Dragonborn Ascendant (7)

A/N: Once again, my thanks to everyone supporting me, and if you want a shout out when this chapter 5 is posted on QQ, leave a comment or send me a message.

-x-X-x-

We left before dawn on the following day, with Messer and Secunda illuminating our path with their ethereal light, an aurora borealis and a million stars painting the night sky in a breathtaking view. It was the coldest moment of the day, but also the quietest where we could walk almost unimpeded, so we stalked through the night, making great progress to Bleak Falls Barrow now that the mist was gone and a path was open, faintly illuminated by the lights of the moons and the stars. There were no sentries guarding the massive stairs nor any guards around the massive pillars that arched up above as if to sustain a titanic roof; ready to ambush us as we entered the dungeon.

Inside the great hall there were gaps on the walls where the ceiling had collapsed on itself, by which moonlight shone through and a cold wind filtered inside, carrying with it snowflakes that danced and glistened with silver light. It was quiet, eerily so, and we had to walk around slowly, careful to not make any overt noise by accidentally tripping over any of the rubble and debris littered around. On the other end of the hall we found a small campsite, together with a chest that we looted to find only a few dozen coins, none of them gold even. The fire was cold.

“Do we go deeper?” Aela asked, sharing a look with me that mirrored the frown on my own face.

“We came here for the Dragonstone, Aela,” I told the redhead. “I can’t go back without it.” If I do, then Mirmulnir won’t attack, and if there isn’t a dragon attack then the Greybeards won’t call for the Dovahkiin, and that would be… problematic to say the least. “Stay close and keep an eye out for any traps or hidden enemies.” I asked, casting a candlelight spell to illuminate our path without a need to hold a torch.

The first flight of stairs saw us descending deeper into the mountain, going through corridors and hallways that had clearly been left unattended for millennia, entire eras even, where rubble and debris seemed to cluster around immense cobwebs. Vines and roots were spread all around, crawling up the walls and even the ceiling, a tangling, living carpet sprawling through the ground where sometimes there were gaps that showed the moss covered stone tiles that paved the corridors.

As we delved deeper and deeper, the air seemed to become more stale and cold, and the shadows stretched, shying away from the light. We found torches littered around, and two braziers that had been lit and which had only embers now left to tell. Bodies of skeevers also in our way, put to the side as someone or a group of people clearly traversed the place just like we were doing. Then, we found a room with a lever.

There were three bodies on the ground, looking ghostly white and with black veins faintly highlighted on their skins.

“Poison,” Aela muttered, sniffing the air around. “Idiots must have gotten the wrong combination.” She said, pointing to three stelae with animals carved on each of their three faces.

“How do you figure?” I asked. It was a dumb question, we both knew it, but it left me curious nonetheless.

Aela’s answer did not disappoint.

“I’m not an expert,” she started saying, “but I know enough about the past of my people and the Ancient Nords. The traps inside weren’t made to keep someone from invading the tomb and robbing it. No,” she shook her head. “That’s why the draugr are inside. The traps are there so they can’t get out.”

I hummed, striking my chin and the forming goatee. “Didn’t know you knew anything outside of hunting,” I muttered. “I’m actually surprised.”

She shot me a dirty look in response, but I was immensely satisfied on seeing her bit back a retort in return. It was no secret that I was by far the smartest person there was in the Jorrvaskr, challenging me in a contest of knowledge was a fool’s errand and she knew it.

So the redhead huffed instead, crossing her arms and turning around to inspect the other side of the room.

Arranging the stelae in the correct order didn’t take long. It was a simple combination of snake, snake and whale, and the only problem - if it could even be called that - was that turning any of the stones set the other two to rotate together, which made getting the right figures quite annoying but ultimately only a time consuming thing.

The next set of chambers, connected to each other through a pit on the ground with a wooden spiral stair making a path; were equally as dark and devoid of life as the other areas had been, although, I did find a scroll with a fast activating spell of fireball written in it left on a stone table.

And then there were spider webs. Thick and hard cobwebs. And on top of that, there was also a slimy wet chittering in the air - albeit a singular one, thankfully - that could only indicate one thing.

“Fucking frostbite spiders,” I cursed quietly under my breath. Aela guffawed behind me, but clearly did not disagree because fuck giant spiders the size of a horse.

I had only one thing to deal with these unholy creatures.

“Burn!” I yelled, dousing the spider with flames as Aela shot arrows at it from a distance. “Burn, you fucking demon! Burn!”

The infernal screeches of it dying were music to my ears.

“DIE!” I cackled like a raving maniac.

I did not like giant horse sized spiders.

“What was that?” Aela asked, eyeing me warily from the other side of the room as I poked the charred corpse of the giant arachnid with my sword.

There was no reaction from it, not even a single twitch.

Good, I thought, inwardly satisfied with myself. Burned to a crisp.

