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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
4-202-03-20 04:06
Lakeside Retreat, Bruma County, Cyrodiil
It's still dark, but the road is indeed good for the local circumstances.
We reach a camp with two tents and no people, and then I realize we're actually near Sedor. The road didn't go to the east through the mountains, it has turned north and led us to almost the same place where we were yesterday evening. There's a path here going southeast, though, and it looks like it might well lead to our destination, the Frozen Grotto.
Soon we see an ogre who stands on a side path. We stop at 20 or 30 meters from him. He waves a little with his formidable club, but makes no sign of trying to come closer. We continue our journey along the main path to the east.
It's gotten light by the time we reach a Gutted Mine. We're attacked by a wolf, but it doesn't look like it killed the dead miner in front of the entrance. There are traces of many human footprints going in and out.
Well, I'm not expecting much fighting ability from Cyrodiilian bandits, but let's be careful all the same.
The interior looks indeed like a mine, a rather big one as it would seem. There are a couple more corpses, and then we run into our first enemies.
They are not too difficult, but new ones keep coming from various passages down below, and some of them are really nasty mages. Although we are on higher ground and can therefore shoot comfortably, the enemies are too far for my Sense of Smell power most of the time and there's not much light down there, and they can still successfully cast fire magic at us, which, apart from hurting, emits light so we are well visible and somewhat blinded. We kill the mages by the end, but it was a tough fight.
Descending slowly, on the lookout for new enemies, we learn that the people we killed are vampires. Now, that easens my conscience. I was unsure if we were doing the right thing attacking bandits we had no conflict with. After all, this is not Skyrim where I have a duty to kill all the bandits. But now it emerges that we're actually doing a good deed.
The battle is still not over.
Finally, we have killed them and can explore this place in peace. It's very large. There's silver ore here, as well as bedmats, some bloody, some not. And dead miners here and there.
We seem to have destroyed the main enemy force. Only a few relatively easy targets remain.
Vampires are human too. [ROTFL]
It's delightful sunny winter day by the time we're out in the fresh air again.
We follow the path up the mountains until we reach a cave entrance inside a hill of bluish rock with many big icicles.
The not very big cave is covered with ice all over. There's a bedmat, some simple furniture and a couple of chests. When I examine those, a tall and strong-looking Dark Elf man appears as if out of nowhere. He tells me he has a dagger that is laced with a Dark Elf poison, the slightest dose of which is deadly.
Yeah, I get it. You want something. Tell me what it is and spare me the dramatics. This is decidedly not a proper setting for bombastic recitations.
Unperturbed, he goes on for a few more minutes gloating over us being under his power and completely helpless, but then he gets hold of himself and orders us to deliver a package to Alammu who is evidently his accomplice, and not ask what's inside and not try to look at the contents, because it's cursed and only Alammu can open it safely.
Sure, no problem. We're headed for Bruma anyway.
He gives me the package, we walk to the cave entrance and I put on my strongest Archery-enhancing gear. I mean, if that joker only has a dagger, there should be hardly any danger, but if that poison is really so deadly, I wouldn't want him to survive the first arrow and then somehow get a lucky hit on me.
Well, he's dead from the first arrow. Nothing difficult there.
Can you believe the jerk actually got hard from talking big to me?
I won't open the package, in case this is another ruse and it'll explode or something. I'll give it to the Bruma guards. I don't really care what's inside. If Neldam (that's his name) couldn't risk traveling to Bruma himself and didn't have any accomplices who would have been actually trustworthy, then he's unlikely to be resourceful enough to have dug up something really valuable.
We now do some mountain climbing, only to find out there doesn't seem to be a way of getting further to the east or southeast. The sights are great, though. The terrain turns from snowy to grassy. We end up finding an enormous statue on a plateau east-southeast of the Lakeside Retreat.
I decide we'll climb down to the house and follow the northwesterly road that's supposed to lead to something like Alewell or Meadspring or what was it. Yes, Aleswell.
A little way past the Lakeside Retreat, we discover some stone things with staircases and a citadel ruin. There are big humanoid creatures with horns and melee weapons.
We kill them and then I realize we shouldn't have, and then we notice there are some human corpses on spikes (in fact, you can see one in the picture above), so I guess we should have after all. The creatures are much smaller than ogres and have bull-like faces. They're called minotaurs.
Further up the road, we discover Frostfire Glade. There's a big cave, not too grim for an underground space, and without any living creatures.
There are passages leading somewhere and the whole location seems to be quite extensive. We have no reason to explore it, so we go out again.
Soon we realize we've almost reached Anga and haven't seen anything that might be called Aleswell. The time is almost 5 in the afternoon. Now, we could go to Bruma, but I feel like turning north and trying to locate that high sharp tower that has been teasing us all these days with its slender elegant looks and excellent visibility on top of a very high mountain. I know it'll get dark in a few hours, but if we can't find the tower, we can at least reach Simund's country mansion. Surely he'll let us crash there if we ask him nicely. (Am I cruel or what?) Or maybe he isn't even there. His chick is sure to make no difficulties.
We discover a Red Ruby Cave which is a completely pointless place – large and unnavigable with appalling lighting, some animals and nothing interesting to find. Shouldn't have wasted time on it at all.
The sun is going down already.
We run past another group of minotaurs and then arrive at a Hunter's Shack when it's already dusk. The hunter is a Dark Elf called Zirain. He has some animal skins and such for sale. We sit a little and chat and pat his nice dog and admire some beautiful Ayleid coins.
