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SPOILER INFO
This fanfic novel is largely based on the events that occurred in an actual game of Skyrim I played. Therefore, it's inevitably a spoiler.
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previous day
4-202-01-01 11:48
Uthgerd's House, Hviterun, Whiterun, Skyrim
When I open my eyes, Valdimar is no longer next to me. However, as soon as he sees that I've woken up, he wastes no time slipping under the blanket. Naturally, his morning erection is long gone by now, but I don't mind giving him a helping hand. I owe it to him for having let me sleep.
He takes me sideways this time and in the right hole. It doesn't last long and I don't get an orgasm, but I thoroughly enjoy our kissing and cuddling afterwards, as well as relish in the awareness that I'm able to give men such enormous pleasure as I just heard Valdimar experience.
Carlotta's house across the street from mine.
We go to the Bannered Mare inn to have a bath. I'm mildly astonished to see the marketplace almost empty at exactly 12 o'clock. As I open the door of the inn, I burst in laughter. The taproom is full of people. They seem to have a kind of an afterparty going on here – if they went to sleep at all.
Even Saadia has come out of hiding for this occasion!
Fortunately, there's still sufficient space for us in the bathroom. Men and women mingle freely without any embarrassment today. (Usually you have to wait behind the door when there's someone of the opposite sex inside.) When I'm clean, I go out looking for my followers. I see Ysolda on the street and ask her to send Lydia, Jenassa and Jordis to the Drunken Huntsman, should she happen to see them. That's where I head now. With any luck, Jenassa will be there already.
Well, so are Lydia and Jordis. All three have a hangover, and they wonder why I haven't, plastered as I supposedly was last night. Give me a break, I wasn't plastered! They insist I don't remember, and demand I tell them what I did last night with Valdimar, in order to prove I do remember. I know they're just teasing me, curious to know what happened. And maybe I did get a little too drunk last night. But I honestly don't feel anything like a hangover, and I don't even feel any pain back there. A good night's sleep is truly a wonder remedy.
For that matter, I now remember I've never had a hangover in my life. I just suddenly know it. Maybe that's how one's memory comes back – something happens to you that is similar to something that's happened in the past, and then you become able to recall that thing from the past?
I can see that my followers are not appreciating a discussion this abstract right now. Sorry. How about running around in the countryside, I ask with an innocent voice and a sadistic grin. Without waiting for them to reply, I ask Jordis how it went last night, and she says Erik and she, as well as Borgakh, had truly the prime seat. They were outside the city walls with the guards who released the fireworks supervised by Farengar the court wizard. They were actually allowed to fire a few themselves. Erik had the time of his life, she says. Good. Thanks, Jordis.
I tell my followers they can rest, because we're in no hurry. I almost stand up, but then I remember. I cast a quick glance towards the bar. Elrindir is busy with a customer and there is no one near our corner table. I sit back down. Wanna hear about a serial killer, girls?
That gets them alert instantly. I tell them what I witnessed yesterday evening in Jorrvaskr and we come quickly to the agreement that we'd better not meddle with the affairs of the Companions and indeed get out of the city until the hue and cry has died down. We can trust the jarl and the steward to investigate this as far as necessary, and we should have no bad feelings washing our hands of that affair, because it's far more likely to have something to do with the trouble within the Companions organization than a mentally deranged maniac. Those don't target seasoned fighters. They're just mad, not stupid, as Jenassa puts it.
As I leave to walk around a bit, I make it a point stressing that I'm by no means in a hurry, but as soon as the girls feel fit enough, I'd like to head for Ivarsted, this time by the northern road. We might get some good exercise in Valtheim and the sights are really nice in that region.
But right now I'm going to the palace to see how Borgakh is doing and maybe try to find out cautiously if anyone has heard anything about yesterday's massacre. If the Companions are keeping it secret, then it's surely an inside affair.
As I exit the inn, I see Lucia and Mila on the street. I wave at them and they accompany me to the palace. There 's a merry crowd around the long tables in the palace. When I see Mikki, I suggest to the children to sit down and have some sweeties. Then I take Mikki out of earshot and tell her about the murder in Jorrvaskr. She promises to keep me informed, should she find out anything while I'm away.
