Chapter 51
-x-
AN: If you read chapter 50 for the first time after 12/22/2023, feel free to ignore this note.
If you read chapter 50 for the first time shortly after its original posting, be aware that the second half of the chapter has been changed. You should consider rereading 50 from the point where Mull and company first arrive at Dustman's Cairn. The last two sections of the original Chapter 50 have been moved to the end of Chapter 51 without any changes.
-x-
Dustman's Cairn is a literal hole in the ground.
That isn't an exaggeration in any way, shape, or form. In comparison to the awe-inspiring grandeur of Bleak Falls Barrow and the more rustic but still impressive edifice of Skybound Watch, it's honestly a bit disappointing.
A short spiral staircase descends about twenty feet to the bottom of the hole, where empty alcoves are indented into the stone-bricked walls and curtains of hanging moss are desperately clinging to life. The hole's most noteworthy feature is a black wrought-iron door that closely resembles the exterior doors of Skybound Watch, located adjacent to the base of the stairs.
Aela and Farkas came here to search for a fragment of Wuuthrad, the legendary axe of Ysgramor that he used to slay countless elves during the Atmoran settlement of Skyrim during the Merethic Era. The Companions of Jorrvaskr consider the axe to be an important part of their heritage since they're supposedly descended from Ysgramor's famous Five Hundred Companions, which is why they have a tradition of looking for fragments of Wuuthrad whenever they turn up. According to Aela, they received a tip that one of the fragments is located inside this ruin. Mull personally finds that hard to believe – it's the axe of Ysgramor after all – but nobody asked for his opinion so he keeps it to himself.
The payout won't be much since it'll be the Companions of Jorrvaskr themselves providing the reward rather than a client. "It's a good thing you said you'd be fine with forgoing pay on this mission," Aela teases. "If there's a reward at all, it won't be much."
"That's fine," Mull grouses. "I'll make it up to my people somehow. I'm sure Jenassa will ask me to start yanking septims out of my ass for roping her into this one."
Aela laughs loudly.
Meanwhile, the Dunmer in question is busily applying lines of white paint to every area of exposed skin on her face, arms, legs, and torso. It's apparently a sacred tradition for Dunmer to paint their bodies with white runes to ward themselves against the undead. Ever the pragmatist, Mull asked a few minutes ago if it's something she can do for all of them, but she claimed it would be sacrilegious to her ancestors and refused.
Once the Dunmer is finished any everyone is prepared for the coming delve – whether that be physically, mentally, or otherwise – they gather in front of the black door and divvy up the torches. Mull, Jenassa, and Farkas are each equipped with a torch in their off-hands and multiple spares in their packs while Aela, Torgen, and Lydia are entrusted with the responsibility of watching their backs.
They light up the torches, cautiously swing open the doors, and delve into a straight hallway shrouded in darkness. Lydia releases a pent-up breath when nothing immediately jumps out of the shadows to attack them.
The hallway widens into a room with a low ceiling after about fifty paces, where they find a few dead – well, deader – draugr lying in front of opened sarcophagi. They look like they were hewn into submission by swords and axes.
Farkas finds a pickaxe on a table and picks it up for inspection. He casts a critical gaze across the walls and floor of the room. "It looks someone's been digging here recently."
"Mmh. Yeah." Aela kneels down next to a patch of disturbed earth. She gently brushes aside a few layers to reveal the charcoal bed of an extinguished fire. "Tread lightly," she calls out.
"Will do," Mull grunts. "As long as we're down here, you should follow Aela's commands as if they're my own," he orders the Mighty Mudcrabs. "She knows what she's doing."
They continue through an arched doorway on the far side of the room that seems to have been blocked by fallen rock until recently. From the looks of it, the deeper sections of the cairn were inaccessible until the owners of the mining equipment came along and reopened the path. They carefully pick their way through a twisting hallway littered with fallen rocks that slants downwards at a sharp incline.
They emerge into a crossroads with branching paths to the left, right, and straight ahead. In all three directions, there are identical 'crossroads' with pillars of living stone in between. Every spare inch of the walls and pillars are occupied by alcoves. Some of them contain mummified bodies while others are conspicuously vacant. A few more deader draugr are scattered across the floor.
"This appears to be a catacomb," Jenassa observes.
"This appears too damn familiar if you ask me," Torgen grouses. "Don't you think, boss?"
"Aye." Bleak Falls Barrow had multiple sections that looked a lot like this one, and all of them were infested with draugr.
As if waiting for that cue, a shadow moves within one of the alcoves to the right and a draugr steps out – a male wearing black steel armor and a horned helmet. A sword and roundshield are clutched protectively in its withered hands.
Before anyone can react, Aela darts forward with inhuman speed and impales her long-bladed knife into the draugr's neck through a gap between its helmet and breastplate. She twists the blade, tears it free, and kicks the undead away. It topples to the ground and doesn't move again.
To the left and up ahead, multiple pairs of glowing blue eyes wink into existence.
Torgen raises his axe. "Oh, here we go."
"I'll hold the right. The rest of you, do whatever you need to avoid being flanked," Aela orders in a clipped tone.
Lydia whimpers something indiscernible.
Two group of draugr rush them from the left and the center at the same time, forcing Lydia to block desperately with her shield while Mull, Farkas, and Torgen cut them down one by one as fast as they can manage. It's difficult to work around each other in such a tight space and both Farkas and Torgen's effectiveness is hampered significantly due to their large choice of weaponry.
One of the draugr to the left shouts in Dovahzul and suddenly shoots an ice spike spell at the group. It shatters against Farkas' armor and sends him reeling to the ground with shallow cuts from icy shrapnel weeping blood all over his unprotected face and neck. Mull steps over him to fend off the advancing horde and prevent him from being dragged away into the barrow's murky depths.
"It's a wight!" Aela shouts. "Kill it now or else it'll use another spell!"
Jenassa drops her torch and jump in to bolster the line while Mull and Torgen make a beeline for the wight. There aren't anymore draugr coming from the right, so Aela starts helping Lydia fend off the draugr streaming from the central hallway.
The wight fires off another ice spike at point blank range and Mull throws himself against the catacomb wall to narrowly avoiding being impaled through the stomach. Torgen delivers an overhand swing of his axe with a hoarse yell and removes one of the wight's arms. It retaliates with a swipe of its own war-axe, but Mull intercepts the blow and seamlessly maneuvers into a horizontal decapitating strike. The wight's brittle flesh parts easily before his sharpened steel blade and it drops to the floor in a lifeless heap.
After another few minutes of desperate defense, they kill off the last of the draugr and guardedly continue onwards. These catacombs are a maze and every turn looks exactly the same as every other turn, a situation that's made worse by constant ambushes from draugr leaping out of dark alcoves to attack them without warning.
