Role Playing Fan Fiction ❯ Conjure It At Your Own Risk ❯ How's That For Gratitude? ( Chapter 10 )

TEN

The trip down the mountain involved more shouting Clear Skies to knock down the wind, and I eventually returned to the fortress of the Greybeards, High Hrothgar. From the back side it was still forbidding and rocky, appropriate for ascetic monks like the Greybeards. I went to the library and meditated in front of the statue of Kynareth, one of the kinder local gods, and the one who taught humanity how to shout like dragons. This actually helped, rather than just making me really angry. That’s what meditation does, you know. It makes you angry. Why people meditate because other people told them it will make them calm and serene when it literally does the opposite is baffling. But in this case it helped and I figured out a bunch more shouts I could use. Then we left High Hrothgar and went down the mountain the rest of the way back to Isengard… no, not Isengard. It is called Ivarstead.

Considering I’d saved the world from an immortal dragon god, I am not surprised that my return to the semi-civilized lowlands was just as silent and indifferent as my arrival there the first time. Yes, the lakeshore is pretty pleasant, and the fishing is good. Spoiled for choice on fish, though I do wish I had some lemon juice to put on them, but they don’t have any citrus here. Best I could do was some wine vinegar from the innkeeper. It made it better. Sofia ate it with little comment. Then she got drunk and I got a room so I could sleep.

The following morning I fed myself and Sofia some fish stew, bread, and then marched for Rivendell… Riverwood. That means passing a bunch of stinking corpses of the animals I’d killed on the way here, climbing the pass again, then descending to the ruins of Helgen, where this mess sort of started. There were bandits there now. I lit several of them on fire so they stopped shooting arrows at me eventually. More wolves attacked and were summarily removed with judicious use of fireballs. Further marching finally got me to the arch where the watchmen stared as I arrived. I nodded to the blacksmith and entered the Sleeping Giant inn. Sven the bard was practicing his lute and belting out Ragnar The Red. I descended the stairs into the basement.

“I killed Alduin on the mountain top. You can stop worrying,” I announced. Sofia nodded her support.

“Really? Just like that? No search for artifacts or surprise defeats or setbacks? No journeys around Skyrim seeking secret knowledge in hidden fortresses?” she confirmed, looking a bit disappointed.

“Nah. I used my magic to make him hurt so badly he begged the Gods to kill his body. His soul isn’t gone, but he has no body anymore so can’t trouble us again,” I answered. She looked considerably relieved.

“That’s… amazing news. Looks like you were the right one to save the world. Can I offer you a free pint of my latest ale? I made one with juniper berries based on the recipe from Helgen,” she said, pale and shaken from the news. I tried it. It was smooth, with a nice piney finish. So this is what I’d missed from the inn that had mostly burned down during the dragon attack, along with the tavern keeper and the barmaid. A shame, but life is apparently short here in Skyrim. We ate some goat roast and garlic bread and felt much refreshed after a night of proper rest.

“You there! Have you ever considered becoming a Vampire Hunter? The Dawnguard is recruiting at the old Fort Dawnguard, near Riften.” This from an orc in unusual armor.

“How near Riften?” I asked, finding the location to be a bit vague.

“I’ll mark it on your map,” the old Orc offered, and I noted it was actually a dozen miles from Riften, down a mountain, and through a secret passageway in a hidden valley, up a trail and there to the old Fort he mentioned. I thanked him and he went on his way. Four to one odds the vampires all know where this place is because of his poor information security. And three to one odds they’ll ambush and kill or turn any potential vampire hunters on the way to this obvious chokepoint. Because it is obvious.

You know, my vampire killer fireball spell would be fabulous for this kind of thing. Not having to go through a bunch of vampire infested dark ruins and instead stand outside in the sunlight feeding my spell mana? Yes. All the yes.

I could use some guidance, because part of me thinks I should ignore this obvious vampire issue and visit the College of Magic in Winterhold. Like something important might be happening there which needs my attention. And I’m a wizard, probably the strongest on this planet. And when you have the power, you have responsibility, or so Papa likes to say anyway.

Am I this world’s Gwen Stacy? Aside from her terrible hair style, and early death to motivate Miles Morales to be the hero he became as Spider Man, not to be confused with Peter Parker, Spider Man, Gwen was a reasonably nice girl. At least in the comics I read. I understand there’s movies and some cartoons, and there’s an alternate universe where Gwen lives and Miles or Peter dies, motivating her to be the best Spider Woman she can be, but for all that, the villains are pretty much the same people with the same origin stories, and she has to deal with them in similar ways to Peter or Miles.

