Chapter 51: The Alduin Quest

The alarm on his phone went off. Curtis hastily put up a candlelight spell, momentarily blinding himself. He cursed as he flailed around for the phone. "Yo, Curtis here. What's up?"

"Sir, this is Jalen. Whiterun's been attacked, but Lady Helsette has successfully captured the red dragon and persuaded it to carry her to Skuldafn."

"Shit! Damages? Casualties?"

"Heavy damage in the Clouds District. It was during midday. Current estimates are about 200, mostly servants working in the homes, young children at home. Most of the nobles were in court, protected from dragonfire by the enchantments put on the palace when it was built. But numbers are sure to go higher. We're still pulling people out the rubble. Jorrvaskr's lost its roof, some shops nearest the district got scorched. The Dragon strafed the market outside of the city walls, many casualties out there. And we've got battles. Out-of-town troublemakers that came in with the spring trade caravans. The Dragoncultists Lord Revyn warned Jarl Balgruuf about. This disaster has also triggered multiple sleeper recorder agents. Shivhis is keeping Aela and Skjor from getting too distracted in battle.

"I also need to tell you I managed to put a phone in her hands before she took off. I did not have enough time with her to instruct her on how to use it, so all I could do was show her how to turn it on. I also disabled most of its functions and put it on voice-only communications and auto-dial because I didn't want her to get confused if she hit the wrong buttons. And because she's heading into a combat situation, I put it on vibrate mode and told her that when it's shaking, what she needs to do to answer. I'll have to leave it to you, sir, to instruct her if you can reach her. I need to go. I'll report back in the evening."

"Yeah. Good job. Keep me posted."

Forget sleeping. He got dressed and went to the docks. The Northern Maiden wasn't due to arrive until this evening. They weren't leaving until they'd offloaded cargo and taken on a new load and passengers, so maybe three days. The only vessels scheduled to leave this morning were all commercial ships headed back to different ports in Morrowind. There were other small boats, none fit to make the journey to Windhelm. He saw a large fishing boat pulling in, riding low, so a good haul on them. He wandered over to their slip and perked up as he recognized the girl throwing ropes to the dock workers to secure the boat. He hastened over, caught one of the ropes and looped it around a dock cleat. The girl recognized him, letting out a gleeful shout and waived her arms at him.

Soon, Captain Nyassa and her children were on the dock embracing him. They spent a few minutes reminiscing about their captivity two years ago and Nyassa's new ship. But time being of the essence, Curtis asked if she was willing to transport him and his party to Windhelm as soon as she was finished unloading her catch. An emergency and they had to leave the island immediately. She agreed.

While the ship was unloading. Taliesin and Severus silently sat on either side of him at the end of the pier as he tried to contact Lady Helsette. So far, the OnStar system was tracking her. Her phone was vibrating — signaling — but she wasn't answering. Likely because she'd put the device somewhere where she couldn't feel the vibrations or because it wasn't a situation where she could answer. All he could do was try every half hour until she finally answered.

"Answering."

"Lady Helsette, this is Curtis. Glad we're finally able to make contact. Is it safe for you to talk now?"

"Master Curtis, glad to hear you. Um, not right now, I just killed a sentry Dragon and I see a draugr patrol approaching. How can I signal you when I'm somewhere safe?"

"Hold down the answer button and say 'Call Curtis.' The device is on voice activation mode, so that's all you have to do."

"Understood. 'Bye."

While they waited, Severus and Taliesin made him scrape up every memory he had of the end game of the vanilla version of the Skyrim game he'd played a lifetime ago. If even a tenth of it was accurate, Lady Helsette was in for a bad time. Download "survival" mod — your performance suffered from injuries, lack of sleep, and lack of sustenance. Plus, arrows weren't endless, and equipment got damaged. In real life a healthy, battle-trained man can initially do a running battle carrying 60 to 100 pounds in armor, weapons, ammo, food and water rations, and other miscellaneous necessities. Maybe. At the beginning of battle. And the long-term wear-and-tear on soldier's bodies just carrying that could be years of torn muscles, degenerative arthritis, and other battle injuries aggravated by unreasonable weights. She'd been ready to leave with only her armor and sword, but Balgruuf made her wait until a heavy pack of food, potions, tent tarp, and ropes was prepared for her.

A city of corpses. There would be no supplies she could scavenge once she ran out of food and potions. He had no idea if there were wild veggies and fruits or game animals in the real Skuldafn. There certainly wasn't in the game version. No fruit trees, no crop fields, and even the lake outside the city had no fish or water plants. All there was in Skuldafn were walking dead things and pissy Dragons.

