Always Lost, Always Hopeful (132) Irresolute Endeavor

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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






4-201-12-28 06:44
Blackmoor Inn, Blackmoor, Whiterun, Skyrim

The streets are practically empty. Here and there, a lonely passerby is on his way to work, but the shops are still closed.

I can't get Anedhel out of my mind. Never before have I seen a man fall in love with me at first sight like that.

So I go to the Thane's Hall. Anedhel is there and fortunately no one else is.

I'm suddenly very nervous and don't know what to do. So I step closer to him, cast my eyes down and wait. He takes the last step that separates us, hugs me gingerly and we kiss.

Now my curiosity gets the best of me and I reach down there with my hand. Feels like semi-hard.

This gesture seems to remove Anedhel's insecurity completely. He lifts me up and carries me I don't know where. I close my eyes and feel I'm wet already.

I'm gently lowered down to a bed. It's a niche in one of the side rooms. I can't see much of the room from the niche, so I suppose we have a good chance of remaining undetected even if someone should enter.

In a strange way, I am enjoying myself and feeling uncomfortable at the same time. (As I'm going to realize later discussing this with my followers, I am subconsciously scared of pain after my unfamiliar ordeal yesterday. Health potions remove only the physical discomfort, not the fear of its potential return.) Although Anedhel's penis in my vagina isn't causing any pain there or anywhere else, I can't truly relax, especially after someone walks in on us after all. I think it's the thane's housecarl I saw briefly on the street last night. He's gracious enough to leave quietly in order not to spoil his lower-ranking colleague his pleasure, but my mood is thoroughly ruined by the shame. Anedhel doesn't seem to be disturbed at all and takes his time, and I actually end up suppressing moans of pleasure.

All in all, this experience was more embarrassing than satisfying. I get dressed and leave the building as inconspicuously as I can. Out on the street, I'm still the dragonslaying hero, so my mood returns to normal quickly. The weather has gotten much better as well. I do my shopping and look briefly into a house or two.

That's a curious writing implement. The man looks really cool too.

I decide we'll go now to the Brittleshin Pass in the south not too far from here, and get that staff Enthir wanted. I mean, I don't have to give the staff to Enthir, and if I do, I don't have to give that item he'll give me in return to Arniel. It's just that we're so close to where the staff is, so we can just as well have a little adventure. I'll have plenty of time later to decide what I want to do with the staff.

Just past the mountains that border Blackmoor from the west and south, we notice a fortress.

We sneak closer. I can see a bandit walking on the rampart, and another one standing still. The walking one is now obscured by the wall, so I aim at the standing one. He looks kind of weird. Don't tell me it's a training dummy. I hit it, but it remains standing. It was a training dummy. And now I've made the living bandits realize something is wrong. So much for a covert approach.

The dummy I hit a minute ago is the one on the left.

Fortunately, we still manage to get to the base of the wall where they can't see us. There doesn't seem to be a gate on this side. We sneak around a third of the perimeter clockwise, reaching a place where a part of the fortifications is crumbled so much that I can climb over with some effort. This doesn't remain unnoticed and I'm attacked immediately. I have to exchange my bow for the Blade of Woe . Eventually, my followers succeed in climbing over as well and join the battle. When the attackers have been eliminated, I equip my bow again and we climb onto the ramparts. The remaining soldiers still see us first, except for one:

What is this? Are you seriously not noticing me? Guess I'd better shoot you dead then, before you wake up from your daydreams.

The fortress is formidable. Borgakh is particularly impressed. If only they'd clear away the rubble and repair the defense wall in that one place where I was able to climb over earlier, this would be an awesome defense installment.

Those clever bastards have erected training dummies all over the place:

I wonder if it could be possible to equip them with magical eyes, so a mage could sit in the fortress and still see what's going on outside.

I'm unsure if I want to explore the interior at all. But since I'm a thane here, I have to do my part keeping law and order in the Whiterun Hold. This place is very close to Hviterun's Western Watchtower (on the right edge of the picture above). Therefore, we go in, and I'm going to be damn glad we did, because this gang is one evil bunch. We find cages, many of which have corpses in them. One cage contains two people tortured to death with fire. It's quite horrible. We kill all the bandits. They aren't much of fighters.

A rather grotesque encounter is with a frail old woman who walks around freely and wouldn't attack us. For that matter, she seems unarmed. She says her name is Agnis and she cooks, cleans and does whatever else the bandits want. Considering her age, it's hard to imagine they would have wanted much, but with that crazy lot I'm not really sure of anything, and I'm not going to enquire about details. We leave her alive. For the time being, she's become the mistress of this horrifying place.

