Chapter 4: Unexpected but not Unappreciated
~~~~~~~~~Garzash~~~~~~~~~
Breathing heavily and arms and legs trembling, he yanked the blade out of the dead bug with a sickening squelch. With the adrenaline rush ebbing away, his heartbeat and mind slowed and cleared and he could look around back to his company. Kjorik, poor lad, was bent over, his arms propped on his knees trying to hold himself up, his chest rising and falling in clear fatigue. Perhaps asking his little Nord companion if he was unharmed may have been appropriate, but the only question he could bring himself to utter was not that.
"Tho-rax?" he growled out, "Aim for the posterior?"
Other than the raspy and uneven breaths, Kjorik made no sound in acknowledgement. The stranger however, laughed gently in a feminine voice.
"I know no one other than you Kjorik who would say 'posterior' in the midst of a fight." she giggled from underneath her helm. Turning to the two, but primarily the fellow Nord, she reached up and took off her full-face helmet revealing a face of a typical Nord woman. She was no more than 27 summers old, and even that seemed older than Kjorik. 'Come to think of it, how old is he?' Garzash found himself wondering. Her golden hair framed her face; a relatively full but curved one as was standard for the northern folk and unlike the more delicate angles of the other humans. Unremarkably blue but glimmering eyes paid little mind to the Orc but rested lovingly on the Nordic lad. For but a moment until her face frowned in worry.
Instead of responding to either of the two, however, Kjorik stumbled back until he hit a wall and slid down to the floor, one arm stuck in webs.
"Kjorik!" she cried as she ran up to him. Garzash followed. Crouching down by the young Nord, he held up the man's chin and found his skin pale and riddled by ripples of dark green veins.
"Damnit." he cursed. "He got hit good." Knowing how Frostbite spider poison could numb, if not lock up, one's body whilst it ravaged the blood system, Garzash reached over his shoulder and pulled off his bag. Rummaging through it hurriedly as he muttered under his breath, Garzash's hand found several vials of potions until he pulled out one bottle that looked to have contained the least aesthetically pleasing liquid in it. Uncorking the glass, he didn't even hand it to the young Nord but rather gripped his head and stuck the bottletop in his mouth, delivering the remedy personally. And though Kjorik's body spasmed in protest when he tasted the potion, vile as it was.
For a second he fell to the floor sputtering and trying to regurgitate the substance, but soon stopped as colour returned to his face and the blackness in his veins receded.
Looking up at his company, the mage smiled weakly and tried to get up but due to the venom's remnants and his arm still stuck in a web, he instead tumbled back down on his arse.
"Kjorik, Stuhn's mercy! Are you well?" the woman cried as she tried to pull him up to his feet. Though weakened, Kjorik leaned on her and with his arm still stuck to the webs, he turned to the woman.
"Yes, Hildi, I'm fine. *cough* Thanks to Garzash." he motioned at the Orc, smiling.
Unamused, he just glared at him. "You should have said you're under the effect of the poison. You could have lost consciousness." he admonished. His eyes swerved to the Nord woman, slightly taller than Kjorik, even if he were standing straight. "Hildi?"
"Aye! Hildi Baftordottir of the great clan Snowskalds!" she proclaimed proudly, fist to the chest. "Kjorik's big sister." she added.
"Adorable." he huffed flatly. "You feeling well enough to move?" he asked Kjorik.
"Right, yes. Just let me-" he rasped out and pulled on the webs, though they would not budge. As Hildi grabbed her brother and they both pulled, the web stretched but not one strand gave. "Maybe we could burn it? Fire coul-"
"Just let me." Garzash stomped up to the Nords and raised his greatsword above his head, ready to bring it down on the offending webbing. The panicked cries of protest made him stop for but a moment. Their faced full of incredulity at his approach, and he could not hold in the grin any longer, the mask broke. Lowering his blade he chuckled out, "You actually though I would, heh heh." Sheathing the weapon back, he instead simply reached out with his hand, grasping Kjorik's arm, and with a minor tug, tore the arm free of the spider webs and started off further down the cavern. Behind him the duo whispered.
"Was it really as easy for him as it looked?" a female voice asked hushed.
"Well I mean, sister, just look at him." another hushed voice replied.
~~~~~~~~~~Kjorik~~~~~~~~~~
Having hacked their way through a few stray webs that blocked the passageway further into the temple, Kjorik and his sister kept a handful of paces behind the Orc, chatting. "What brings you here?" inquired the mage. "Are you here alone, without Haggar or Sveddi?"
"Yes, father called this my test. I must get into the Sanctum buried within the temple and return with the wisdom inscribed on the Dragon Walls."
From ahead of them, Garzash called back, asking, "What's a Dragon Wall?"
