14th Last Seed, 4E201
In my latest dream, I see a line of every Harbinger who has ever lived, starting with Ysgramor.
We stand in Sovngarde, at the foot of the legendary Whalebone Bridge, and as I watch, each Harbinger steps forward, welcomed by Tsun, and walks into the Hall of Valor. Until we come to Terrfyg, the one who first burdened us with the blood of the beast.
He tries to follow his brothers and sisters before him, but before he can even set foot on the bridge, he is set upon by a great wolf, made of shadow and with eyes of fire, and the wolf pulls him into the Hunting Grounds. I can hear Hircine laughing as he opens his arms to Terrfyg.
And Terrfyg seems regretful, but also eager, in a way—eager to join his master, after a lifetime of service as a beast. He never looks back as he's dragged away.
From there, a terrible thing happened; every next Harbinger in the line turned willingly away from the Hall of Valor, and entered the Hunting Grounds of their own accord, walking along beside their own shadowy wolves. Fear picked at me as I watched them, growing into terror as my time came closer, and closer.
Too soon, it was my turn. I could see great Tsun standing on the other side of the bridge, beckoning to me through the shimmering mist. It appeared that I had a choice about where to go. And then I heard a snarling growl, and turned to see my own shadow wolf, stalking towards me, coming to drag me away from my ancestors and into Hircine's waiting arms.
My heart beat madly, and I reared back in fear. Suddenly, I felt a hand at my back. I whirled around, and came face to face with a stranger who hadn't been there before.
She had long, wild raven hair, and warm brown eyes that burned with courage and determination. She stared at the wolf with no trace of fear, and when she met my gaze, her bravery kindled my own. She had a sword in hand, and as she rose it, I felt the weight of my own warhammer at my back. I drew my weapon, and we charged the beast—determined to take it down together.
I realize that this is only a dream. But I can't help feeling like it still has meaning...I've had so few, throughout my lifetime. At any rate, it was a vivid enough dream to make a man like me take to writing, so it must be of some import. I will have to wait and see.
Merrin woke up before dawn's first light, and it took her a few seconds to remember where she was. The Bannered Mare was all but silent, save for the sound of the serving girl downstairs, doing her early morning chores.
It was dark in her room as she crawled out of bed, and she relit several candles to see by as she dressed.
First the grey cotton tunic, and then her brown cotton breeches. A pair of woolen socks.
She worked her way somewhat clumsily into her Imperial leathers, carefully feeling with her fingers to make sure she was doing each strap and buckle correctly. Proper armor was one of the first things she'd need, once she had money to buy it.
She was pleasantly surprised to see an oval mirror sitting on top of the room's dresser, leaning against the wall; Alvor and Sigrid hadn't had one in their house, and it had been a very long time since she'd had a proper look at herself.
She dragged the chair over from the small table she'd eaten dinner at, and set it in front of the dresser. Then she lowered herself into the chair and pulled on the oversized leather boots—another thing she'd need to replace.
Finally, she turned and looked at herself.
In the flickering of the candle light, she eyed her own familiar features, and was relieved to see that nothing had changed.
Both of her parents were there, in her face; she resembled her mother more, with the same strong, high cheekbones and shape of eye, the same full lips and arching brows. But her father's genes had had their say. Her skin was lighter than her mother's because of him, and a smattering of his ever-present freckles covered the bridge of her aquiline nose. Beneath his fiery beard, he'd had the same pointed chin.
Her only contribution was one long scar; a crooked slash across the right side of her jaw, from her cheek to under her bottom lip, shining pink in the dancing light.
She groaned; she'd also inherited her father's unruly hair. Her thick black waves were a tangled mess, and she worked hard to smooth it through with her fingers before she plaited it into a braid.
She didn't linger at the mirror any longer than she needed to. In another minute she'd belted her scabbard around her waist with her sword already sheathed inside, and slung her bow and knapsack over her back. Then she blew out the candles and opened the door.
She passed through the inn without saying anything to the woman preparing breakfast in the kitchen, and slipped unnoticed into the brisk pre-dawn.
Whiterun was sleeping with the exception of the guards, who were making their way along their patrols with their torches still lit in the pearly haze. She nodded at the two men guarding the gate, and neither said anything as they nodded back.
Merrin had always loved this time of the day—when all was still and mostly quiet, bathed in the glow of approaching light. Everything wrapped in a lovely kind of hush, as if all the world were holding its breath, and the rising sun would bring the exhale.
The sun broke the edge of the horizon as she was walking down the long road that bowed from the city, and she tilted her face up to the first warm rays. Outside the city walls, the world around her was in various states of waking; the farmers were already tending their fields, their bodies moving in silhouette, and the warmth from the sun turned the dew in the fields into low hanging clouds of shimmering mist.
She only crossed paths with a few other people on her way down the road towards Riverwood. A pair of hunters with packs full of pelts emerged from the woods and hailed as they passed her, making their way towards the city to sell their furs. Not long after, a courier ran up behind her, quickly surpassing her and continuing on his way, paying her no mind at all.