Just so long as my laughing at arrogant villains while I mock their bad plans falling apart doesn’t turn into a habit. Compared to Papa, their plans are devious, but Papa did admit in his journals that he was a magical thug with some skill in thaumaturgy and too much power for evocation compared to most other wizards. His eventual development of soul magic infused spells caused limited grief to Fallen angels, shapeshifters, and various other supernatural beings. I was exposed younger, and have a better intrinsic understanding via prayer, which I still do daily, and additional information about the nature of beings composed entirely of soul and manufactured or conjured bodies.

If I ever get stuck in RWBY, which got a comic book series, I should be well suited for life there. Its all about soul in RWBY. For the meantime, this strange world of Tamriel, or Nirn, was a way to pass the time until I can work out the solution to moving my physical body from here to Earth again. The confluence of powers and assistance of God, capital G, is probably to help these people in his name. I wonder which local god is a face of actual God? Are the local gods former mortals like me who gained power and immortality via soul magic, or are they like angels, fragments of God, based on particular thoughts at a specific time that resulted in their existence and will, pieces of an infinite soul? Soul magic is weird stuff, and the benefit of Skyrim and Nirn, this planet, is soul magic is the kind people use here. They’ve taken it to the next level. As a training ground, it is ideal.

Having just climbed the pass twice in the last few days, I opted to ignore the vampire hunters and their poor operational security for now, and headed North on the main road, visiting Whiterun, the commercial capital of the province. I traded some furs and things with the blacksmith with the daddy issues for septims, then headed for the market circle, offloading several items for coins and brewing then selling potions at the apothecary. Much richer now, I climbed to the temple of Kynareth, healed some people, then prayed to God for a bit before exiting the temple and climbing the stairs up to the massive oak-beamed castle.

“Jarl Balgruuf! I bring news!” I shouted, interrupting his bald imperial advisor Proventus, the father of the blacksmith by the gates. “I have defeated the cause of the dragon’s rising and things should calm down again.”

"What of the war between the Empire and the Stormcloaks?” contradicted Balgruuf immediately. I sighed.

“I’ve been avoiding that issue. The dragon was Alduin, a god bent on destroying the world. You could show some gratitude,” I replied icily.

“So you say. Then in gratitude of this city, I offer you this suit of armor and magical helmet,” he tried, pushing out a heavy steel plate. I raised an eyebrow.

“Sofia? You want those?” I offered. She shrugged, then reached for them, stripping off her clothing in front of the assembled court and pulling it on, tightening straps hidden under the plates of steel. It was very shiny, and not stealthy at all. She plopped the helmet down.

“I can see in the dark,” she announced in a tinny echoing voice.

“Thank you Jarl,” I said. We left the throne room and I concentrated my potions and soul gems in the Fount in the wizards work-room. He smarmed at me, asking questions about Alduin which I answered as well as I could.

“Fascinating. And you say this was a dragon god?” Farengar confirmed.

“Alduin. Like in the book on your shelf over there,” I pulled it off and handed it to him to read.

“Really? So he existed after all?” Farengar repeated, amazed.

“He was flying around raising dragons from the dead, you know,” I explained.

“Right. So you said. And then you killed them,” he said more doubtfully.

“That is correct. There are witnesses. If you would care to travel to the sites of these events you can view the dragon skeletons and perhaps you can speak to witnesses and write a book about the events,” I suggested, tired of his nonsense.

I found Proventus eating dinner and paid him to finish fixing up my house, Breezehome. More decorations, bookshelves, a place to cook dinner. A place to sit down to eat it. A door to my bedroom. And I’ll want to see about building that chimney for the fireplace. Maybe construct a wood stove rather than waft smoke into my bedroom and through the wide vents in the ceiling that lets in the rain and snow? The concept of a warm house may seem silly to Nords with frost resistance, but it matters to me.

I dropped off various items in storage at home, putting things away and created an alchemical paint to knock down the shine of that armor, turning it black and grey instead of reflective clanking steel. I also attached cloth to the undersides of the plate to stop it clanking.

“This is amazing? Why didn’t anyone else ever think of this?” Sofia asked me.