Back outside, we run to the nearby watchtower and tell the city guards they'd better ask the jarl to send some men to occupy the empty bandit fortress. The girls and I proceed to the southwest. We discover a cave entrance called North Brittleshin Pass. It leads to a system of caves called, unsurprisingly, Brittleshin Pass.

There are some walking skeletons and mages inside. From one of the latter, we get the staff Enthir wanted. Its name, buy the way, is Staff of Tandil . The exit at the other end is called, just as I thought, South Brittleshin Pass. We are now on the northern shore of Lake Ilinalta, northeast of Little Vivec. The sun is going down.

Shall we swim across? It's not far, but I'm not sure we can find a place where we can come ashore without being seen naked. Or should we proceed westwards along the coast? Or east to Riverwood?

I get an idea. Tomorrow we could go and explore the southwestern corner of Falkreath one more time. As you may remember, we left the area beyond Pinewood unexplored the last time because we got overloaded. There's no danger of that this time. We could, like, spend this night in Falkert, explore the unknown area tomorrow, and unhurriedly return to Hviterun by the night of the 30th.

The girls think it's a good idea. So we walk to the shore close by. We're going to swim to a little islet between here and Little Vivec, and then come ashore behind Selyse's shop or find another location if necessary. (Jenassa, will you be fine? Yes, she replies, her period ended today.)

Unfortunately, when we come out of the water on the islet, that little boy Albert happens to run around the corner of the shop, and he sees us naked. Dammit! In a small community such as Little Vivec, I simply can't afford to embarrass myself in public like this. Should have put up with the discomfort and swum in armor.

My mood is slightly improved when I find that Selyse is still trading at 7 in the evening. We run quickly through Aurora, because I don't want Lorm to have to see me. But then I notice Ursula is outside her house, so I go to ask if she would trade and she would. Learning from her that Lorm is not in the village, I relax. Ursula apologizes for not inviting us in. With her husband at home, we're certainly more comfortable chatting outside. Me and my followers agree that it's a good idea. Ursula is curious to know what happened between me and Lorm, and I tell her.

It's already dark when we proceed to Falkert.

After a little chat in the cozy and friendly inn, we go to bed relatively early.



next awakening






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Always Lost, Always Hopeful (12) Less Work for Me

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SPOILER INFO
This fanfic novel is based on the events that occurred in an actual game of Skyrim I played. Therefore, it inevitably reveals a lot about the game.
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previous day






4-201-08-28 07:11
Aurora Borealis Inn, Aurora, Falkreath, Skyrim


I have rested well on this very modest bed. This shows how tired I must have been last night.

We have breakfast with the innkeeper and his nice family. Then we go out.

I want to explore Little Vivec alone. Looking for it, I walk past an alchemy shop. The proprietress Skarla is sweeping the porch. I keep her company and let her fill me in on what's going on in the village. She's only a couple of years my elder and we find a common language easily.

She also points out Little Vivec to me:

Skarla tells me it's inhabited by elves who keep largely to themselves. Even though Aurora and Little Vivec are as good as one and the same village geographically, there is little communication between them. The people of Little Vivec sometimes pass through Aurora (because you can't get practically anywhere from Little Vivec without passing through Aurora), but they never stop at the Aurora inn to have a drink and socialize. Skarla thinks it's a great pity. She's hasn't been able to find herself a good boyfriend, which is why she's really keen to get to know the men whom she can see working across the water, but she has no idea how to go about it.

Little Vivec is located on four tiny islands, one house on each and wooden bridges between them. Most interesting!

There's a boy named Albert sitting in front of the first house. He's playing a game where he and his dog have to save the world. I wish him luck and enter the house. It's a shop of an elven woman Selyse. She tells me the village was founded by elves who emigrated from the city of Windhelm in the eastern Skyrim where Ulfric Stormcloak, apparently the same man with whom I was brielfy imprisoned together, was making their life unbearable. The village is ruled (sort of) by a man Belvadyr who apparently has a high opinion of himself but is not respected very much by the other villagers.

Selyse would very much like me to find some ingredients she has had difficulties getting. I ask her if she has talked about it with Skarla from Aurora. Selyse replies Skarla is quite pointless. Sensing she's uncomfortable with the topic for some reason, I leave it at that and promise to do what I can.

The next person I see is Belvadyr himself.

He is very jovial and... how should I put it... grandiloquent? I'm not sure if that's the right word. I'm not good with fancy words, and neither, must I say, is he. Anyway, there's no reason to dwell on him longer. Suffice to say that when he offers me a job as his official courier, I refuse – politely, but he still takes offense.

Belvadyr's wife Velyna works nearby in the vegetable garden. She is very friendly but remarkably unintelligent and disinterested in everything. I'm sure she and her husband get along very well and I'm happy for them.

