Chapter Three

May Outweigh

I will remember that there is art to medicine as well as science,

and that warmth, sympathy, and understanding

may outweigh the surgeon's knife or the chemist's drug.

- The Hippocratic Oath, adapted from the original in 1964 by Louis Lasagna.

"We found some potions earlier," Admand said like it was some kind of peace offering, pointedly not looking in my direction after I issued my stern ultimatum. "There's nothing else worth taking with us."

If the two soldiers really had cleared out all the medical supplies, I would be raiding the eaves for potion ingredients by now. If this were a game. Only it wasn't and I didn't have nearly bottomless pockets at my disposal to facilitate my pack-rat tendencies. Just my jeans pockets and what I could carry in my hands.

Then again, potions were worth the hassle of lugging them around, and I had played the tutorial portion of the game some two dozen times. I made a beeline for the barrels in the far corner and almost immediately found four more healing potions hiding in the bottom of one. "Ralof, you're the tallest, can you check the platform above me please?" I searched the other barrels and shook the cloth sacks while everyone else did another sweep, Admand and Laeca looking a little embarrassed that I'd found an overlooked stash so easily.

Ralof, being the freakishly tall person that he was, plucked the little pink bottle I knew would be on the raised platform without even stretching. After digging my head out of the barrel I took his find and cradled all five potions to my chest, being as I was the only one who didn't have a weapon to swing. Admand was juggling three as it was and of course none of us had a bag to put them in, that would be too convenient.

My t-shirt might be long enough to make a cloth parcel without exposing my midriff, but I'd rather wait until we reached the-

"We should get moving." I choked out, trying to keep my expression neutral with a clenched jaw and eyes that didn't wander into anyone else's line of sight.

"Agreed. All right troops, move out." Those of us who weren't her troops didn't bother to point out that fact to the Captain.

Through a door, then down a long stairwell and out into the-

"Trolls blood!" Ralof cursed as soon as the wrought iron cage came into sight. "It's a torture room!" The look he sent Hadvar was positively venomous, as if he were personally to blame. "You've kept a torture room beneath Helgen for how long? Since the last war broke out, or just the start of the revolution?"

Hadvar said nothing. No one did.

I was more concerned with the fizzling sounds I could hear and the irregular light flickers that cast shadows towards our feet. Ralof came to the same conclusion I did and pushed past the faux-legionaries into the room.

Two bodies, one bled out on the floor, another a distinctly male heap of charred blue raiment and human flesh in the corner. In the centre of the room was a man in long robes standing over the still form of a Stormcloak woman with no discernible injuries. My heart lurched when I realised I had seen her face before, defiant in the face of death in the execution square, and again her expression alight with laughter after Ralof pushed me from the tower.

Ralof howled and lunged for the last man standing, only for the others to pile on him to hold him back. "It won't bring them back," Hadvar pleaded as Ralof dragged the other man's planted feet along in an attempt to rip the torturer's throat out, "remember the ceasefire!"

"HANG THE DAMN CEASEFIRE!"

My sights were set on only one thing however and I used my elbows to gratuitous effect to push past the ruckus and reach it. Her. The other two were beyond any help and honestly I couldn't care less about the torturer.

I left the potions by her head, implementing what I knew instead of what I could only guess at, and checked her pulse followed by her breath. Not even a gust. But her hand was still warm. She had died only moments before we entered the room.

We're going too slowly. We've lost too much time as it is... But I have to try. I can't not.

The helmet I gently removed and placed aside as I tried to remember a dozen different memory aid rhymes and snappy acronyms, but they had fallen away and all I could do was go through the motions. Tilt head back, check airways, compress nostrils, breathe once, twice.

Thirty compressions, for all the good they would do when she had a leather jerkin over chainmail of all things, but I had to try. "C'mon, you can do it." Was I addressing her or myself? Who knew. "Ralof, come help me!" The Stormcloak was still flighting four Imperials while the fifth looked like he was only restraining his spells because his own people would get caught in the crossfire. "She's still warm!" I pressed when Ralof looked at me with wild eyes. "I need your help if we have any hope of resuscitating her."

It was manipulation, I knew it was, but we couldn't afford to fight amongst ourselves- if I had to distract Ralof to make him see that then so be it.

Twenty-eight, twenty-nine, thirty. Another breath. Two.

My head was spinning when Ralof knelt on the other side of her. "What do I do?"

"Overlap your hands like this, interlace your fingers, and press down on the breast bone firmly with the bottom palm." I demonstrated. "Keep that rhythm going for another twenty-five then pause while I breathe into her."

