After hearing the absurd request from them, I just stood there. Why were they acting so strangely? With the beating around the bush explanation and the way Farengar kept interrupting, I didn't know what to say in response.
"Do…Do you jest? Are you playing some kind of prank on me?" I said after a few minutes. Even though everything they had said did indeed sound like a joke, I have noticed some of the things they had mentioned. It's hard not to notice dragon's scales being replaced with skin or fur, and when a large majority of ladies in Skyrim and Solstheim alike look as if they went to a face sculptor for their chest it was a bit difficult not to stare. I also secretly hoped that there was something new for me to do. Honestly for the last couple weeks Skyrim had been… very dry. It was as if everyone's problems had been solved. I was getting bored, because I had nothing to do. It's hard for me to imagine what I actually did before I became a sellsword. So if there was somebody new to defeat, somebody else's evil plan to foil, I would be happy. It's strange to admit, but something to do in this country, something to defeat, which was better than finding ten thousand septims when cleaning out your kitchen cupboard.
"A prank? A prank?!" Hrongar yelled, making me jump like a skeever. He got closer to me and I could feel his breath on my face. His eyes were narrowed, and his closeness was bothering me. I took a step back. "This is completely serious, Valund. There still isn't much we know about him, almost nothing at all. We actually don't even know if it is a guy. Wizard man over here has been looking through a lot of books because, well, anything helps at this point."
"You say that as if magic would have been your last resort!" Farengar said, sounding offended.
"Exactly."
"Wait a minute," I spoke again, interrupting their soon-to-be bickering. "Are you telling me, you don't know literally anything about the person that's going to do this? All you have is a prophecy that states that 'Tamriel might end'? Why are you freaking out about this so much, if nothing is really solid? Why did the Jarl send for me if that's it?"
The men looked at each other for only moments, before Farengar told me to follow him.
We had arrived in a room that I'd never been in before, which surprised me already because I thought I had seen every place inside Dragonsreach by the first month I got here, though that wasn't the most surprising part. As I stepped into the room, I quickly held my nose closed with my hand. A dead body lay on the floor, each hand and foot separately secure so you could clearly see the full front side of the naked corpse. The skin was a blue color, as if somebody had just painted this man with a paintbrush.
"What." I said.
"We found this body; sadly we found it in the middle of the day, when it fell from the ceiling out of a portal of some kind. It was obviously magic, as the portal closed itself after the body fell through."
"That must have given the Jarl's kids quite a scare. " I said, trying to hold back a laugh. Don't get me wrong, what happened sounds terrible but those children can be such brats sometimes.
"Luckily only Nelkir was in the great hall at the time, and he seemed less traumatized than the servants."
"How long ago had this happened? It surely can't have been that long ago, otherwise I would have heard the rumors."
"It happened less than a week ago, and people have sadly just began to start hearing rumors about it. We have had more than one concerned citizen in here asking about it, or fretting about them and their children's safety." I took a step to the body, and reached my hand out. "Wait! We aren't sure If he's safe to touch or inspect yet."
"Well it's a damn good time to check." I said, ignoring his warning as I rubbed the slightly dark blue skin. It felt normal, if a bit… wet. "What does this have to do with the prophecy? Does it specifically say 'A body with blue damp skin will fall from the ceiling?'"
"More or less," At my incredulous look Farengar sighed. "Well it's not quite a prophecy, it's more like a story in an old book."
"So you called me here because of a story?"
"Well the story has many parallels to what is going on here in Skyrim, including this body here. I forgot to mention, there's also a word that appears in the book a lot, 'mod'. At first we thought it was just abbreviation of the word modifications, but now I'm unsure. It seems to be used in context to something else, which may give us a clue to what we're going to be dealing with."
"Are you planning on telling me this story and not leaving me, the Dragonborn, in the dark?"
"Oh don't worry Valund, the Jarl has an extra copy of the book for you, I'm sure."
The wind was picking up, and Marie was walking along the road to Solitude. She knew her parents would be fine at home; they had lived alone for about a year, after Marie moved to Solitude with her husband.
Marie sighed when she thought this; she still hadn't told Valund that she had married while he was gone. She wasn't sure how Valund would even react to the news. He was a sweet older brother, who would crush the skull of any boy or man who would break her heart. Once even, when they were kids visiting Solitude for the first time, Valund had beat up another kid who had given Marie a nightshade flower. Valund said he did it because he thought the boy was trying to poison her with nightshade (Valund had read an alchemic book earlier in the week, and was acting smarter than he really was), but Marie had a suspicion that it was more because she was starting to get attention, and Valund didn't want to give his sister away to be courted. Now she was, and now she didn't know how to tell her brother, she had to be grateful Valund wasn't very observant and didn't see the iridescent Ring on her finger.