She had a sweetroll to break her fast while she walked, and by the time she could see Riverwood in the distance, the sun had properly risen into the sky. There was no path to the Barrow from the village itself, and she turned instead off of the Emperor's road, and onto a winding dirt path into the woods.
It was a confusing and roundabout path, and she figured out fast that the way up to the Barrow wasn't as straight forward as she'd thought.
What had started out as a brisk morning was growing into a humid day, and the path she was climbing was steeply uphill. Soon, the sound of her cursing mixed with the chirring insects in the trees as she felt sweat running down her back. The too-large armor trapped even more heat, and she could feel her mood souring as she clambered through the brush.
It was hard not to be angry. She was struggling through these woods to make money to live by, and when she'd come into Skyrim six days earlier, she'd had everything she could've needed. She'd had gold and provisions, a good bow and arrows, shoes that actually fit her feet. She'd been wearing armor that she'd made for herself, and a sword that she'd specially forged. And then because of bad timing and sloppy decisions, it had all been taken away from her.
The money was a hit, for sure, but the loss of the sword was what rankled the most; all of Merrin's most personal possessions had been stored away for safe keeping before she'd left Skyrim back in 197. So the Imperials hadn't gotten their greedy hands on those. But the sword was special to her, and she'd never get it back.
Several minutes later, her dark ruminations were abruptly cut off by the path opening up, and her catching a glimpse of an old stone archway jutting over the treetops ahead. She hurried towards it, and after another minute, she scrambled up a pebbly shelf and found herself staring at the massive Barrow.
It was much, much bigger than it had looked from the road far below with Hadvar. The stone arches must have been jutting a hundred feet into the sky, a marvel of technology for the time, and an enormous stone staircase met with the mountain in front of where she stood.
As she ascended the staircase, she rose higher than the trees, and a wind picked up around her that cooled her off. It was hard to be humid, at altitudes like these.
She avoided the look-out points to her left, with their spectacular views and non-existent railings, and headed to her right instead. In no time at all, Merrin found herself standing in front of the two huge carved iron doors that would lead her into the Barrow, hidden cleverly behind a stone pillar.
Her thoughts flashed to Hadvar, probably on his way to Solitude by now. What he would say, if he could see her now!
She drew her sword from its sheath, took a deep, steadying breath, and pushed open the heavy doors.
Within seconds, it became obvious to her that she wasn't alone in the Barrow. The light from a campfire was bouncing off the walls at the far end of a long crumbling hallway, and she could hear two people bickering in the same direction.
'I say that we go after Arvel. Bjorn should've been back with word by now, anyway!'
'This isn't your decision, Solin. You heard Arvel—guard the gear, he said. Watch the door. How do you expect to make it out of here with anything if you can't follow simple instructions? If we screw up, we won't get our cut.'
Bandits. She snorted quietly in disgust. It wasn't the first time she'd found some sort of lowlife criminal squatting in a Barrow; if you were in a pinch, the front rooms were easy shelter, and Barrows in more remote locations were prime targets for looters.
These ones seemed to be pretty amateur. They were arguing so loudly that they didn't even hear her re-sheath her sword and string her bow instead—and they obviously weren't doing a good job of watching the door. She crept a few steps forward and grimaced when she saw another two bandits laying dead in front of her, obviously killed by some dead skeevers nearby.
She could see the bandits clearly now, from her spot behind a leaning stone pillar. One man, one woman, both of them lightly armored, neither of them wearing helmets. She sighed.
Merrin had no great love for killing people—next to the traveling, the reason she'd become a mercenary was to protect people. But Skyrim's laws on bandits were clear-cut.
It would be impossible for her to sneak around them, so she took care of them instead; the first arrow she loosed buried itself in the side of the male bandit's neck, and he died quickly with a gurgling rasp. His companion noticed immediately and screamed in fear, but she was stupid enough to dart towards her comrade instead of towards cover, and Merrin's second arrow lodged in her chest. It was a clean shot, and the woman's death was quick; Merrin waited to make sure the scream hadn't attracted any more bandits, and then stepped out of the shadows and walked up to the bodies. The woman had been an archer, and Merrin took the arrows out of her quiver and transferred them to her own before she continued onward, not bothering with the chest they'd been guarding.
She descended into a network of tunnels that were labyrinthine and crumbling. The ancient Nords had preferred circular tunnels, made of stone and full of elaborate carvings; the tunnels she walked through now were ruined and full of rubble, breaking apart after thousands of years, with moss and ferns covering the floor and a network of tree roots climbing the walls. She had to watch her step carefully to make sure she didn't trip, and even though she hadn't reached the crypts yet, her ears were strained for the sounds of approaching draugr.
It was as she was walking past yet another lit brazier and creeping down a worn stone staircase that she heard a human's muttered curse.
As she ducked especially low, Merrin could see that there was another bandit standing in the room at the bottom of the stairs; he was standing in front of a lever that presumably opened a gated doorway, and staring to his left at a trio of stone pillars. They were pretty common in the Nordic Barrows; the idea was that if you turned the pillars in the correct combination, the lever would open the door, no problem. But from the sound of this bandit's muttering, he was finished trying to figure it out.