"What in Oblivion's name is she doing?" The torturer hissed.

No one had an answer and I wasn't even willing to look at him. There was a young man lying on the ground with his throat cut only a few metres to my right and the smell of burnt flesh was almost as overpowering as it had been outside, close proximity and still air almost beating the sheer numbers of Helgen proper. The torturer's assistant and another Stormcloak soldier. How were people still getting in? There must be multiple routes into the keep from the town, but if the tunnels kept collapsing...

Through my knees pressed to the cold stone floor, I felt the rumble of Alduin's roars.

"Twenty-five." Ralof reported, lifting his hands as I once again tilted the woman's head back, clamped her nose and blew.

Still no signs of life. "Again. Thirty this time."

Ralof continued.

"You said it yourself, we have to keep moving." The Captain's tone was reasonable, as logical as someone could possibly sound surrounded by corpses in a torture chamber advocating another to be thrown onto the pile. "The dragon will bring the keep down and even if you get her up she'll only slow us down."

"If it was you lying on this floor you'd want someone to at least try." It had been two minutes. Her blood was being pumped manually, her brain was receiving oxygen, but our tenuous form of life support wasn't going to do any good if her own body didn't pick up the slack fast. "What I need is a defibrillator..."

"A what?" Ralof was doing much better than I had in CPR training, by this point in the session I had been cursing my practice dummy between panted gasps. Done right, chest compressions were surprisingly labour intensive.

I gave the woman on the ground another two lungfuls of air before answering. "A shock to the heart. Lightning stopped it in the first place, but it can also jump start it again." I cast my eyes about the Imperials, already knowing that Ralof wasn't a mage. "Anyone know a shock spell?"

Laeca pointed at Admand but he was quick to correct her. "Don't look at me, my Destruction studies tapered off after frost magic, I can barely make a spark!"

"Anyone else?" I tried not to look at the torturer, but no one else stepped forward.

"Twenty-one- I thought Bretons -twenty-two- were good at this -twenty-three- sort of thing."

"Racial stereotypes only get you so far." I sighed, wishing I wasa Breton with their natural talent for spells. "Come here." I told the tor- mage. I told the mage. Across from me, Ralof tensed. "He can't do any more harm." I said then bent to give more air.

"This is ridiculous. There's obviously been some kind of civil unrest, we need to secure these prisoners not-" the mage waved his arms expressively, "attempt clumsy necromantic practices and for what? A rebel who just tried to stab me, I was only defending myself-"

"That's enough." The Captain pinched the bridge of her nose. "Hadvar, you and I will guard the entrances. Pétur, Laeca, strip this place of anything valuable. Admand assist the Lady Aragon and the Inquisitor in their task." The torturer spluttered protests but she cut him off with a glare before turning another on me. "You have five minutes and then I'm throwing you over my shoulders and marching you out like an uncooperative sack of potatoes, do I make myself clear?"

"Crystal." I had fallen into sync with Ralof without either of us counting the compressions aloud any more. "Okay," I said after another count with four people now clustered around the woman. "I need you to send twin simultaneous shocks here and here. Start off with two hundred volts each and then-"

"Two hundred what?" The Inquisitor snapped.

I looked to the ceiling. "Oh you have got to be kidding me." Breathe, 'Lyra', breathe. "We don't want to fry her, whatever power levels you normally cast at, I want you to restrain yourself. Focus on sending a pulse through her system, not roasting it."

"If we can get her heart started, I know a few healing spells." Admand interjected, "save on the potions."

"She's getting all the damn potions she needs." Ralof growled.

"Thank you, Admand." Steering away from another confrontation sounded good. "Any medical assistance you can offer is very welcome. My studies were... eclectic." Read: I have no idea if potions are like they are in the game, or how to administer liquids to an unresponsive patient without choking them.

"Lyra." Ralof reminded me and I gave the woman on the cold stone floor another round of mouth-to-mouth before sitting back on my heels.

"Everyone else back, here and here." I pointed to the points I would attach a defibrillator, "start gently, you can always increase the voltage but if you fry her internal organs-"

"I'll bash your skull in." Ralof finished helpfully.

"Thank you, Ralof. I think we've all had enough bloodshed for one day."

The Inquisitor shot me skittish looks as he laid his hands on the corpse, electricity running up and down his fingers although he seemed to be containing it. He took a deep breath and when he released it he also let the lightning loose.

