The interior of High Hrothgar smelled of dust and soot, and felt cold and empty, given its population of silent and peaceful monks. None of them could speak, lest their power overwhelm their surroundings. The only chance I had to hear all of them was when I was called upon before. The one Greybeard that could speak safely, Arngeir, was left to be my mentor.
"Come here, Dragonborn," he said as he directed me to the center of the main hall. Statues of Dragons lined my presence as I learned. He continued the lesson. "We shall teach you the power of the Unrelenting Force. You have first learned the word 'Fus'. Now you must broaden your knowledge with the next word in this shout."
Another Greybeard approached the center, softly breathing an inscription into the ground. The knowledge of Unrelenting Force soon flowed into me. Lydia was enthralled by the amazing display of magic.
"Now, Dragonborn," Arngeir requested. "Let the unrelenting force leave you."
"Fus..." I prepared as a great power built within me. "Ro!"
A strong barrier of magic repelled itself from my soul, kicking up waves of dust and pebbles from the ground. Lydia had a brief coughing fit in the background.
"Very good, Dovahkiin. Now, we shall follow Master Borri to the courtyard, where we will teach you the Whirlwind Sprint, with the word 'Wuld'."
The group strode through the large iron doors in the rear of the building, opening up to a courtyard where the air sat still. I could sense a stiff feeling in my nose and ears, and Lydia's face was already turning red. Another Greybeard blew a word of the Dragon language toward the snowy ground, breathing the letters of the word Wuld into the soil. Again, the ribbons of magic flowed into me. The stiff sensation of cold in my nose dissipated for a moment before returning again. The monks led me to two pillars, with a gate in the distance. Arngeir continued to instruct me.
"Now, Master Borri will open the gate. When he does, I want you to use the power of Wuld to pass through."
I waited a few moments, and then Borri opened the gates with his voice. I shouted, "Wuld," and found myself instantly propelled to the opposite side of the gates. Snow was blown in the opposite direction, leaving Lydia to wipe her face of it.
"Very impressive," Arngeir enthused. "You seem to have a profound grasp of the art of shouting, as expected from a mortal born from Dragons."
"Thank you," I said as I bowed in respect.
"We still have one more test for you to complete. We need you to retrieve a lost artifact of ours, the Horn of Jurgen Windcaller, from the Nord tomb of Ustengrav."
"I will find it as soon as I can."
"We have confidence in your abilities, Dragonborn. We anticipate your return soon."
I bowed once more, and showed myself out from High Hrothgar. Lydia and I continued down the steps once more. 7,000 steps, like a step for each day I must endure this life long adventure. I couldn't imagine the war with the Stormcloaks and the attacks of the Dragons ending any time soon. We hired a carriage at dawn, and I pictured myself, old and grey, approaching the final judgement as I faced the last dragon of Tamriel. I couldn't imagine that the man that was once just a boy with a troubled past was the fated savior of man and mer. My father would be honored, and my mother would be proud. Just not together. My parents had separated as my father's distance grew farther. Without his support, my mother was failing financially. Not able to bear the stress, my sister ran away. All my father had were a bunch of decade-old badges and a stash of skooma to show for his "efforts" of success.
Tired from the mountain trek, I fell asleep, and dreamed of the image of my final battle. I was fighting a fierce and profoundly threatening dragon, but I was not very old. I felt barely different. I had five great warriors by my side, each seemed of my age, although I could only recognize two...
We returned home with Klimmek's reward for delivering the supplies, and a note of the location of Ustengrav. I knew that we needed to get the Horn as soon as we possibly could, given the dire importance of the matter. We returned to Dragon-blood Manor by dusk. The carriage stopped, and the two of us dropped from the opening. Ri'saad was already awake, standing not far from the home, using his steel dagger to carve an image into a mighty oak tree. I stopped mid-step when I saw what he had created. I almost couldn't believe what I was seeing.
It depicted the image of a large dragon, spreading its wings, casting its broad shadow over a small and helpless village. Each small house had the carvings of straw roofs and each little person, however individually unimportant, contributed to the graceful congruity of Ri'saad's masterpiece.