They wander around for a while until eventually finding a rotted wooden door tucked into an discreet corner. They ease open the door and descend into a hallway with a huge stone pillar partially collapsed about halfway through. The pillar was caught by the opposite wall before it could completely crumble and is now balanced precariously over the hallway, leaving a narrow gap for them to squeeze through. The hairs on Mull's neck stand on end as he passes beneath the gargantuan pillar. One wrong move and that thing could collapse on top of them, smashing them into Oblivion.
"Where are the miners?" Aela wonders aloud. "Did they abandon this place and leave before we got here?"
Nobody answers, so Mull decides he might as well offer his opinion. "It's starting to look that way. They made it at least this far down before they retreated, for whatever that's worth. And there aren't any fresh corpses."
After twisting and turning through narrow passageways with dead draugr scattered here and there, they find themselves at the top of a staircase overlooking an open room with a vaulted ceiling and three archways set into the opposite wall. The middle one appears to have collapsed, but the two other archways on either side seem to be intact. The one on the left is open and leads into a small annex chamber while the one on the right is blocked by a steel portcullis and leads into a hallway that slopes downwards.
There doesn't appear to be anything or anyone dangerous in this room, so they spread out to look around for anything interesting. Lydia and Jenassa sort through some blackened books and unidentifiable tools scattered haphazardly to the left while Aela and Farkas wander off to the right. Mull and Torgen make for the leftmost archway on the far wall and cautiously duck inside, where they find some old potions in glass vials as well as an oversized lever mechanism situated atop a stone shelf.
Torgen eyes the device warily. "What do you think that does?"
"I don't know. Don't do anything with it until we're sure it's safe."
"I hear you loud and clear, boss."
They spend about fifteen minutes inspecting the chamber, but they don't find much of value. They also can't figure out how to open the lowered portcullis blocking the path ahead.
Finally, Mull and Torgen take the risk of pulling the lever in the small room. Mull reasons that he can use his Thu'um to escape or destroy anything dangerous. He would've preferred to do it alone, but the lever is so badly rusted that it requires both men's full strength to move it.
As soon as they pull the lever, an unseen portcullis drops down over the archway and traps them inside the annex while sending up a cloud of dust. Mull's face flushes and he mutters curses into his beard. In hindsight, it was obviously a trap – and a simple one at that.
"Now look what you've gotten yourself into," Aela drawls. "But hey, good job! The other gate opened."
"Just sit tight," Farkas adds. "I'll look for the release. It's got to be here somewhere."
"I'll keep an eye out for trouble," the Huntress offers.
Lydia and Jenassa sprint over to the portcullis and peer at the two captive men through the steel bars. "My Thane!" the housecarl screams. "Are you alright?!"
"I'm fine," he calmly responds while waving away the dusty haze. "Try to keep your voice down. All it did was trap us in here like a couple of idiots."
"All good, boss," Torgen reports while inspecting his arms and legs. "No poison dart traps or anything like that."
"Thanks for stating the obvious."
"…What was that?" Aela suddenly hisses. She drops into a stance and flexes her bow in the direction of the newly-opened archway. At the same moment, a group of about a dozen armed and armored men stroll into the room in a loose formation. Their equipment is an eclectic mix and match of hide, leather, and steel. They look a lot like bandits, except for one strange thing. Each and every one of them is sporting the image of a handprint somewhere on their clothing or body. One uncommonly ugly man even has a handprint painted directly on his face.
They spread out and slowly form a half-circle around the group, forcing them to gather in front of the portcullis trap with Mull and Torgen still stuck inside.
One of the strangers steps forward, a Nord with braided brown hair and a forked beard. A hide roundshield with a large steel boss is raised protectively in front of him. "Aela the Huntress," he gruffly announces. "We've been after you for a long time, so imagine my surprise when you drop right into my waiting hands like this."
"You're the Silver Hand," she dispassionately replies.
"That's right. We knew you would be coming here soon, and here you are. So predictable. Talk about a rookie mistake."
Several of the strangers chuckle malevolently.
"Who are they?" one of them asks while pointed at Lydia and Jenassa.
"It doesn't matter," another barks back at him. "They're with the Companions, so they die."
This is bad. Whoever these men are, they significantly outnumber the others, and from that brief exchange he's willing to be they didn't come here to share tea and sweetrolls. Mull needs to get out of this little room, but the walls are solid stone and the portcullis is made of thick bars of steel. His only chance is to use Unrelenting Force… but there's a very real possibility that it could cause a cave-in. Shit, what do I do?
"Boss?" mutters Torgen.
"I'm thinking!" he growls.
"It's too bad that your friends there fell for our trap instead of you, but that's alright," the leader of the strangers continues. "We can still make this work."
He unsheathes his sword and points it at Aela. The blade gleams strangely in the crimson torchlight, like it's made out of moonstone or malachite instead of regular steel.
"It's time for you to die, bitch. Everyone here has lost a brother, sister, father, mother, son, or daughter to your fangs and claws." Anger creeps into his voice. "Their souls will rest easy in Sovngarde after they watch us flay you alive. I pray that they'll find enjoyment in the sounds of your screams."
The Huntress hangs her head and sighs. "The fragment of Wuuthrad was just a lie, huh? I can't say I saw that one coming. I'll need to have a long chat with Skjor about vetting suspicious tips when we get back. He really messed up this time."
Behind her back, she holds up three fingers and crooks them downwards like the claws of an animal. Farkas grunts and discreetly ushers Lydia and Jenassa a few steps away from her.
"Let Farkas and the others go," she demands. "He isn't a lycanthrope anymore, and neither is his brother or Kodlak Whitemane for that matter. I'm the only person here that you should be concerned about."
"Ah, how charming!" the leader laughs. "To think that an unapologetic murderess would pretend to care about the lives of her allies. It's like something out of a sappy bard's tale. Your cute face almost had me fooled." His voice lowers dangerously. "But almost isn't enough. I don't think that's gonna happen, missy."
Aela raises her head to stare into the swordsman's eyes and tosses away her bow, where it clatters loudly against the stone floor.
The strangers chuckle at the display. "Get ready, lads," their leader sneers. "We're in for a hell of a show. Killing this bitch will make for an excellent story."
"None of you will be alive to tell it," Farkas rumbles ominously.
Aela begins to transform before their eyes. She hunches over and moans in pain while her body is enveloped in swirling shadow. First her arms grow unnaturally dark and elongate almost to the floor, while her fingers gain huge hooked claws. Then her back ripples and contorts outwards, making her look like a hunchback. Bristly fur appears all over her body. A hairy tail emerges from her lower back, just above her rear. She suddenly surges upwards and howls through an elongated snout. Triangular ears flicker this way and that along with unnatural yellow eyes.
"Talos save us. She's a werewolf," Torgen harshly whispers. "We're all going to die. I don't want to get eaten alive, even if it's by a pretty lady."