“Because they are primitive screw-heads?” I answered. She rolled her eyes. She put on a tavern wench dress and headed for the inn to drink and probably have debauched sex with someone I did not need to know about. I got a drink and paid for a song from the bard, Mikael. I ate some venison stew and bread. Bought some apple pasties, listened more, and stumbled down the street to bed.

“Come on, Sofia. Time to wake up. We’re going to travel a long way today.”

“Ohh… my head. How much did I drink?” she complained. I sighed, then cast healing hands and cured her hangover a moment later.

We set off through the gates with our knapsacks full of food and potions and fur cloaks, heading north to the icy mountains and presumably the college of magic in this world. Or at least, of Skyrim. I think that there’s another college or two in this world, like one in the imperial capital, and another in Summerset Isle, run by the nazi elves.

We passed the farm with the evil dudes’ grease stain on the road outside, then three wolves lurking on the edge of a giant camp. Further yet, the climate changed to snow and ice, just like that, and I killed a spider and an ice elemental, then passed an old tomb where I stopped and stared. I could feel a word of power inside. I turned and marched towards it, incinerating three bandits with bows and pushed open the doors. There were corpses and fresh blood inside, looks like the rest of the bandits woke some zombies. A draugr-mummy was waiting inside and I incinerated it with a fireball, then found more and did the same thing. I passed several traps, going around them while Sofia acrobatically jumped over the trigger-stones in the floor. Why anyone stepped on them is a mystery. They’re so obvious when the lighting is this good. Several staircases and halls and more draugr-mummies burning merrily like well-seasoned firewood I finally found the Word Wall. I killed the draugr with a fireball and the archer mummy for good measure, then stared at the wall. Disarm. Interesting. A non-lethal soul-magic. I collected up the treasure with Sofia and we exited the tomb again through a convenient barred door that went near the entrance. We climbed up the road a short distance, noting an inn where I rented a room and she got drunk with an orc wearing nice clothing and a penchant for good food.

The next morning with a quick dose of Healing Hands for Sofia and we continued our Journey, passing more animals in need of exterminating, a tomb for some ancient Nord alchemist, and climbed the pass. A keep started firing ice spears at me so I returned fire with homing fireball, incinerating a bunch of dark wizards, their reanimated skeleton servants, and summoned my own flame atronach, whom I decided to name Sybil, because it was slightly self-aware and shaped like a woman because the local wizards are perverts.

I eventually picked up the fallen staffs and gold while standing in the courtyard and opted to construct my seeker fireball, sending it into the keep and fed it magic for the fifteen minutes it worked, filling several soul-gems in the process. These primitive screwheads should know better than to waylay travelers on important pass roads. It was just asking to be cleaned out. I entered, finding several chests and books I hadn’t read yet, then left a bit heavier and Sofia complaining of the stink. A quick cleansing spell helped us both. We completed cresting the path and descended past one of those degenerated elves holes. I sent my homing fireball in there too, gathering more full soul-stones from the effort of ten minutes and mined an outcrop of iron, then a second one. A few more wolves decided to test themselves and were found wanting. Down the cobbled road with ice and snow, shivering despite my fur coat, I arrived at an iron mine and a single guard. I used the smelting equipment to turn ores into ingots, then continued on down the road. Several dead wolves later and one large polar bear, we arrived in our furs in the wrecked town of Winterhold.

“Welcome to Winterhold… oh. I see you are a wizard. Then screw you,” complained a guardsmen.

“Don’t like wizards?” I asked, curious at the hostility. Not that many people in Skyrim liked wizards. Most don’t use magic.

“Look at the town. Seventy years ago the ground shook and half the city fell into the sea, and the other half was destroyed.”

“Looks like you still have several buildings. Why not rebuild all of them?” I asked. The guard glared at me, then spit to the side.

“There’s no money, and most of the population left.”

“Seventy years is a long time to live in ruins that could be homes ready to welcome new residents and businesses,” I contradicted him. “Willful misery sounds like a local problem caused by local poor-decisions.”

“Wizards. Be on your way,” he spat again and stormed off. I shrugged, looking to Sofia. She blinked, eyeing the tavern.

“Wizards have special booze that few ordinary people get to enjoy,” I reminded her. She lit up at this.

We approached the college and probably new kinds of drinks Sofia will enjoy.