He knew Revyn and Helsette had hoped the Dragon and gate would be the last resort. Revyn knew of Skuldafn because the man knew his history of the Ebonheart Pact and that Skuldafn was the hidden meeting place for the Pact. And once Curtis had rejoined this reality and let it be known the Dragonborn would need to chase Alduin to Skuldafn and beyond into Sovngarde, they'd consulted with Paarthurnax. The old Dragon had known where most of the bodies of Alduin's closest allies had fallen. Odahviing and two other senior commanders were on the Morrowind side of the Velothi Mountains. Revyn had hired people to watch the graves for revival. He'd known within days when the red Dragon had been revived.

But the world seemed determined to force the Skuldafn/Sovngarde route, and Revyn's efforts to get a gate functioning before Alduin challenged his wife met obstacle after obstacle.

Lady Helsette had jumped onto the back of her destiny and gone to meet her fate in Skuldafn. Curtis was sure the Candlehearth gate would work now.

The Netch Life II off-loaded its cargo, and Captain Nyassa was able to entrust its sale to Councilor Morvayn, who'd stepped up after Curtis had informed him of the emergency.

As the ship was casting off, Lady Helsette called back. She'd found a tiny, shallow niche in one of the steep, forested mountain slopes, enough to spread a bedroll out. And there were enough trees and bushes about to muffle sound while not blocking her ability to see approaching creatures. But the draugr seemed to be staying within the stone city.

Curtis spent the first hour instructing her how to use the communication device. She was soon able to give them their first glimpse of Skuldafn. The images weren't good because of signal interference, some localized energy strong enough to affect connection to the OnStar satellite that had been moved into orbital sync over Skuldafn.

Ten times bigger than the game version. Same with the number of draugr patrols and dragons perched on tall, soaring arches. The streets were wide enough for dragons to descend to ground level and fight if they had to.

The gate to Sovngarde, if the Game lore held true, would be at the top of the ziggurat at the opposite end of the city. Odahviing had dropped her at the farthest point away from the Sovngarde gate — his malicious compliance to his agreement to carry Lady Helsette to Skuldafn. He'd kept his word and brought her past the flying sentries to Skuldafn territory, but he wasn't obliged to take her to the Sovngarde gate.

Beside, as she claimed to be ready enough to defeat Alduin, then a city full of undead and low-ranked Dragons should not be a problem for her. This should just be a little warm-up before the main event.

"Have you found the gate platform?"

"I think I might have spotted it. I'll try to get closer tomorrow if I can get some rest tonight."

"Okay. Listen close, I'll tell you how to rig up the phone to make a security trap."

She wanted to try to talk to Revyn or with Tolfdir. Curtis told her it was better she prioritize getting a good rest. He'd call those two for her and set up a group chat. Tolfdir, he knew, was quite busy. Revyn had just gotten his phone, but likely he was too distracted and had left the new, unfamiliar device in his office because tracking showed it hadn't moved from its location since delivery. But they'd be in Windhelm day after tomorrow.

Curtis called Tolfdir as soon as Lady Helsette had gone to sleep. Most of the master mages were preparing to leave for Windhelm. Revyn had taken Candlehearth Hall, torn it down, and was in the process of building the teleport platform. Ulfric was mustering troops to invade Skuldafn.

Damn, they should've left Solstheim when Revyn decided to go. He claimed business matters for his reason. Curtis had stayed because Ilya was in her healer mode and wanted to help the Altmer. Severus and Taliesin were interested in poking around the Dwemer ruins and looking for Dragon walls. And then he and Irdal were swimming around Solstheim in the deep-dive suits they'd recovered from Nchardak.

Well, playtime was over.

X—X—X—X—X—X—X

"Boy, gotta get that calibration down," gasped Curtis, wiping his mouth. He fumbled with the stopper on his waterskin, took a big mouthful, sloshed the water around, then spat it out. Having a big meal before transport had been a bad idea. Well, the ghosts had said the transition would be "rough." Severus and Taliesin also seemed to be suffering stomach upsets. That made him feel marginally better. But once over the initial side-effect of teleportation, the two were up and doing their jobs — Severus was consulting with Helsette as they walked the perimeter; Taliesin was painting sigils on stones and columns to set up an anti-zombie zone. After that, he would start working on re-engraving the temporary runes the ghosts had burned onto the stones to enable together the first team's transport.

And him. His job. He sat his butt down, pulled his mini-keyboard/monitor out of the padded case attached to his left thigh, and pulled up status screens. His suit was at full power. The first task was to establish a solid uplink to the OnStar satellite. It wasn't easy. The magic protecting Skuldafn from hostile magic attacks, the physical barrier kept the place oxygenated and focused the warmth of the sunlight that enabled the lush landscape and free-flowing water. It caused a lot of shifting energy patterns. Without it, this place would be about cold and windy as High Hrothgar.

