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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
4-202-05-17 09:54
Canal House, Riften, The Rift, Skyrim
I go through shops with the girls unhurriedly. I won't bring up Luma just yet. I'll give it some more thought myself first. Maybe my hunches will become clearer or maybe I'll get a dream or something.
I am, however, most curious about the message I got in Forelhost. Who might possibly have seen such a strange metal envelope?
I don't have great hopes about the court wizard Wylandriah, but maybe I could ask Maramal. Priests tend to know a lot, as I have noticed.
Maramal looks at the brown metal message for several seconds without saying anything. Then the priestess Dinya, a Dark Elf, approaches, looks over his shoulder and says Cuomac is a Dwemer name.
Does this mean I have a chance to get to see a Dwemer? Could it be that they aren't extinct as everyone believes, just like the dragons weren't?
I notice an obvious decrease in enthusiasm. In fact, both Maramal and Dinya insist it's not a good idea to go to the "indicated location". They have looks on their faces like they wish they could lock me up to prevent me from pursuing this quest further. So I shrug and say I wasn't all that keen to begin with.
I exit the temple. The sky is partially cloudy, but the weather is warm and Riften is very beautiful.
Strolling alone towards the marketplace, I'm astonished to run into Ovacca.
"Wanna know something I heard?" she asks after hugs and how-are-yous.
"Always."
"It's about Razzada and Afanna."
"Oh! Tell me."
"Just don't ask where I got it from," she insists.
"Okay, I won't." I try to sound as serious as she just did.
"I'm not entirely sure it's all true, but I was told Afanna protected Razzada, because he promised to get for her a magical item that would make a man guaranteedly fall in love with her. Then he did get it for her, but apparently it misfired somehow and made that man fall madly in love with a completely different woman. Afanna was furious, but he couldn't do anything to Razzada, because he threatened to tell everyone and she couldn't bear the thought of becoming the laughingstock of the whole city. So she had to go on defending him when the guards wanted to expel him from the city, and even helping him out with money occasionally – until you turned up and went straight to the count, unwittingly solving her problem. Word is when she heard about it, she hired some mercenaries to find Razzada and kill him."
"Wait, why didn't Afanna simply have him killed earlier?"
"She couldn't risk arranging a murder within the city walls. She could have gotten into severe trouble. Although she did go as far as sounding out the Fighters' Guild, but they were afraid to go against a mage as powerful as Razzada was reputed to be."
I chuckle.
"Right," she says. "Afanna tried to tell them Razzada was a complete hack, but they thought she was just bullshitting them to persuade them to take the job."
"So, is Razzada dead now?"
"I don't know that. Maybe Afanna will tell you."
I laugh. "Yeah, right. Anyway, thanks for telling me. What brings you here?"
"I decided Cyrodiil was too unstable for me. This city looks really nice, though."
"Maybe not as nice as it used to be."
Ovacca grins and pats my shoulder. "Relax, Laura, I'm not turning back to banditry. Least of all in Skyrim. There are many ways to earn my daily bread without risking my life."
"Glad to hear. And before I forget, the latter includes staying away from Maul."
"And Madesi?" she asks with a smirk.
"Yes, him too." I was never worried about Madesi's fidelity in the first place. And come to think of it, we can't seriously expect our casual boyfriends to go without sex while we are traveling around. Only it had better be with someone we never hear about.
Ovacca and I wish each other good luck and I walk on to the marketplace where I inform Madesi that regrettably I won't be able to be with him, because something he doesn't want to see should happen sometime during today. He says Argonians don't mind that. I say I do.
I see Jordis and Ghorbash come from the direction of our house, and we go together to fetch Lydia from the palace. I intend to visit several locations in The Rift today. I'm especially interested in finding out how the construction of Nimalten is progressing and if there's possibly something useful to do there. So far we've been doing little except running through it.
On our way to the west, I notice another one of those round Dwemer mechanisms. It must be quite near Largashbur. Funny I haven't paid any attention to it so far.
The weather gets even nicer by the time we reach the Orc village. Life has turned back to normal, everyone greets us enthusiastically, especially the men [grin]. The alchemist Atub who is some kind of a spiritual leader here (even though she obviously can't be a chief), tells me they've been succeeding very well in keeping on the good side of Malacath.
I ask her what's that Dwemer thing in the west. She says they don't know and don't care. Just one of those long-abandoned ancient sites you can find all over Skyrim.
Well, I'm going to check it out.
The path passes under really pretty stone arches.
I particularly like this column:
Note the winding stone walkway on the right that leads to the top.
