Chapter 19

As we were walking back, Lydia was curious about something. “I don’t understand something, my Thane. We can see the College of Winterhold from here. Why is it that if Urag or any members of the College were concerned about Septimus, they didn’t just go out and look for him themselves?”

“It’s simple, really. Think about yourself for a minute. About the you that was, before you met me. How far outside of Whiterun had you actually gone?”

“Well, I’d been to the meadery, and ... that’s ... I’d never really gone anywhere, had I?”

“Unless you’re in the army or an adventurer, most people don’t. That’s the point. We band together for safety and protection, form towns, form cities. Farmers supply them, but they require guards to protect them. It’s just not safe for most people to go anywhere without guards, and sometimes lots of them, or at least they don’t believe it is. Think about that draugr we took out earlier. Do you think even half a dozen regular city guards would have stood a chance against it? Maybe the Companions could have taken it out.”

“We have gotten better as we’ve traveled, haven’t we?”

“Exactly. I’m not going to say that we can’t run into something we can’t handle. Talos, we could end up dying in this Alftand or Mzark. Who knows? But here’s the thing. If it happens, then we tried. We didn’t hide. We faced the challenges that Nirn has thrown at us on our feet.”

“That’s ... my Thane, you’re almost describing us as heroes of legend.”

I smirked. “Lydia, should we succeed, what do you think we will be?” She stopped walking, dumbstruck. I grinned at her. “Come on, I said should, didn’t I? Let’s get off this damnable ice before we get freeze.”

It was early afternoon when we got back to the College. I went straight to Urag. “Do you have a map of Dwemer ruins?”

“I take it you found Septimus, then. Congratulations. What are you looking for?”

“Alftand or Mzark, maybe Blackreach. Urag, I’m sorry to say that your friend is no longer quite sane. But he’s given us clues on where we need to go.”

“Similar to the clues you left for me? Your Majesty?” I jumped a bit at his comment. “Don’t worry, I haven’t told anyone else, and I won’t. Not without your permission. Obviously your companion here already knows the truth about you. I told you I had one of the best libraries around.”

“It ... would not be safe if that information left your lips. Least of all to the Thalmor.”

“Don’t worry. I’m well aware that Ancano is a pure pain in the ass, and I have no interest in saying anything to him. I’m old, no longer fit to be a warrior, and because of my skills I’ll not find an honorable death in combat. I’ve found my own kingdom here in this library. Yet you have done something that I didn’t think possible. You have stirred my soul again. You have brought the warrior back that I thought was gone. Thank you.”

I could feel the blush upon my cheeks. “You are most welcome, Urag. You no doubt know why I need an Elder Scroll, to defeat Alduin. Help me, be the warrior who finds the knowledge I need to win.”

I saw something that few have seen. An Orc that had tears in his eyes. It only lasted a moment, then his nature took over again. He coughed once, then said, “Very well. I ... I have a map to show you. Wait just a moment.”

He went to a cabinet along one side of the room, pulled a key out of his pocket to unlock it, and then retrieved a long scroll from it. He brought it over to his table and unrolled it. “This is a map of Dwemer buildings. It shows you where Alftand is, as well as two others, Mzinchaleft and Raldbthar. Those are the known ways down to Blackreach, where the Tower of Mzark is located. Obviously we’ve known where these places are, just not how important they were.”

He put all of them on my map. “Good luck. Defeat Alduin. Do what ever else you need to do. And ... if you need me, know that I am here for you.”

The two of us left the College more subdued than when we’d entered. After crossing the bridge and getting back to Winterhold, I stopped outside the traders, put my shield up, and began casting clairvoyance. It showed me a pathway that led behind Birna’s shop and up the mountainside.

As we got to the top of the mountain, a dragon flew towards us, concealed by the falling snow. I quickly drank a potion of restore magic as I was almost out of power from the clairvoyance spell, then summoned an atronach. It began firing fireball spells at the dragon while Lydia shot arrows. I got my bow out and joined in the shooting.

The snowfall made it difficult for us to see him. I felt his breath upon me, trying to freeze us. I fired back. I couldn’t see him, but shot into the middle of the cloud. Several times he came by, Lydia and I shooting at him each time. I recast my spell for another atronach, then felt the ground shake as he landed. I realized his frost breath was taking a toll on me and quaffed a healing potion barely in time.