Walking around in the palace, I succeed in seeing a halfway decent map of Skyrim hold borders for the first time.
I'm not sure what those square things are. Probably fortresses.
I'm not sure what those square things are. Probably fortresses.
Around 3 in the afternoon, me and my followers leave the city. Having passed through the eastern suburb, we cross the river via an islet, on which we find an old chest with some weapons and money inside, and then climb up a steep riverbank near the Ritual Stone to reach the highway that goes past Valtheim Towers to Eastmarch.
We just run past Valtheim. Never mind the exercise. Further east where the road forks into the northeastern branch that goes to Windhelm and the southern branch that goes past Fort Amol and Darkwater, we run south for a while and then leave the road and climb up mountain paths.
[series of 3 pictures you can click through; click on the first picture to make it big, then click again to see the next picture etc.; press Esc to return to the text]
It's great we got to see that splendid scenery in good daylight. Even my followers' hangover is gone. :-)
We reach Nimalten without difficulty, and from there Ivarsted by the time the sun is going down.
That's the bridge you have to cross to get to the 7000 steps leading up to High Hrothgar. Or was it 8000?
Ivarsted is right up this path and to the left.
Ivarsted is right up this path and to the left.
Facing the direction we arrived from. Note the bridge from the previous picture.
At the inn, I realize I'm really fed up with that smartass jerk Bassianus who is ostensibly courting Fastred but in fact won't let anything with breasts walk past without throwing some sleezy witticism at her. On the other hand, killing him still seems kind of too harsh, so I don't really know what to do. Maybe Valdimar would know, if he were here. But he isn't.
After a brief stop resting and hearing from Wilhelm the barkeeper that nothing sensational has happened recently, we set out for yet another trip up the 7000 steps to High Hrothgar. If we won't drag our feet, we'll reach it while it's still more or less light.
As we're crossing the bridge at the southern end of the village, a guard is fighting a bear. We help him kill it. Then we see that Barknar the pilgrim has sadly met his death, possibly by the paws of that very bear.
Our journey up Mount Nexus is eventless. We succeed in running quickly past all the trolls and don't get lost even once.
In High Hrothgar, I leave my girls waiting well out of the holy weirdos' sight, and spend considerable time locating Arngeir, a task made more difficult by the unfortunate fact that all the other Gaybores are keeping to their principle of not talking. The average men's reluctance to talk (at least about things that matter) is irritating enough, but even the most taciturn men I've met talk at least a few words every now and then. In this company here I would go completely crazy in two days. But never mind that. When I finally find Arngeir and ask him if he knows a shout that can bring a dragon down from the sky, he admonishes me paternally for having let the Blades put stupid thoughts into my head. Refusing to help me until I "return to the path of wisdom", he turns away.
Suddenly, there's strange rumble. I believe to hear the massive stones High Hrothgar is built of clacking against each other. Arngeir turns around again and says Master Einarth has reminded him that the decision is not his to make. I am to go and talk to the Greybeards' leader Paarthurnax who lives in seclusion on top of the mountain, behind that energy barrier (up the stairs in the next picture) I haven't been able to pass through.
I walk behind Arngeir to the foot of the staircase where he teaches me a shout called Clear Skies that'll help me with that hurting mist. The teaching is done just like the previous times, by projecting glowing symbols onto the ground. I step onto them and thereby acquire the shout.
As I approach the gate and do the shout, the strange mist dissipates and I can indeed walk though. With northern lights in the sky, I can see well enough to proceed along the path up the mountain. However, the shout clears only a limited area, so when I proceed, I end up in the mist again and have to use the shout again to avoid losing health rather quickly. The problem is the shout has a cooldown period, and I'm moving so quickly that I reach the mist before I can use the shout again, and I'm too impatient to wait and so I go into the mist anyway and end up hurt real bad and I still can't use the shout and for some reason my Healing spell is failing to work and so I'm almost dead before I realize I have to take a health potion.
That was close, and it was really inadmissibly careless of me. When will I learn to pay better attention and think what I'm doing rather than just rush headlong into trouble?
A little later, I'm baffled to see a goat unperturbedly searching for food from under the snow. How it can survive in an environment that kills a human being in a matter of minutes is beyond me.
