Watching Aela geek out over The Hall of Stories had been pretty cool, and honestly crossed the line into funny. It was frankly delightful, the way that she would go from being Aela the Huntress -the cool, calm, and collected killer of man and beast and shuffling undead- to Lara Croft, history nerd and haunter of libraries. Of course, Lara Croft had been pretty damn deadly on her own, which was probably why this fantasy world of mine had substituted her for Aela. Or whatever it was that had happened. I still had no idea if she, or anyone else, was simply a face or the actual person, or even the actual person but with some sort of magically-induced memory loss.
Anyway, the way that she’d pieced it all together had been pretty great, and she’d been both adorable and sexy as hell when she was talking about it. Almost sexy enough to make me forget that I had no idea what was going to be on the other side, only that it was going to be extraordinarily dangerous.
Could be a Deathlord. Could be a lesser Dragon Priest. Could be something I had no frame of reference for at all, given the way that this world had already shown a willingness to deviate from the source material that I had originally known in some pretty appreciable ways. Something I’d just spent the last couple of hours being reminded about by the layout and architecture of the temple around me.
The barrows in the game had been relatively straightforward affairs, with predictable enemies and predictable rewards, but I was starting to suspect that the barrows in this world were going to be considerably more complex, and dangerous. The game had clearly made things easier, and shorter, for the same of playability, but in a real world it would likely end up being anything but.
So while I let Aela have her moment, while I admired she and Lydia both with some subtlety, I slowly pulled the golden claw free of a hip pouch and made my way up to the final door.
"With your strength and valor, you have passed your trials and proved yourself worthy in the eyes of Struhn. With grace and dignity have you comported yourself as a child of the gods and found favor in the eyes of Dibella. With your dedication and your studies, you have proved yourself worthy of Jhunal's gifts. Let them open the path before you." I intoned rather dramatically, running my fingers over the totemic symbol on the largest ring before pressing on in experimentally. With a soft grinding of stone on stone, the ring smoothly turned like a wheel, and I moved on to the next in the sequence.
Moments later, I was pulling the golden claw away from the keyholes as the door shuddered and began to sink down into the ground at my feet, slowly revealing the innermost sanctum of the temple-tomb of Bleak Falls Barrow. An innermost sanctum that was far larger and more elaborate than the one in the game, which had always -to me- looked partially-finished at best, hastily thrown together at worse. Instead of the mostly-natural cave and rough-hewn dais I was so familiar with, the vast chamber -half a football field in length, perhaps, and half of that in width- we now stood in was high-vaulted and supported by a multitude of massive pillars that bore the same carved aniconistic totems that we’d seen throughout the barrow.
The dais was more impressive as well, multi-tiered and more resembling that which you’d see in major late-game tombs like Ustengrav or Dead Man’s Respite, and just like those places sarcophagi were spread liberally between the layers. Which meant that the boss, whoever and whatever he would turn out to be, wasn’t likely to be alone. Which meant an already-complicated and potentially-deadly situation was now even more dangerous. Although…
“Lydia, can you freeze the sarcophagi shut, then unfreeze them on command? It would let us kill the draugr in sections and at our leisure, rather than having to fight them as a cohesive group.” I asked the platinum-haired frost mage, who frowned thoughtfully at me.
“I can, yes. Ice of that thickness and durability is straightforward enough, and I can maintain the spells on a dozen or more at a time without much strain.” She paused, her ice-blue eyes narrowing as she considered the dais more carefully, her fingers already beginning to glow with the faintest shimmer of frost-blue magicka. “But there will be a moment of weakness when I release them. If you want them unfrozen on command, I’ll have to keep a thread of my will on each one. It’s not demanding, but it does mean my attention will be divided while I’m holding them. If we’re overrun, or if something... unexpected happens, I’ll be slow to respond. And if I have to break the hold to defend myself, I won’t be able to control which ones break. All of them will come loose at once, and we’ll be right back where we started.”
“Understood. Then we’ll position ourselves so you don’t need to be on the front line.” I nodded, already mapping out the chamber in my head. “Skjor, Ralof, with me at the base of the dais. We’ll be the anvil. Hadvar, you stay with Lydia, guard her flank and keep anything from reaching her that slips past us. Aela, find a perch and do what you do best. Prioritize any spellcasters or archers that might show up. Questions, suggestions, comments, concerns?”
