Role Playing Fan Fiction ❯ Conjure It At Your Own Risk ❯ Off Script ( Chapter 3 )

[ Y - Young Adult: Not suitable for readers under 16 ]

THREE

 

To say that I was disappointed by Whiterun is something of an overstatement. I wasn’t expecting much. There weren’t that many people. Or that many homes. Most were not very big, probably two or three rooms per home. Few houses had real chimneys, opting for roof vents, meaning they would be smoky and cold, at the same time. The smithy just inside the gates had a chimney, at the very least, so someone was smart. I approached her, a redguard with a friendly demeanor.

“I have fresh uncured wolfskins for sale. What will you give me for them?” I asked.

“How many?” she asked, inspecting them. “Not bad. No sword or axe cuts. You kill these with magic?”

“Yes, with Spark. The fur is intact.”

“I’ll give you three septims each,” she announced. I sighed and held out my hand for the coins. Six gold septims richer.

“My father has the ear of the Jarl, and nobody knows just how much he does for him,” commented the smith to some guard, bragging. I walked away from that. That woman has issues. I headed up smoother stone pavement of the road into the market square. There were several stalls. One market stall was offering fruits and vegetables for sale. I noticed that the price of a tomato is one septim. So I had enough gold now to buy half a dozen tomatoes after carrying wolf skins down a mountain. I think I can see a problem in this economy. Another sold jewelry and goblets made from silver and very large gems, probably garnet and amethyst. There was a general goods store, and an apothecary building.

“I’ve got a hungry daughter to feed. I have no time for men,” said the lady grocer, denying the interest of a passing Nord. I climbed the wide stairs to a dead tree which must have had a trunk more than ten feet across. It looked very old, but it was also very dead. A temple on the left of the staircase proclaimed it was for Kynareth, one of the local gods of Skyrim apparently.

“Your Children? Your Very LIVVES? RIISE UP!” cried out a voice at the base of a series of man-made waterfalls. It was a preacher standing in front of some kind of altar symbol, but none I was familiar with. He was shouting about Talos like a madman. He was kinda like a Baptist, I have to say.

I passed him by, headed up the series of stairs which went between a series of huge flowing waterfalls and deep pools. At the top of the stairs I found the water seemed to be emerging from beneath the castle itself. How interesting. My sight showed it was rich in mana. It would probably make a good mana potion, once boiled clean. There were fish in it, after all.

I crossed the final bridge and pushed open a tall and very heavy door to enter the Jarl’s palace. This took most of my strength and several seconds because they were so very heavy, probably hundreds of pounds each of ancient oak bound in iron strapping, with great hand-made bolts. I realized the entire building was made of huge oaken timbers above the large stone foundation. And I mean really huge. Like that one giant hotel at Yellowstone, that’s got a five story tall atrium inside, and stood for over a century despite damage from the Teton quakes. It was that same kind of epic construction. The interior atrium was also around five stories tall and you could play a regulation game of soccer in here. I climbed wide steps and skirted a firepit that was fifty yards long. I approached the throne, and the Jarl, when I was stopped by his bodyguard, a dark elf with a drawn sword and a serious demeanor.

“Who are you to dare approach the Jarl?” demanded the dark skinned elf woman. She had pointed ears, red eyes, and a variation of the English longsword I knew from Michael Carpenter. Her skin was also a greyish-black color, not something I’d ever seen on a human being. I really need to read some local history because Jarl Ulfric’s memory dump is a little too specific and biased to get a proper understanding.

“I have news from Helgen, about the dragon,” I answered with my clear young voice. I swear I look five years younger than I am. If not for my swelling bosom, I’d probably be taken for a child.

“Approach the Jarl, and keep your hands where I can see them,” she warned, sheathing her longsword. I stepped forward another dozen paces and the Jarl noticed me.

“So, you were at Helgen then, girl?” the Jarl called out to me.

“I had a great view of the dragon as they were threatening to cut off Jarl Ulfric’s head. The dragon wanted him dead, too. It seems Skyrim has more troubles,” I answered. “And Riverwood fears the dragon may attack them next. Gerdur asks for your aid.”

