Chapter 2: Marvellous Magicks
~~~~~~~~~~Garzash~~~~~~~~~~
Indeed, the night had passed nearly uneventful sans one instance when a fierce tugging in Garzash's head awoke him from his slumber. A sabre cat had picked up the scent of their horses and them and thought it would be a good idea to ambush them unaware but both had clambered out of their bedrolls and tents when the cat crossed the spell's boundary.
'It really means nothing can suprise us in our sleep.' Garzash thought amazed.
The animal tried to engage them but the Orc's reflexes and the Nord's quick thinking had soon rendered the feline predator dead. Garzash had taken to skinning the beast and seeing as rays of sunlight were cresting over the horizon, it was as good a time as any to begin packing up camp. An early morning for the two.
Even with the prospect of fresh meat for dinner and fine furs for sale, Garzash mood was fouled when his eyes glazed over the creeping mountain ledges above them. It would be hard climb, perilous and without guarantee of a path to the top.
"You're really contemplating this, aren't you?" the Nord asked from behind him.
"Yes," came his gruff response, "I don't want to back track. Especially given how slow Skyrim's mounts are." He turned around, aiming to pack up his own tent and ready the horses but instead walked right into Kjorik, knocking the poor lad over. "Hey, watch it!" he growled out, though he did extend a hand to help the Nord up. "The fuck were you trying to do, standing this close? Shouldn't you be packing up th-"
Now that his attention was back on their sleeping site, he had found all of the camping equipment gone, neatly folded and tucked away on the saddlebags. Patting down his robes to be rid of any dirt or snow, Kjorik looked up at the Orc with a smirk. "You had been staring at the rocks for a while."
"Well then, you should have said so." the Orc grumbled out, "We can leave immediately to save daylight and cover much ground."
He had brushed past the Nord, barging into his shoulder as a reminder to not stand in his way again.
"Or," the Nord began and Garzash's shoulder's slumped, "We can ascend up the mountain."
His head turned and Garzash could not help but give Kjorik and incredelous look. Those slopes were too steep, the snow would treacherously shift under ther feet, the horses will slip. 'I could give this wimp a thousand reasons why that will ultimately fail.' the Orc thought. He hadn't been staring idly at the mountains, he was contemplating every possible manner of scaling the rising rock but found each one too dangerous or impractical. Much to his chagrin, his earlier resolute stance -"We will climb"- had faded.
Yet Kjorik didn't share his pessimism. "If we leave the horses behind, I could get us up on top of the mountain in less than half an hour." he said with utmost neutrality.
"You can fucking WHAT?!" the Orc roared in disbelief. "Why didn't you say so earlier! And why leave horses if they can prove useful later?"
Pulling up his sleeves, the Nord summoned green sparks to his hands and with a flourish, doused himself in his own arcane energy. This had seemingly no effect, nothing that the Orc could discern at least, but the Nord took in a nervous breath and jumped... a couple dozen feet into the air!
Garzash's astounded gaze trailed the Nord who had leapt up onto a branch of a nearby tree and followed the mage as he jumped from one arborous sentinel to the next. Never did the mage appear to be tiring, his expression unstrained. He even leapt down and struck the ground without so much as spraining an ankle. Shortly afted, a little burst of green sparks was the only indication that the spell had worn off.
"We can jump up to the top!" the Nord proclaimed.
Still reeling from the display, Garzash had trouble formulating any word. Quite comically, he simply stood there, mouth agape, for a minute before his rational thoughts could catch up with him. "You can just... I mean... so we could be up there by mid-day?" he wondered out loud.
"Indeed, with a combination of the Jump spell, particularly popular in Morrowind a few hundred years ago and the Slowfall spell, for added safety. Makes the countryside of this province less of a hassle." Kjorik explained proudly.
"And we can't take horses because?" the Orc demanded, though in a comparatively subdued tone.
"Heh heh, aaniiiimals... erm.." the Nord struggled to explain, "they don't handle the sensation of magically enhanced movement with... let's say... 'grace'. In fact, they thrash around and can cause harm to themselves and anyone around them. Trust me, that's how I lost my previous steed."
