. I had some vague memories about them being something special, but I could not recall what that might be. Were they supposed to be vampires? But we had talked to both of them in daylight and even sunshine, so how likely was that? Not for the first time I missed having my iPad and a local copy of the entire Skyrim Fandom and/or Wiki pages with me.
In late afternoon we saw an old stone structure shimmering between the trees on our right, and Fiona insisted that we should have a look what that was. The place was located only about ten minutes off the road, and it turned out to be a dome shaped Nordic ruin. Fiona was about to enter when I heard an odd buzzing noise from inside, and I held her back:
"Fiona, maybe there is a dangerous creature inside. What about looking in from the roof first?"
She nodded, and I tried to find a place where we could get up onto the roof. On one of the sides enough soil and dirt had accumulated to allow us to just step on the roof, and we slowly climbed upwards, until we got to the inside rim. From there we looked in and down, and there was indeed a creature inside. It was a glowing mix between a human being and a tree, and it slowly moved around. The creature's senses seemed to be working well, though, and within a few seconds it had noticed us and attacked instantly. The attack was special though, as it appeared as a swarm of bees being thrown in our direction. A quick retreat avoided a hit, and the bee attack was not smart enough to turn around. Experimentally I stepped forward and sent flames down, which hurt the creature, but it retaliated by sending another swarm of bees.
Eventually Fiona suggested:
"Look, do we really have to attack and kill this beautiful creature? Maybe it's just at home here and wants to live in peace? By the way, does it have a name?"
Lydia opened her mouth and wanted to say something, but changed her mind. The Bosmer did have a point, and thus I offered:
"If it stays in there, it should be all right to stay alive, I think, and we do not really have to check this place for valuables. I believe that we just encountered a spriggan, right, Lydia?"
Lydia nodded and added: "Yes, that is a spriggan in there. They are quite dangerous, and they are rumored to be able to call animals in the forest to their aid when attacked, too. Fine, let's leave this place and allow the spriggan to live for now. According to what I have heard they tend to stay in the same place anyway."
When darkness had already started to descend around us we arrived in Falkreath after a long walk, and we found the local inn – Dead Man's Drink – soon to our left. When we entered, we were greeted by the proprietor right away:
"Welcome to Dead Man's Drink. What can I do for you? Food for the hungry, drink for the thirsty, or even rooms for the night?"
"Food and drinks and two rooms for the night, if you'd be so kind, lady."
The local maid, Narri, a young Nord, also approached us; she looked at us, let her eyes move up and down my body for quite some time and finally called out:
"Shor՚s bones! A tall and handsome Khajiit in Falkreath!"
What? Was the talking about me? Valga Vinicia, the innkeeper, just shook her head and told us: "Just ignore her. She utters something like this to most male travelers."
I had no intention to start some relationship with the young Nord, but her comments were at least somewhat flattering. She also offered:
"I've half a mind to ask if you'll take me on one of your adventures, but I can't just leave Valga on her own."
"No, I guess that you can't, and my life may not be quite as adventurous as you may think. And there are the dragons, too."
"Dragons, really? We have heard about Helgen and the dragon who had supposedly been there, but that was just one dragon, right?"
"I am afraid that we have seen a few more, and the land out there is not safe."
That stopped her forwardness for the time being, and she got back to ask us for our specific wishes for food and drinks. Once she had vanished into the kitchen, another voice made itself heard:
"Excuse me, but are you going to go to the graveyard?"
That had been spoken by an old Nord warrior, who had been sitting in a corner and now slowly moved closer to us.
"Certainly not today, but maybe tomorrow, yes."
"Ah, then you could do me a favor. My legs are not working well any longer, and I barely manage to get here from my house those days. I just finished giving my old war companion, Berit, a proper burial by fire. Old hard head hated the idea of being lost cold in the ground. Could you deliver the ashes to Runil, the priest of Arkay? He'll know the right blessings to make for Berit's soul."
"Of course, it will be a pleasure, old man" Fiona replied and took the small urn.
"Ah, very nice of you, child; much obliged. Just tell him it's from Thadgeir; Runil knows me well."
Our dinner was served, and we got busy with eating. As usual, a good meal tasted even better when it was enjoyed after a long day with bodily activity, and we all happily indulged. Not long after we were done we retired to our rooms; it had been a long walk today.
[Author's Notes: The village 'Oakwood' appears, according to Wiki pages, in the 'Arena' game. It is replicated for TES V by two mods, one by 'Arthmoor' and one by 'Schlitzohr'; I have not decided yet which one I like better. What do you think?]