“Hmm. Gerdur is level-headed, so would not ask without need. Very well. Irileth. Send a detachment of guards to Riverwood to help protect the town.”

“Yes, my Jarl,” the dark elf accepted her order and sped away.

“You came to me with this news of your own free will. I grant you this token from my armory,” the Jarl says, trying to push a set of imperial armor at me. It was a leather vest and a leather skirt with straps and buckles to hold it together. Not a cute look, and probably very uncomfortable as well as lousy protection.

“Jarl Balgruuf, I am a mage, not a warrior. Might you have something more useful to me?” I asked. He balked at this, then sighed.

“Very well. It seems I will never be able to offload those things,” he muttered under his breath. More loudly: “I have a task that might suit you. Follow me.”

I felt the mana before I saw the mage, and approached him. He was one of those yellow elves, like the Thalmor that the dragon was breathing meteors at. He was leaning over an alchemy table. I can tell it was alchemy because the stinks coming off of it were powerful, foul, and reeked of both chemicals and magic.

“The Jarl wants me to talk with you about some task?” I queried the man.

“Huh? What? The Jarl is in the throne room, over there,” he gestured impatiently. One of THOSE men.

“Look out, you’re about to step on your fire rune,” I taunted.

“What? But I haven’t cast it… oh, a mage I see. Very amusing.” The Jarl arrived then.

“Farengar, I think I’ve found someone to help you with our dragon problem. Oh, and grant her one of your spell tomes as my boon. I will pay you from my treasury.”

“I don’t suppose you have tomes of summoning? I can do this,” I said demonstrating the summoning of the wolf familiar,” but it lacks in attack power.”

“A mage I see? You might journey to join the Mages College in Windhelm. As for a tome of summoning, how about a flame atronach?” he suggested. “I have one here.” He stepped into an office to the left and returned with a book glowing with the same kind of magic as the book of Spark. He offered it to me and I read it, a moment of trapped time and suddenly I just knew how to conjure an atronach, a type of elemental from the plane of flame, somewhere out in Oblivion, as they called it. Their Never-Never was weird, and often dangerous. I conjured the monster, which looked like a woman, complete with boobs, made out of flame, and flames out of her head like a wide hat. As conjurations go she’s weird looking, like something a teenage boy would come up with while horny. Not that girls got horny during puberty. Nope. We are pure as driven snow. Seven years of monthly cycles, and I can almost think that with a straight face.

“Thank you. This will serve,” I answered, nodding with gratitude to the Jarl and this Farengar wizard.

“I am researching the dragons and came across mention of a stone tablet within a tomb, the Dragonstone of Bleak Falls Barrow. Go to the tomb and return to me this tablet and I will be able to advance my research.”

“What does a stone tablet have to do with dragons?” I asked, curious.

“Ah, no mere mercenary but a thinker. I like that,” Farengar responded. He was very condescending. And the only person I knew likely to have spell tomes from this world.

“Go to the tomb, bring me the tablet. You will be rewarded,” he answered simply. I glared at him.

“The people of Whiterun need your aid. Please hurry!” urged Jarl Balgruuf.

I looked from him to the mage and back again. I sighed, and trudged away. Somehow I doubt these rewards will impress me very much.

 

____ Somewhere in space ____

 

From: ROU Frank Exchange Of Views

To: GCU Jaundiced Outlook

Message: Megastructure map enclosed, surface area black body, several port facilities found, automatic defenses disabled using EW and CREWS. Unknown Drones found operating with 8.712E12 energy, variable output, see attached videos of types, inactive and active forms, report, documentation and video of disassembly. Drones non-sapient, mechanical, no hackable system present, and no wireless control or emissions.

Mega-structure is three AU diameter, gravimetric survey suggests solid planet within and orbiting moons, two, and sun (singular) around planetary body within megasphere. No radio, laser, or other transmissions detected, black-body IR and dark energy emissions only detected energy. Purpose for sphere unknown, but portions of the sphere show high intensity dark energy and matter.

