As Desmond trips over yet another tree root, he can't help wish for a pair of hiking boots. His leather boots are a nice boost to his armor rating, but they aren't exactly built for trekking through forests. Maybe that's just him, actually. He's never been an outdoorsy kind of person, and living in places like New York City and the basement sanctuary of Monteriggioni has only exacerbated that. Skyrim, unfortunately, seems to be nothing but nature though. As he spits leaves out of his mouth, he tries to convince himself that he's loving the outdoors. He's totally fine with hiking in the goddamned mountains. Give him a stupid forest over a dragon any day.
Really.
He hikes down to the river with Ralof before the man, in all his infinite wisdom, decides to split up. Desmond flat out vetos that idea, going so far as to cuff the man on the back of the head to voice his displeasure. He's not going to leave the only person he knows and trusts a little in the entire fucking country, and he says so. Ralof looks sheepish, and a little bit touched. Desmond pretends he doesn't see.
The manly bonding moment is killed about a hundred feet later, with the discovery of the Guardian Stones.
"What are these?" he murmurs, gliding up to them in a trance. He brushes his finger over them one by one and they hum, light flickering over the carvings. Ralof looks disturbed. He takes it that isn't normal, then. "Who made them?" He doesn't really need to ask. He know First Civ technology when he sees it. And if he's right, Ralof's going to say-
"Nobody knows who made them. They've been around for as long as anyone can remember."
Yup, there it is. He steps closer to the one depicting a hooded man holding a knife. They all have a rather large hole in the center of them, he notes, as his hand unconsciously slips into his pocket and fingers the golden ball within. A hole just the right size for an Apple.
He pulls it out and, without thinking much about it, slides the Piece of Eden into the gap.
The whole platform lights up bright blueish white, and in a split second, Desmond is crouched on the ground with his hands cradled protectively over his head. He wasn't in Vidic's clutches for very long, but it was long enough to associate the color light blue and bright light with pain.
He uncrouches after a moment, when it becomes apparent that he isn't being harmed, and subtly glances over at Ralof. The man, however, is frozen. Not with shock or anything, literally just frozen in place, like a hyper-realistic statue. When he takes a second to examine his surroundings, he notices that there's no noise. At all. The river and the woods are totally silent. The trees and grass are unnaturally still. Time's been frozen, then.
Oh lord, that can't be good.
He turns back to the Apple, and notices that it's still slightly protruding, not quite in the center of the stone. He prods it a little more, and feels something click into place. The Apple starts to turn slowly, and then faster, glowing a bright, burning gold. He backs up quickly, expecting something to happen, but after a full minute all it does is begin to slow down, until it comes to a complete stop. It pops out of the standing stone with a faint hiss, and he has to lurch forward and fumble to keep it from dropping to the ground.
In the place where the Apple clicked into the pillar, right where it touched the bottom, is a tiny indent, the exact shape of the carving on the front face of the standing stone. It's little, about the size of the top half of his thumb. He steps back, away from the pillar, and starts when it beginst to rumble and sink into the ground. In a few seconds, there is nothing to indicate that the thing was ever there, except for the small etching on the Apple.
The platform, however, is still glowing bright blue, so Desmond repeats the process with the other two stones, which depict a warrior type guy and a man in tobes with a staff. A wizard, maybe? In the end, he stands on the glowing stone with three little pictures etched into the golden ball. He gazes helplessly at the now empty platform and, lacking anything else to do, steps off.
Time restarts, violently.
Ralof, who had been running to his aid, crashes into him, sending them both tumbling to the ground. Desmond smacks his head into the rough stone and almost loses his grip on the Apple. Thankfully, he manages to shove it into a pocket before he really does lose it.
"Owwww," he whines, sitting up and clutching the back of his head, tears prickling at the corner of his eyes. He gazes accusingly at Ralof, hurt, even though he knows it wasn't the man's fault. They just stare at each other for a minute, and then the other man can't scramble off of him fast enough, stammering apologies and helping him to his feet. He just shakes his head and stalks off down the road, answering all of Ralof's questions with a curt "I'll explain later," or a grunt.
Ralof trails along behind the mysterious man, Desmond, doing his best to keep himself from bombarding him with questions. What on earth had happened back there? He's never seen anything like that before, and he has just walked out of a fight with a dragon. What Desmond had done with the Guardian Stones, that was the stuff out of tales!
But then again, he thinks, so are dragons. Maybe the things of tales are much more present than we thought.