"We aren't gonna get eaten," Mull retorts before raising his voice. "Farkas, get them away from the gate!"
The male Companion of Jorrvaskr heeds his words immediately and wraps his beefy arms around both Lydia and Jenassa. The man ignores their indignant squawking as he heaves them bodily to the side, away from the portcullis.
At the same time, Aela launches herself into the middle of the group of strangers and lashes out in all directions with her razor-sharp claws. Three men are disemboweled in an instant, splattering the others with rancid gore and forcing them to back away while cursing vehemently. One man lunges forward and sticks a spear through Aela's shoulderblade, causing her to flinch away and snarl angrily.
Another man snakes around a stalwart shieldbearer and swings a bright-bladed sword into Aela's thigh, eliciting a whimper and forcing her to retreat further. A third man attacks with a mace, but she grabs him in her enormous paws and bites deeply into his neck. He screams in agony as a spray of scarlet blood splashes across her fur.
An archer shoots an arrow into her torso with a sharp twang, making her whimper again. Werewolves are supposed to be tough, but Aela doesn't seem to be anything of the sort right now.
Mull finally puts two and two together. "They're using silver," he gasps. "Dammit, they'll kill her! Torgen, hold onto me right now!" he commands. "I'll get us out of danger if the roof comes down on our heads."
To the older man's credit, he does as instructed at once. "Uh, boss? What do you mean-?"
"FUS RO!"
The steel portcullis emits an ear-grating screech and visible shifts in place. A huge dent becomes visible in the center, but the gate still standing. Torrents of dust and debris tumble from the ceiling, portending a swift and inescapable demise beneath several tons of rock. Mull swears and takes a deep breath while doing his best to ignore the disgusting sensation of foreign particles being sucked into his esophagus.
"Godsdamn, that was loud!" Torgen complains.
In the chamber outside, the violent clashing of steel against steel is now audible along with the battlecries of men and women. A meaty squelch reaches Mull's ears along with Aela's bloodcurdling shriek. He needs to do get out there now.
He breathes deeply again. This isn't the time to lose control! You've gotta concentrate!
Force is the fundamental energy of the world that maintains a presence in all things. Balance is the intangible noumenon that defines a state of being in which conflicting energies are controlled, equivalent, or enhanced. Force without Balance is insubstantial. These are the truths he learned during his time at High Hrothgar.
He doesn't want to Shout in order to kill these assholes. He wants to Shout in order to save his people. Every time Aela screams in her werewolf form, it feels like a nail is being driven through his chest. He can't let her die. He can't let any of them die.
Anger surges hotly inside of him. Indignance that anyone would dare to harm those who belong to him causes his heart to race. Frustration towards his own weakness makes his teeth to clench tightly.
He accepts these emotions, catalogues them, and ignores them for now. They have a time and a place, and this isn't it.
He concentrates even harder. He delves deeper into the Way of the Voice than ever before, else he risks giving into the rage. There is nothing except the way forward. This iron gate will be thrust aside and he will walk through it. There is no alternative. He can already see it in his mind's eye.
He inhales one last time, broadens his stance, and opens his eyes. "FUS! RO!"
Pure azure energy slams into the portcullis again, and this time it's more than powerful enough to fulfill his desire. The portcullis – which must weigh hundreds of pounds at minimum – is torn free from its restraints and sent careening into the center of the vault-ceilinged chamber. Two men cry out frantically as they're crushed beneath its bulk.
Mull feels the air shift in the instant before the roof above his head collapses. He tightly grasps Torgen's arm and prepares himself for another Shout.
"Mull!" Torgen roars.
"WULD!"
An irresistible gale seizes hold of his limbs and drags him forward along with the older bandit. In the heat of the moment, he forgets to use his legs properly and goes sprawling across the floor along with a flailing Torgen. Behind them, the small annex room with the lever is completely buried in rubble and a cloud of billowing dust surges outwards from the wreckage.
Everyone stops and stares at the unfolding spectacle. Farkas comically pauses in the middle of holding up a man by his neck while pummeling his face repeatedly.
"What in the…?" one of their enemies murmurs. "Is he a wizard?"
"I think he's a Tongue," another tentatively replies.
Both of them are relieved of their burdensome questions when Aela envelopes their heads within her huge paws and crushes their skulls. The madness of battle ensues once more.
Torgen crawls onto his elbows and then to his knees while coughing heavily. "What in the h-hell was that?"
"The Voice!" Mull answers while clambering to his feet. He draws his sword with a raspy hiss. "Now get ready to fight!"
There are only a handful of their opponents left standing, but that doesn't mean they should be underestimated. He darts forward and brings down his sword onto the shoulder of a man facing away from him, causing him to yell and drop his weapon. A follow-up swing bites deeply into his neck and severs his spine, halfway decapitating him and sending him to the ground like a ragdoll.
Aela breaks through the guard of another man, knocks him on his back, and begins gorily feasting upon his exposed innards.
Jenassa uses her sword and dagger to deftly cut twin slashes in the shape of an X across her opponent's chest.
Lydia sluggishly wipes a stream of blood away from her nose, sidesteps the deadly arc of a descending warhammer, and shoves back her enemy with her splintered roundshield. The man readies himself for another swing only to be bisect cleanly in two by Torgen's axe from behind.
Farkas finishes beating a disarmed woman into a bloody pulp and brutally shoves her battered form to the ground.
With that, the last of their foes are slain. Silence descends over the blood-soaked chamber, with the only interruption behind Aela's slurping and chewing as she enjoys her cannibalistic feast.
Lydia takes one look at the unpleasant display, her hands fly to her mouth, and she promptly vomits all over her boots.
"Nice," Torgen grimaces.
"By Azura's sweet grace. I must say, the two of you have a rather heroic sense of timing." Jenassa trudges over to Mull while wiping off her sword with a rag.
"That doesn't feel like a compliment," Mull replies.
"It isn't." Jenassa sheathes her blade and falls into a parade rest in front of him. "Three of these vagrants fell by my hand, so I expect to be duly compensated for services rendered at the appropriate time."
"Of course," he sighs. "I'll see that it's done. But try to focus on getting everyone out of here alive first, alright?"
"Very well," she stiffly answers.
Everyone except Aela slowly congregate along the right-side wall of the chamber, where there aren't as many dead bodies. It's also the furthest they can get from the collapsed annex. Rocks are still dropping from the ceiling on that side of the room with alarming regularity.
While Mull busies himself with checking over a rather bleary-eyed Lydia to make sure she isn't hurt too badly, Torgen amiably claps Farkas on the shoulder. "You doing good, brother?"
"I'm well enough," the Companion grimly states. "I think we should be worrying about Aela. Those silver weapons looked like they were hurting her badly."
"Where did these assholes get their hands on silver?" Mull inquires while grabbing Lydia's face and peering into her eyes to make sure she isn't concussed. She indignantly tries to bat away his arms, to no avail. "It ain't exactly cheap, seeing as it's the same stuff coins are made of sometimes."