The woman's upper body spasmed like a marionette's strings being tugged, the Inquisitor jerked back in shock. He wasn't the only one.

"That's normal. Try again." I should have really thought of putting something down to cushion her head before trying this but there wasn't time to go hunting now. "Again." I insisted.

Flash! Spasm.

"Again, higher voltage- half again the power you're using."

Flash! Spasm.

Her heart wasn't beating, I had checked both neck and wrist pulse points and also her airways for breathing. I felt my throat clench and it took effort to speak past it. "Again, double the original voltage."

The sparks danced along the woman's body in alignment with the metal she was wearing- and wasn't that something I should have removed beforehand? I had never administered first aid outside of a classroom, I was tried, scared, and possibly concussed. Yeah, great plan, Lyra.

"Should I try again?" I couldn't believe this guy was actually deferring to me.

I finished checking her lack of vitals again and nodded. "Once more. Just- yeah."

The woman whose name I still didn't know jerked again, but this time I caught her head before it could fall the boneless half inch back to the stone floor. Better late than never, although in the end it hadn't really made any difference.

For the last time I leaned over the Nord's face and felt for a gust of air, searched for the signs of a beating heart in a cooling chest.

I sighed. "I'm sorry, Ralof."

Although I couldn't look anywhere near him I could still hear the thick swallow and exhale. I didn't want to see if he was crying again. I wanted to scrub the images of all I'd already seen from my mind and forget that I'd ever woken up in the back of a wagon.

"Thank you for trying." He said thickly, squeezing my hand over the body between us.

I got slowly to my feet, pins and needles adding to the other pains of the day. Meanwhile Laeca swooped in and started piling the potions I put aside into a backpack; it looked like she had been busy because there were already supplies inside. The cage doors hung open, their keys still in the locks, and I didn't want to know what kind of spell had been used to turn some poor man or woman's body into a fleshless skeleton but leave their robes pristine.

"Do we have everything we need?" The Captain made it sound like I hadn't been holding everyone up on a pipe-dream. "Then let's move out."

I shook out my legs, grimacing as the blood rushed back to them, but lingered a moment beside the body. It didn't seem right to leave her like this, but what else could I do? Her eyes were already closed, blonde hair swept back and expression surprisingly serene. Crouching, I overlapped her hands in the classic open casket pose then pulled away.

The hands pulled me back.

I shrieked.

The woman coughed, gasping for air while the soldiers, Inquisitor, and one rebel filled every frequency with exclamations in what seemed like triple decibels. My ears were ringing, I couldn't hear myself think, and the woman-who-was-a-corpse couldn't breathe.

"Stay calm, it's okay, it's okay." On auto-pilot I turned her into the recovery pose while quietly exclaiming: "Holy shit, I can't believe that worked!"

"What do you mean you can't believe that worked?!" The Inquisitor demanded less quietly. "Are you telling me we wasted all this time on a theory?!"

"Oh shut up!" The Captain snapped, "the theory worked didn't it?"

The woman's eyes were wide and terrified as her breath rattled and gasped- I couldn't tell if it was hyperventilation or broken ribs from the compressions.

Ralof was already uncorking a potion, settling down at my side directly in front of his comrade. "Liv, it's all right now, I promise. Anyone who wants to hurt you will have to go through me."

Together we both coaxed her into drinking while Admand muttered under his breath, sending golden light coursing though Liv's body. "How is she?" I asked when the 'other' Breton stopped casting and leaned back on his heels.

"Fractured ribs, lightning burns, metal burns, I've done what I can."

"Which is?"

He winced. "Uh, the burns aren't as extensive? The potions will help internally at least."

I nodded, babbling as I planned logistics. "We need to bind your ribs, Liv is it? Can you walk? Of course I don't recommend keeping the bindings on for the long-term, that risks pneumonia, but you'll need a buffer until we get out of here."

"Have another potion, Liv, it'll help." Ralof offered, helping her to hold her head up.

Liv glugged it gratefully. "By the Nine, what happened to me?"

The Inquisitor coughed something that sounded suspiciously like 'eight'.

I ignored him. "Dragon. Ceasefire, with each other at least. We resuscitated you. We really should get going."

"Lyra saved your life, Liv. She knew what to do."

"Excuse me, I think you'll find-"

"If you think I'm going to give credit to the one who killed her in the first place, think again! You repaid the life you took but don't think that makes you a good man." Ralof snapped at the Inquisitor.

"It was a team effort." I insisted before the Nord could make good on any of his earlier threats. "None of us could have done it alone. Now we really must get you up, I'm afraid there's still a dragon trying to kill us all."