I succeed, however, in bringing the conversation onto the topic of men in general, and eventually I get a chance to ask her if she has seen any interesting men recently. Velyna says a mysterious man came to Little Vivec a few days ago. He went to see Bal-Ran who lives in a shack on the next islet on my route. Her husband was somewhat displeased with the stranger's unwillingness to talk to him. She has no idea what the man's business with Bal-Ran may have been, but she describes the stranger's looks to me in great detail.

I thank her and move on to say hello to Bal-Ran. He's a no-BS-looking elf (right, they're all elves here), a hunter and an expert archer. He asks me to eliminate a group of bandits at a place called Moss Creek Camp further southeast, and bring the leader's helmet back to him as proof. When I ask him about a stranger who visited him recently, he refuses to tell me anything. This has to mean he did indeed meet that stranger and they said a lot more to each other than just "how do you do?"

The last house belongs to two twin brothers Toren and Taren. Toren, according to himself, is able and industrious while Taren is a lazy good-for-nothing, as well as (yikes!) very fond of women. I can't verify that information with Taren right now, so I just return to Aurora.

I spend the next hours exploring Aurora and do some shopping and training.

The blacksmith's name is Ursula. She is friendly and doesn't mind talking and working at the same time.

Aurora has a well-equipped magic shop with a friendly proprietress, an oldish woman Kaldred. Today she teaches me a spell called Clairvoyance  which helps you find your way around.

Lydia catches me on my way back to the main street. We chat a little about this and that, and then she says:
"You know what, Laura?"
"What?"
"Should it happen that something is too personal to tell Jenassa and Vera, you can tell just me."
"Oh, you'd like that, wouldn't you?"
Lydia's face is perfectly serious. "Yes, I would."
I get serious too. "Good to know. I will. In fact, there is something I've been wanting to tell only you."
We have reached the square (of sorts) in front of the inn and at this precise moment a courier steps up to us and hands each of us a leaflet advertising a museum opened in a place called Dånstar. I don't know where it is.
In the north, says Lydia. On the coast. She annoyedly crumples the sheet and tosses it onto the ground. Then she looks at me with demanding impatience.
"That's not a nice thing to do," I admonish her, faking sternness.
Lydia stomps her foot. "Don't be like that!" But then she picks up the paper all the same.
Seeing Jenassa and Vera approach, I look at the clock outside the inn and exclaim: "My, it's past 3 already! We must get going immediately!"
Lydia casts me an I'll-make-you-pay-for-this look and I can't help grinning and she can't help smiling, and Vera notices it and looks at us inquisitively, and now Lydia notices them approaching, and I motion them to follow me and we head for the Moss Creek Camp.

Apart from those bandits Bal-Ran wants eliminated, I'm also planning on killing a dragon nearby and returning to Falkert for the night. We're running quite late, but I'm optimistic that the dragon will make himself visible even in darkness.

Which reminds me... I haven't yet shown you a map of this region. I'm sorry. I was going to, but then I forgot.

This is central Skyrim, the area around Lake Ilinalta:

When we arrive in the Moss Creek Camp, we find the bandits already dead. I get that helm for Bal-Ran. I find a moment to whisper Lydia to not worry, I'll tell her everything later. Of course she understands this is not the time, and of course she wasn't really cross at me to begin with. I'm not sure when it was we developed a special kind of bond, but by now it's clearly there.

There's another couple of tents with some dead bodies nearby, across the creek:

We loot the place quickly, but we won't hang about wondering what's happened here.

The dragon is supposed to live in a place further south called Ancient's Ascent. (I rather feel it ought to be Ancients' , but I shall keep to the official spelling.) It's on the other side of visibly unsurpassable mountains, so I need to find a way in, and I'm absolutely awful at navigation. So I use the Clairvoyance  spell for the first time. Strangely enough, it points in a direction almost opposite to Ancient's Ascent. Kaldred's husband Glod told me earlier today that Clairvoyance  can sometimes mislead you (as, by the way, can the compass, albeit very rarely), so it's by no means a substitute for the map and your brain. That said, my map indicates there's a small road across the mountains in the east from here, and that's where Clairvoyance  seems to be pointing at. That's why I trust the spell for the time being. However, at the point where I see a path leading up the mountain and Clairvoyance  still tells me to go in the direction directly opposite, I choose to trust my own common sense and follow the path.

We arrive at another fireplace with tents around it. I believe to faintly hear strange buzzing which somehow brings my thoughts to spriggans. I use the Sense of Smell  power and we look in every direction very carefully, but there is no one about. Just as we relax and begin to search the place for loot, three bandits appear and attack us. Thanks to Jenassa being forever alert, we notice them quickly and kill them without much trouble (with the emphasis on "much").