Glancing back up at the mountain side, the Orc contemplated the idea. "Could you get us back here to the horses later?" he asked.
"Of course. Negating fall damage is child's play." Kjorik said nonchalantly.
"Sure it is." Garzash grumbled to himself. Impatiently, he spread out his arms, asking, "So are you going to give me rabbit legs or not?"
With an annoyed scowl, Kjorik pulled up his sleeves and began weaving the arcane energies, the mystical forces forging runes up his wrists and forearms, and the two of them were doused in lukewarm, green light for a split second. "Relax, we'll get there soon anyhow. And I can't transform living flesh yet."
The Nord, with solemness of a Nord in Skyrim and a practiced mage, Kjorik positioned himself under the nearest outcrop of the mountain and leap up to the ledge. Following up in his steps, the Orc glanced up at the veering stone mass above him and jumped.
The first to protest were his innards, primarily his stomach. The soft tissues swished and swayed inside of him whilst his hand and legs flailed wildly, trying to stabilize his trajectory, attempting to maintain a modicum of control. Crying out as his momentum diminished, his body motionless in mid air for but a second before he started descending. Not plummeting but the ground was getting closer and closer, ready to smite the breath and his bones out of him. Yet mere feet away from the land's embrace, Garzash slowed greatly and landed, rather softly on the ground. Unbalanced due to the alien nature of the spell, he crumpled to all fours, but was otherwise unhurt.
Marvelling down at himself, nary a scratch to be seen on him, not one bruise forming, the Orc's mind tried to grasp at the godly simplicity of the magic. 'We're invulnerable! We could fall from the skies into a town and ask for a drink without a care!' he thought. 'We coul-'
"Don't just stand there, the charm doesn't last for ever!" came a voice from above.
Waking from his daydream, Garzash sought out Kjorik and his keen eyes spotted a figure above him, close to two hundred feet ahead. The figure's robes billowed gently in the rising winds, waving at him to follow along. His heart beating faster, Garzash took a steady stance before leaping up once more.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Kjorik~~~~~~~~~~~~~
His hair danced as the winds picked up, both due to altitude and the shift in weather. Arm stretched out lazily in front of him as he focused a small stream of magicka downwards, aiding the Orc who lagged behind. Having waited for fifteen minutes for the Orsimer to catch up, Kjorik began feeling the spell effect slipping off of his own skin, and immediately reached out to Garzash, channelling his arcane energies to prolong the Orc's enhancement.
'It really wouldn't do any good if I let him die rolling downhill due to my negligence.' he thought, and further lamented, 'I wish he would hurry up, however.'
Of course since it had been close to quarter of an hour, the human could see his green friend approaching, albeit unsteadily and lacking any grace, which was hard for an Orc to display as it was. His body wobbled at the apex of every leap an his extremities pivoted wildly. Though the spell diminished one's fall, it didn't right one's positioning and Garzash would more oft than not land... well... not feet first.
A faint smile graced Kjorik's face. The Orc isn't the first, nor the last, to struggle with the sensation of magically enhanced movement.
In a jaw-droppingly tall hall, of stone grim but grand and poised, painted in blooms of undulating blue shimmer, echoes of carried up to the vaulted ceiling, echoes of both rejoice and expiration as a rabble of robed figures cheered each other on as the occasional individual flashed turquoise and shot up into the air before descending, oft head downwards. Most in the class had great fun, derived either from their success or from the impishly foolish failure of their colleagues.
"Come on J'zargo, aren't cats supposed to always land on their paws?" a Bosmer girl jested.
"J'zargo is not a cat but a Kahjiit. And J'zargo is getting bored of this. He is to master the elements not parlour tricks!" the young cat-folk said, attempting to retain dignity.
Tolfdir, a man frail in body and spry in his mind and the foremost expert on Alteration in Skyrim, stood mere feet away shaking his head. "No J'zargo, if you can't handle parlour tricks then you won't master the elements either." he admonished. "And please don't try just to prove me wrong! Tempting magic and fate-"
"Yes sir, its is dangerous. We know." Brelyna intervened, prematurely ending the tirade about safety.
Quite displeased at the interruption, - why how audacious and ill-mannered - Tolfdir relented nonetheless, seeing no point in boring his students further. "Regardless, if you're struggling, you need to practice more, if I'm not available, ask Kjorik for help."
