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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
4-202-04-13 11:39
Dead Man's Drink, Falkert, Falkreath, Skyrim
I feel wonderfully rested. After a nice warm bath, I go to Nuri's shop and tell him casually I have brought back some Ayleid things from Cyrodiil, and he can have them if he wants to... by any chance. His reaction is exactly as enthusiastic as I had hoped. I'm so happy that I can sell all those marvelous things to someone who cares about them instead of just any old merchant. Nuri and I haggle a little (he insists on paying me more while I'd rather give the stuff away cheaper), but we agree upon a reasonable price.
By the way, this Ancient Falmer Dagger looks really cool, too:
After a visit to the alchemy shop and a little stroll on the marketplace, we're ready to leave. I wonder if we ought to make a stop at Aurora on our way to Aulbryn's House. I feel I'd really like to apologize to Maul and make up with him. I wouldn't hire him as my follower, though.
The girls unanimously urge me not to do it. They insist nothing good can come out of it. How do I think Maul would feel if I came and told him I want him not to be angry with me anymore, yet I'm not going to do anything about the reason why he is angry?
Of course they're right. It's just so sad. I need all my willpower to not start crying.
We'll take a brief tour in Dreamborne Isle today, attempting to explore that area in daylight we missed the last time in the darkness. I hope we have enough daylight left. There don't seem to be any places suitable for sleeping on the island. On second thought, if it should get too late, we can go to Oakwood for the night and return to the Dreamborne Isle in the morning.
That's Narri, the nice serving girl who keeps urging Valga to hire one more girl to help her handle all the work.
I'm not going to ask Shasien to come with us after all. In order to be able to take him along, I would (temporarily) have to let Jenassa or Jordis go, but Shasien is decidedly not a fighter. Dreamborne Isle has so far been the safest place I've ever seen in the world, but if we're going to do some exploring, we'd better be at full fighting strength. It's always good to be cautious when venturing into the unknown.
Between Falkert and Aulbryn's House are mountains. We have the choice between bypassing them from the west and north or from the south and east. The two routes are of almost equal length.
I decide we'll take the easterly road, the one that passes through that bandit ambush point which has a wooden bridge above the road. We should be able to comfortably bypass the mountains southeast of Aulbryn's House.
The weather is cloudy and a little foggy.
Before the road joins the Pinewood–Helgen highway, we turn left to take a shortcut through the forest and see if we can perhaps cross the mountain range earlier.
To my utter astonishment, we discover a location called Teleport to Ben Erai. More precisely, we magically learn that there is something with that name around here, but we can't see anything except trees and stones and such. The teleportation portal must be underground. There's no indication as to where the entrance could be. The name Ben Erai means nothing to us. If I had to hazard a wild guess, I'd say it sounds like something from the Gray Cowl of Nocturnal quest.
The view roughly in the direction we came from is charming, though:
To our west are some stairs going uphill. Let's take a look. Jordis points out that South Shriekwind Bastion must be quite near. That's the place far above Falkert overlooking the town, remember? We used to descend from there along a steep mountain slope.
Indeed, the stairs lead just there. When we explored the interior... what was it, four months ago?... we could have descended quite safely from this side and reached Falkert by a detour.
Well, never mind. Let's just move on.
Running eastwards between the mountains and the road, we discover a path that passes through two mountain ranges. We see an old Orc who is wandering around looking for a good death.
Now, I could help him reach his goal, but having stopped to think about it for a moment, I realize there's no reason for him to die just yet. He's evidently not harassing innocent passersby (such as us) and this region is warm enough for him to wander around comfortably. Let him go on slaying predators (and with any luck even some bandits).
We proceed downhill to the north where I run straight into the bandit camp next door to Aulbryn's House. Not noticing my girls following me at some distance, the men run towards me with jubilant shouts only to fall down pierced by arrows a minute later. This is a perfect demonstration of the efficiency of me and my followers' travel formation.