“What was what?” I asked in return, nodding, and she gave me this strange look. I had the faintest impression she was pondering leaving me or putting an arrow through my head. I shook my head. “Well, at least we know what happened with the other bandits.”

There were five more corpses in the room, four of them completely enveloped by webs wrapped around them like cocoons of some sort, and the last one was being eaten by the spider itself when we found it, face dissolved and half eaten with gastric juices. It made me shiver.

“Look here, Magnus,” Aela called, standing on a wall covered with webs, she had a dagger on her hand, and a mummy cut open next to her. “There’s our Dark Elf friend. Think he has anything useful?”

“Might as well,” I shrugged, stepping next to the woman. Loot was loot, and it was better with us than with the dead.

“A golden claw,” she hummed, turning to face me. “Do you know what this thing is for?” She asked. “There are a few symbols in it. Animals too. Butterfly, bear and owl?”

“It’s a combination,” I told her, picking the gold piece. And it really was made of solid gold, which was… impressive. There must have been at least two kilograms of it on the claw, and it was carved with such ornate and intricate details it was astounding, probably more worthy as a relic than if I were to melt it down for coins. “The Nords of the Merethic Era, still largely Atmorans, worshipped a pantheon of animals, chief amongst them being the dragons, which, to them, were literal gods walking on earth. These are representations of the things they worshipped. They probably have a meaning behind it, which would make sense to them, but I don’t know what.”

“So… It’s a key?”

“Most likely,” I nodded. “There are some carvings on these nails, see. They must be for a lock of some kind.”

“Right,” she nodded. “Better keep it safe then.” And she tucked the claw inside of a bag.

It was as we moved through corridors and small antechambers that I noticed the change, but it was seeing a lit altar that cued us in on what we were going to see next. Draugr.

The thing about the ancient undead Nords was: while many of them, the slaves and thralls entombed to maintain the megastructures their masters resided in, were dumb and relatively frail, that rule only went until the guards that supervised the workers.

The path opened to a chamber seemingly carved from the mountain itself, sculpted away until there was a hall of sorts, extending for dozens and dozens of metres until there was a split on the path. A stairway leading above, where the roof had collapsed over it, and a path to the left, extending further and further until a small corridor where I could hear faint swishing.

“Careful,” Aela whispered, stopping me before we could awaken any draugr from their slumber. It was hard to say which ones were alive, however ‘alive’ that could be called, and which ones were truly dead. And there were dozens of them just in this room alone. “Remember to put your blade in all of their skulls, even if they appear dead,” she said after I cast muffle on ourselves. And I nodded to her point.

It was better to be safe than sorry when dealing with the undead. Beyond the desecration of the sanctity of life and the subversion of the natural order of the world, there were reasons why Necromancy was a practice often frowned upon and viewed as the arts of dark wizards, the evil and the mad. Truly, it was a wonder how no great necromancer ever managed to become a king of sorts when they could raise endless hordes of inexhaustible warriors. Undead did not tire, did not hunger nor did they thirst, their strength was often reduced from when they had been alive but they in turn possessed an endless drive to see the task they were assigned to done, with the added capacity of continue fighting even after most grievous sort of wounds, like a lost arm or an open chest… I’ll have to deal with Potema before she can be resurrected, I thought. The Wolf Queen was the only necromancer I could name that was immensely powerful, and although her quest was rather lacklustre, the implications it raised about her power were… worrisome.

Making sure that the slumbering draugr would stay sleeping, permanently this time, was a time consuming and even risky endeavour I was comfortable with doing.

Thankfully, after clearing that hall and looting all the gold we could find - a hefty sum of twenty coins - and moving to the next room after bypassing a trap of pendulum axes swinging from one side to another in a tight corridor; the draugr we encountered, despite being awake were still in too much of a small number and relatively weak to threaten overwhelming me. We got rid of them and all the others in the path I soon came to realise was not the 'proper' way to navigate the tomb. The tight passages, the numerous albeit weak guards… This was the servant's route to walk through the tombs without being heard or seen by their masters.

It painted a much more clear image in my mind as to why this dungeon diving went successful so far.

And of course, that was when things had to change.

We entered a room, a great hall with an upper section that could be accessed through a stone bridge in the middle of the room. There was oil spread on the floor and a dozen sarcophagi spread around where my eyes could see. It was different from what I remembered, but I knew this was one of the last rooms before the boss chamber.

So this would be where his personal guard rests.

"I don't like this place," Aela muttered, stalking in front of me with light steps and quick feet.

"Me neither," I whispered, eyes trained carefully on the sarcophagus on our left. I was sure a draugr would be coming out of it. "It's too quiet."

So quiet that when the arrow flew we could both hear it sailing through the air, whistling as it twirled before bouncing against my chest armour.

“Shit!” I yelled, startled ducking away to try and find cover just as another arrow flew up above my head.

“The second floor!” Aela shouted, stepping from behind the wall she had been hiding to fire against the draugr. Her arrow flew straight, hitting against the undead’s unprotected stomach, but it was only staggered for a heartbeat, actually taking a step back as it stumbled for a moment before regaining its footing.