"Oh." Liv blinked slowly. "But we're working with the Imperials?"

We got Liv's ribs bound, another thing that would be easier without armour getting in the way, and as she was unsteady on her feet Hadvar and I helped her onto Ralof's back. She was verbally responsive only part of the time and her eyes kept drooping closed which worried me.

Laeca handed me the pack of accumulated supplies and we moved briskly from the torture chamber I interrogated the only healer in the room. "Admand did you detect any signs of a head injury? Inflammation of the brain, skull fractures, anything like that?"

"No, I mean, not that I could sense at least."

"Internal bleeding? Organ failure?"

"I- I don't really know. I'm a thaumaturge!" He whined, "good at alteration, illusion, a little destruction- not healing!"

Laeca patted him on the head. "We know, little reality bender. Take it easy." She quirked a smile at me, towering over my hobbitish form like a Grecian Amazon. "He gets stressed over academics and stuff."

"I spent six years at High Rock's most prestigious magical academy! It is not 'stuff'!"

The two of them continued to bicker as we made our way through the keep. Well, we all had our own coping mechanisms I suppose.

Pétur went to check the way was clear and then we were moving briskly down a long corridor with cells on both sides. Bringing up the rear I made sure there was no one inside any of them and though I may have seen the glint of coins in dark corners there really wasn't time to stop for them.

After the cells came another set of stairs, these ones steeper which made Liv groan with every bounce no matter how Ralof, Hadvar and I tried to cushion her movements. Large cast-iron cages hung from the ceiling, some empty, others with skeletons or fresh corpses in them. One chain had come loose from the ceiling, probably when Alduin toppled one of the towers above us, and the body of a man in ragged clothes lay mangled against the bars. The pool of blood on the floor looked fresh, meaning the man had been alive when he fell.

I felt bile rise in the back of my throat and barely swallowed it back.

"Why are there bodies here, why is this place here?" I asked as we manoeuvred carefully through a hole in the wall- and wasn't that also a strange thing to have in a keep? I'd never considered it before but now the convenience rankled me. Was this a smuggling route? Had they been intending to expand the building's foundations? Had the wall simply become unstable and broken into an old cave system?

I was not the only one with questions.

"Bodies are supposed to be kept here until someone claims them, or they are buried in a pauper's lot." Hadvar frowned, his jaw clenching. "That room is all that remains of the old debtors prison, but no one living it supposed to be in those cages."

"We have more important things to be dealing with right now," the Captain rebuked, her sword out in front of her as she accepted a torch from Laeca that Admand had just lit with magic.

"But Captain, those cages were only to be used in-" he shot a glance at Ralof, so quick I almost missed it, "extreme circumstances."

"And I'm sure they were."

"That man was arrested for sleeping in Galgruf's cabbage patch, I was there when he was brought in."

"Then I'm sure he must have done something else after he was brought here to garner that kind of treatment."

"Captain-"

"Sergeant." She cut him off. "Keep your mind on the dragon and getting out of here alive."

"...Yes, ma'am."

The tunnel was dark, smelling strongly of mildew, and the path of wet sand and gravel loose underfoot. I gingerly retrieved a torch from a wall bracket and politely asked Admand to light it. He looked at me with the long suffering semi-patience of a weary adult humouring a child but at least now we had light at the front and rear of our party.

Although I was probably the wrong person to trust carry a flaming stick. I held it up as high as I could without straining (which wasn't very high at all) and concentrated on not setting anything on fire as we trudged through the gloom.

In all honestly, I was really starting to miss my brightness adjustment settings. Things were so much easier when you could fiddle with a few buttons and every underground tomb was inexplicably lit with braziers or magelight.

We heard voices on ahead long before we saw our first glimpse of natural light since coming underground. "No Einarr, I'm not waiting around to be eaten by a dragon!" One man snapped with a particularly strong Nordic accent. Ahead of me I saw Ralof jerk in shock, causing his passenger to wince at the jostling.

"That is Hrafn, let me talk to him." Ralof spoke in undertone to the Captain, "I will tell convince him of our temporary truce then call you in."

The Captain stared at him for a long moment before nodding.

Hitching Liv higher on his back, Ralof manoeuvred to the front of the group before slipping through the archway and round the corner to where the voices were coming from. "Hrafn!" Ralof called into the cavern before he breached it. "It is good to see you alive my friend!"

"Ralof!" The same man crowed, "we thought you were dead, well some of us did- is that Liv? Those red cloaked bastards did this to her, didn't they?"