"These men were members of the Silver Hand."
"…Silver Hand?" Mull repeats when the Companion doesn't immediately elaborate.
"They tell people that they're a cabal of werewolf hunters, but they're actually more like common bandits. Still, their hatred for lycanthropes is real enough. They've been at odds with the Companions of Jorrvaskr for years."
"Why's that?" Torgen gurgles as he swallows a mouthful of a healing potion. "Is it because Aela's a werewolf?"
The Huntress-turned-werewolf looks up at the mention of her name. After a short but tense stare-off, she shakes herself like a dog – sending blood splattering all across the room, including all over the Mighty Mudcrabs – and quietly pads over to a second dead man who she also begins messily devouring.
"Yes. And also… because I was too," Farkas quietly admits. "Same with my brother and old man Kodlak, our leader. But we aren't werewolves anymore. I never wanted to go to the Hunting Grounds when my time came to die and I wasn't the only one who felt that way. A few years ago, my brother and I hunted down a coven of witches in the southern Reach called the Glenmoril coven and killed the lot of them. We took the heads of their leaders and preserved them because Kodlak claimed they had powerful magic, but we didn't realize at the time what that meant. Then the three of us started talking about finding a way to become human again, and that's when Kodlak read in a book about some old ritual we could perform at the Tomb of Ysgramor all the way up near Winterhold. So we took the heads, found the tomb, fought some ghosts of the ancient Companions, and slew our wolf spirits. And that was that." He shrugs. "If you want to know more, my brother could probably tell you. I've never been good at talking."
"That's quite a story." Mull finishes examining his housecarl and pats her on the arm. "Think you can look after yourself?"
"Of course, my Thane," she stubbornly declares. Her face is streaked with dried blood and her hair is a rat's nest, but her eyes seem more focused than they did earlier.
"Atta girl." He turns and glances at Aela, who's now snacking on to her third victim. "So she's the only one who didn't want to give up her lycanthropy?"
"Her and Skjor," Farkas answers. "That bald bastard is just as stubborn as her. Both of 'em view it as a blessing from Hircine. They even have an altar with totems and everything."
"Honest-to-gods daedric cultists," Torgen whistles. "Who would've thought?"
Jenassa sniffs. "I don't see what's so unusual about that."
"Aye, I forgot you Dunmer are daedra worshipers too. Don't you know you'll be condemned to the fiery pits of Oblivion when you kick the bucket?"
"I fully expect to spend my afterlife dwelling in the silver city of Azura within her realm of Moonshadow, which is said to be a place of such splendor and beauty that the eyes of mere mortals cannot comprehend it. You're welcome to your drinking hall of Sovngarde or wherever it is that you barbarians intend to languish for eternity. I wouldn't wish that on my worst enemy, to be frank with you."
Torgen guffaws. "Then it sounds like we'll have to agree to disagree, svartelf."
"Those places sound okay, I guess, but what about the Hunting Grounds? Can I interest you in our lord and savior Hircine?"
Everybody turns their head at exactly the same time to see Aela the Huntress daintily picking her way between mangled corpses. She's covered from head to toe in blood, even her hair, which makes her ocean-grey eyes stand out more than usual. Somehow her clothing and equipment are miraculously intact.
She grins like a wolf. "Did I scare you?" she slyly asks.
"…I have a lot of questions," Torgen announces. "But the first and most importantly is – why aren't you naked?"
"Magic," she cheekily responds. "Just because I'm a werewolf doesn't mean I'm a voyeur, thank you very much. So!" She rests a hand on one hip and gestures lazily towards the rightmost archway that was originally blocked by a portcullis, now conspicuously open. "Are we gonna keep going or should we call it a day? Those scrumptious icebrains said the whole fragment of Wuuthrad thing was a lie to draw us out of Whiterun, so I'm thinking our work here is done. Agreed?"
Everyone immediately voices their agreement except Mull, which the Huntress doesn't miss. Her gaze lands squarely on him.
"Mull?"
"…I'm not done yet," he firmly states. "I can still hear the whispers. They want me to find something deeper inside the barrow and there's no way in Oblivion I'm leaving now without something to show for it."
"Whispers?" Torgen quietly asks Lydia.
She shakes her head and mouths 'I don't know.'
"There could be more Silver Hand down here," Aela points out.
"And there are still the draugr to worry about," adds Farkas.
Mull shrugs. "I'll kill them all."
Mirmulnir seems to like that answer. Mull can feel him smiling with that fanged maw of his. 'Yes you shall,' he rumbles.
He gets a round of peculiar looks from everybody for the second time today, until Aela tilts her head back and laughs at the ceiling.
"I'll admit, the trick with that gate was pretty impressive. And using it to turn a couple of those sweet little snacks over there into smeared goop was a nice touch. Maybe you aren't just talking out of your ass."
"I'm not."
"Uh-huh. If you're that sure about it, then feel free to keep going. I won't be the one to stop you."
Farkas shuffles awkwardly and Mull catches the unspoken meaning. "I won't make you come with me if you don't want to. I would like you three to tag along since I'm paying your salaries," he directs to Lydia, Torgen, and Jenassa. "But if the Companions of Jorrvaskr don't have business here anymore, then it isn't like I can keep you against your will."
"That's true." Aela adopts a pose and taps her chin thoughtfully. "…But I think I'll stick with you anyways. I don't like leaving these things half-finished, and on the off-chance there are more Silver Hand lurking around here somewhere, I'd like to exterminate them before we leave." She says it so casually that you'd almost think she's walking about rats instead of men.
"It's got nothing to do with us being friends?" Mull asks sarcastically.
"Nope," she chirps. "You okay with that Farkas?"
"I won't say no," he grumbles.
"Perfect! I know I can always count on you!"
Torgen and Lydia simultaneously groan while Jenassa stoically sets about looting the tattered remains of the Silver Hand. Some of the poor bastards were pulverized or literally torn to shreds, so Mull isn't sure why she bothers trying to scavenge anything from them. It doesn't look like it's worth the effort.
"Hopefully everything is smooth sailing from here," Torgen gripes. "I've already had enough excitement for one delve."
Lydia mournfully nods.
-x-
One good thing about the presence of the Silver Hand is that they've already cleared out most of the restless draugr. In that sense, Torgen's hopes are partially realized.
Conversely, it appears that the Mighty Mudcrabs have now wiped out most of the Silver Hand, as they only encounter five more across the next several chambers and passageways – a pair of two sifting through rubble and another three resting around a sputtering fire in a room filled with cobwebs. Aela quietly snipes the majority of them with her bow.
