Dardeh was very grateful for his new armor on his journey back to the Reach. Yes, there was the usual complement of wolves, and bandits in Whiterun Hold. He even ran afoul of a group of three relatively weak vampires on the first evening and was fortunate to avoid being contaminated with Vampiris Sanguinaire. He had cure disease potions with him, of course, but he hadn’t really expected to meet any vampires unless it was the dead of night and this had been early evening.
No, what was truly special about this trip was that he needed to dispatch no fewer than three dragons.
The first one rose up from just behind the foothills, near the point where the road to Falkreath branched south past the west end of Lake Ilinata. There wasn’t much cover to be had out on the plains, but there were a number of wolves and a giant from nearby Sleeping Tree Camp that distracted the dragon, drawing its fire. Dardeh used the distraction to his advantage, Shouting both force and frost at it and firing arrows as he could, until finally the beast dropped to the ground and he was able to assist the giant in finishing it off. This time, he was careful to keep a low profile as it began burning and shedding its power, and he ran off as soon as the transfer was complete so as to avoid worrying the giant about a potential theft of a well-earned kill. He would forego the chance to collect some dragon bones in favor of not being launched into the air by the giant’s club.
The second dragon drew him off his intended route to the west. He heard the faint sounds of its roar ahead of him and broke into a trot, trying to see where it was, and ended up almost in Rorikstead by the time the dragon spotted him and attacked. There was even less cover available for this fight, but the guards in Rorikstead and along the road had done some substantial damage to the beast already and they came running to help him. It hadn’t taken long for them to drop it to the ground, and his killing blow had come from atop its head.
He had jumped off the dragon’s neck to the ground, grinning to himself. It was, although terrifying, an exhilarating experience to be riding the back of an enormous creature of legend. As the now-familiar swirl of power surrounded him he saw a group of four guards standing with their mouths open.
“Dragonborn!” one of them breathed.
Dardeh just nodded. He really didn’t know what else to do. “Thanks for all the help,” he said. “I’m not sure I could have done that alone.” That much was true, he thought; and it certainly didn’t harm anyone to acknowledge the substantial part they had played in defeating the dragon. The only thing I do completely on my own is whatever this is, with the dragon’s soul.
But for all that excitement, and the barrage of familiar predators he encountered climbing back up over the bluff that marked the eastern edge of the Reach, the third dragon was by far the most frightening enemy he had ever faced. Dardeh had been walking slowly along the road, feeling an odd mix of nostalgia and regret as he entered the familiar surroundings of the Reach, wishing with part of his heart that he could simply return to his childhood home and leave the business of being Dragonborn behind and knowing with the other part that he could not do so until the dragon threat was over.
Maybe I can never leave it behind. I’m the only one who can make sure they’re gone for good. I can’t just leave it to the authorities. They can kill a dragon’s body but not its soul.
He’d reached the small side road that lead to Old Hroldan, a tiny place that had been the site of a major battle in the Second Era, led by none other than Talos himself before his elevation to divinity, in his guise as Hjalti Early-Beard. Dardeh was pondering resting at the inn for a time when the familiar roar came echoing across the water, from the west. He couldn’t see the beast, for all the high rock outcroppings, until suddenly the trees and rocks around him rumbled and a spray of flame hit the ground in front of him, nearly close enough to singe hair, the keening of the shout nearly deafening. He ran for the high rocks behind the Old Hroldan inn and tried to find cover.
This dragon, like the one he had met in Eastmarch early on, seemed particularly fixated on him, personally, and was not distracted by any of the Reach guards or Imperial soldiers on the road who stopped to fire arrows at it as fast as they could. It was determined to kill Dardeh. He focused Unrelenting Force on it whenever he could, snapping its neck and head backward and interrupting its fire breath shout long enough to fire off several good bowshots each time. He had the full power of the shout, now, but even it was only so effective against a fully-grown dragon. He tried Frost Breath on the beast once or twice, but his Shout was not strong enough to counter the devastation of Fire Breath at full dragon power.
And then he made a mistake. He ran onto the porch of the inn and was effectively trapped like a rat. The dragon dropped into a hover, just above the clearing in front of the porch, and unleashed a powerful gout of flame. Dardeh was able to escape some, but not all of the flames’ damage, by standing directly behind one of the porch roof’s support beams, but that wasn’t going to be an effective tactic for long.
I’ve done it now. This place is going to go up like a torch and I’ll never be able to save the people inside. I have to make a break for it but I have no place to go, and if I die the dragon will be alive even if the soldiers kill its body temporarily.
But the inn at Old Hroldan had not withstood centuries by being a weak structure. Whether it was something that had been mixed into the roof over the years, or the power of the spirits that were supposed to inhabit the place, or something else entirely, the roof did not catch fire. The beams behind which Dardeh hid scorched, and smoked, but that was all, and with a part of his mind Dardeh wondered how that could possibly be so. Dardeh played cat-and-mouse-and-Shout with the dragon for what felt like hours until he finally forced it to ground and was able to finish it off with his scimitars.
He didn’t stay at the inn. Instead, deciding to stay out of the spotlight, he made his way to a small island in the midst of the river and tossed down his bedroll, resting for a few hours.
The rest was a good idea, as it turned out. He knew he was heading into a big Forsworn encampment near the Karthspire, but having only approached it from the north as a youth he hadn’t realized just how big it was. The encampment spread from the cliffs on one side of the river, across it, and up the other side, effectively blocking access to the eastern route to Markarth.