"This one may need a stool soon," he said in a nonchalant manner. "There are some high-up details this one cannot reach to carve." He leaned upward, as if arcing his line of sight over a great wall.
"Ri'saad," I barely spoke, in awe. "How long have you been able to do this!?"
"Oh, a while," he said. "This one would make carvings in firewood before he burned it at camp. Usually thoughts and memories that haunted dreams. Ri'saad learned this at the orphanage. Had much time to waste, you see." He glanced over at me with a warm smile and a certain brightness in his eyes. I interpreted that as well-deserved pride.
He had told me about his orphanage before, about how his mother gave him up when he was young. He stayed there until his late teens. When the orphanage wasn't making any progress, and nobody wanted to adopt him, he decided to leave and became a beggar in Skyrim. After a year of that, he was picked up by a caravan, and eventually became its leader.
In my flurry of thought, I had nearly forgotten about Lydia, who was nearly speechless. She expected this even less than I had.
"This one has had dragons on the mind, for obvious reasons, and what better way to express our shared purpose?"
"It doesn't look very optimistic, but I love it," I responded. I looked him in the eyes and said. "What a beautiful thing to come home to."
Once again, he bore an expression of temperate satisfaction, and glanced down at his feet. He said, "What have you learned, Dragonborn?"
"That we need to find the Horn of Jurgen Windcaller at a Nord tomb in Ustengrav."
"Doesn't sound safe. Do you want this one to come with you?"
Lydia approached and snapped, "Well, I'm done with walking for a long time. A very damned long time. I'll be sleeping." She retreated into the house, leaving Ri'saad and I to the symphony of nature.
"This one thinks we should be getting some rest as well," he said.
"Heh, so we can be wide awake to disturb the rest of the Draugr?"
"Don't remind Ri'saad," he groaned.
We left nature to its privacy to enter our own. Within the oak tree's bark, the murderous dragon continued its eternal reign of fire on the nameless villagers. The sun set beyond our home, shrouding the scene in darkness, leaving the orchestra to the crickets and the owls of the night.
The next morning was brisk, as Skyrim mornings go. Ri'saad had his mother's blanket wrapped around himself, but was still shivering, and leaning up against me. It took a few hours to reach the dense swamplands surrounding Morthal. The carriage driver couldn't enter the town from the direction we came from, so he'd dropped us off by a crevice to the unpaved main street.
Almost as soon as people saw us, their faces turned from expressions of misery to disdain in some, and outright disgust in others. It became apparent to us that this small, wrecked village was not welcoming to outsiders. We could not find a single person at work, and the only pavement was on an old bridge that lead out of the sleepy hamlet.
"Ri'saad does not like the feel of this town," he spoke in a low whisper.
"I know. They don't seem to like travelers stopping by. It's weird, because it looks like they could use some money."
Before we stepped up onto the bridge, a small boy approached us, and told us, "My mother tells me to leave people like you alone. But I want the voices to stop, and she won't help," He then proceeded to walk solemnly away.
Ri'saad's only reaction was to slowly back behind me. We tried to ignore what the boy said and continued to Ustengrav.
The tomb was underwhelming. I guess not all Nord tombs were as outwardly impressive as Bleak Falls Barrow. This pathetic little entrance was nothing but a cylindrical pit with stairs and a door to enter the place. Ri'saad tied his blanket firmly around his waist and drew his twin daggers. I opened the door and we both crept in cautiously.
We were greeted by a typical tomb hallway, with some empty crypts on the walls. I nearly tripped over a pickaxe, and decided to pick it up and latch it to my belt. I lead Ri'saad through the twists and turns of the hallway until we came to the first large room. Two bandits were inside, speaking something unintelligible. Waiting in hiding, we watched as the Draugr inside awakened. The jarring thud of the crypts bursting open made Ri'saad flinch. When the bandits and Draugr began to battle, we saw that as an opening, and charged in with our blades and spells. The Draugr made quick work of the bandits, and turned immediately toward us. I shot one Draugr with a lightning spell and torched the other with flames. I looked back to see Ri'saad in a sort of sheepish, weak fighting stance, as though he had never fought before. I chuckled and signaled for him to follow.