Then I'm attacked by an icewraith. The path is not dangerously narrow when you just run, but a combat under such conditions could turn rather precarious. Then again, with the mountain on one side, the icewraith hasn't much room for maneuvering. That's why it keeps very close to me most of the time. I choose to fight it with a sword.
It's not easy to keep up with the monster circling around me, but it would be much harder with a bow. I'm fascinated to see the icewraith's jaws up close and I eventually kill it without taking too much damage myself.
Finally, I reach a small plateau on the very top of the mountain, in the middle of which sits a really big dragon. No, he hasn't eaten the Gaybores' leader. He is their leader Paarthurnax. The leader of the Gaybores is a dragon. After all the crazy things preceding this, I'm not even very surprised.
As I approach the dragon, he asks me who I am and what brings me here. I reply that he probably knows already. He says he does, he just hasn't had an opportunity to talk to anyone for a very long time. So I indulge him, asking him not only about things I need to know, but also things I imagine he would enjoy talking about. He speaks slowly, mixing dragon and human words, but I don't mind. I find him kind of likeable.
Before answering my questions, Paarthurnax demands to know why do I want to save the world in the first place.
Save the world? Does this mean that if I don't destroy Alduin, he will not just go on attacking settlements but actually destroy the world? [Gulp]
Come to think of it, Arngeir hinted something to that effect earlier, but I didn't (want to) believe him. Hearing it from the mouth of Paarthurnax, I have no more doubt.
This means I'll go with the Blades' "selfish" pursuit of saving the world rather than follow the Gaybores' "path of wisdom" who insist that if this world is meant to be destroyed then let it.
But that's in the future. Right now, I have to give Paarthurnax's question an answer as good as I can come up with.
Just in case you didn't know – my line is on the right and his reply to me is below.
Paarthurnax tells me humans did indeed defeat Alduin in the distant past with a shout called Dragonrend. Paarthurnax doesn't know the shout, though, because it was designed specifically against dragons, which is why it's impossible for a dragon to learn it. But he has a solution. There's an Elder Scroll , with the help of which Paarthurnax thinks he'll be able to send me temporarily into the past where I can meet the people who created Dragonrend and learn it from them.
You may ask what an Elder Scroll is. I don't know it so well myself (and I feel embarrassed to ask Paarthurnax and show my ignorance), but the best I understand, it's a written work that is very ancient and contains something highly powerful and unusual. In other words, something like a Black Book that is good rather than evil, perhaps? I must ask someone in Winterhold. Or maybe Farengar knows. (In fact, I'm sure Farengar knows.)
As to where this particular Elder Scroll might be, Paarthurnax has no idea. He says he's been meditating up here waiting for the inevitable return of Alduin, and occasionally teaching dragon shouts to people such as the Greybeards. But he knows little about what's been going on in the people's world down below.
I'd like to tell him he should at least fly around from time to time to stretch his muscles, but somehow it doesn't feel appropriate after the solemn matters we just discussed. So I just say goodbye and Paarthurnax thanks me for having taken the time to talk to him.
My goodness, it's morning already! The sun is shining as I descend, much more careful with the hurtful mist this time. After I've defeated another icewraith, I realize I forgot to ask Paarthurnax why there aren't any female dragons around. Oh well. I'm not going back for that. At least not today.
Another goat up in this place utterly unapproachable for common mortals. I just can't believe it!
I find Arngeir where I left him, sitting on his knees and probably begging the universe to forgive the humankind for my perilous pursuit of knowledge. When I ask him about the Elder Scroll, he informs me that he and his fellow holymen don't concern themselves with them, because they're dangerous knowledge humans should not meddle with. Doing everything in my power not to burst out laughing, I ask him who would meddle with such things. Possibly someone in Winterhold College, he tells me. That's where most of the blasphemy in the world seemingly comes from. Great. Hope he won't find out I'm (at least nominally) the Arch-Mage of that very College.
Now, would you believe if I told you I'm dog-tired? I'm pleased more than words can say to find out that being now an officially recognized Dragonborn, I'm allowed to sleep in the High Hrothgar dormitory.
So are, fortunately, my followers who are already (or still, rather) asleep.
next awakening
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