There are two burial chambers where large groups of draugr rise to attack them all at once, but they manage to fight through the hordes by arranging themselves in a tight arrowhead formation with Farkas and Torgen wreaking havoc at the front while Lydia and Mull guard their flanks. Aela and Jenassa hang back with their bows and shoot down nearly a dozen draugr apiece on both occasions. The Dark Elf doesn't use her bow often, but when she does, she acquits herself extremely well. Mull also gets a few good opportunities to test out the flame spell he learned from Farengar by shooting gouts of fire pointblank into the faces and torsos of draugr that get a little too close for comfort. Even through his magic is still sputtery and uneven, he deals an immense amount of damage each time. The desiccated flesh of the undead draugr makes for great kindling. The better he gets at using his new magic, the more he starts to like it.
Some of the draugr utilize frost magic to harass them afar, but Aela calls out "Wights!" each time and prioritizes turning them into pincushions with her arrows, signaling the others to defend her until the threat is neutralized. Mull uses Unrelenting Force on two occasions to sweep wights off their feet and slam them into walls, and once more to break up a large group of draugr that are acting like bodyguards for a wight. Their spells are dangerous and both Torgen and Jenassa are wounded by ice spikes, but it's nothing a healing potion can't fix. As long as the wights aren't given enough time to rain down spell after spell for an extended amount of time, dealing with them is usually straightforward.
In a third burial chamber, they discover the remains of both draugr and Silver Hand who seemingly wiped each other out within the last couple of hours. The Mighty Mudcrabs finish off a small number of wounded survivors before continuing onwards. No sense in giving them a chance to stab someone in the back.
Other than that, the only hazards they encounter are mostly environmental in nature – poison dart traps that are activated when gemstones are removed from pedestals, swinging axes that drop from the ceiling, and the occasional rabid skeever. They loot a substantial amount of ancient coinage, hacksilver, precious stones, and valuable potions from urns, altars, and locked treasure chests. Mull puts his lockpicking kit to good use for the first time in a while. Farkas is also adept at simply breaking things open to access the goodies within.
The whispering of the barrow gradually becomes louder as they continue further and deeper, which gives Mull a sort of internal clock to work with that enables him to gauge their progress. It's irritating at first, but after a while the adrenaline-fueled intensity of combat inside the close confines of the cavernous crypt is enough to drown out the constant noise.
Overall, these subterranean passageways are very similar to what Mull and Torgen remember from Bleak Falls Barrow in multiple different ways, from the architecture to the sarcophagi to even the tactics used by the draugr. They tend to lie in wait within the pitch-black darkness until the interlopers draw near, at which point they open their ghostly blue eyes and move in for the kill. Lydia is practically pissing her pants the entire time, but Mull and Torgen both fare much better than they did during Bleak Falls Barrow since they know what to expect now. Aela, Farkas, and Jenassa shrug off the impenetrable darkness and heart-stopping draugr ambushes like they've done this a hundred times.
Maybe they have, Mull thinks wryly.
It's all going relatively smoothly until they reach one of the deeper areas of the crypt and emerge from a passageway into an expansive dark space. It appears to be a large natural cavern but their torchlight doesn't reach quite far enough to tell for certain.
Mull glances to the right, sees something white and vaguely oval-shaped, and curses savagely. "You've got to be kidding me."
"What is it?" Aela whispers.
"I-is it more draugr?" Lydia shakily demands.
"No, it's worse."
Lydia takes a step back and bumps into Jenassa, who stops her from retreating further.
Mull exhales heavily and raises his torch to better illuminate the wagon-sized object. "It's a Frostbite spider egg. A big one."
Torgen explosively echoes his curse. "Godsdammit, why?" he laments. "Could it be anything other than one of those blasted spiders just this once?"
"Aw, come on!" Aela walks between the two men and slings her arms over their shoulders. "They're just spiders! You kill 'em until they're dead exactly like anything else. I mean sure, they have potent venom and can climb on walls, but so what?"
"And ceilings," Mull growls. "Don't forget the ceilings."
Everyone cranes their necks as they stare upwards into the gloom.
"…I don't see anything up there," Aela finally announces.
Jenassa gives the Huntress a dark look. "Gah, and neither can I without a brighter light. But that doesn't mean nothing is there."
Aela taps her temple. "Blessing of Hircine, remember? Near-perfect night vision is one of the perks."
"Ah. Pardon my assumption then."
"No worries, my lovely svartelf. Most werewolves don't look as pretty as I do. I'm sure it's easy to forget sometimes."
Lydia shudders. "I don't think the image of you consuming a man's intestines is something I will ever be able to forget."
Mull impatiently taps the surface of his lamellar armor to get everyone's attention. "Can we get on with the spider-slaying already? The sooner this is over, the happier I'll be."
"I'm with the boss on this one," Torgen throws in.
"Fine, fine. You need to learn how to work and have fun at the same time," snarks Aela. "Want me to take point so you don't have to get your delicate little hands covered in spider guts?"
Mull gestures with his torch. "Lead the way," he shamelessly says.
It turns out that their worrying is mostly for nothing. There are a grand total of two unhatched spiders inside the cave and only one of them is a big one – and even then, it isn't nearly as large as the colossus that made its home inside Bleak Falls Barrow. A hail of arrows from Aela combined with the ridiculous lethality granted to her by her blessing are more than sufficient for bringing them down.
They find the entrance to another section of stonework tunnels at the far end of the cavern, put down another handful of draugr including a wight that Aela mows down with more arrows, and progress into yet another catacomb that oddly enough doesn't contain any restless draugr. All the mummified ancestors in this area are resting peacefully atop their beds of stone.
That's a good thing too, because the sounds of whispering and chanting inside Mull's head are starting to reach a fever pitch that he can't ignore anymore. It's so loud that he can barely concentrate on anything else. 'We are close,' Mirmulnir hisses.
"Eyes up," he calls to everyone. "We're almost to the end."
"Thank Kyne, Mara, Shor, Talos, and everyone else," Lydia breathes.
"Don't get too excited." They round a corner and abruptly find themselves facing another black wrought-iron door. "I doubt we're the only ones down here."
"Farkas." Aela nods to the door and her Companion hurries forward to shove it open.
"Give him a hand, Torgen," says Mull. "We'll watch your backs."
"Got it boss."
The two burly men struggle with the door for the better part of a minute – it clearly hasn't been opened in an extraordinarily long time – but eventually they succeed in grinding it open with much strained grunting and trickling sweat.
Mull and Lydia lead the way into the next chamber using the housecarl's battered but still functional shield as cover. They find themselves in a hallway with an arched roof two stories high and large alcoves lining the walls, each of which contains a black iron sarcophagus. Further ahead, the hallway opens up into a large room – quite possibly the largest yet – with iron chandeliers hanging from the ceiling and stairsteps ascending to raised platforms housing bulky stone braziers that haven't know the warmth of a flame for millennia. Ceramic urns of all sizes and more sarcophagi are lining the walls on either side, a single horizontal sarcophagus is positioned in the very center of the chamber, and at the opposite end where the steps are highest…
There's a looming black wall that seems to absorb the light of their torches, creating a void of impenetrable shadow. As soon as Mull lays eyes on that wall, the voices in his head surge in volume and begin chanting in the dragon tongue, urging him to stride forth and claim his birthright. Mirmulnir's raspy speech intermingles seamlessly with the song of his soul.