'Oh, piss on it!' And he reached out and pulled the lever.
Merrin winced, but there was nothing she could do. In an instant, what must have been twenty poisoned darts came shooting from holes in the walls in all directions, and most of them found the bandit's flesh. He howled in astonished pain, and in a second or two he had staggered, hands scrabbling against his skin, and fallen flat on his back. His legs and arms were twitching wildly, and foam started bubbling from his mouth.
He died with a terrible rasping gurgle, and then he was still on the cold stone floor.
Nausea and pity both bit at her—bandit or no, it was an awful way to die, and her chest was tight when she finished descending the staircase and walked up to his pale corpse. His eyes were wide open and bulging, and she knelt down to close them before she looked at the pillars.
She'd solved this kind of puzzle several times before, and it didn't take her long to work out the combination. She turned the pillars so that they presented two snakes and then a whale, and then she stepped over the bandit's body and pulled the lever again herself.
She got a much different response than the dead man beside her; the metal gate blocking the passageway came shooting up and out of her way, locking in place so that she could pass through.
Beyond that door, the Barrow started looking much more untouched. Thicker and thicker cobwebs came sweeping across the ceiling, and only the occasional brazier was lit, making it almost impossible to see. If she strained her eyes, Merrin could make out a single set of footsteps disturbing the thick layer of dust on the floor.
Still she didn't hear any draugr, but her ears were straining to catch the smallest sound; if there was any way she could avoid getting snuck up on, she was going to do it.
She'd been inching her way through the darkness for several minutes when natural light started sifting through it, and she noticed then that the walls, floors, and ceilings around her were entirely coated in spiderwebs. Merrin grimaced; she had a pretty good idea of what was ahead.
The sudden sound of someone frantically shouting for help had her jumping a foot in the air.
'Help, help! Is anybody there? Horknir! Bjorn, Solin! Somebody, help!'
She dashed around the corner ahead, and in the next room she found the source of the crying pleas.
At the far end of a long room covered entirely in webs, a Dunmer bandit was thrashing around, hopelessly caught up in a thick layer of spider's webbing that covered the room's other exit.
A jagged hole in the ceiling here was the source of the natural light she'd been following, and in the bright light she could see the man's expression of relief; he stopped his thrashing, and called out to her.
'Hey, you! Oh, thank goodness you're here! Please, come and help me, I can't move!'
It looked as if he'd gotten stuck trying to leap through the webs in the doorway. Warily, she took another step towards him.
'How did you end up stuck like that?'
'There's no time for questions like that,' he insisted. 'You have to hurry, before it comes back!'
She'd opened her mouth to ask what 'it' was, but before she'd made a sound, she got her answer; through the hole in the ceiling came crawling a Frostbite spider that dwarfed the ones she'd had to kill with Hadvar.
The Dunmer went pale as the spider descended, his dark eyes bulging as he started to gibber. Then his gibbering turned to shrieking, and he started screaming hysterically as he thrashed in the web, begging her not to let it get him.
He was screaming for nothing—the spider wasn't interested in him. Immediately it scuttled straight for her, mouth foaming and mandibles clacking, and it covered the distance between them almost instantly.
Oh, shi— Merrin tossed her bow away somewhere to the side and ripped her sword out of its sheath, bringing it up just in time as the spider lunged at her. What would've been a punishing bite got countered when she managed to force her blade between its foamy mandibles, but the spider was easily bigger than she was, and it had the upper hand in weight and strength. She stumbled backwards, nearly falling, and the erratic movement was the only thing that saved her from catching a sudden spray of green poison directly to the face.
'Kill it, kill it, for Azura's sake woman, kill it,' the Dunmer bandit screamed from up ahead.
She ignored him—she had to, if she was going to win this fight. When she'd stumbled, she'd noticed that the spider was missing its front left leg, and now an idea was forming quickly in her head.
Keeping her knees bent, she sliced out in an arc with her sword, aiming for the front right leg, and the steel of her blade swept clean through the spider's exoskeleton with a disgusting crunch. The severed leg fell to the floor with a thud, and the spider hissed like a tea kettle as it bobbed down and forward, trying to adjust.
Now was her chance.
With a mighty yell, she launched herself at the spider, leaping into the air before she could actually hit it and managing to connect chest-first with what would've been its shoulder. It was a struggle to hang on to her blade, and the spider shrieked and started trying to shake her off, but Merrin was stubborn and wouldn't be dislodged; she grabbed a fistful of its bristling brown body hair, and when her foot found purchase against another spindly leg, she used all the strength she could muster to boost herself onto its back.
The spider started bucking and rearing like a horse, and she almost fell a handful of times as she shimmied painstakingly towards the giant monster's head, but she finally managed to get there, and locked her knees around its narrower neck. She was lucky that the spider hadn't thought to climb a wall to escape—if it had, she probably would've broken her neck.
Finally in position, Merrin gripped the hilt of her sword with both hands, and brought it down with a triumphant yell directly through the top of the spider's head.