Proceeding further up the path, we soon arrive at a cave entrance. This location is called Bonechill Passage.

Inside, there are caves completely covered with ice. We see a wolf fighting a quickly-flying white (or maybe very pale blue) thing.

Lydia informs me it's a creature called icewraith and it's very deadly. It's also hard to hit, because it's, well, flying back and forth very quickly. Here, however, thanks to the two animals fighting each other, we are fortunate enough to be able to kill them both without taking any damage ourselves.

In the next cave, there's a large humanoid creature called snowtroll . It's very strong. My arrows cause but little damage to it. Fortunately, it needs quite a long time to see where I am, so with the help of my followers, I succeed in killing it before it can damage us.

Soon we are through the passage. As I had hoped, it has led us through the mountains. In front of us is a stone staircase going uphill. On top, there's a word wall with glowing characters on it, similar to the one we saw in Bleak Falls Barrow. No dragon, though. I shrug and think: whatever, I'll get the shout then, and maybe the dragon will deign to turn up in a while. When I'm halfway to the wall, the dragon comes flying from somewhere.

It's a good fight. This dragon gushes frost instead of fire, and unfortunately I have absolutely nothing to protect me against frost damage. I have to make do with generic health potions. Fortunately, there are four of us, so the dragon keeps getting distracted enough for each of us to heal herself whenever injured. I'm happy to tell you that this time I'm able to stay focused and not let my health get dangerously low. Well done, Laura! You're learning.

I get a soul from the dragon (it must look very impressive from the side, but I'm getting rather used to it), and then I step up to the wall and absorb the shout. It's called Animal Allegiance.

Jenassa has heard it told that "Animal Allegiance" means nearby animals will temporarily become my allies and attack any enemies of mine. That sounds interesting. Maybe I can even put it to good use.

But now it's half past 8 and completely dark. We need to get back to Falkert which is not far but very much lower than we are now. Fortunately, my khajiitish tendencies give me an excellent ability to descend even steep slopes. (Not to ascend, though.) Therefore, I need only half an hour to reach the familiar road down below.

Now I use a spell to teleport my followers to me. I know teleportation often leaves people nauseous for an hour or two, which is why I only do it as a last resort. Here it's inevitable, though. They wouldn't have a chance climbing down that mountain in darkness.

The spell works fine, but the girls do feel sick for some time. Fortunately, Falkert is not very far. Soon we're delighted to be back among lit lanterns, warm houses and unaggressive people.

I leave my followers resting at the inn while I proceed to the jarl's house. They're still up. I report first to the steward Nenya about the dragon, and then tell Jarl Siddgeir that I killed those bandits in the west he wanted to get rid of. Siddgeir appoints me thane of Falkreath and assigns to me a fascinating dark-brown-skinned woman Rayya Provlithsdotter as a housecarl.

She looks fierce with the traditional warpaint of her native region, but actually she's only 19 years old and a nice and modest girl.
I'm assured she's an excellent fighter all the same. Has to be, having been brought up in Hammerfell and made it to Skyrim.

In order to take her with me on my travels, I have to dismiss one of the existing followers. Bardslayer won't let me keep more than 3 at a time. He says anything more than that becomes an unmanageable crowd. He's probably right. Three followers have been getting in my way often enough.

It's Vera who has to go for the time being. Or for good, actually, because I don't think I'll ever prefer her to one of my existing followers. She's had her adventure and can now focus on growing up.

You may be wondering if I'm really exposing Vera to the considerable danger of having to travel back to Hviterun all alone. No, I'm not. There is more or less regular horse cart connection between all hold capitals of Skyrim. They transport trade goods as well as passengers and are accompanied by armed guards. While not 100% safe (as can be testified by an occasional upturned cart and a dead horse on the roadside), they are as protected as you can get in Skyrim. Both warring parties leave them alone, even when they're coming from enemy-held territory, and there's the strictest taboo on abusing them for military purposes. In fact, the soldiers always help defend them against bandits and wild animals, if they happen to be nearby. There will surely be one going to Hviterun within the next few days. That's how Vera can return home. Probably she won't even have to pay, because she'll help guard the caravan en route.

Well, it's getting on midnight. Time for bed.

We walk to the inn together, the five of us. A bard is singing in the taproom. He doesn't seem to be from here. The girls inform me that it's common for bards to travel from place to place. Vera hears it whispered that his name is Talsgar and he has studied in the Bards' College in Solitud. She makes it sound like it's a really huge deal. At least Lydia looks almost as excited as Vera. When the bard takes a break, they want me to come along to talk to him, but I am reluctant, so they go without me. I go to sleep soon, as do Jenassa and Rayya.



next awakening






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