Mull blinks and he's suddenly standing directly in front of the black wall without any recollection of how he got there. Much like the one in Bleak Falls Barrow, this wall is covered in rows of runes along with various images of dragons and men, hieroglyphics depicting gods or animals, and tiny alcoves for votive candles – but unlike the first wall, this one lacks the vegetative growth of a natural cave.
His lips begin moving of their own volition. "QETHSEGOL VahRUKIV KiiR JUN JAFNHAR WO LOS AG NahLaaS NaaL YOL DO LOT DOVah LODUNOST."
The guttural words roll off his tongue with practiced fluidity, as if he's been speaking Dovahzul since the day he was born. They reverberate from the bare stone walls and eerie echoes chase after each throaty syllable.
"…What do those words mean, my Thane?" Lydia timidly squeaks from somewhere behind him.
He licks his lips and gazes back over the largest block of dragon-runes. It takes a concerted effort for him to speak the sentence in Nordic instead of Dovahzul. "This stone commemorates the child king Jafnhar who was burned alive by the fire of the great dragon Lodunost."
"How delightful," Jenassa snickers.
Mull ignores her snark as he leans closer to the inscription. Just as with the wall in Bleak Falls Barrow, there's a single word here that jumps out at him as somehow being more significant than the others. The runes of that specific word begin to glow with a ghostly light that gracefully shifts from blue to white to orange to red and back again, all while bleeding off ethereal tendrils of smoke that rise into the air before vanishing like they were never there. The others don't comment on the otherworldly phenomenon so he can only assume it's visible to him alone.
The word is Yol. In the languages of mortal men, it means 'fire.' He's never seen this word before and yet somehow he innately knows its definition.
'Fire,' purrs Mirmulnir. 'This is the most primordial element and the harbinger of nature's destructive power, a concept that resonates profoundly with all dov. Countless joorre have been annihilated by Yol and countless more shall be annihilated upon the ending of days, when the ravaging firestorm of AL-DU-IN will arrive to engulf all of creation. Yol lies at the heart of me and of you, for we are brothers born in flame.'
"Fire…" he repeats. "Yol. Yol." He tests the word a few times under his breath, and although he doesn't feel anything particularly special from it, it's still undeniably a Word of Power. This feels identical to his experience at Bleaks Falls Barrow when he encountered Fus for the very first time.
"Oh, hey. A fragment of Wuuthrad. That's something you don't see everyday."
The voice of Aela the Huntress finally breaks Mull out of his torpor. He turns around to catch sight of Aela leaning over a table and plucking a diminutive object from a rectangular pedestal. She turns the item this way and that as she examines it in the light of Jenassa's torch.
"The Silver Hand weren't lying," Farkas states with evident confusion.
"Hmph. Guess not." Aela tosses the steel fragment into a satchel at her waist. "Sai must've been on our side today. Other than that, I don't know what to tell you. Life's weird sometimes."
"…Looks like this worked out for you in the end too," Mull rasps. His voice is gummy and dry for some strange reason, like he's been walking through the arid drylands of Hammerfell without water for hours.
"It seems that way."
"Uh… sera?" Jenassa unexpectedly interrupts in a worried tone. Everyone collectively looks at her and she points to one of the sarcophagi. "We appear to have unwanted company."
The stone lid of the sarcophagus slams into the floor with a loud crack, followed shortly after by approximately a dozen others. A draugr clambers out of the ancient casket and fixes its pitiless blue gaze upon them.
"Circle up," Aela orders as all signs of levity vanish. "It looks like they'll be coming from all sides." Their position in the center of the chamber means the sarcophagi along the walls are now forming a ring around them that's only broken by the black wall.
Her prediction is swiftly proven correct as draugr emerge from their resting places one after the other. Her arms blur with inhumanly fast movements as she nocks an arrow, draws, releases, reaches for her quiver, nocks an arrow, draws, releases, and repeats. Draugr drop to the ground with arrowheads embedded in their skulls but more rise to take their places.
The draugr fall upon them with bitter blades and cruel axes that descend with the monstrous strength of unfeeling sinuous muscle behind them, but their wielders only move forward to engage in ones or twos at a time. As a result, the trespassers manage to fend them off without too much difficulty despite being surrounded. The appearance of four wights wielding ice magic proves to be bit more problematic, but Mull manages to assassinate one of them using Wuld combined with a well-timed swing of his sword while Aela and Jenassa snipe the others with their bows.
At the end of the skirmish, one final draugr emerges from his tomb. This one is taller than the others and is arrayed in thick blacksteel armor with an intricate horned helm and bulky black greaves – undoubtedly a draugr-lord. It hoists a two-handed axe, snarls in Dovahzul, and points directly at Mull. "Qiilaan us dilon!"
"Go to Oblivion!" he bites back. Seeing the challenge for what it is, he stalks out to meet the draugr-lord and readies his sword in a guard position.
The draugr-lord plants its feet and inhales – a rattly sound that could never be produced by a living being. "FUS!" it Shouts.
Having seen what his opponent was preparing to do, Mull leaps to the side and responds with a Thu'um of his own. "WULD!" The wave of pure Force from the draugr's Shout rushes past him ineffectually.
He darts forward with the speed of the wind and aims the tip of his blade at the draugr's chest in an attempt to end the fight in a single blow. Unfortunately, this draugr is faster than the others and deflects his attack with the haft of its axe. It tries to punch Mull in the face with a gauntleted fist and he manages to duck backwards at just the right moment.
He trades a few blows with the draugr-lord while making sure to keep his distance. He doesn't want to accidentally leave himself open to a swipe from that oversized axe, which would surely kill or maim him. The downside is that he struggles to land any critical strikes of his own, with the best he can do being a few shallow scratches and some superficial burns from his weak flame spells.
The draugr-lord inhales for another Thu'um and Mull preempts it on the spur of the moment. "FUS RO!"
His enemy is flung backwards and slams into one of the vacated sarcophagi with enough force to crack stone. It staggers and sluggishly hefts its axe, but it isn't quite fast enough to parry Mull's follow-up attack. He charges the stunned draugr-lord and stabs it in the face through the eyehole of its helm with as much might as he can gather in his sore muscles, causing it to go limp and its malevolent blue eyes to fade into shadow. When he's pretty sure it's dead, he wrenches his blade free and allows the draugr to slump sideways to the floor.
He glances back at his companions and derives smug satisfaction from the sight of them gaping like a school of suffocated fish. "How was that?" he pants.