“One.” Skjor rumbled, the first word he’d spoken to me in the better part of two days -I was positive at this point that the two of them were just as aware of my vampirism as I was of their own secret natures, likely due to my scent.- as he rolled his shoulders and eyed the dais with his good eye. “If the guardian is what you say it might be, a Deathlord or a Priest, it could use the Voice. If it does…”
“If it does, I’ll engage it at point-blank range while the rest of you support me.”
The words were delivered flatly, but the response that they garnered most certainly wasn’t. As a matter of fact, it seemed that everyone wanted to voice their opinion at once, none of which were particularly supportive of my plan. In point of fact, most of them seemed to think I was entirely insane, even Aela and Skjor, in spite of their knowledge on my true nature.
I was unmoved.
“I’m the best option out of us. Outside of Skjor and Aela, I have the most experience of anyone here, and I well could have more experience than they do.” I continued implacably, not responding to any specific comment, instead settling for drumming my fingers on the hilt of my bastard sword. “Furthermore, and more pertinently, I’m the one who has fought the most inhuman opponents thus far. Unless any of you have also fought and killed multiple dremora in single combat?”
None of them had, of course. Daedric servants of that level were incredibly rare, post-Oblivion, what few summonings happened resulting in the summoned daedra being killed and harvested for spell-casting materials almost immediately. Hell, even the daedra-worshipping Forsworn didn’t have dremora running around in support of them, and their entire religion was performing animal -and occasionally human- sacrifices to gain power and support from the Princes that the dremora serve.
As a result, the silence that fell over our motley crew was rather thick one, tinged with distinct hint of pointed displeasure and no small amount of suspicious doubt, but to my surprise no one challenged my claim. Either Cassandra had gone around telling people about what she’d learned during our little tryst, which I really rather doubted, or they were -for a wonder- believing me. Only tentatively, perhaps, but belief all the same.
I would take what I could get.
“Very well.” Skjor finally grunted, the concession clearly not making him particularly happy, not that he was a ray of sunshine regardless. “But if you fall, the rest of us will be left to contend with whatever it was that killed you. Keep that in mind before you decide to be a hero, Imperial.”
“I have no intention of being a hero, Skjor. Heroes die young and leave behind grieving families and unfinished work. I intend to be a survivor, thank you very much, if only because my sisters would learn how to bring me back so that they could kill me themselves.” I replied dryly, earning a flicker of something that might have been reluctant amusement from the Companion before his face settled back into its usual somewhat-stern expressionlessness. Looking around, I confirmed that no one was going to argue further, before nodding sharply. “Good, positions then. Aela, pick your perch, move as you need. Lydia, start when ready. Gentlemen, weapons free.”
Weapons rasped on sheathes as they obeyed, and I took a deep and steadying breath as crystalline fog started to crawl across the tombs, Lydia’s power creeping across the room around us like the morning frost is so closely resembled. God, I hoped I hadn’t bit off more than I could chew bringing a small group. I’d expected the final room from the game, but I could have easily brought twice as many fighters and we still wouldn’t have been getting in each other’s way.
Far too late to change my course of action now, of course. Even if I were to send one of my companions -Hadvar and/or Ralof, most likely- back to fetch proper reinforcements…well, the time it would take for them to get down the mountain, back to Whiterun, recruit such people, and return would be measured in days. Days during which Mirmulnir might decide that it was time to start his rampage, days during which Alduin might resurrect more of our brothers, days that some other disaster -one that I couldn’t predict- might come to pass. No, we were committed now, and the only thing we could really do was make the best of it that we could.
Hopefully, none of the men and women at my side would lose their lives as a result of my assumptions.
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Skjor wasn’t happy about this entire situation. He saw the need, and he was even willing to acknowledge that the information that Constantine possessed was both incredibly valuable and something only he seemed to hold with any reliability. But allowing the whole of Whiterun Hold to be led about by the nose by a pureblood vampire was beyond galling. No matter how decent this particular pureblood seemed to be, though Skjor was hardly willing to take anything on faith in regards to the man’s true nature. Not yet. They had simply not known him long enough.
Even if Kodlak likely had a point that the Companions themselves were proof that being inhuman, and being affiliated with a Daedric Prince, was not worthy of automatic condemnation. He wasn’t happy about that point, but he respected himself and Kodlak both enough to admit that it was a fair one none-the-less.
But vampires and werewolves were naturally opposed. One held great talent for magic, the other was resistant to it. One relied on speed, the other on power. One was made of subtlety and shadow, the other anything but.
