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ACRUS
Thirst for Knowledge
City of Markarth
Another shop, another disappointment. Acrus was getting tired of eking out a living with sorcery displays in the town squares of Skyrim, depending on the generosity of gawking peasants. Every shop he'd been to had offered the same worthless repertoire of cantrip spells for sale. Oakflesh, Candlelight, Sparks, always the same unimpressive spell tomes passing through his fingers. He'd been warned that finding spells would be difficult when he told his mentor he'd be leaving Cyrodiil for Skyrim, and at the time, he'd nodded and humoured the old man, but it turned out he'd been right, and it made Acrus wish he'd simply enrolled in the Arcane University, back in the Imperial City. But that would have meant travelling across Cyrodiil to get a recommendation from the Mages' Guild in every city, and Acrus simply refused to be sent on errands across the province just to be granted access to the University.
So much to his mentor's protests, Acrus had simply up and left, travelling North to Skyrim, where the magicka was more to his liking, not the word-for-word incantations taught in the University, but a rawer, more primal manipulation of elements. Where in Cyrodiil magic was practiced with the brain, a science to be methodically studied and employed, in Skyrim it was practiced with the soul, instinct and willpower making it possible to bend the laws of nature. Or so he'd heard.
It made sense, then, that not many magic tomes were found in Skyrim's shops, since the mages of Skyrim simply had a different approach to magic. He'd briefly considered enlisting a mentor in Skyrim as he had in Cyrodiil, but mentors were scandalously expensive, and his inheritance had just about run out.
Just as he threw the last of the shopkeeper's tomes back onto the table with a disappointed sigh, the shop owner's assistant, a lovely young alchemist with an elegant blue facial tattoo making a stripe over her nose from one cheek to the other, asked him, "If you're looking for spells, why don't you go to the College of Winterhold?"
Wait, there was a College of magic in Skyrim? And nobody had told him of that?
"Excuse me? College of Winterhold?"
The young apothecary looked suddenly guilty, as if she'd said something she shouldn't have. Still, she clarified, "Well, yes. Almost on the northmost end of Skyrim lies the village of Winterhold. There's supposed to be a College of Magic there."
The old shop owner, an old Breton woman with wicked-looking tribal facial tattoos (what did these Skyrim people have with face tattoos?), promptly scolded, "Muiri! The College already has to turn down most of its applicants. I doubt they'll have the time for a wandering hedge wizard."
Being called a hedge wizard should have made Acrus' blood boil, but he stayed calm, as he always did unless there was magic to be cast, and he asked again, "Can you tell me where this College lies, exactly?"
After an insecure look at her employer, the girl called Muiri explained again, "Um, head Northeast until you come to the sea. Follow the coastline, past Solit – "
"Muiri!" the old woman interrupted again. "There's no point sending this young man all the way to Winterhold for no reason. The College isn't taking new members anyway."
Regardless, the young woman continued, "… past Solitude, keep following the shoreline East, you'll reach Winterhold eventually."
The old shop owner let out a grunting sigh of disappointment and devoted her attention to the mortar she was crushing mountain flowers in.
But Acrus had more important concerns than flowers or potions. He had places to be.