The creature let out a terrible shriek and blue blood started pooling around her sword, but she could tell in a second that something was wrong; it staggered around, but didn't die like she'd expected. She cursed herself for her stupidity—she must not have actually reached the brain.
The spider was enraged now, and it gave a mighty heave that she couldn't compete with—jamming her sword through its hard carapace had wrenched both of her arms, and it was all she could do to take her sword with her as she tumbled off the spider's back and landed on the stone floor below with a thud.
The fall had knocked the wind right out of her, and she struggled to take a breath as the spider whirled around. It was in a frenzy, poison dripping from its mouth, and it gave another scream as its many eyes locked onto her. It surged forward, and Merrin did the only thing she could do—she lifted her sword.
Her blade came thrusting up just as the spider's hungry mouth came surging down, and this accident of timing achieved what Merrin's plan hadn't; the steel of the blade stabbed into the spider's maw, its own weight and the angle of the blade causing it to carry through, all the way to the brain behind.
It gave one more scream, and then the spider slumped forward, dead, the change in positioning nearly breaking Merrin's arm, and the weight of its body pinning her to the floor.
The Dunmer started screaming triumphantly in front of her, but she had no time to celebrate; she had a serious problem.
When the spider had run itself through with her sword, her arm had been dragged deep into its maw, tearing her skin, and now acidic blood and poison alike were both seeping into her various wounds. She was officially poisoned.
'Hey! You won! Are you still alive in there?'
Merrin only groaned in response. This poison wouldn't take long to spread; she could already feel the chill gripping her body. If it fogged her brain, she didn't have a chance. She let go of her sword and withdrew her arm, stifling her moans of pain as every cut and tear were newly aggravated. Cradling the wounded arm against her chest, she started feeling around with the other for a way to escape.
By the time she found a small opening between two crumpled legs, her breathing was seriously labored. She twisted her body into a painful, unnatural position, and laboriously scooted inch by inch until her head and chest were freed. With her knapsack on, she barely fit; she had to kick with all her strength to push herself the rest of the way through. When she finally wrenched herself from under the spider's heavy body, she laid limp against the cold stones, her face bathed in slanted sunlight, and didn't move at all.
She didn't know how much time passed, then. It was the Dunmer man who jarred her back to her senses.
'Hey, Nord! Wake up! You can't just let the poison take you.' His voice was loud, cajoling, and full of fear. 'If you die, then who will get me out of here?'
His motives were selfish, but his message hit home—she had no intention of dying in this crumbling ruin.
Feeling like her muscles were made of rope, Merrin forced herself onto her side, and took a second to look at her injury. Her right arm was a total mess; long, deep scratches were full of sticky black blood that the poison had quickly coagulated, and pus that was a nauseating shade of green was already oozing from the centres of the wounds. Her skin itself had gone an ashy sort of purple, and her veins were corded starkly against the surface.
She sucked in a sharp breath, and shoved down the urge to either scream or vomit. Determination stirred back to life as she clamped her good hand painfully around her forearm.
She opened her channel of restorative magic, and the cobwebby room was bathed in golden light as she started leeching the poison from her body and knitting shut her torn up flesh.
It was slow going and difficult work; she'd almost been too late when she started, and the effects of the poison had exhausted her. The level of improvement she saw was just enough to keep her going, and it took several minutes of determined casting to achieve what she could normally do in moments.
But in the end, she did achieve her goal: with the help of the magic coursing through her, her arm at last returned to normal, the skin smooth and unblemished, and the poison burned out and fizzled in her veins. Her vision had gradually cleared as she'd worked, and after long moments, her breathing slowed.
For at least a minute, she just laid there, gingerly testing how she felt. It had been a long time since she'd been poisoned, and never this badly. She wanted to make sure she'd actually recovered.
And the reality was that she was still exhausted; if she was going to finish the job she'd come here to do, she was going to have to perk herself up.
Slowly and stiffly, she finally sat up. The Dunmer started clamoring for her attention the second he saw her moving again, but she only shook her head at him.
'Give me a minute.'
She pulled her pack from her shoulders and opened it up, rifling inside until she found what she wanted, and then withdrew from the bag with a green bottle clutched in her fist. She uncorked the stamina potion with her teeth, and then belted back the bitter, syrupy liquid.
She drank the whole thing, and as she did, much-needed strength and energy came flowing back into her body. She flexed her fingers and took a deep breath, rolling her shoulders and shaking her head. She tossed the empty bottle back into her bag and pulled herself steadily to her feet, finally feeling normal again.
She re-shouldered her pack and then walked across the room. She retrieved her bow from where she'd thrown it, satisfied with its apparently unharmed condition. Then she looked determinedly at the corpse of the spider.
It took some finessing, but after a minute she'd managed to lift the spider's head with an old leg bone from one of its previous kills. She could see the hilt of her sword buried there, glinting in the sunlight, and she reached gingerly into its ruined mouth to yank the blade free of the steaming maw. She smiled to herself with satisfaction, and wiped the mess of blood and poison off on some nearby ferns. She took her time re-sheathing her blade, and then she gave her armor a once over.
Only then did she look up, and meet the bandit's eyes.