They could barely stand to be within the same Hold as one another, often times and even the most reasonable amongst either species often found themselves driven to violence if they were within so much as a mile or two of the other. Gods, he’d felt it himself when the Imperial had first walked into Dragonsreach, that low-burning growl in the back of his throat, the way his hackles -more metaphorical than literal, when he was in human form- had risen beneath his armor and his teeth nails had ached to lengthen and sharpen. Aela had felt it too, he knew, perhaps even stronger. She had ever been the more primal between the two of them. It had been a testament to Kodlak’s own iron-clad self-control and wisdom that he had seemed unaffected, and had the presence of mind to keep them from doing anything foolish.
So, in the end, Skjor had no choice but to try and take the man’s measure for himself, to witness with his own eyes what sort of person he was, and what batter time than on a mission of such -supposed- vital importance as this? Better still, if the man turned out to be as much a wretched monster as so many other purebloods were, it would be better by far to ambush and kill him far away from any potential innocent victims. Much as some might scoff at the idea, or claim incredulity, the Companions did try to limit collateral damage.
When it truly mattered, at least.
And, thus far, he had to admit -if only to himself, and only with the greatest of grudging reluctance- that Constantine Valerius had not given him cause to draw his blade. Quite the opposite, in fact. The man had been measured in his words, careful with his decisions, and showed every sign of caring more about the lives of those around him than about his own glory or advancement. Even now, putting himself forward to engage what might very well be a Dragon Priest at point-blank range, he had not done so with the swaggering bravado of a man with more ego than intelligence. He had done it with the quiet confidence of one that knew exactly what his own abilities and limits were, and was able to take the measure of the abilities and limits of those around him.
Skjor wasn’t a fool. In spite of how the rest of the world tended to view he and his shield-siblings, in spite of the way the Companions often went out of there way to never reveal the true depths of their intelligence or the breadth of their knowledge, he wasn’t stupid and he wasn’t prone to denying reality.
Whatever else the vampire may or may not be, the man was a soldier and a fighter, one with a mind as sharp as his blade. That was the reason Skjor was willing to follow his instructions in the battle that had begun to rage the moment Lydia’s frost magic had begun to seal the sarcophagi. Sarcophagi that had almost immediately begun to crack open, as the draugr within them sensed the threat the magic -and the party- posed from beyond the grave and rose to defend their tomb.
The first few had died easily as they tried to orient themselves, most cut down before they could even finish exiting their place of burial, and those that had managed to raise their weapons had been struck down by the precise arrows of his little sister before they had ever managed to reach attack range. But the battle had only been growing steadily fiercer in the time since, and as he exchanged blows with a Wight that was still alive more from sheer undead stubbornness than any retained skill on its part, he grimaced at the rippling thunder of The Voice as it rolled across the cavern once again.
Removing his enemy’s head, he chanced a glance to the next tier up, where Constantine and the Scourge Lord the vampire was battling were nothing more than a whirl of enchanted metal and vocalizations. It seemed the man had dodged the latest Shout that the creature had tried to use on him, or simply been immune to it’s effects. Something that he wasn’t sure he believed was possible, but the Voice was a mystery to everyone that didn’t live atop the Throat of the World, so what did he know was possible in regards to its strengths and limitations?
Nothing, that’s what, but what he did know was that it was by far one of the most dangerous draugr that he’d ever seen. It wasn’t the first Scourge Lord he’d seen, but it was the most intact and the best equipped, and he shuddered to think what the ruler of this place would be if that was simply one of it’s guards. A Death Overlord, perhaps. Something he’d only heard of from rumors, or that Aela had mentioned from her books. Nightmares, larger than any mortal man, clad in enchanted ebony and wielding weapons of the same alongside near-unfettered usage of The Voice.
Frankly, if given the choice, he would rather a lesser Dragon Priest. A robe-clad sorcerer, even an undead one in enchanted clothes, would be easier to kill than such an enemy. Especially if he and Aela were to take on their lupine forms and let it’s spells wash across their fur, hopefully to no effect, while their allies cut it to pieces. A choice he was sure that he and his sister would make, if it became necessary. The Circle had no interest in revealing their true natures to the rest of Tamriel, but if it was a choice between maintaining the secret and watching Lydia or any of the others die, well… the niece of the jarl was hardly going to denounce them for saving her life. And the others could be sworn to silence easily enough, or else dealt with in whatever manner Kodlak deemed necessary upon their return. It would be unfortunate, but it had happened before in the past and would doubtlessly happen again in the future, and…
His thoughts were broken by a guttural, warbling growl as another draugr took a swing at his head with the maul that it was carrying. A half-step back, more of rocking his weight onto his heels than anything else, had it go whistling by with two inches to spar, and the draugr staggered to the side -lower jaw nearly torn from it’s skull- as he casually backhanded it across the face with one gauntleted hand. A follow-up blow severed it’s head, a snarl from above had him looking up again, and a much longer series of movements had him out of the way as the Scourge Lord slammed into the ground where he’d been standing a moment before. He hefted his weapon as it struggled to rise, only for the vampire it had been fighting to make a far more controlled landing beside it’s chest, kick it’s helm free from it’s head, and stomp it’s skull into paste.