We climb higher than that curious mechanism and find a Control Port, but we can't activate it and I'm not even sure we should. Nearby is one of those pipes that seem broken but still keep releasing steam every once in a while:
I've told you I don't care much about technology, but those Dwemer machines are so different from everything else that I can't help getting curious. I mean, they look so unbelievably powerful. When put to proper use, they might be able to achieve things we can't even imagine.
Now what about that building over there?
It's really hard to get to, and we can't get inside from there either. So we just welcome this as an educating workout and leave for Sunguard City.
Oh... In case you're interested, the name of the place is Avanchnzel.
Sunguard City is not far:
I am informed that the local government is giving me a house as a gift, to show the people's gratitude for all the good deeds that I've done. Well, thank you very much. The house is not awfully large, but roomy and comfortable. An ideal place to stay, should we want to spend some time in Sunguard City.
Not today, though. We proceed towards Ivarsted.
We reach the village when it's getting dark. I ask Lynly how Fastred is doing. It would appear she's not entirely aversed to the idea of getting together with Klimmek. Lynly has been dropping him subtle hints whenever he's at the inn. I suggest maybe she should be a little less subtle.
I ask Lynly if she's ready to tell us about Sibbi. She is hesitant, or rather reluctant, but she probably realizes that I'll keep asking her whenever I'll be in Ivarsted, and there's no escaping it. So she tells us.
I'm not going to repeat our entire conversation, but in a nutshell, Sibbi kept a harem, most members of which were genuinely in love with him. Lynly was among them. She assures me Sibbi knew how to allure, and to be prefectly honest, judging even by the little I got to see of him, I can totally believe it.
However, that was evidently not enough for Sibbi. Some girls he had essentially bought by rescuing their parents from dire poverty. But those girls were still content, because they were, firstly, grateful for him helping their parents, and, secondly, realized that life as Sibbi's concubines was likely to be better than anything they could have achieved on their own in this merciless world.
But there were also girls who had refused Sibbi, after which he had blackmailed them into becoming his pleasure toys by threatening to have their family members thrown into prison, their home set on fire or such.
Sibbi treated his girls well, Lynly says. He wasn't sadistic or anything. The bad part were frequent sex orgies with Sibbi's friends where he, generous and jovial as he was, supplied the females. He also routinely rewarded his henchmen for good services by letting them have sex with one or another of his girls. In very special cases he actually gave a girl to a "business" partner or a cutthroat who had served him exceptionally well. Svidi had seen this happen several times.
There was no information of those girls' fate. No gory rumors. Still, this was not what they had counted with when they gave themselves to the man they loved or at least were very grateful to. They put grudgingly up with having to share him with other women, but being given away permanently like a cattle or household item was just too much. That's why Lynly snapped when he was told he was going to have to marry another man she had never even laid her eyes upon.
"The word is you tried to kill him," I say.
Lynly explains that after crying her eyes out and realizing it was not going to make anything better, she contacted Hafjorg from the alchemy shop. (Sibbi never considered it necessary to lock his girls up or have them watched or something. After all, this was his mother's city. Where could they go?) She bought some poison and mixed it in Sibbi's mead. Unfortunately, his sister Ingun, an aspiring alchemist with a particular interest in poisons, noticed the subtle difference in the mead's scent and recognized what it was the drink smelled of. Lynly succeeded in escaping at the last moment. She doesn't want to say who and how helped her reach Ivarsted, and we won't insist.
Lynly looks very sad. I'm having the feeling she regrets recalling it all and telling us about it.
It's still not too late, so I decide we'll go to Nimalten this evening after all. It's so close that if there's really nowhere to sleep there, we can easily return here.
There are many new faces in Nimalten. No inn yet, though. But the thane's headquarters seems to be complete:
We meet the thane too. Her name is Brasteir Stonevoice. We've seen quite a few Stonevoices in various parts of Skyrim. Brasteir says she was actually supposed to stand in for his brother until he would get some other things in Riften taken care of, but now it seems those other things are more important, so she's sort of permanently here.
After we've talked for a while, Brasteir seems to have decided she can trust me, and confesses she's in a bit of trouble. There's an ancient Nordic ruin called Vaalmungar just north of here. It's been sealed and off-bounds. Something to do with an ancient curse and a treasure. The thing is, she got curious about the treasure and sent a party of guards there, along with a mage.
It's the local dialect, never mind.
They broke the seal and went in, but haven't returned. Now she's lost some soldiers and the mage, and maybe something evil is about to come out of Vaalmungar. Not to forget that the treasure might still be in there...
I promise her we'll go and take a look. But is there any chance we can sleep here tonight, such as in the guard barracks?
Sure, she says.
And not share beds with male guards, I add, just in case.
Amused, Brasteir gives instructions to have us accommodated.
next awakening