We searched each room and chest for treasure. We found a little bit of gold, some gemstones and jewelry. What really caught my eye was a spell book, still in perfect condition. It probably belonged to the bandits, but I didn't care.
"Oh, yeah! Spell book! Who needs to sleep with this to read!?", I exclaimed.
Ri'saad seemed confused, but endeared by my enthusiasm for reading and magic. He himself apprenticed in conjuration while he was with the caravan, but his mentor and friend didn't make it through the dragon attack, so spells were still a relatively unfamiliar art to him. I made myself promise to teach him some things, and hopefully learn new spells myself.
The two of us battled chamber after chamber, and Ri'saad's fears of the undead seemed to ease with each conflict. He strode further into the room in battle. He ceased waiting for enemies to come to him. Eventually, he didn't need to stay so close by me. By the time we had reached the giant cavern, he was the one leading me.
Funny how we switched roles like that.
The cavern in question was something that seemed to have been taken out of a book. A giant, roughly egg-shaped chamber with an opening for sunlight to fall through, decorated with plants and trees.
"This is not what I was expecting," I said, admiring the natural beauty.
"This one has heard of things like this, but to think Ri'saad would see one."
We made our way down the cliff face to a Dragon word wall in the lowest gardens. There, I found a new shout, which I could now understand with my new Dragon abilities; "Become Ethereal". As I took in the knowledge of the new shout, Ri'saad watched with a look of fascination, before looking back up to the ceiling of the colossal cavern.
"This place is very beautiful," he said.
I walked up beside him, and turned my eyes to him as I said, "Yes, it is."
After a few moments in the cavern, we continued to scale the opposite cliff face to reach - big surprise - more tombs. The undead truly were relentless. They had no other reason to exist but to defend their burial place. We, however, weren't keen on the notion of joining them. By this point, slicing the Draugr into fine sections proved to be easy for Ri'saad to handle.
Eventually, we found ourselves at a great iron door. Pushing as hard as I could, it budged just enough for us to get through. What we found was a large pool of water with a bridge spanning towards what seemed to be the pedestal for the Horn. As we walked forward, giant statues of Dragon heads rose from the water on either side of the bridge, as though greeting me to the end of my quest.
That is, what I thought was the end of my quest. The pedestal did not have the horn, but it had a note, requesting for "the Dragonborn" to meet someone at the Sleeping Giant Inn in Riverwood, by requesting for the "Attic Room". The details troubled me. It felt like some sort of trap, but I had little else to do but comply. If I didn't, it would be a dead end. The heavy disappointment was compensated for with large amounts of treasure. We piled it into bags, and took a backdoor out of the tomb.
As we sat again on the carriage ride home, the air was just as brisk as in the morning. Ri'saad was one again snuggled in his mother's blanket, comforted by the fine weave. He told me of the story that the blanket is all he has ever known of his mother. He showed how the blanket depicted a family. A mother, a father, and three little sons. He never remembers seeing any of them. He explained to me that his blanket doesn't just give him physical warmth, but some sort of spiritual warmth, as though he connected with his family through the blanket.
"What of your family, Karal'e? What do you have?"
"Nothing. I don't even have a blanket, or ring, or anything. I could've left with something, but... I didn't," I reflected. "I guess that, after what I'd found that day, that I just wanted nothing to do with my life back there anymore."
"What did you find?"
"Well... It was a week after my mother's birthday," I recalled. "My mother and father had drifted to the point that they hadn't seen each other in the-Eight-know-how-long, and I had ran home from Rodryck's house. I went inside, found the entire house in disarray. Everything knocked over. Even the table was just... broken. I called for my mother, knowing something had gone terribly wrong."
Even the breeze stilled to listen to my story.
"I crept into my mother's bedroom... And I found what had been left of her lying in bed. She was gone. I didn't even look very hard after I realized. I just ran."
For the first time I could remember, I felt myself begin to cry at the memory of what had led me into this unforgiving fate in the first place. I shook, but not from the cold. Ri'saad removed his mother's blanket and covered me, resting his head on my shoulder and falling softly asleep.