Without extra bowmen or soldiers to divide his attention, it was just Lydia and I. We tried to dodge and duck his attempts to bite us or hit us with his wings as best we could. It wasn’t good enough. Lydia took a heavy blow from a wing and went flying backwards into a snowbank. He started towards her, then reared backwards in pain and shock. We had an unintentional ally – an ice wraith had stumbled onto our fight and being the hostile spirit it was, attacked the first thing it saw, the dragon.

The dragon turned from Lydia to deal with whatever had literally just bit it on the ass. I ducked under the tail that came sweeping by, pumping more arrows into the dragon. With a mighty chomp, the dragon bit the wraith in half. Seeing my opening, I drew my sword and charged in, jumping onto the back of the dragon and running towards his head. He reared up, preparing to leap back into the sky. I reversed my sword and plunged it into his skull.

As he collapsed into the snow, I leaped off and ran to where Lydia was trying to pull herself from under the snow. “I’m sorry, my Thane, that wing sweep took me by surprise.” She grimaced in pain and a trickle of blood ran down her lips as she coughed. I dropped my sword and began casting healing spells on her, to help her obviously broken ribs. It was a close thing, but between my spells and two potions, she was soon able to stand.

“That was entirely too close, my dear. I’d say if the dragons are making this much effort now, that we must be getting close to finding something they don’t want us to find. It’s mid afternoon now. If you want, we can go back to Winterhold and rest.”

She shook her head. “This hurts, obviously. But we need to press on. Surely we’ll find some place we can rest for the evening. I’m just grateful right now to you. I’m the one who is supposed to be your sword and shield – not the other way around.”

“As I told Esbern, I’m getting my old skills back. Hey, there’s some kind of camp or excavation ahead. It looks like there may be a shelter over there, can you make it?” She nodded and we continued on. A deep pit appeared to have been dug and there was a door leading into what obviously was a Nordic ruin. There were several stairways and platforms leading down into the pit, as well as a small but empty, campsite on another platform overlooking things.

It was still early, but this was too good an opportunity to rest after the severity of the combat we’d been in. Lydia started to protest when I told her to strip and get into the sleeping furs, but my stern glance quieted her quickly. “Yes, my Thane.” She was quickly asleep as her body caught up to what magic and potions had done to heal her broken ribs.

I simply sat down and kept watch. For some reason I wasn’t feeling fatigued like normal and I wasn’t going to complain. At the edge of the platform I set up a tripwire as an alarm, then got into my own furs to stay warm. This looked like a fairly abandoned site and I didn’t want a fire to tell anyone different. I dozed an hour, watched for an hour, and repeated that through the night.

The next morning I woke Lydia from her slumber and helped her into her armor. She gave a little shriek when I slipped her cuirass on and the breastplate touched the skin of her breasts. “Sorry that it’s cold, dear. I didn’t think to put it in with me.”

“It’ll warm up soon enough. It was just a shock is all. And paybacks are a bitch.”

“Shut up, give me a kiss, and then let’s grab a bite while we get on the trail again.”

We trudged through the snow. I spotted a couple of wolves ahead and decided to work on improving my destruction skills a bit. Two fire bolt spells resulted in two dead wolves. After skinning them, we pressed on and soon found some Dwemer buildings rising out of the ice. Two abandoned houses were here as well, along with another temporary encampment. “Looks like someone else is trying to explore here as well,” I commented.

“And not doing well, considering how empty and abandoned this place is.”

We looked around for a bit, finding a manifest detailing the expedition that preceded us. Several frozen corpses that were burned showed what had happened to some of them. A wooden ramp led down towards what hopefully was the entrance to Alftand. Further down a swinging bridge supported by some ropes danced a bit in the wind, but steadied as we walked across it and into the entrance.

The entrance actually appeared to be a rift in the glacier wall itself. Several wagons were tipped over and a scattering of wood and debris littered the area. Some cook fires had been here at one time, but the pots were knocked over and the ashes were long cold. It appeared that this had been a place where the previous expedition had stayed before pressing onward.