Undead were annoying.

The stone lids of the sarcophagi unlatched then, many of them falling to the ground with a thunderous noise, heavy thuds as if the weight of a full grown man hit against the stone floor at once. I have to bite back a curse, swirling around just in time to see a skeletal hand finding purchase on the sarcophagus right next to us.

“The draugr are awake!” I shouted to the redhead who definitely cursed, hissing as another arrow flew from her bow with a mighty twang.

I moved quickly then. Eliminating the draugrs was now a top priority that had to be done as quickly as possible before the warriors could overwhelm us.

Thankfully, the one that rested next to our entrance point despite being the closest was the one who would have to do the most work to get into a fighting position, which let me drive my sword through its neck before it fell in a boneless heap.

I knew, however, that the others would not be so easy.

An arrow flew, falling short of my feet and almost bouncing back up making me flinch. There was at least another archer up there, and I would also have to deal with at least five more armed and fully armoured draugr.

“Joy.” I muttered darkly, pondering between using some fire spell now or saving my magicka to fight the actual boss.

“Argh!” Aela cried, falling to the ground as she clutched a dark arrow to her stomach. The snarl on her face was furious, and when she saw me watching she snapped angrily. “What are you watching me for?! I’m not dead, Magnus, so go deal with those bastards!” She growled before notching another arrow to the string of her bow.

The decision was made for me at that moment.

Magicka surged like a well, a stream of pure and unadulterated energy, lumping at my hand. Of the Destruction tree, shock spells were the ones I favoured the most, though I was certainly no slouch at fire and ice ones either. I was sure I would soon be able to start mixing elements together, as soon as I figured out how to do it, something that I would either do it myself or learn at the College of Winterhold, I hoped. So, with the ball of magicka trapped in my hand, all it took me was a conscious effort of will to realise the conversion of magicka before a gout of flames expelled from my hand.

Fire raged, spewing fiercely in a controlled manner, a bright light that suddenly turned the entire room alight. The fire hissed as the draugr enveloped by it shrieked, shrill cries piercing my ears and just making me shiver and my spine to crawl as the ancient Nord warriors had their bodies consumed and being finally liberated from their eternal servitude.

When the screaming stopped I felt my magicka pool being at a bit over half of its capacity, and I rushed upstairs, picking up my sword to deal with the final two draugr. One of them even managed to send an arrow through my armour, piercing next to my shoulder, but the flinch that made me do didn’t stop me from putting my sword through its head before it could ditch the bow and pick the war axe hanging by its side.

The other one was another matter however, and I only managed to dodge the swing that could have possibly decapitated me through a lucky step back before I was inside the undead’s guard. The follow up attack didn’t have any power behind it, and despite biting against the metal plate of my armour, it didn’t get anything out of me but a grunt. On the other hand, through that I was able to catch the draugr’s arm and lock it in place before pushing with my own sword, blade piercing the undead through below the chin up to its brain.

As soon as it fell lifless on the ground I was retracing my steps down, rushing to kneel next to Aela, the red haired huntress grimacing fiercely at her own wound.

“Don’t know why you brought me if you can do all of this on your own,” she hissed, but I placed a firm hand on her shoulder and forced her to look at me. She still tried to avert her gaze then, but I didn’t let her too.

“Getting to here almost without injury was luck,” I told her, brown eyes staring pointedly at her green ones, before dipping down, a hand slipping to pry her hands open. Taking a look at her wound almost made me wince. Stomach wounds were always nasty, and if you didn’t die from the wound itself then you would from infection or some other problem due to the damage caused to your intestines and all that entailed. “You are lucky I’m a mage,” I told her. “And that I bring potions with me. You’d be done for if it wasn’t for that.”

“You don’t expect me to-” I pulled the arrow. Her eyes widened, bulging as her mouth opened and she gasped, gaping like a fish. “SON OF A CUNT!” She yelled before the arrow was finally taken from the wound.

When I started to circulate my magicka with another healing spell, she whimpered, keeling over and trying to hide her face from me. “It’s alright,” I whispered, “It’s alright. The arrow is out, you’ll be fine.”

“Fuck you, Magnus,” she managed to bite out. “Fuck you.”

“Yes, yes, I you are welcome,” I sighed, procuring a red vial from my pouch before offering a few sips of the viscous liquid for her to drink. The grimace over her face immediately lessened as the healing potion did its job and started to mend her body. I would probably have to give her a cure disease potion and maybe some antibiotics just in case.

Then, picking the woman in a bridal carry, I took her to a place where the smell wasn’t so foul so she could recuperate from her exhaustion, and for me to take a few winks of sleep.

-x-X-x-

Chapter 9 will be the last chapter of exploring Bleak Falls, and then after that we will have a small interlude, where I'll be taking a small break from 27th to September 2nd