The bandit had been eager to see himself out of that webbing, and it made him generous with his information. Immediately, he'd introduced himself as Arvel, and thanked her profusely for saving him. Then he'd begged her once again to hurry up and free him, before anything else came crawling along.
When she'd hesitated, Arvel had been quick to offer her a deal; if she cut him loose, he'd be happy to take her with him through the rest of the Barrow, and when they reached the Hall of Stories, he would split the treasure with her.
She'd asked him how he planned on getting inside, not expecting him to have an answer. But the Dunmer had surprised her.
'I have a key, a golden claw. And I know how it works! The claw, the markings, the door in the Hall of Stories—I know how they all fit together! Help me down and I'll show you. You won't believe the riches that the Nords stashed in there.'
The golden claw. As she'd stood there in front of him, the pieces had clicked together. These were the very bandits she'd been hired to look for; the bandits that had broken into Valerius' shop. Lucan hadn't known that the claw really was a key to an ancient Barrow, and by sheer coincidence, it happened to be the very Barrow that she needed to get into.
Internally, she'd made note of this stroke of fortune, amidst all the bad luck she'd been having; it looked like she wouldn't be needing to make a dummy key after all.
She hadn't let on that she knew of his crimes. As she'd cut him loose, Arvel had crowed in triumph, thanking her warmly again and again. His dark eyes entreated her, and his expression was trustworthy—jovial, even. But Merrin wasn't fooled. He was telling her that the two of them could be allies, but he was a looter and a thief—it was only a matter of time until he turned on her. It didn't escape her notice that he asked no questions about how she'd got there, and he didn't once ask about any of his friends.
In the end, she'd decided that this suited her fine; two able bodies would make it through the draugr's crypts more easily than she could alone, and when the time came that she had to fight, she was confident she would win. And so she'd feigned ignorance, and accepted his offer, asking him to lead the way.
She'd waited for draugr in vain up until then, but in no time at all, they were entering the actual crypts.
It hadn't been long before they'd encountered what Merrin had been dreading most; they were descending a crumbling staircase when they heard a menacing growl.
They had only the light of two torches to guide their steps, but it was easy to see the piercing blue of glowing eyes cutting through the darkness. The draugr shuffled towards them both, its withered body shambling on broken feet. Its jaw was unhinged, and its face was crusted in dried blood—it had obviously encountered something else, recently. It growled and cursed as it raised its ancient axe, its guttural voice speaking in a tongue she couldn't understand.
The draugr were dead, and it made them slow; as it had approached, she had clamped viciously down on her fear, and forced herself to jump into action. She had lunged towards the draugr with a whooping yell, and had severed its head from its emaciated shoulders with a single hard stroke of her blade.
Arvel had been slower on the uptake, and he stared at her open-mouthed as she whirled around to face him, eyes alight and teeth bared.
'Mephala's tits! You really do know what you're doing. Let's hope we don't run into any more, eh?'
But it had been a ridiculous hope, one she didn't even bother sharing. As they plunged into the following rooms with their torches held high and their muscles taut, more of the cursed undead sought them out; papery skin stretched over their ancient bones as they staggered towards them with their weapons raised, and neither of them dared to relax for a moment.
They passed through several different rooms, Merrin careful to stay behind him—through crumbling hallways that were mostly collapsed, up a ruined staircase into a room with a waterfall, where draugr wandered around mindlessly and attacked them as soon as they drew near. They scurried through a long, dark crevice with an ice cold river rushing around their ankles, and twice Merrin took advantage of corridors with swinging axe traps, darting between the slicing blades and luring the much slower draugrs chasing her to a permanent death.
It was harrowing work. Corpses you thought were actually dead would suddenly try to grab you as you passed, skeletal claw hands groping wildly after you as they dragged themselves from their tombs to fight—once, Arvel narrowly avoided a sword through the ribs when a draugr took him by surprise.
She couldn't let her guard down next to Arvel, either; her fights were made harder by keeping an eye on him, making sure he didn't take advantage of her distraction. And whenever they fought in a larger skirmish, she made sure to keep him ahead of her, in case he got the idea to try and shove her into a draugr's waiting arms.
She wondered when they'd ever make it to the Sanctum; long after the groups of draugr had thinned, they continued to wind their way through endless tunnels. They were old and crumbling, some no better than oversized rabbit warrens, and sometimes they opened up into earthen caverns, with coursing rivers rushing beside them and clusters of glowing mushrooms climbing the rocky walls.
In the spaces between fighting, Arvel had taken to grandstanding loudly, telling her about what kinds of treasures they'd find beyond the Hall of Stories. She didn't point out that he had no way of knowing the things he claimed; it really didn't matter enough. He didn't watch well enough where he was going, and at one point he ran through the shallow water they'd been following and barely managed to pull up short before he plummeted over the edge of a sudden cavern. The river had come to a waterfall, and the sharp rocks at the bottom of the swirling stone cauldron left no doubt about the fate of anyone unlucky enough to fall.
'Careful,' she said tonelessly. 'Watch where you're going, or you won't make it to the Hall.'