"Well," Kjorik began, "various walls across Nordic settlements are inscribed with words of wisdom from the gods themselves. Each wall derives insights from a particular deity and their design tends to reflect that. Hawk Walls are Kyne's teachings about our inner selves and the power and peace contained within her children, there's the Dragon Walls of Alduin about the ultimate end and rebirth, Stuhn's Whale Wall for mercy and justice, Mara's-"
"I get it. Religious preachings then." Garzash cut him off.
"Yes, but also understanding of the world from a spiritual and mythic perspective, which helps True Nords harness our rightful gifts of the Voice." Hildi curtly added. "You may not find it convincing, but to us those words can manifest into physical truths."
"Of course!" Kjorik exclaimed. "That's what the texts refer to!" Quickly he reached into his satchels and pulled out a lightly worn tome, expertly opening it to the right page, pointing and reciting, "force to move mountains must refer to some insight into the Thu'um!" Pondering sielntly for a moment, he wondered. 'How come father knew what was in this tomb? No records in the college yielded this much detail... Oral tradition secrets from old hag Maeve?'
"It sounds too easy. Read a few words on a wall and suddenly you gain more powers? Sound ludicrous." the Orc scoffed.
"We meditate on their meanings." Hildi stressed tersely. "And why are you here anyway? You here with my brother?"
"I'm here on my own business and he tagged along."
Hildi turned to her sibling for clarification, but all Kjorik could do under the scrutiny was shrug nonchalantly, eyes conveying everything to a sibling. 'He's not wrong.' What did get a bit more of a rise out of him however, was spotting the Orc stooping down to rifle through an urn placed at the feet of a coffin. Before the Orc's hand could pull anything out, Kjorik yanked his arm firmly. It did nothing, Garzash didn't even budge, but he at least felt it and faced the young Nord. "What are you doing?!"
"Looking for extra coin or trinkets... What's it look like?"
"You want to wake the dead? Draugr will rise if we try to rob the ever resting ones!" he added in a hushed tone.
"I can fight them off, they can't be different from all other undead I saw in Cyrodill or Wrothgarian mountains."
"Not really the core of my point, Garzash!" Kjorik explained exasperated. "Many ancients have willed themselves to be bound to their comrades' resting places to defend their familial offerings. Yes, they are meant to fight off intruders so they can die noble deaths in a fight and enter the Halls of Shor, but that doesn't mean we ought to pilfer the place with wanton avarice!"
"You know Kjorik, you really should keep him on a shorter leash." Hildi giggled.
Less mirthful, the Orc marched up to her and poked a thick finger firmly at her chest as he punctuated each phrase. "He doesn't keep me on a leash, no one does. I'm in charge between the two of us."
Failing to contain more laughter, her eyes swerved right back to the little mystic Nord, coyly adding, "Yeah. That's how my brother usually prefers it anyways, eh, Kjorik?"
Red in the cheeks, bashfully, he chided, "Hildi, now is really not the time for this." Not wanting to stay on the subject a single agonising second later, he hurriedly turned around and rushed ahead, his own candlelight spell barely maintaining pace. The former citadel's halls remained deadly silent, with nary a hint of life in each chamber they passed. Each room featured its own former grandeur and function; what must have been a mustering hall, the morgues and the history halls and burial halls stood still. Oft times an unburied Draugr would stand duly in an inset pillar, directly opposite the more ornate coffins or weapon racks proudly displaying ancestral blades. Their eyes closed but by oaths and hexes of old, watchful. His own eyes stayed on his Orc friend, each time challenging him wordlessly to not provoke the guardians of the crypts.
Their journey stopped by no volition of their own but by a sight most bizzare; a statue in spitting image of Therald Varskclan with hand outstretched in the universal gesture of stop. Behind him the corridor continued not but rather a wall of most fiercely bluest ice barred the passage. Icicles and snow hugged the ceiling and the ground, and a faint frost-mist carried on for a few yards forward to the feet of the statue itself. There at the podium of the memorial, on a plaque of cold iron, unrusted still, it said:
Be ye friend or foe stranger, halt!
Be it or not that from skalds ye heard of my assault,
This ice being a no mere thin veil,
Will test the blood from which ye hail.
To meet me secrets and my pride,
To test yer mettle and yer hide,
Ye must break through my Northern rite,
Which ye cannot fight,
Lest yer huff like spring's respite,
Can blow away mine blizzard's bite.
When Kjorik read this out, the three had naught to do but gape at each other.
This is a very short one, typed it out in one evening because I think I finally got over the writer's block and figured out how to handle the dragon lore and the central conflicts of the story. I hate promising update schedules because those never worked out previously so maybe of I don't I'll feel the winds of inspiration more often? Or maybe smaller but more frequent chapters will simply be more feasible. We'll see.
Of course, like always, what really helps the most are reviews. Dear God do those help stay motivated so keep them coming, I read them all.