The ice around this campsite was stained with blood. Something had been slaughtered here. The pathway led further downward. I heard the voices for two angry Khajiit arguing, echoing up the tunnel. Their accents were unmistakable. We continued creeping along. The tunnel changed from snow and ice to stone construction, letting me know we were now in the Dwemer ruins.

I could hear some machinery rumbling in the background, almost like a smithy and waterwheel rumbling. A table with a machine of some kind taken apart upon it lay in front of us. A book was sitting there, and I quickly browsed through it. Apparently this machine had been some kind of Dwemer automaton, like a giant spider but powered by a soul gem. I guessed that whoever had been doing this research was the source of the giant blood spatter on the floor near an impassable gate.

As we proceeded passed this, one of those spiders jumped out of a compartment on the wall and began attacking us. A couple of swings of our swords was all that was needed to take the metal monster down. Following the tunnels up, down and around corners found us having a couple more of these dwarven spiders jumping out at us, to no avail on their part.

I heard some wet thuds coming from up ahead. As we rounded the corner, it was obvious that whatever the Khajiit had been arguing about was serious, as one was slamming an axe over and over into the body of the other. No reasoning with that, so I simply walked up behind him and buried my sword into his back. Several empty skooma bottles indicated the cause for their argument.

Continuing on, we found a room with another torn apart spider that had been studied. The sound of moving machinery was quite loud here. We went around a wall that jutted out ahead of us, into a wider, open area. From out of each wall a round sphere jumped out, sporting a sword and a small crossbow.

These were considerably tougher than the spiders. One came after me, the other after Lydia. Several blows from my sword barely seemed to affect it at all, and I soon found myself backed into a corner. I tried to Shout the thing away, to give myself some room, but nothing seemed to happen. I saw the glow as Lydia used a potion, and I did the same. This dwarven sphere was incredibly tough.

The second sphere smashed Lydia back into a wall, then turned towards me. I nearly panicked but remembered that I still had plenty of potions as well as magic. Fortunately at the same time the second one reached me, I had just finally managed to kill the first. In the brief respite I grabbed two potions at the same time and swallowed their contents quickly. That was the only thing that saved my life, as the sphere had closed, with me still stuck in the corner. Well, that and the quality of my armor. Several more swings and I felt the sphere was weakening as much as I was. I was able to cast a fast healing spell on myself and then finished the sphere off.

As I did so, Lydia returned to her feet from where she’d been stunned by the machine. I cast a healing spell on her as well, then paused while I recovered my arcana. This battle had definitely left us bruised and battered. It was almost a relief to enter the next room and only be attacked by spiders. They were quickly vanquished. The tunnels led up some stairs. A chest lay directly in front of us, but there were more spiders down the hall in either direction.

The spiders quickly fell to our arrows and we recovered some treasure from the chest. I was really starting to feel the strain in my muscles from the previous battles. A little further down this hallway was a closed door. I opened it, hoping to find someplace to rest. A dwarven sphere was sitting, closed up and waiting like a sleeping draugr. It didn’t activate, so we stepped back as far as possible and started shooting it with arrows. It was still incredibly tough to kill, but it did end up dying at our feet. The room it protected had some dwarven stone beds in it. I motioned Lydia in and shut the door behind us.

The door opened into the room, so I took my dagger and jammed it under the door. “Hopefully that will keep anything else down here out. You look like death warmed over, and I’m sure I do as well. I call a break. Let’s get some rest, get some food, and let our bodies recover from the magic of the potions.”

“I think when we get home that soaking in a warm tub for a full day is in order, my Thane. I’m just glad we’ve some of those wolf skins, these stone beds are hard.”

Before when we’d been in combat, I’d felt ... something. A thrill, perhaps, or because I could absorb the souls of dragons, I could also feel something from the creatures that we’d slain. And it had made me extremely aroused. This time, though. This was ... totally different. I felt nothing from these metal creatures. I even felt like I’d been drained inside after battle. One of the notes had said they were powered by soul gems. Perhaps they were draining the energy to power themselves from us, as we fought them.

Lydia picked up on my rather morose attitude and put her arm around me. “Martina, my love, we have made it this far. We are warriors. If I never make it to Sovngarde, I will have still had my time with you.” We had taken our helms off to eat. She leaned forward, resting her forehead against mine, looking deep into my eyes.