They took a roundabout path spiralling downward instead, taking out a lone draugr on it's shuffling patrol, before they crossed a natural earthen bridge with the waters swirling and churning just below. The bandit beside her would've had a fair chance of drowning her if he'd shoved her into the seething current, but he never tried, and she gritted her teeth as her shoulder blades itched in anticipation—what was he waiting for?
She had no choice but to keep wondering. They'd scrambled up a steep dirt incline and through another hole in the wall, and came upon a draugr armed with an ancient battle axe, standing at the ready, guarding a set of wood and wrought-iron double doors. Arvel was excited to see them, thinking they led to the Hall of Stories, but after they'd cut the draugr down and lifted the bar on the heavy doors, it was obvious to her that such wasn't the case.
If she had to guess, she'd say they'd entered the first Sanctum; this section of the Barrow was much more impressive, with sweeping grand ceilings and arching bridges and long staircases with carved balustrades. Dusty metal stands holding old empty soul gems started flanking their paths, and Arvel learned the hard way that to knock one over was to draw unwanted attention.
There wasn't much time for talking or brooding—draugr were gathered here in much greater numbers, and she'd taken to setting her torch on the ground and using her bow instead, to try and thin the numbers from afar.
Just when Arvel was starting to suggest in an uneasy voice that maybe they'd taken a wrong turn somewhere, they came across a room so badly destroyed that it had obviously suffered a cave in at some point. He thought that they should turn around, but when Merrin lifted her torch high behind him to illuminate the room, they saw another set of impressive double doors, and he quickly changed his mind. They clambered over large chunks of fallen stone and pushed open the great double doors, and there, at last, was the Hall of Stories.
They both hurried inside, Arvel whooping as quietly as he could, and she immediately closed the heavy doors behind them. Arvel lit the cold and dusty braziers with the fire from his torch, exclaiming as he went, and cast flickering orange light over the long and silent hall. It stretched ahead of her, the puzzle door waiting at the end barely visible in the dim light of the fires.
She'd only been in one other Hall of Stories, and as she walked, she admired. The walls were covered in ancient Nordic carvings that had once depicted great battles and deeds, and she thought she could make out pictures of several of the Divines. But so ancient was the Barrow and so eroded were the walls that large sections were now entirely meaningless.
He didn't move to make his inevitable betrayal until they'd reached the massive puzzle door. Merrin sensed the subtle change in the air—noted his shifting stance. She could practically hear the gears turning in his head; no more draugr meant that their usefulness to one another had come to an end. She turned to face him, and for a second they were both utterly quiet. Then Arvel slicked an especially charming smile over his face, and dug something out of his pack. 'Here,' he said, and when he extended his hand towards her, the golden claw was resting in it.
'The key to the door? What about it?' Merrin was careful to keep her voice neutral.
His smile widened. 'I wouldn't have made it this far without you. I think it's only fair that you be the one to open the door.' He chuckled, and his expression was the picture of humility. Merrin's stomach muscles bunched.
So he's either hoping some trap in the door will kill me, or he's planning on doing it himself while my back is turned.
It turned out to be her second guess; she'd taken the claw from his outstretched hand and had just started working to turn the first wheel when her straining ears picked up the barely perceptible sound of something sliding from a leather sheath.
She'd been ready for him, every muscle tight with anticipation, and she was quick enough when she dodged to the side so that his intended stab was only a slice; his dagger slashed into the armor at her side instead of the muscles of her back, and his eyes were alight with surprised terror when she whirled around to face him.
She didn't waste time or energy; she grabbed his wrist and slammed the hand holding the dagger into the rock wall. He yowled with pain and dropped the knife, and then she took him by the other shoulder and slammed his face into the wall, instead. He staggered away, spluttering, and while he was disoriented, she stooped and grabbed the dagger he'd dropped. He saw her coming and tried to fight her off, but the adrenaline surging through her gave her the upper hand, and after a brief struggle she plunged his own dagger deep into his throat.
She shoved him away from her as his hands came up to the wound in his neck, and his dark eyes bulged in horror and surprise. Killing people had never gotten easier for her, and there was almost as much remorse as anger in her eyes as she stood there and watched him die.
When all was silent again, she stood there, trembling. She'd expected his attack—that didn't mean she'd wanted it.
'You fucking bastard,' she whispered to Arvel's body. 'Why did you have to do it?'
Then she closed her eyes, and tried to force her body to calm down.
After a minute of even breathing, she felt calm enough to turn around, and examine the door behind her. She knew that the combination to the door would be on the back of the claw; when she flipped it around in her hand she saw a bear, a moth, and an owl carved there.
She could barely reach the highest ring even despite her height, and it took her a minute to turn the heavy stone wheel until it displayed a carving of a bear. The other two rings went much more quickly, and in another minute she was shoving the talons of the golden claw into the lock, and twisting.
The grinding of the massive stone door coming down attracted the attention of several draugr at once, and without the bandit's help, they were all her problem. She had to fight extra hard to take them all down, and not get maimed in the process; by the time she watched the light from the last draugr's eyes flicker out as it crumpled, she was breathing hard, and had bruises blooming.
She squared her shoulders determinedly, and marched into the inner Sanctum.