Penetration of the sphere by probes finds significant dark energy interference in standard drones, disabling them. Adapting shield frequencies or hardened drone designs requested to continue exploration mission.

___ END TRANSMISSION ___

 

Riverwood is just as miserable the second time I visited as the first. The river flowing by is nice. It burbles. Fish jump for the bugs flying low over the water. There are a lot of fish. I could probably swim in there and catch one with my hands, there are so many fish.

The lumber mill slowly cutting logs in half and dropping them into a pile is the main industry. There are chickens running around. There are kids and a dog that reminded me of a wolfhound. Not like Mouse, whom I missed terribly since his heroic death several years ago. There are backyard vegetable gardens, with lots of cabbage visible. This place is probably very… gassy. There are also elk wandering around the periphery of town, and moose. Small moose, and reindeer/caribou. There are mountain goats visible on the slopes above me.

I’ll admit, having been to Whiterun and hiked back this way, I overheard that this mountain East of Riverwood is the tallest in Skyrim, better than 14,000 feet if I’m any judge. It got a good look at it as I passed the farms and meadery and headed for the road up the river again. We’re so close to it that the sides of the mountain are blocking views of the top. And they are really steep jagged sides. You’d expect to see glaciers here, but no luck. That doesn’t make very much sense to me, but maybe we’re in an interglacial at maximum retreat right now, which suggests that when the ice returns it will be much colder.

Already I notice that when the wind howls down off the mountain top my nipples crinkle with the cold. I’d experienced this effect before, and usually wore thicker clothing, but I can see I want to make myself a fur cloak to protect myself. And considering I’m going up to that barrow Ralof warned me about, and it was surrounded by snow, I’m going to need it.

I get the idea the locals are much hardier than I am, and I can see why they felt the need to include Frost Resistance as a key inborn skill for Nords. I could have picked Nord, been a foot taller and a hilarious set of boobs and one of those horned Valkyrie helmets. I could have had thews. Dad loved thews, when he played role playing games with Billy and the Werewolves. Their name really did sound like a folk-rock band that played for one of those local Renaissance fairies, the kind with the e stuck near the end to make it sound more Olde English.

Another burst of icy air descended. Okay, my nipples are now hard enough they hurt. Time to see about a fur lined cloak. Several minutes of bargaining revealed that a fur-lined cloak I could have made from a pair of those tanned wolf skins with the fur left on and some leather strips would set me back thirty gold Septims. No deal. I did learn that the sister of the owner was the apparently target of two of the village men, one a cannibal elf that worked at the lumber mill hauling firewood for coin, and the other an oaf who worked as a bard at the nearly-empty inn I’d passed when I returned to town. Farengar had called Riverwood a miserable little village and he wasn’t far wrong.

I resigned myself to warming up in the inn for a few minutes, noting a bored man behind the desk polishing a tankard with a rag. No one ever found what he did with the clean ones… sorry, I couldn’t resist the Pratchett reference there. The other proprietor was a bossy short blonde woman with a scar over her left brow and a large pair of boobs she displayed prominently, probably for extra tips when serving drinks. Or maybe she was just that kind of woman. I have no particular need to find out.

I noticed a book glowing in my Sight on the top of a barrel past a hand-made leather sleeping bag, fur lined with skins. I wonder what sort of fleas and lice live in such a thing, then a shuddered when I realized that everyone suffered from them and a society like this wouldn’t have the first idea about insecticides. I’d be collecting lavender when I spotted some next time I was walking around. It was an insecticide. Unfortunately, most of the human population is also allergic to it, including me. Sigh.

The book was magical, a tome. Not a tomb, though with the job imposed on me by the Jarl, I’d be in a tomb soon, probably reading the walls so I’d be reading a tomb. Such a Missnape. I carried the Tome over into the firelight and sat in a chair while the blond Nord bard sang about the redhaired guy who bragged and drank too much and got killed by a Nord woman who was tougher. I’d seen a few who probably fit that bill, actually.

