Desmond gazed flatly at the hooded man in front of him, letting his ire seep into his stare. The wizard shifted uncomfortably, hands clenching and unclenching in the folds of his robe.
He let the silence stretch on for several seconds, before sighing heavily and pinching the bridge of his nose, eyes closing in agitation.
Video games. They made no sense.
"So," Desmond said, opening his eyes and glaring from underneath his lashes. "Let me see if I've understood this information correctly."
"You-" he pointed to Farengar, "are a court wizard. His court wizard." The finger moved to point to Jarl Balgruuf, standing off to the side and looking torn between anxiety and amusement. "He pays you a sizeable amount of money to stand here and look wizardly and do wizard things." Farengar nodded, looking the faintest bit insulted. Desmond's finger moved from the Jarl to the trio of Companions standing on his other side. "They," he stressed the word, "are rather experienced members of what I understand to be a fighter's guild that can be payed for the use of their services. They live one staircase away from you."
He pointed to himself. "And you want me, an inexperienced, unknown stranger who literally just went through a traumatic dragon attack, to slaughter every moving thing in a tomb likely full of your dead ancestors to find a stone tablet that may or may not actually be there," he angrily gestured to the trio of fighters, who now looked extremely uncomfortable, "when you have a group of able bodied people willing to do it for some gold coins who live literally two minutes away from you."
Farengar shuffled from foot to foot. "Well, when you put it like that, it does sound unreasonable…"
Desmond growled to himself. "This is ridiculous. You are ridiculous. This fucking situation is ridiculous!" He plopped down into a chair, muttering to himself and rubbing his temples, trying to stave off the incoming headache forming behind his eyes.
"You would be compensated handsomely, friend," the Jarl wheedled, internally smirking at the way the stranger- Desmond? was that his name?- stiffened. Ah, gold, the one thing that never failed to sway the hearts of men.
The stranger sighed and seemed to collapse into himself a little. "How much compensation we talking about here?"
"Five hundred gold," he said, "as well as one yet undetermined additional reward should the dragonstone be where Farengar thinks it is."
Fuck, that was a lot of gold. But this could also be a dangerous waste of his time. Did he really need it that much?
A thought struck him. He flipped around in his chair, arms braced on the back, and stared down the trio of companions. "If I split the gold evenly between us, would one of you accompany me?"
They looked surprised for a moment, but seemed to consider his request seriously. Finally, after a minute, Aela nodded.
"I would accompany you for 250 gold," she said. "That seems reasonable."
Desmond grinned. "Alright, thanks." He turned back around. "Yo, when do you want this done by?"
"As soon as physically possible."
"That means now, doesn't it." He sighed. "Well then, Aela, looks like we got some work to do."
#
"Why did I agree to this," he muttered to himself, taking down bandits with kill shot after kill shot.
This, he thought, shivering from the snow that pelted his skin through the gaps in his armor, is why I hate nature.
He struggled through the snow alongside Aela, stripping the corpses of their arrows and gold and potions, and let out a sigh of relief when they finally made it to the sheltered recess of the door.
He took a deep breath and laid a hand on the intricately carved metal.
* To Bleak Falls Barrow
"Let's go."