He wished he could be unimpressed by that, but…it had been an impressive method of landing a killing blow, and while he wasn’t some milk-maid that would swoon over heroics, he had to admit that the other man had made the whole thing look rather artful. Something he would normally sneer at -fancy moves were for plays and storybooks, not true war- if it wasn’t for the fact that it had worked all too well. Of course, if you were as fast as a vampire was, you could afford to fight pretty, couldn’t you? Divines knew that plenty of Companions tended to showboat in their own ways.
“We’re almost out of time, Skjor. The boss, whatever he is, will be waking up any moment now, and I didn’t find the Dragonstone up there anywhere. Which means that it’s probably inside his sarcophagus with him.” the man in question informed him, no more out of breath than Skjor himself was, despite the vicious pace of the battle he’d just been fighting.
“Wonderful.” Skjor grunted, sarcasm dripping thick from every syllable as he. “Of course it is. Wouldn’t be a proper tomb-delving without having to pry the prize from the cold, dead hands of whatever’s been sleeping on it for a few thousand years.”
“It’s the sort of thing that builds character, or so my old centurion always liked to tell me.” Constantine returned dryly, his lips quirking even as those unsettling eyes of his swept the cavern, taking in the state of the battle in a single sharp glance. Skjor snorted even as he followed his gaze and had to admit -again, only in the privacy of his own mind- that the vampire’s strategy had been a good one. Aela’s arrows were punching through eye sockets with their usual deadly accuracy, Hadvar and Ralof were working together to deal with anything that came near Lydia, while the Ice Princess herself was…well, flash-freezing the last few draugr in their tracks before shattering them with a wave of her hand.
Kodlak was right about that girl. Half the reason neither the Empire nor the Stormcloaks had tried to force the issue with Whiterun was the fear of turning her magic against themselves.
A pulse of power, enough to set the hair on his arms raising and half the wolf in his soul snarling defensively, drew every eye to the top of the dais as the last of the draugr returned to rest, and Skjor barely caught Constantine’s growl of discontent before the man vanished from his side in a blur of speed. His plan was obvious, his desire to cut down the ‘boss’ before it could finish rising from it’s crypt blatant, but even as he darted up stone steps with preternatural speed, Skjor could see he wouldn’t be fast enough.
The lid of the final sarcophagus didn’t slide to the side, wasn’t pushed up and out of the way to crunch to the ground like so many of it’s brethren. No, it exploded, shattered by a great force into a thousand pieces in a cloud of debris, and from that cloud emerged to Guardian of the Dragonstone. Skjor had been right with his earlier assumption, it seemed, and he grimaced as the massive ebony-clad Death Overlord caught Constantine’s first blow on it’s own sword with almost contemptuous ease. The bastard was probably 7 feet tall at least, and built like a brick outhouse.
This wouldn’t be an easy fight.
###################################################################
So, this is what it’s like to be an adventurer.
The thought that flitted through Lydia’s mind was a pained one, and one filled with a strange sort of somber wonder, as she pressed a frost-wreathed hand to her ribs -at least three of which where cracked, if not broken- and looked around at her comrades.
Ralof was unconscious, Hadvar barely better at his childhood friends side. The two of them had tried to take the Guardian on, catching it from behind in a three-pronged attack as it had battled with Constantine, only to be thrown across the room to crash hard into a sarcophagi by it’s Voice.
Skjor and Aela, for their part, were busy rekilling several of the draugr that they’d already defeated, draugr that the Guardian had been able to awaken through necromantic magic. That had been where her rib injuries had come from, she’d been caught totally off-guard when an enemy that she thought well and truly dealt with had come at her from behind and landed a solid blow to her chest with it’s mace. If it hadn’t been for a hastily-cast ward and the fact that the draugr had been too damaged to use it’s full strength, she might well be dead or dying right now. A thought that brought her full-circle.
She’d fought bandits and beasts, she’d even fought the occasional draugr that had escaped it’s crypt and wandered onto the plains of the Hold. No one in their right mind would dream of calling her experienced, but this was nothing compared to what she had done before, and watching the Companions and -especially!- Constantine fight showed her that she was nothing compared to some.