The book was actually amusing. It was a spell tome of Capacity of a Sparrow, which when cast gave you the ability to lift an extra knapsack of weight, valuable if you’ve found some treasures and want to get them out of a tomb where you’ve been reading, rather than drop other valuable loot where you found it and give up the gold it will bring when sold to some merchant or blacksmith, presuming you can negotiate a price both deem fair. I learned the spell quickly and now knew how to boost my carrying capacity if I needed to. I returned the book to where I’d found it and suitably warmed, headed out to face my destiny. Again.

A short time later I was across the bridge and killed a wolf, of course, then skinned it, with plans for a cloak. I’d need a couple more, probably. A walk along a narrow rocky path around the side of the mountain found tower and several men lounging around. Wait, one was a woman. I will not attempt to reason with them, and climbing over these cliffs is not going to go well. I drew in mana, focused, and cast Flame Atronach between me and them. The elemental resisted a moment but accepted my will, then went towards what I am reasonably sure are bandits in the tower. The struggle was brief, the screams likewise, and I was left needing to cast my new Sparrow spell by the end of it, then returning down the mountain to sell the loot, which included fur armor soiled by death, iron armor pieces which were both heavy and poor protection because it covered little of the body, like arms and legs, and several weapons like hand axes, long bows. The money from their sale was enough to cover a night in a bed, so I slept at the inn, ate a hot meal, and shut the door on the bard. Most of the adult residents of Riverwood seemed to be there for the entertainment, but I just wanted to sleep properly. I was tired enough that I was surprised to wake at dawn without having needed to arise in the night. So very odd.

A good night’s sleep did me wonders, but also left me needing a privy. I was directed out back to an outhouse and made use of it. I also noticed the dark color of the garden soil and the particular smell suggesting that the contents of the outhouse got turned into fertilizer to grow their vegetable. That is a fine way to get cholera, and is common practice in Spain and most of Europe, unfortunately. People wonder why Americans are so overweight, and part of that is we don’t have rampant cholera from our vegetables. I’d been a skinny girl when I lived in Ecuador with my family.

Finished with my business and rinsed off in the river, which stank, I ate a breakfast of venison, cabbage soup, and bread, then headed up to the tower and continued my journey. Luckily, there was another wolf I fried with Spark, and I was able to save this pelt as well. I’d finally be able to make a cloak. A few coins worth of salt and the brains from the wolf spread upon the skin and it began to cure the leather. A disgusting process, but it works. I really want some household charms, like repel biting bugs and cure leather, more quickly, and resize armor to fit me. If such incredibly useful things existed.

Inquiry at the general goods store got a laugh from Lucan, the proprietor. I sighed on exit.

I stashed my goods in a tree stump behind where the guards were staying, noting the stink of urine suggested they were using the area as their privy. I returned up the mountain, again, killing yet another wolf, and found the empty tower contained a sack of gold, a lantern but no oil, a number of barrels of food, for some reason, including salt which I took, and a chest at the top containing an iron armor plate and seventy five gold Septims. Hoorah? It was money. I need a house. Gold is heavy. In video games they make gold light, but in the real world it is heavy, and carrying around gold is a fast way to get overburdened and need that Elsewhere Swallow spell, which I used.

Another trip down the mountain and sold the iron armor for a pitiful fifteen septims. The rest of the armor was lighter and worth five each. My sack of gold was heavier and I asked Lucan, still open late, if he had any spells.

“I have a few here,” he admitted. I looked them over. Something called Oakflesh. Another called Muffle. And one called Ocato’s Recital.

“What’s Ocato’s Recital?” I asked. He shrugged.

“The mage said it helps you precast several defensive spells so on detection of hostile intent the spells will activate.”

“So if I had this Muffle and this Stoneflesh spells I’d be able to precast them with this Ocato’s Recital? Sounds useful. So I have to precast it every time?”

“I think you just do it the first time. It is automatic after that. Something from Cyrodill, from the Mage College.”