"It is a long story, shield-brother." The pause was tangible, hovering in the air like a guillotine. "We need to talk."

"He means to turn on us." The Inquisitor hissed. "We don't know how many of them are in there, we should have kept the woman as a hostage at least."

I was torn between worry for this being a real possibility and the urge to smack the man who was making me doubt Ralof in the first place.

The discussion had dropped to furious whispers next door. I shifted anxiously as Laeca checked that the sword at her side was sliding clear of its scabbard. Almost everyone took that as a cue to make similar preparations and I saw skittish Pétur check the draw of his sword and dagger four times with compulsive fervour.

At least no one was endangering the tenuous truce by drawing first, although any sound of rasping steel next door would quickly change their minds.

The voices next door rose in pitch, the whispers becoming furious hisses, I heard 'we can't' and 'you must be' but nothing else over the sound of water running over stone.

"This is ridiculous." I grumbled to hide the worst case scenarios my mind was leaping to. "We can't show good faith if we hide outside."

"We are not hiding." The Captain glared at me. "If we enter without knowing their numbers, or the situation at hand, we will lose the advantage of the bottleneck. If these people can be reasoned with then all is well either way."

Admand was already casting a spell I didn't recognise offhand, interjecting softly: "Four Stormcloaks, six if we're counting the other two."

I'd throw up my hands if I wasn't carrying a torch. "Liv can't even walk and you seriously think Ralof's going to drop her to pick a fight? That Ralof would start a fight to begin with?!"

"Lyra, hush." Hadvar spoke softly and in any other tone I'd have smacked him for the condescension. "I'm sure everything will work out."

"Don't act like you're not all talking about slaughtering each other if this gets even a little hairy."

"Not all of us," Hadvar rebuked before sighing, "but should anything happen... stay behind me."

I kept my eyes on the wall, watching the shadows flicker and listening to the running water ahead. "It won't come to that. It can't come to that, not after everything that's already happened."

"Too often that is exactly how it ends. Lyra-"

But what he was going to say was lost when Ralof called out: "It is safe to approach!"

Not a single Imperial moved an inch. Even the Captain looked uncertain.

"Oh for goodness sake!" I ducked and wove to the front, shouldering past anyone who tried to stop me. "Right!" I said, louder. "We've coming through!"

"Lyra!" Hadvar made to pull me back but he only snagged the back of my shirt momentarily before I pulled from his grip and stepped into the chamber.

A.N.: Woooo. I finally managed to publish something (even if it's not the fic I wanted to). I was going to add a whole other scene after this, but it was just dragging the chapter down.

OC NAMES AND MEANINGS:

Laeca (Female, Imperial) – Actually a Roman surname rather than a given name, means 'left-handed'.

Admand (Male, Breton) – I cannot find my sources for this one and now I'm thinking I misspelt 'Armand' and just ran with it. Hm.

Pétur (Male, Nord) – Icelandic form of 'Peter', whose etymology through the Greek Petros means 'stone'.

Liv (Female, Nord) – Comes from the old Norse root Hlíf, meaning 'protection'. The modern Scandinavian word means 'life'.

Einarr (Male, Nord) – Old Norse, ein meaning 'one, alone' and arr 'warrior'.

Hrafn (Male, Nord) – Old Norse, meaning 'raven'.

Aaaand as for the Captain (Female, Imperial) and Inquisitor (Male, probably Breton), I haven't decided yet. Does anyone know if the Captain has a canon name? I've never joined the Imperials in Skyrim and don't know if you can meet her later if you don't kill her.

All CPR information in this fic is as accurate as I could transcribe it from my own training. That being said, there are dangers involved in its practice which is why you should receive proper instruction before attempting it (unless you are literally the best/only hope for someone about to die).

You must clear the airways before you attempt to resuscitate (you do this by checking the airway for obstructions and tilting the head back so air can be transferred safely) and also learn the correct rhythm and pressure for chest compressions. Pressure really should be practised on a dummy, but you can time compressions to the beat of the song 'Staying Alive' by Bee Gees.

Do not attempt chest compressions over something unyielding like chain mail unless you have no other choice. Absolutely never attach a defibrillator to a patient wearing metal on their chest. Honestly, if it weren't for magic, Liv would be super dead by now.

Question: What do you think restoration spells and potions are capable of outside of Skyrim game mechanics? How effective are low versus high level spells? Do you think potions can be spammed to restore full health? I'd love to hear your thoughts.