What Merrin saw when she cleared the dusty entrance took her breath away.
She'd walked into a massive cavern. Daylight streamed through crumbling holes in the soaring stone ceiling, and it made her torch unnecessary, providing enough light for her to see by. The sound of rushing water was overwhelming; waterfalls fell in a cascade around the room, coming straight from the stony walls, and a river rushed by under an arching footbridge. The entire place felt ancient and untouched, but in some ways it wasn't; as she stood there gaping, a colony of bats suddenly flew past her, shrieking at her intrusion as they settled higher up in the lofty ceiling.
She could see a raised platform at the top of a staircase, with a chest and a sarcophagus just sitting there. If the Dragonstone was in the Sanctum, that platform was its most likely hiding place, and she started walking forward to investigate.
That was when she heard the chanting voices.
Startled, she jumped and looked around, certain she'd missed someone else in the Sanctum—but no one was there. She was in the echoing room alone. As she looked around, the voices continued.
They were low, but urgent, keeping a fast rhythm, and they spoke the same language that the draugr had growled. For reasons she couldn't begin to explain, something about them made her want to come forward, deeper into the room.
She gave in to the urge, and as she walked forward, the voices grew slightly louder. All at once, she realized where they seemed to be coming from—a tall, curving, man made wall at the back of the raised platform ahead.
Merrin was inexplicably drawn to that wall, and as she came closer she saw the head of a dragon carved into its stony face, centered high above her. Absently, she acknowledged that this should have made her wary, but she felt no apprehension as the voices guided her forward.
She saw as she drew nearer that there were strange runes carved into the wall; when she was still several paces away, one of the groupings started to glow. It was a chilling, eerie, icy blue, the exact same color as the draugr's eyes, and as soon as it started, the chanting got dramatically louder.
Wait! Internally, Merrin shook herself, and forced herself to stop walking.
An icy cold fear suddenly gripped her as she stood there—what if the glowing symbols were some sort of rune trap? She hadn't come all this way just to get killed by a lousy spell.
She took a step back, not wanting to set it off by being too close.
Instantly, the chanting got exponentially louder—it sounded like there was a group of men standing beside her in the echoey chamber, shouting at the top of their lungs. It didn't stop there; just as the chanting became all she could hear, drowning out every single other noise, a blueish white light came shooting from the glowing rune on the wall, and rushed directly towards her.
She had no time to run, or even to move, and she stared in horror as the light hit her directly in the chest.
The moment it hit her, Merrin went rigid. An energy unlike any she'd ever felt before was coursing through her body, heating her blood, making her vision darken and swim. She was suddenly incredibly dizzy, and she staggered back, catching an old metal stand holding a soul gem and knocking it over with a ringing crash.
She grabbed her forehead and bent over double, each breath a tearing gasp, and for several seconds she couldn't see. Fear shot through her like a bolt of lightning—what the hell was happening to her?!
And then from the darkness that had swallowed her sight, the glowing runes came swimming back to the surface, exactly the way they'd looked on the wall. But as the strange and terrifying energy coursed through her, she could suddenly understand their meaning. They came together to spell a single word.
Force.
As soon as she comprehended the word, the effects of the strange magic started to fade. The chanting quieted, reduced to a whisper, and soon she was standing there, dazed and out of breath, but with her heart rate slowing and her vision restored.
She bit back a fearful moan, and cursed as she trembled where she stood. What on earth had just happened to her? This was magic that she wasn't familiar with, and she was terrified that she'd just been hit with some kind of slow-acting spell that would sicken her, or worse. The seconds ticked by, and Merrin waited anxiously for any negative effect from whatever had hit her. But eventually she had to admit that she was back to feeling perfectly normal.
She shook herself, calling on her discipline. It was time to get what she came for, and leave.
She'd taken a single step towards the chest on the platform when the lid of the sarcophagus came flying off with a startling crack, hitting the stone steps and shattering. The noise was deafening in the quiet cavern, and Merrin jumped and had to bite back a scream. When she saw a withered and skeletal hand rise up and grip the side of the casket, she cursed again and drew her sword.
The draugr that climbed out of that sarcophagus was not like the others she'd faced in the Barrow. He radiated a terrible kind of energy, and when he looked at her and opened his sagging mouth, it wasn't a harmless growl that came out.
'Fus...RO!'
This draugr could Shout. His words swept out on a wave of solid energy that crashed right into her and knocked her off balance, slamming her into the wall behind her. Her head connected sharply with the rock, and the hit left her winded and dazed, her vision spotting.
The strange comprehension hadn't left her—in the back of her mind, she took note of what he'd said.
Force. Balance.
She was pulled sharply back into focus by the sound of booted feet rushing toward her; the draugr was charging towards her now, a greatsword that still looked wickedly sharp raised high and clutched in his bony hands.
She barely moved out of the way in time. The sound of the draugr's enormous sword hitting the stone wall beside her went ringing through the cavern, and it Shouted another blast of energy at her that she only just managed to avoid as she went leaping out of the way.