#
If someone had asked Desmond to picture a small Scandinavian town in the mid to late sixteenth century, he would have pictured something close to Riverwood. Unfortunately, no one had ever asked Desmond to picture a small Scandinavian town in the mid to late sixteenth century, so he has absolutely no idea what to expect.
Gerder, Ralof's sister, is quite nice, if a little standoffish. She had graciously offered him a place to stay for the night, and he had accepted with no small amount of relief. He feels like he could sleep for a year after the day he's had, but he settles for a solid eighteen hours. Unfortunately, it only feels like a few seconds. According to the little menu, it's Fredas, the 22nd of Last Seed. Whenever the fuck that is.
* You awake feeling rested
You're a goddamned liar, he thinks viciously. And it seems as if that's going to set the tone for the rest of the day, because he's unexplainably, though understandably, grumpy.
Gerder notices him as he climbs out of bed and stretches the kinks out of his back.
"You're awake, good. There's something I need you to do." Desmond quirks an eyebrow and gestures for her to go on. "If there really is a dragon on the loose, Riverwood is defenseless. I need you to head down the road to Whiterun and tell the Jarl the news so he can send troops to defend the town."
That sounds reasonable. "Sure. How do I get to Whiterun from here?"
"Head north out of the city and across the river, then over the ridge. You'll see it on the hill. You can't miss it."
"Alright. Thanks, for everything." He might be in a bad mood, be his mama raised him to be polite. She smiles kindly at him before shooing him out the door.
Riverwood is misty in the early evening light, and the cold sunlight drifts lazily through the banks of fog. It's quite peaceful, and goes a long way towards soothing his nerves. He takes a deep breath and heads off, shoes tapping softly on the stone of the road.
Thirty minutes later, he rather regrets not thinking about how much walking this was going to involve. He's far from winded, used to this kind of exercise as he is, but his legs are beginning to ache and his feet are already there. The rough, patchy stone roads of Skyrim are nothing like the smooth asphalt of his world. And there are so many damned rocks around he's always in danger of twisting an ankle. He almost prefers walking through the forest.
Not quite though.
Night is already falling by the time he gets to the farms on the surrounding the city. It's quite pretty, in a medieval sort of way. The giant crumbling walls are a little intimidating, but eh, what can you do?
The sounds of a fight bring him up short. A few hundred feet away, three people are hacking and slashing at a-
He squints. Is that a giant?
It roars and swings it's giant club at the three of them, narrowly missing the two men. The third, the woman, lets out a vicious battle cry and charges it head on, hacking and slashing like a machine. He watches a significant chunk of the Giant's health disappear, then shrugs and continues on towards the city. They don't need help at all, and he's on an errand, anyway.
But this is a fucking video game and nothing ever makes sense. They end up stopping him just outside of the stables.
"That Giant is dead, no thanks to you," says the woman, who's label names her Aela the Huntress.
And, just like that, his bad mood is back. "What the fuck did you expect me to do, shout at it until it died? I was like four hundred feet away, and it was clearly your fight. Step the fuck off, lady." He stalks around them, feeling their astonished gazes on his back.
About ten feet later, he feels a gloved hand on his arm, stalling his movements. He turns, and it's one of the nearly identical men. He doesn't say anything, just nods to the woman standing at his side. Desmond turns fully to face them and crosses his arms, shooting them poisonous glares. One of the men actually takes a step back.
"I… apologize," the woman, Aela, says. "That was rude of me. May we start over? I am Aela the Huntress. These are my shield brothers, Farkas, and his actual brother, Vilkas." She sticks out her hand, and actually looks apologetic, so Desmond counts to five in his head and lets out a quiet sigh before shaking it.
"Desmond Miles. I was pretty rude to you too, so I guess that makes us square. It's been a rough couple of days." His arm drops back to his side.
One of the men, Vilkas he thinks, nods his head. "That's understandable. Did you hear about the dragon attack at Helgen?"
Desmond barks out a short humorless laugh. "Buddy, I was in the dragon attack at Helgen." He smirks grimly as the three of them stutter at that. "Now, you all seem like decent people, and it's been nice talking to you, but I have to see the Jarl." He turns on his heel and waves over his shoulder. "Later."
"Wait!"
Desmond looks back. "You've never been to Whiterun before, have you?" asks Farkas. "Let us escort you to Dragonsreach, the Jarl's palace. It's the least we can do."
He thinks about that for a second, before nodding. It would be bad to get lost, although the city doesn't look that big, and walking in with three warriors will give him some street cred. Aela immediately drops into position on his left, while Farkas and Vilkas trail behind.
"So," he starts, just before the silence becomes awkward, "what is you three do?"
"Well," Aela says, "we're members of the Companions, which is…"