Dreamborne Isle is as beautiful as ever. Under the blue non-sun and with perfect daylight, we run towards the Woodpeak Temple. Now that we know the way, we quickly reach the bridge before which we have to turn left. There is indeed something there. It looks like some kind of a shrine:
Past it, straight ahead, is a stone staircase that leads to a locked gate that can't be opened. To our left, down another staircase, is a pond of what looks like molten stone or metal. (It's called "lava", says Jenassa, and it's indeed molten stone.)
We go past the pond and descend to the ocean. For your orientation, this is the southwestern shore of Dreamborne Isle. We find the entrance to a Flamecrag Grotto.
There's a passage that leads to a large cavern. It's quite beautiful for an underground space and has enough light to see properly.
Where the passage in the above picture ends, there's a small plateau and a descent to the cavern floor. There seem to be at least three other passages leading out of the cavern. We stop on the platform to admire the view and to figure out which way we should proceed. Suddenly, we can hear the faint sound of many running feet – approaching us, as I presume. We take cover as well as we can and grab our bows. Opposite us, the first armed men appear and run towards us. "The welcoming committee," some seasoned warriors would cynically call them. We start shooting. The enemies begin to fall down while new ones keep emerging from the same and other directions.
It's a long and scary battle. Scary because the enemies are so many and they look so ferocious and brutal. Luckily all (or almost all) of them have melee weapons only, so we actually kill them all without any damage to ourselves. Two of them get as close as 3–4 meters.
And as you can see from the red dots on the radar, this is nowhere near over.
I am using fire explosion arrows this time – not because I enjoy setting people on fire, but because they, apart from damaging the target, create a fire on the ground which burns for some time, damaging everyone who gets too close. I thought it would be useful with this kind of enemy concentration. In reality, they fires look impressive but their effect is negligible.
We loot the corpses and proceed carefully through one of the passages. There are lava streams everywhere, but no people or creatures to bother us. They should have hidden somewhere here and waited for us to reach a narrow place in the open, that is on one of those wooden bridges with lava on all sides, and attacked us then from different directions.
"They couldn't," Jordis says. "They didn't have bows, remember?"
Right. With swords and axes, they wouldn't have had much of an advantage here.
We reach a hall with a round stone thing in the middle. At the farther end, past what might perhaps be called a lava fountain, or maybe a lavafall, a staircase leads up to something colorful.
In front of that green thing is a small pedestal, above which floats an object called Fire Keystone. It looks like an oblong ball and in fact its curious shape reminds me of a ball I saw some Orc children play a game with back home in High Rock.
I guess that's one of the "stones" we're supposed to find to be able to locate Aulbryn. I pick it up. Out the corner of my eye, I can see my followers reaching for their weapons. What's wrong, girls?
Flame atronachs, that's what's wrong, as I realize after I've turned around. There are several of them around that lava fountain and they are attacking us with fire magic. And new ones keep emerging.
In brief, this is a complete chaos. Whenever the wall of fire in front of me gets a little smaller, revealing a view to an atronach, I shoot. Every hit kills, but the moments when I can see an enemy are very brief and rare. All the while I can hear my girls scream, evidently suffering from fire spells – as am I.
It lasts for something like 20 minutes. All my followers survive. Nevertheless, I'm shocked to my core. I would have never forgiven myself if I had let someone of my dearest friends die because of a quest as meaningless as this. What could I have done differently?
Nothing, really, say the girls. They began popping up immediately after I picked up the Fire Keystone. The only thing I could have done differently was to have come here alone.
No, there is something. I could have used the Ritual Stone power to wake a few of them up to attack the others. But it's true that there was nothing I could have done to prepare for the battle. It was just lousy luck. And an extremely well-designed protection mechanism for the Keystone.
It's gotten dark outside. We walk back towards Aulbryn's House.
According to Aulbryn's notes, there seem to be two more Keystones to find, but we'd better return to Oakwood for the night as planned.
"We don't have to," Lydia reminds me. "We can sleep in the bandit camp across the road."
Right! That's what we'll do.
See the tent up the path?
next awakening