The eyerolls were audible and the relatively small Nord shrank under the gazes of his peers.
"Of course, why don't you just let Kjorik teach us Alteration, he's far ahead enough of us!" complained Onmund the only other Nord student in his class. Unlike Kjorik's more diminutive stature, Onmund struck an imposing figure amongst the students, boasting strong blood of the Men of Atmora. He struck an odd image of a bear of a man wrapped in linen robes.
"It is my responsibility to oversee your studies and progression and ensure the rules and principles of the college are upheld, and that no dangerous activities are taking place. Whilst I would love to occasionally have an extra day off to pursue my own research, Kjorik needs to catch up on his Soul Trapping-"
That had brough him back to the present. The notion of studying and practicing necromantic hexes bringing a chill to his body, a chill his ancestry failed to protect him from. But be it as it may, the Gods and fate had whimsically wished it so perhaps, that at this very moment Garzash had caught up and actually landing on his feet. Stumbling forward a bit but otherwise without falling over.
Breathing in a little loudly, the Orc cleared his throat, "Well, I'll give ya that, it was faster."
"Right? The disproportionate utility of such a simple arcane weave! Just you wait, with enough practice I'll be like Master Tolfdir. As a demonstration, he once jumped up from the foot of a cliff up onto the College bridge in one bound!" the Nord rattled off.
"That's what you want to achieve?" Garzash asked, cynical.
"Well... I mean, yes. That is, that and other... stuff... like..." With the Orc's more scrutinizing glare, Kjorik's enthusiasm fizzled away. Head held slightly lower, with less of a spark in his eyes, the young Nord mage, turned around and began shuffling up the path towards the great arches that adorned the tomb yard.
Relics of the past, like the populous of the land, these stone arches had so far withstood the harsh weather and the incessant bite of time, remaining proud and tall. Stones so large, it boggled the mind how the Nordic ancestors have engineered such construction projects, the slabs cutting so precise there is little that the elements had contributed in its smoothing. But it was the enormity of Bleak Falls Barrow that truly took one's breath away. Rising out of the ground, platforms that could more aptly be named plateaus capable of housing a small neighborhood were connected by stairs wide enough to allow three carts to ride abreast, the barrow loomed over its little domain, a semicircular fortress adorned in carvings of old, depictions of histories and tales, sealed with 15 feet tall vault doors. This was one of the pinnacles of the Old Nordic culture.
"Gotta admit, that's impressive." he heard the Orc say, gruffily.
"So overbearing, yet... tranquil." the younger man breathed out, transfixed.
So I figured, this would be a good place to stop as I'm thinking of writing a longer, more tense chapter next though hopefully much faster than this one.
AN: I would like to thank Karakum, Cerith the Argonian and CrazyRecluse for reviewing. It was the fact that I noticed the positive feedback and suggestions that really inspired me to pick this up again.
Re; Karakum: Yes, it is unfortunately too strong of a trope in this category of fics. It may lend itself to "transported into the game" genre, but it would be unnecessary for this. That way, the story is already on its way without wasting 10k words getting from Helgen to Whiterun. As for the magic, I really wanted to explore its mechanics and its scope. After seeing the different effects on DND spells and the ways modders have broken down spells into casting components to allow spellcrafting/research, I knew that there was potential for a magic heavy story that didn't revolve around spamming the in-game spells.
Re; Cerith: a) I'm till trying to figure out how to mesh the lore-description of the land with the familiar game-based layout. For ease of following the journey, and hence accessability of the story to others, and for my own sake of not having to invent a homebrew geography of the land, the first few chapters may not seem as different from the bame, but I hope to let it grow out more over time. b) Green is a nice exotic tint, but I'm more into the "behemoth" side of "green behemoth". c) That... well... you'll see. Let's just say that the Dragonborn fiasco is a retcon by Bethesda and I see no reason why we couldn't diminish it a little.
Re; Crazy: No, I very strictly wanted to avoid that for this story: from your perspective its redundant as you know the plot, and one can only make so many tweaks and twists to it, and from my perspective horrendously boring.