"…Pretty damn good," Aela grudgingly admits.
Torgen raises a hand with fingers splayed. "Ten out of ten."
Lydia simply shakes her head in wonderment while Jenassa not-quite-glares at him with unmistakable suspicion. It's regrettable that he had to reveal his hand to his newest employee with all this Shouting and finding a new Word of Power, but he supposes it was unavoidable. He can deal with the consequences later when he isn't so damn tired.
Farkas just grunts. A man of few words.
They take a short break to catch their breath and rummage around for loot before getting everything organized and searching for the exit. They don't want to stick around long enough for more draugr to show up. Following a brief investigation, Lydia and Jenassa uncover a hidden tunnel that gives them access to one of the upper chambers of the barrow, which makes it fairly easy to return to the exit. They keep a wary eye out for more Silver Hand but their fears of another ambush are luckily unfounded.
And thus Mull's second Nordic barrow experience finally draws to a close. It's practically a miracle that nobody was killed or seriously wounded, but he mostly chalks that up to his proficiency with the Voice as well as Aela's presence to keep things from getting too out of hand. Most of the credit should probably go to Aela, if he's being honest.
He steals a look at the Huntress as they climb out of the entrance hole and reemerge into the sunlight. "So you got your fragment."
"We got the fragment," she agrees. "That could've gone much better, but hey, we're all still alive and kicking. That's what matters."
"Agreed." The others seem pleased to be back aboveground. Torgen, Farkas, and Lydia are enjoying the fresh air while Jenassa is skulking off by herself to do a deep clean of her grimy gear.
"And look at you! You got your… whatever in the Huntsman's name it was. Your dragon word or whatever."
"Yeah. I'm not feeling much of a connection with it yet, but maybe that'll change soon. I have a feeling it'll be very useful in the future."
From what he's seen so far, there aren't many problems in Skyrim that can't be solved with the liberal application of fire.
"Good to hear." She leans over and slugs him in the shoulder hard enough to make him flinch and scuttle a few steps away. "No need to pay me for anything, by the way. I thought about it for a while and I think the honor of assisting the Dragonborn with his endeavors is more than enough to satisfy me. Not many people can say they've had the chance to do something like that. Besides, we found enough good loot that we should be able to split it six ways and have everyone go home happy."
"Are you sure?"
"Very. I killed a bunch of Silver Hand pests, recovered a fragment of Wuuthrad against all odds, and gave you a hand. That's a good day in my book."
He hesitates for a moment. "…Farkas told us a few things about the Companions' history with lycanthropy, including you and Skjor. I hope you don't have a problem with that."
She scoffs. "Since when do you care about hurting people's feelings?"
"I don't," he sardonically replies. "But if our positions were reversed, I sure as Oblivion wouldn't want Lydia or Torgen blabbing about my personal business. So… I just thought I'd ask."
"How sweet. Maybe the big bad Dragonborn does have a heart after all." She sits down on the edge of the cairn and tucks in her legs as she gazes at the sunset. She pats the ground next to her and he slowly takes the offered seat with a weary groan. "…Are we camping together for the night?"
"I don't know. Are we?" Dusk is still a few hours away, but he doesn't think it'll be enough time to make much progress on the road before they would need to set up camp for the night. Whereas Bleak Falls Barrow took almost an entire twenty-four hours from start to finish, Dustman's Cairn went comparatively quick. Only four or five hours have elapsed since they first entered the crypt.
"If it's up to me, then yep. We are now. We can get a fire going and grill some meat to celebrate our successful delve."
"Please tell me you aren't talking about those poor Silver Hand bastards you tore to shreds down there."
She glares at him. "No, you icebrain. If your people don't have any preserved meat on hand, I can go hunt something easily enough. And I'll thank you for refraining from cracking jokes about my appetite when I'm in werewolf form. I don't like it any more than you do, but feeding on my kills is the best way for me to regenerate from my wounds. They came prepared to do some damage with those silver weapons."
"It wasn't a joke, but… okay."
Aela snorts before her expression turns pensive. "Tonight, I want you to tell me about the Dragonborn. You've changed a lot in the past few months, but I didn't realize how much until today. You aren't that helpless little man with an attitude problem whose scrawny rear I saved at the Western Watchtower."
"…That I am not," he softly murmurs. "For better or worse."
"So how about it? In return, you'll get to learn more about me and the Companions of Jorrvaskr. We have a more interesting history than most can truthfully claim. Sounds like a deal?"
"Sure, as long as you keep everything you learn to yourself. I'm only agreeing because I trust you."
"Yeah, yeah. Same here." She waves at him like he's an annoying fly. "Now start from the beginning. How was the trip to Ivarstead? You cut it pretty close when you left Whiterun with winter already on our doorstep."
"Well…"
-x-
They talk and eat deep into the night, and the next morning they say their goodbyes at the base of Dustman's Cairn for the second time. Aela and Farkas get underway for Whiterun with their prize in hand while Mull and the Mighty Mudcrabs embark in the opposite direction towards the Hjallmarch.
-x-
When they're less than a day away from the mountains, they pass through a small area of scattered evergreen woodlands in the otherwise treeless plains that Lydia informs them is called Greenspring Hollow.
Less than a hundred paces into the treeline, they stumble across what can only be the remains of a fresh battlefield, the terrible aftermath of war. The woods have been permeated by the putrid stench of bloated decaying corpses and entire flocks of carrion birds are lurking in the branches overhead, croaking hatefully and glaring at the four trespassers with pitiless black eyes.
There are bodies strewn beneath the canopy in all directions, sometimes piled so thickly that the ground can't be seen beneath them. Most of them are clad in the tattered remnants of blue tabards and bearskin clothing that identify them as Stormcloak rebels, but there are more than a few steel-plated Imperial legionaries lying among them as well.
"What are Imperials and Stormcloaks doing in Whiterun Hold?" Mull asks nobody in particular. He swipes at a fly that buzzes too close to his face for his liking. Countless multitudes of the damn things are swarming around them in black clouds, and gods only know what they've been eating.
"I couldn't hazard a guess," Lydia snarls. "Clearly they no longer respect my uncle's neutrality. Neither Ulfric Stormcloak nor General Tullius care for his attempts at diplomacy and I'm afraid we're not long for the war. Especially after seeing this."
A bit further in, they find a large number of dead Stormcloaks who look like they were executed in one big row, about fifty in total. Their bodies were left here to rot. Whoever did the deed – Imperials, presumably – must not have wanted to waste time or effort burying them.
"That's a lot of dead men," Torgen grimly observes.
"Aye."
Lydia drops to her knees next to the body of a girl lying on her back with blonde hair stained red, staring sightlessly at the sky through dilated green eyes. Her hands are bound and her throat was sliced open, exactly the same as all the other prisoners. "Why would they do something like this?" the housecarl demands through gritted teeth. "This is wrong! Do they have no honor?! How dare they call themselves Nords when they would spit upon Stuhn's mercy!"