“How much?” I asked. He told me. I cringed. It would set me back 890 septims to buy all three. I bought Ocato and Oakflesh, the cheapest protection spell. Maybe I could upgrade later. I read the spells and cast them realizing I could add another spell, included Elsewhere Swallow too. Thus prepared I crept back up the path, cold and shivering despite my fur cloak and found the tomb.

It looks a lot more imposing up close. It was spiky, with flying buttresses, carved dragon motifs, writing I could not read… and now I’m reading a tomb. And it’s dark. And cold. At least there’s plenty of moonlight… and two moons. And there’s aurora borealis covering the sky in a shifting electromagnetic curtain of light. Searching the structure I spotted the silhouette of one visible watchman, standing in the open from one of those buttresses nearest me. He or she was another bandit according to what Lucan had said. I lowered my crouch and shifted closer to the rocks beside the trail.

I considered, wishing I had a useful spell for distance. Kinetic energy with conjured materials, like an ice spike would do the job like an arrow, only meaner. In these conditions with snow blowing around it would be easy enough. I used my mana to form and gather the materials, hardening and compacting the shiv into a drill, aimed carefully building up potential energy and fired it like a gun. The spike took the man in the torso and he was flung from the post, falling a good thirty feet to his death. Father gets very fussy about killing with magic. His morals are weird. He kills with magic often. Wiping out all the vampires and their thralls around the world was more than two hundred thousand dead, all to save my life. In the scale of things, I figured I was owed at least that much leeway.

Two more voices shouted, noticing their fellow had vanished. My protective spells both cast, poof, and I was somewhat bark-covered, mystically speaking. I readied a spike and waited in my veil for a chance to strike from the shadows. An arrow just missed me. I stepped sideways, reaimed and fire my spike into his guts from at least 200 feet away. Good shot, me. He yelped, but stoically drew another arrow and fired back at me over the two foot icicle jutting out of him. I sidestepped. The arrow snapped into the rocks behind me. Another man howled in rage charging down the stairs, an Orc. I cast my Flame Atronach summons and directed it to attack. It responded by throwing fireballs, small ones, at them both. A moment later I emerged from behind my magic shield and there was a charred corpse not twenty feet in front of me and a pair of feet from the archer atop of the ruins wall. My mana slowly refilled. I was almost empty, but it was returning to me now I’d stopped casting. Interesting effect. I don’t have to sleep or eat a big meal to refill my reserves. That will change combat and magical options quite a bit, and it seems that the Ocato spells didn’t use my mana reserves, more that they’d fired from the pre-charge I’d done, and it was refilled rapidly, ready for the next bout of combat.

I crept up, wary of more guards and looted their bodies for gold, food, one had a Nord mead bottle, and a pair of lockpicks. I went to the next, learning to tune out the smell of scorched monkey meat and burned hair, eventually loaded to capacity. It was dark, and I needed to descend the mountain as best as I could with this loot. What a drag. I kept thinking of spells to keep my end up.

“I’d like to rent a room for the night,” I asked the innkeeper, or at least the guy behind the counter. He was also pouring drinks for the barmaid with the bigger tits. Bigger than me, anyway. Huge, if I’m honest. And I’m totally not jealous. I’m younger, not scarred. Yet. I bet a lot of women in this Skyrim country have scars. I bet they show them off to their lovers, brag about how tough they are.

“Record,” said a woman, and there was a beep. My head swiveled to the left, to stare at her. That was electronics.

“It's ten septims for the night, miss,” said the innkeep. I counted out the coins and paid him. My big pile of stuff tied with leather straps and twine I’d found on one of the guys. I haven’t even been inside the ruins yet and I’m already carrying loot like some kind of mook. I wonder if I’m a Mob Character or I’m the hero of the story? Considering the dragon? Meh. Even odds.

“It’s the one on the left,” said the innkeep. He unlocked the door for me and I went inside, placing my smoky and bloodsoaked pile of goods behind the door, then went to find the Recorder girl. I wonder if we’ll be friends?