The realization wasn’t a pleasant one, but it wasn’t an entirely crushing one either. She was, after all, the niece of a jarl, the daughter of a warrior, and a woman who had spent the better part of her life knowing that one day she would have to prove herself in ways that truly mattered. This, perhaps, was that day.
Or at least the first step on that road, and she winced as Constantine was staggered by a brutal pommel-strike to his abdomen, though he wasn’t so distracted or injured that he couldn’t parry the follow-up blade-strike that had been aimed at his neck, nor left him unable to plant his palm on the draugr’s chest and pour enough lightning into it that she could feel her hair standing on end in spite of the distance between she and the battling pair.
As she watched his follow-up kick to the undead’s chest send it reeling back a good half-dozen feet, she couldn’t help but shake her head in disbelief. There was no way that man was human, anymore than the best of the Companions were fully human. She knew what some of the best fighters in Skyrim looked like when they were engaged in battle, and none of them were that fast or could hit that hard.
And, honestly, it explained a few things, she thought to herself as she staggered over to double-check the two Riverwood natives, snagging a health potion from Hadvar and downing it in a single swallow. Those strange eyes of his, for one thing, and the strange width and breadth of knowledge for another.
She wouldn’t point any fingers or make any claims, but…she had a good idea of just what the once-soldier was ,and despite herself she couldn’t help but feel a thrill of excitement. She’d known from the moment she met him that he was no normal person, that he was interesting in a way that no one else she’d ever met had managed, and she couldn’t wait to see what he did next.
#########################################################
Aela liked to think of herself as a woman with self-control, especially over her base -particularly carnal- urges. For all that she so easily and happily made use of Ria, for all that she would abruptly and without any sort of hesitation or shame push the other woman to her knees and use her mouth for pleasure, or pull the woman into her room at the drop of a hat, she was never out of control.
But right now? Watching as Constantine finally seemed to find the tempo of his battle and start overwhelming an enemy that could have probably slaughtered it’s way through the most elite soldiers Whiterun had to offer, and start overwhelming it?
She was more turned on than was remotely appropriate. It wasn’t the violence that did it, exactly, though Divines knew she had always found a certain measure of pleasure in watching a true warrior at work. Oblivion, as much as she loved to watch a master of warfare ply their trade, and she liked it very much, she could find herself equally intrigued by anyone displaying their expertise or proficiency. And that’s really what it came down to: competency. She found skill, ability, to be the most arousing thing in the world, and that was something that this handsome bastard of a vampire seemed to possess in spades.
The fact that he was both knowledgeable in, and apparently as fond of, history as she was only made things that much better. Not many people, especially not people living in Skyrim, were particularly interested in knowing more about the past. Which was ironic, given how obsessed they were with ancient glories and family legacies. One would think that they’d want to know more about the world that the ancestors they so proudly boasted about, but that couldn’t be farther from the truth.
Ooh, there went one of the creature’s arms. Constantine had managed to get his blade into the gap between the upper edge of the creature’s gauntlet, and the bottom edge of its rerebrace. Which was incredibly useful, given that the draugr had been wielding a longsword in that self-same hand, meaning that it was more or less defenseless.
Or, at least, it would have been defenseless if it had been any normal opponent. The Guardian, however, was distinctly not normal, and rather than try to claw at Constantine with its remaining, gauntleted hand -never mind retreat and try to buy the space it needed to reclaim it’s weapon- it instead lunged forward and slammed it’s ebony-clad helmet directly into Constantine’s face with bone-crunching force. The vampire realed back, surprised, with blood streaming from his clearly-broken nose…which is when the Guardian followed up with a Shout that had dust and debris falling from the ceiling.
“FUS! RO! DAH!”
The wave of force, distorting the air as it swept across the space between the two of them, was enough to make her ears pop. Then it slammed into Constantine’s chest, a direct hit as he struggled to recover from the headbutt, and he was thrown like a discarded toy across the room to slam into one of the room’s colossal supporting pillars. The sound that he made when he crashed into the pillar was…horrifying, and he crumpled to the ground at it’s base in a heap of crimson-stained leather and steel.
For one, horrifying, heart-in-her-throat moment, Aela thought he was dead.
Then he moved, slowly and painfully perhaps, and she felt herself shivering for more than one reason at the sight of his eyes. Eyes that were no longer that beautiful bronze-gold, but a far brighter and inhuman crimson of a vampire that was no longer concealing it’s true nature.