Mull lightly places a hand on the girl's shoulder. "That's just the way of these things, Lydia. It's a lot harder to spare a life than it is to take one," he mutters. He knows that all too well. He thinks back to the boy he stabbed in the leg in Whiterun. He could've killed that stupid idiot and maybe he would've in the past, and yet he didn't.
"Maybe they weren't Nords," Torgen rumbles. "This smells like Cyrodiilic treachery to me. Bastards to a man, the lot of 'em."
"Perhaps," Jenassa neutrally comments. She nudges a discarded galea-style helmet with the tip of her boot while scanning the corpse-strewn field with sharp eyes. "Are we to stay here and search the dead for loot, or would you prefer to move on?" she calls to Mull.
"…I think moving on would be best," he says at length. He ignores the fiery glare that Lydia shoots him over her shoulder. "The victors might still be around here somewhere and I don't feel like tangling with them today. They might not take too kindly to scavengers."
"Very well."
Once Lydia pulls herself back together, they leave the battlefield behind and delve deeper into the coniferous woodlands. The wind isn't as harsh or cold as it was out on the high plains, which Mull counts as a blessing. The resident fauna is also different, and they catch sight of several elk, moose, squirrels, and even a sabrecat lurking in a meadow of purple heather at one point.
When they make camp that night, Lydia and Torgen turn in early while Mull and Jenassa stay awake to keep watch for a while. They sit around the fire in wordless but not entirely awkward silence.
Mull finds himself contemplating what they saw today. He's no stranger to death in its many brutal forms, but there was something unusually sobering about seeing so many corpses piled up together in a single place. There must've been a hundred of them easily. He's never seen that many dead men and women at the same time before, not even during the final stand of Joren Stone-Breaker's gang in the Jerall Mountains where Morven died.
After a while, he begins talking to Jenassa unprompted. He isn't sure why. Seeing that battlefield must've put him in an odd mood.
"I wonder how many men I've killed," he slowly starts. "That's a strange thought, isn't it? I'm sure it hasn't been anywhere near the number of dead from that battlefield back there, but it's gotta be more than a few. It seems bizarre to me that I, just one man, could've ended the lives of so many others. They were all folks leading their own lives with their own troubles. They could've ended mine if things had gone differently, but instead I ended theirs. Does that make me better or worse than them? More deserving to live or less?"
His voice drops.
"I see them in my dreams sometimes – the faces of those people. I recognize them, but I can't remember who they were or where it happened. After a while they all started blurring together. That doesn't sit right with me for some reason. You'd think remembering why I gutted them in the first place would be the least I could do."
Jenassa stares at him for a long moment. The firelight dances brightly in her bright red eyes. "…Forgive me for my impertinence sera, but I don't understand what point you're trying to make."
"Heh," he scoffs. "I'm not sure I do either."
The Dunmer shuffles uncomfortably. "If you ask me, our sole responsibility as individuals is to care for our own well-being along with the well-being of whoever we've deemed worthy of our care. If everyone comported themselves this way, then perhaps our world would be a less chaotic place. Those who are weak and cowardly have only themselves to blame for their shortcomings while warriors like you and myself ought to be immune to their grievances. I understand that my people and your people have differing perspectives on some of these matters," she says with a thin smile. "The Reclamations are many things, but merciful has never been one of them. However, there are also certain universal constants that I think we could find common ground on."
Mull grunts.
"You disagree?"
"Not too long ago, I think I would've. But now…"
"Be a hero… like I never could. For me."
"…I don't know what to think anymore."
He falls silent again after that and their short but uncharacteristically philosophical conversation dwindles to a close. The only sources of noise for the rest of the night are the crackling of their campfire and the groaning of the wind passing between tree trunks.
Mirmulnir tries to give him some coaching on the nature of Yol, but his progress is decidedly limited. Not only is he not in the right mood for philosophizing, but he's also been struggling to internalize the new Word of Power ever since he learned it in Dustman's Cairn. Whenever he thinks he's close to understanding its true nature, it always slips from his grasp like water between his fingers.
-x-
They emerge from the coniferous forest and begin their ascent into the northern mountains the next morning, where a trackless gap between two peaks called Eldersblood Pass will give them passage into the Hjallmarch. With Lydia acting as their guide using a map she pilfered from her uncle's treasury, they scale the first half of the perilous pass in less than half a day with few difficulties. This isn't a popular route by any means, but it's much more discreet than Labyrinthian.
There are a few widely-spread homesteads and lodges dotting the grassy slopes on the southern side of the pass, but oddly enough there isn't any activity to be seen among them. There are no telltale columns of smoke rising from hearthfires and several buildings even have boarded windows. Mull wonders if this region was abandoned for some reason, but when he voices his question, neither none of his companions have any insight to offer.
He becomes distinctly more worried when they pass near the charred remains of a homestead that was very obviously burned to the ground at some point in the past. Mull carefully picks his way over to the site of the destroyed buildings and sifts his hands through a shallow mound of charcoal that might've once been an barn. It leaves heavy black smears across his fingers and palms, meaning it's still fresh. The scent of burnt timber and melted sap is hanging heavily in the air along with a fainter sickly-sweet smell that can only be cooked flesh. Whatever happened here, it happened recently.
There are a few patches of snow lingering here and there, but they're already in the process of melting beneath the rays of the spring sun. That makes the trek through the pass somewhat easier – disregarding the frequent streams of fast-flowing snowmelt – but it's still rough going due to the steep topography. More than once, Torgen is required to bodily drag Mull, Lydia, and Jenassa to the top of sheer ledges that they can't scale on their own. He claims that he's accustomed to this sort of terrain from spending so many years in the Pale's icy mountains.
When they've almost reached the summit of the pass, Mull pauses as he feels a distant sensation brush against him with invisible fingers, intangible yet there all the same. It's a soft, familiar warmth that radiates across the surface of his skin, causing his hair to stand on end.
It's followed seconds later by disembodied voices that whisper in his ears along with the faint echo of drums beating in tune with his feverish heart, causing his adrenaline to spike. This familiar phenomenon is precisely what he felt when Mirmulnir approached the Western Watchtower upon black wings heralding bloody battle all those months ago.
Dread washes over his body like a spray of molten magma. This is much more intense than when he sensed the distant presence of those two dragons in the Rift shortly after leaving Ivarstead.
A dragon must be close. Very close.
"If I can sense a dragon this strongly, does that mean it can sense me too?" he quietly mutters.
'Indeed,' Mirmulnir replies. 'One of our brothers is nearly upon us.'
"Well shit."
A booming roar echoes from the lofty peaks towering over their heads, causing flocks of birds to erupt into the sky in a frenzied panic.