It devolved into a dangerous fight for her, in which she didn't have many options. Her sword was useless against the full set of steel armor that the draugr wore, and the combat was too close for her to dare trying her bow. She had to stay constantly on guard to avoid her opponent's punishing blows; one good hit could be enough to finish her, depending on where it landed. And as if that wasn't bad enough, the enemy's sword had been enchanted to deal frost damage—the temperature in the room had dropped several degrees, just from him swinging it around.
Her only advantage was her speed. Centuries of decay had made the draugr stiff, and it was impossible for him to match her pace. He had the deadlier weapon, but she had the superior reflexes, and as she gave him the runaround on the platform, an idea took shape in her head. It was risky, without a doubt. But what other choice did she have?
'Hey, Corpse-Breath! I don't have all day!'
She yelled at the draugr, taunting him as she skirted out of the range of his blade, and then she ran towards the edge of the platform. The staggering corpse snarled and gnashed his teeth, before he chased after her as fast as his withered legs would carry him.
When she got to the top of the crumbling stone staircase, she whirled around and watched him advance on her. The timing had to be just right, or her plan wouldn't work.
Merrin held her ground as he closed the distance, didn't flinch as he raised his sword. She let him get closer than he'd been since the first strike, the one that had almost run her through. And at the very last second, she dodged to the side.
The force of the draugr's wild swing made him stagger as he lost his balance, and he teetered over the edge of the steps as Merrin ducked around him. With a roar, she planted a foot in his back, and kicked him forward with all her strength, sending him toppling down the crooked stone stairs.
From there, the fate of the battle was decided. The draugr had been a formidable opponent, but his armor was useless as he crashed against the stones, and she could hear the snapping and crunching of brittle bones as he went flying down the steps. By the time he came to rest on the cavern floor, he was nothing but a torso and a head, his arms and legs in shattered pieces around him, his greatsword pinned uselessly underneath him.
It was said that the draugr felt no pain, and it was easy then for Merrin to believe the stories; this one glared up at her balefully from the hard stone floor, seeming unperturbed at the loss of his limbs. She had to dodge another Shout as she ran down the steps, and when she raised her sword up over his head, he snapped his jaws and growled at her just as fiercely as he had when he'd first clambered from his tomb to attack her.
She brought the sword down and gave it a twist, and the eyes went dark, the body finally still.
She only took a moment to collect herself, reining in her thundering heartbeat. Then she straightened up and looked around. She kept her sword out just in case, but nothing else came crawling out of the stone to challenge her.
She found the Dragonstone tucked away in the inside of the draugr's sarcophagus, and she wasn't terribly impressed; it was an old stone tablet with its etchings nearly completely eroded, and when she tried to make sense of the writing, she couldn't. She wrapped it in a roll of old linen before she slid it into her pack for safe keeping, and then turned her attention to the ornate wooden and iron chest.
She was much happier with what she found in there—a dagger enchanted to absorb your opponent's stamina, a handful of garnets and amethysts, and several magic scrolls that looked like their wards were still functional, even after all this time. Her financial situation was looking up...she just had to find an interested buyer, after she'd given the Jarl his Dragonstone.
With everything worth taking packed into her rucksack, Merrin turned her attention towards finding the nearest exit. She knew from the one other Sanctum she'd seen that there would likely be an exit nearby.
After a minute of searching, she found what she wanted; she climbed another even longer, steeper staircase, and at the top of that staircase was a hidden lever. When she pulled the handle, a section of rock came rolling away to expose the twisting stone tunnel behind it.
She ran down that tunnel, and when she finally reached the end, warm afternoon sunlight hit her face, and she was greeted once again by the sounds of the forest.
The sun was setting over Riverwood as she pushed through the door to the Trader.
Lucan's eyes lit up when she pulled the claw from her rucksack, and she couldn't help but smile.
'Oh, Mara's Mercy, you actually did it! You got our claw back,' he crowed, rounding the counter to meet her.
'Those bandits won't be bothering you again,' she promised.
'I just can't believe it,' he laughed, eagerly taking the claw from her and running his hands over it reverently. 'I'm going to put this back where it belongs.'
The golden claw got place of pride on the Trader's wooden counter, and he stood there satisfied, hands on hips, just staring for several moments. Then he turned to her, smiling, and shook his head.
'Oh, Camilla will be so happy to see our claw returned. Just wait until that girl gets home. Now,' he held up a finger. 'About your reward. Hang on just a second!'
He went running upstairs, and returned a minute later, holding a bag of septims.
'I'm a man of my word,' he said matter-of-factly. And then placed the entire bag of coin in her hand.
Merrin stifled a sigh of relief, and her face split into a grin; with money like this, she could afford food, lodging, and repairs, and could figure out what she should do next. Combined with her reward from the Jarl and whatever she could get for the gems and scrolls, it would probably be enough to ride the ferry back to Morrowind.
'Thank you, friend,' Lucan said heartily. 'Thank you so much. It's good to know there are still reliable people kicking around in this province.'
What do you think of my story so far? I appreciate reviews and criticism! I'm also always looking to meet new fellow nerds! Come to twitter and find my account TheSamanthaborn to say hello!