The sound that left his throat was…she struggled to define it or describe it, but it spoke to a part of her brain that was older than everything but the gods themselves. The part of the brain that simply screamed ‘predator’, and he launched himself back at his enemy in a cloud of seething black-scarlet magic. To it’s credit, as strange a term as that might be when considering the circumstances, it tried to meet his attack head-on. That was…a mistake, to put it lightly, and Aela winced at the way it shrieked as he essentially tore it apart.
Then the fight was over, and his voice -deep, rumbling, echoing unnaturally and tinged with pain- ordered them to gather anything of value, take what healing and health potions that they could, and join him on the dais. No one argued. No one even hesitated, really, which spoke volumes about the state of mind everyone present was in. Her shield-brother, who had been by far the most vocally suspicious of Constantine throughout the journey, simply grunted an acknowledgement and started moving from body to body and sarcophagus to sarcophagus. Hadvar and Ralof, both groaning their way back to consciousness with the help of the potions Lydia pressed into their hands, were slower about it, but no less obedient. They’d seen at least a portion of what had happened. They’d watched a man take a Shout to the chest at point-blank range, somehow avoid being turned into a bloody smear against ancient stone, and then watched him turn into a living, magical cloud of rage and hunger. Arguing with him was probably the last thing on their minds, and with good reason.
For her part, she quickly made her way to Constantine’s side, finding him leaning quite heavily against what remained of the Guardian’s tomb, eyes still burning bright and his fangs in full view as he panted softly, grimacing with every other breath. She hesitated for a moment, foremind and hindmind arguing with one another fiercely over getting closer to the injured predator that was the man before her, before stepping to his side and offering him the last healing potion that she possessed.
“Drink it. You look like Oblivion warmed over and served on a cracked plate. Almost as cracked as your bones are now, I would imagine.”
The corner of his mouth twitched, a pained movement that might have managed to become a smile were he in less injured state, and he took the proffered bottle with a hand that, she noted with some unease, was tipped with claw-like fingernails that were rather longer and sharper than anything she hadn’t seen on her own hand. He didn’t seem to notice, or perhaps simply didn’t care given the state he was in, as he uncorked the potion with his teeth and tipped the contents back in a single swallow.
The effect was almost immediate. The bruising that had been blooming along his jaw, the split in his lip, the ugly gash he’d picked up at some point, all healing to a certain degree, and she grimaced at the sound of bone grinding and popping back into place. That would be where most of the potion’s power had gone to, then, quite understandably. Injuries to the skeleton were not to be trifled with, and any healing potion would by it’s very nature target the most grievous injuries in the ingester’s body first.
He sagged a fraction further against the broken tomb when the worst of it was finished, the strange black-crimson aura that had been clinging to him like a second skin slowly bleeding away into the air, dissipating like smoke caught in a draft. The crimson didn’t entirely leave his eyes, though. Not yet. Whatever greater vampiric powers had been called up when the Guardian’s Shout had nearly killed him was still there, just beneath the surface, waiting until it was needed again.
She found, somewhat to her own surprise, that she wasn’t afraid.
She’d fought vampires before, she knew that the more injured they got, the more mana they expended in a fight, the more physical effort and powers that they wielded, the hungrier that they got. Yet he hadn’t so much as given her an ill glance, never mind actually tried to forcefully feed from her. As far as she was concerned, that made him damn-near trustworthy, respectable, and not particularly frightening. At least not in a truly fearful way, Divines knew his little display was frightening in a few others.
“Nnh. Thank you for that. It should be good enough that I can make it back to Riverwood without much issue.” he tilted his head towards her gratefully, before reaching down into the sarcophagus and extracting a large, heavy looking stone tablet -the damn thing was probably the size of an end table, and twice as heavy- that was covered with carvings. He glanced at her, taking in her current state, and when she saw the way he hesitated she rolled her eyes and stepped forward to pull it from his hands.
“Why don’t you collect your new armor and leave this thing with me.” she suggested, dryly but not unkindly, and he snorted softly in agreement -grimacing as his repaired but doubtlessly still sore ribs and nose protested such violent treatment- before setting about doing just that.
Soon enough, their battered, bloodied, but unbroken -and unslain- group was slowly making their way back through the barrow. Back towards the entrance, back towards Riverwood and, ultimately, back towards Whiterun.
Back towards questions, towards the unknown and all the myriad fears that came with it.
Back towards whatever their future was, in this new and dangerous world, that saw the return of dragons.