Then a courier appears as if out of nowhere (well, not really; he comes up the same path along which we arrived). He has a letter for me. Are you kidding me? What kind of magic those people use? It's amazing, to track me down here. I'm feeling immense respect for the Cyrodiil couriers. In Skyrim, if you remember, it took them a week to deliver me a birthday card.
The courier explains he's a military courier who indeed uses a special magic to track down people. The letter he brings is from Legate Precilius Varro of Fort Pale Pass. Zirain adds that civil couriers are so few in Bruma that they're as good as unavailable for the common people (as are the military couriers, obviously).
The letter says Legate Varro hopes we're in good health and praises our valuable help with the Stormcloak prisoner, and wonders if we could help him out with something else. Well, I'm not quite believing in the sincerity of this, but we shall certainly go and find out what it is he wants.
"Why not believe in his sincerity?" asks Lydia. "Have you ever looked at yourself in the mirror?"
She has a point. Anyway, we need to get a move on. It's practically night already.
I hope Jenassa the Mature and Sensible won't say that the smart thing would be to return to the city for the night and come back here in the morning. I don't care what's reasonable. I won't turn back now that we're so close.
It's pretty dark, but the snow reflects enough light to see the path. We run past several ogres who are just too tardy to decide in time if they want to hit us or not.
It's half past 9 by the time we run through under a wooden walkbridge.
Surely that's where we need to find a route to somehow. We must be near the top now. But then the path ends. We go a little way back and succeed in finding the path again, and indeed reach the wooden bridge. I feel as happy as if I had found a way to travel to the Imperial City.
Now, it might be a good idea not to run into an ambush here. So we proceed cautiously. Past another rock, and there's the tower, quite near. No ambush. In the middle of the path sits an animal. It's a feline, but much smaller than a sabercat or a pahmar. Can it be called a panther? Yes, it can, says Jenassa, however she has only seen panthers in books and that was in her childhood, so she doesn't really know.
Hi, kitty! You're cute. Although I badly fear you will be less cute tomorrow morning when we will have slept the night and are going back unwashed (meaning, the Spriggan Soap effect will have worn off).
I suppress the urge to squat down and hug the animal. (We won't know what it's called until it's dead, and I hope we will somehow be able to avoid it.) There's a very snowy and icy staircase leading up, and some of those blue burning things we've seen in Ayleid ruins. It's a long climb, but it feels like a child's play after all the mountaineering we've done today. Awestruck, we approach the structure that is magnificent even in the darkness. Now we know its name – Frostcrag Spire.
I hope we can sleep in there. We wouldn't even mind sleeping with somebody.
Having admired the exterior for a while (no great views of the surrounding mountains in this darkness, though), we enter through a massive stone door.
The interior of the tower is quite undescribable. It's full of weird-looking things, but before we've even had a proper look around, we are approached by an elven man who asks what we're doing here.
I mumble something not necessarily very intelligent, but he allows us to stay for a while. We talk to a number of people and they are seemingly doing some weird magical experiments. More precisely, this place used to be something very grand in very distant past, and they are basically poking around in the dormant magic here to see what they're going to find.
They're enthusiastic about it like children who have found out for the very first time how to ignite fire, and just as irresponsible about the possible consequences of their game. They refuse to share any specific information about what they have found, and are wary of the Synod. At least one man is demonstrably insane. He holds me for someone with a man's name, seemingly a long-dead mage he believes to have summoned from the past. When I tell him I don't know anyone with that name, he is convinced I'm making fun of him.
That woman Kalimbria seems to be the only one with at least some sense of responsibility around here:
The only thing we learn is that it's precisely this group who is behind the weird phenomena in Bruma. They keep trying to teleport various objects from the past and are very frustrated believing it's not working and trying to figure out what is it they're doing wrong. I inform them those objects are materializing in the Synod building instead of here, and they really should stop doing it. However, their only reaction is joy – "Wow, our experiments are successful after all! Not quite the way we have intended, but at least something is happening."
Tense as my relations with the Synod may have been in the past, I intend to denounce this bunch of lunatics to them before cities begin to disappear. I tell the aforementioned madman as much, hoping to provoke him into revealing something interesting to me. He just shrugs and says: well, go ahead if you feel you have to do it. I think he still holds me for the ghost or reincarnation of that whatever he believes to have magically summoned, and I'm not sure he even understood the meaning of my words.
At any rate, there's zero chance we would be allowed to sleep here and I'm having real difficulties keeping my eyes open, so we're leaving for Gautierre Manor which is the closest thing to a human settlement far and wide.
The crisp air outside is making me alert again. Thanks to all of us wearing armor with the Cushioned enchantment and indeed quite familiar with its use by now, our journey down the mountains takes a lot less time than our ascent did. Jumping down from yet another hill, I land practically on top of an obviously hostile human and kill him without bothering to find out why he doesn't like me. Then another man comes running. Before he finds us in the darkness, we can see he's wearing thalmor robes. When he runs past the spot where we are hiding, we shoot arrows into his back. His name was Nurenor and he was carrying orders to find and exterminate Talos worshippers suspected to operate at the base of Gnoll Mountain. I have no idea where it may be. There are no mountain names on my map. Could be this very mountain we just descended.
The Gautierre Manor is just over the next hill.
Simund is not at home and there are new guards, but Atul insists she knows us and we're friends, and since we're female, the guards see no reason to deny us entry. Atul has no objections to us spending the night there. She asks if I have talked to her husband Dumrag yet (Oops! I've forgotten to.), and I reply that I haven't, but we're headed for Bruma now and she needn't worry, I won't betray her.
And now we can finally get some rest after this confused day.
next awakening
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