Piggyback on the Skuldafn gate frequency. It had been designed to push through the environmental barrier without disrupting it. Turning all of Skuldafn into a howling, freezing, thin-air wasteland was not the way to start this quest. And now that the gate was activated, even when not teleporting, it maintained an ion channel through the energy membrane.

There, he found the right frequency for a strong link to OnStar. From the SkyForge tower came a dense data stream on Whiterun, the battle prep in Windhelm, and family pictures from Revyn. Curtis quickly transferred the latter to Helsette's phone and stored it on the crystal drive. He didn't know if the unit would work in Sovngarde. Not likely. The phone was meant to work in this dimension, not be some ghost-talker transmitter. But at least she'd have some pictures to look at for a while.

The toehold unit came through led by Master Faralda — Winterhold wizards and Dunmer Blades led by Ambarys. Sure, many of the Dunmer were geriatric, but they brought the skills they'd learned during the Oblivion Crisis. A bunch of lumbering, shouting, beyond-geriatric undead was hardly a challenge. This unit would not be charging into the city for battle. Their duty was to hold the safe zone for the Nord units and wounded to retreat to. The wizards would handle the Dragons while the Dunmer, the undead.

The wizards soon worked out the kinks in the transport power supply. Mage Onmund, Tolfdir's teaching assistant and secretary, took over as transporter chief from Revyn, who had fainted from exhaustion on the other side, he and the ghosts having done the heavy carry. Now that the system was fully powered up, Onmund could handle the rest of the gating operation to bring the rest of the tourists through.

And the next batch was led by Icewind. His group brought materials for building wooden barriers and setting up and furnishing the main command tent.

All the activities got the attention of the Dragons. Two came to fly over and challenge the invaders. They were no match for the Dragonborn and her wizards. After that came a wave of draugr. Icewind and Severus led out two dozen berserkers and shattered that attack.

Curtis wanted to explore the city, but he was here as the communication and logistics officer of the operation. Icewind and Ulfric knew of the comm helmets he'd built for Hrafnhildr and her team of Stormblades when they'd been Revyn's bodyguards a year ago. Lady Helsette and Revyn wanted Curtis to maintain the illusion that the helmets were the best he could do. The little handmirror communicators would not be visibly used. Curtis had Jalen and Irdal cobble together the primitive comm gear for Severus, Icewind, and a couple other field officers. His suit, unfortunately, was broadcast central, so he couldn't turn off the chatter, just lower the volume. On the other side, he knew Galmar and Ulfric were listening in.

Helsette declined to wear one. One shout and everyone's head would explode.

Wasn't much to say about the battle. Wizards and archers brought down the Dragons, and soldiers on the ground helped with the killing. The old city shook with the warring shouts of two Dragonborns and multiple deathlords, dragonpriests, and Dragons. When he wasn't relaying orders from Icewind and Severus and making clarifying situation reports to Ulfric and Galmar, he coordinated camp operations and rescue runs for the wounded or body retrieval. Colette and her team treated the wounded and got them in a condition to go through transport.

Whether by runes of magic or mathematics, it still meant ripping a person's atoms apart and reforming them on the other side. Teleportation was one of those things that work so long as you don't look too closely. Data migrations, a headache-inducing practice he really didn't want to think too deeply about. More M-theory madness. Talk about data cloud migrations.

Way beyond his or Dumac's comprehension. He doubted Mage Onmund understood that field of computing. Didn't have to, really, as the end-user. All he had to do was metaphysically point-and-click for the magic to happen. The ghosts had set up the transfer protocols. Revyn said they'd sacrificed their connection to this reality to secure the connection between Windhelm and Skuldafn. They were now in Sovngarde, sharpening their axes and swords to fight by the Dragonborn's side.

Along with a dozen or so idiot berserkers.

If Alduin hasn't already spotted the fresh food flooding in.

But back to transporting injured. Colette had to heal them to prevent them from leaking sloppy data bits during transfer. Kinda rude to the other transportees to find alien body bits embedded on arrival. The dead were shipped neatly contained in body bags.

Treasure was also coming. It couldn't be helped. Scouting for clear paths meant going into buildings, and things get picked up. The draugr had no use for the gold, silver, gems, armor, and weapons they owned thousands of years ago. Orders were given that they were to report finding any libraries or laboratories for the mages to explore later.

The Dragons soon gave up. They sat their tails down atop high buildings and the surrounding mountaintops and ignored the taunting mortals below. If Alduin was cowering in Sovngarde and stuffing his face, they weren't going to kill themselves trying to hold off the Dovahkiin. Word was the Dragonborn would ignore them if they didn't challenge her or those with her. However, since it was Alduin's will driving the dragonpriests and draugr, those things kept up the fight.

On the evening of the third day, the column of light from the gate to Sovngarde flared and then went out.

She was on the other side now.

The signal from her phone was lost; the unit, untraceable.

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