Under the tutelage of Brynjolf, Vex, Delvin, and the others, my confidence had grown. I could be in plain sight and yet hide from anyone. I could sell a giant his own mammoth. I could take a necklace right from under a noble's nose. I could slash a man's throat before he even knew I was coming.
But for months - even with all of my skills, determination, assurance, and tenacity - I had still come up empty.
I still only had sixteen unusual gems.
Where were the last eight stones if they were not scattered throughout Skyrim's caves and forts?
I obsessed over that question - pondering over it while sitting in lengthy carriage rides across the country, staking out houses, drinking a pint at taverns in little towns - while my first unusual gem weighed down my tunic pocket, begging me to reunite it with the other gems.
I took fewer and fewer jobs, distancing myself from the others in the guild. I lit candles to the Gods and prayed endlessly to Nocturnal instead.
Eventually, at Brynjolf's insistence, I was assigned a simple job in Whiterun to clear my head. He did not say it directly, but I could tell that he worried about me. Begrudgingly, I agreed though the thief inside me craved a much larger prize with much bigger risks.
Brynjolf's job - steal an ornate horn from Amren's house - turned out to be child's play; just a little too simple, even for someone as distracted as me.
Quietly closing the front door, I crouched in the shadows on the stone porch and waited for a couple of guards to pass.
My gaze lazily followed their path down the street toward the Hall of the Dead.
The dead!
I nearly stood up with this revelation, but managed to catch myself before doing something thoughtless and stupid.
Why had I not thought of that before? I wondered, sneaking to the entrance of the Hall of the Dead and pulling out a lockpick. People send loved ones off with valuables all the time.
With hopeful, trembling fingers, I unlocked the grand doors and pushed them open just enough to squeeze through the crack and then close the door quietly behind me.
I fought hard not to cough at the thick, musty air that greeted me inside. Slowly, my eyes adjusted to the dim candlelight and my heart pounded against my rib cage as I made my way down the stairs, hidden by the shadows. I had never ventured into a burial chamber before and my mind raced with the possibilities of what I might find: perhaps coins and jewelry to line my pockets? Or maybe skeevers and more sinister creatures?
Turning the corner, I listened carefully for voices or the shuffling of feet. Hearing nothing but a creak - creak - creak up ahead, I stopped to retrieve my dagger from its holster at my left hip.
Leaving the safety of my cover, I sprung from the shadows and swiped at the empty air. I looked up, confused at not hitting a solid mark, and then released a startled shriek.
Two skeletons towered over me, their bones glistening white in the dull candlelight, their hollowed eye sockets glowing red, their teeth chattering at me incoherently. I slashed at them over and over again but continued to miss. They stepped closer and closer, arms raised and poised to grab me.
Where in Sovngarde do you hit a skeleton?
Surely Rynjus would have known the answer to this riddle, but I could only back away, unsure of what a skeleton would even do to me if it caught me. Would it eat me? Could it eat me? Or would I serve another disgusting purpose?
I bumped against a mummified body upon a shelf. Something shiny dislodged from the body's hand and fell to the ground but I ignored it. In any other circumstance, I would have bent down to pick it up and examine it, but now, I positioned my dagger in front of me, ready to strike again if need be.
The larger skeleton reached out and grabbed at my sleeve. With all of my might, I pushed his hand away and part of his arm flew off into a burial urn on the other side of the hall. The tiny bones of his hand scattered, disappearing into the darkness.
With a new determination, I lunged at the broken skeleton, hitting him with my fist and with the end of my dagger. His teeth snapped angrily at me, but I did not break contact. Pieces of his body fell apart and dropped to the stone floor, stirring up clouds of dust. The other skeleton reached for my neck, his grip cold and strong. I elbowed him off and concentrated on the other one, who was almost nothing but a skull and spine.
But the second pounced upon me, biting my shoulder and upper arm. I screamed in pain and threw the remainder of the first skeleton into his friend who immediately let go.
We circled each other, waiting for the other to make the first move. The blood from my bite wound trickled down my arm and dripped from my wrist, leaving a trail on the stone floor. The skeleton stared blankly at me, though I swear to the Gods there was an awful smugness about it.
He finally lunged at me and I pulled him in, ready to smash as many of his bones as I could with my bloodied arm. We tumbled to the floor, breaking a small burial urn. Plumes of ashes dusted the air. I coughed and my eyes watered as I blinked away the cremated remains, kicking the skeleton away, pushing him into the opposite wall and into a wall torch.
His scraps of clothing caught fire and he burned, screeching and howling until he was little more than a pile of bone meal.
I laughed, a hysterical, belly-shaking, fiery laugh. Tears streamed down my face, streaking my dirty cheeks. I wiped away my tears, forgetting about the blood on my hand. Taking several breaths to steady myself, I moved my wobbly legs underneath me and tried to stand.
A nearby gem caught my eye. I couldn't tell what exactly it was - only that it had a fine cut in the shape of a diamond. Judging by the color, a garnet, perhaps?
It must have fallen from that person's hand, I reasoned, but as I turned it over and over in my fingers and wiped the dust away, my smile grew ever wider.
Seventeen.
Here in this pit, I had found number seventeen.
I dragged myself out of the Hall of the Dead and aboard a carriage. The driver eyed me warily but allowed me peace when I tossed him a coin purse - enough for a ride back to Riften and a hefty bonus to keep his mouth shut.
For personal safety, I had always shied away from tombs and burial sites and though I did not relish the thought of tangling with more of the living dead, I would gladly do it if it meant that all twenty-four stones would be mine.
My spark had returned. Brynjolf assigned me task after task - the further from Riften the better - and I breezed through them all, always on the lookout for another ruin on the way which might contain an unusual gem.
During these cross-country excursions, I fought through hordes of skeletons and draugr and necromancers, clearing the secrets of the deep, dark depths of Sunderstone Gorge, Ansilvund, Yngvild, Rannveig's Fast. I hated the raw stench of the dead and their musty homes, hated the many new scars on my face, but I would not stop so close to my goal.
I even descended into the Dark Brotherhood Sanctuary - invited, of course - and as I wandered the passageways, always in the shadows, I found another unusual gem tucked away in Astrid's room. Taking the utmost care not to arouse suspicion, I safely scooped up the gem. Astrid never noticed it was gone.
Twenty-two gems now sat beneath the loose brick in my corner of the Ratway and I celebrated by buying everyone in the Thieves Guild a drink.
While the others reminisced about past heists over bottles of ale, I sat alone at a table on the outskirts of the activity, toasting Nocturnal and the Gods for my good fortune.