The Forsworn were natives of the Reach from as far back as men could remember. They were an odd mixture of man and mer, Breton, Nord, and other races who had always been in the area. Some were deadly mages, others simply brutal warriors, and the deadliest, the Briarhearts, had had their own human hearts removed and replaced with briar hearts in a bloody, sacrificial rite. While their original intention had been simply to secure what they considered their own land for themselves – and they had been successful, briefly, just before Dardeh was born and while he was an infant – the Forsworn now ruthlessly hunted down anyone who wandered carelessly into their territories. They particularly disliked the Nords they felt were responsible for taking their ancestral lands.
You would think I might understand them a little better. I know what it’s like to be neither one thing nor the other. But I don’t. I hate them for making it unsafe for my Nord mother to leave Markarth for all those years, and for attacking people just traveling on the roads, trying to keep bread in their bellies like everyone else. I don’t understand why they have to make war on everything around them rather than building up their encampments into proper homes.
Or maybe I do.
He shook his head at that thought, not really knowing what it meant. And then he became too busy to concern himself with it any longer. The Forsworn were everywhere, they wanted him dead, and some of them had frost spikes to share. It seemed as though hours had passed by the time he spotted Delphine, Esbern, and Esbern’s frost atronach on the other side of the river, all fighting every bit as furiously as he was. The numbers of Forsworn were dwindling and the piles of bodies growing higher as he moved in hoping to join them.
Then a hagraven entered the fray, making her slow but deadly way down from an altar higher up the hill on Dardeh’s side of the river. He discovered that she was there when an enormous fireball exploded in his face, sending him tumbling down the hillside into the water. He was glad for the water; it kept him from cooking alive inside his armor. But he was too injured to do much more than scramble up the opposite side of the hill Delphine occupied, and pull out his bow. There was a platform, higher up from where Delphine stood; he took down the one Forsworn guarding it with a well-placed arrow, then made his way up to its vantage point.
The hagraven was distracted by the frost atronachs. She blasted them apart easily with her fireballs, but as soon as one disappeared Esbern cast another, and frustrating as it must have been to Esbern, they did manage to do some damage before being destroyed. The hagraven croaked and staggered back with each blow, and it seemed to Dardeh as though she was taking longer to recover each time she was hit. Dardeh started raining arrows down on the hagraven while she was looking elsewhere. He heard Esbern yelling “I could use a hand here!” just as he loosed an arrow. It flew straight and true and pierced the hagraven’s skull, dropping her to the ground.
There were just a few Forsworn left, determined to take them and then all of the Reach in spite of the carnage surrounding them. By the time Dardeh made it to Delphine she had taken out all but one of them and they dispatched that one with no trouble.
The three of them stood, panting, and made their way slowly up the hill and into the Karthspire.
Dardeh was happy for his Shouts then, as the three Forsworn inside met them with arrows, axes and frost spikes. He was able to fling the spellcaster backwards with Unrelenting Force and then finish him off with swords while Delphine and Esbern defeated the other two. They continued upward, toward what he knew had to be the mountaintop temple he’d seen from a distance so many times before, through a winding path with several stubborn and dangerous puzzles including a gigantic stone face guarding the entry to Sky Haven Temple proper. And without his physical presence, Delphine and Esbern would have come all that way for nothing, as only he could open the door.
At the end of it all, Dardeh had found himself staring almost in a daze at a huge bas-relief wall. He examined it, taking in every detail of an intricate tale told in pictures, of the kind he’d seen in the Hall of Stories in Bleak Falls Barrow, while Esbern droned on about history, and prophecy, and the return of Alduin. And a shout that would defeat him again. That roused Dardeh from his reverie. A Shout?
Delphine turned to Dardeh. “Have you ever heard of anything like that? A Shout that will knock a dragon out of the sky?”
“I’ve only heard of a few Shouts at all, Delphine, and you’ve heard them. So no. I haven’t.” Sorry to be bad-tempered but I am truly exhausted right now. Three dragons, a hagraven, saber cats, wolves and gods know how many Forsworn in just a few days. And sacrificing blood to get in here, as well. It’s a wonder I can stand.
She frowned. “Well I guess there’s no help for it. I had hoped to avoid involving them but we’re going to have to ask the Graybeards for help.”
“What’s wrong with that? Do you have something against the Graybeards?”
She snorted. “If they had their way you’d do nothing but sit up there on the mountain with them and talk to the sky, or whatever it is they do. Power’s no good if you’re too afraid to do anything with it. Think about it. The people who had power but never used it – do you ever hear about them?”
Dardeh nodded. It had rather seemed that way, the last time he’d seen the Graybeards. He had trudged back up to the monastery to return the Horn of Jurgen Windcaller on his way to find Esbern in Riften. Arngeir had seemed pleased to have the Horn back, and had taught him Da, the final word of Unrelenting Force; and the four Graybeards had welcomed him to High Hrothgar as one of their own. But Arngeir had been quick to point out the need to follow the Way of the Voice, which basically amounted to quiet contemplation. Dardeh understood it, the philosophy they followed. Arngeir had explained it carefully, and it made sense for them; but it did rather amount to talking to the sky, all told, and seemed rather useless for someone with no intention of living life as a monk. He had more pressing matters to tend to.
“Don’t worry, Delphine. I’m not afraid of my own power.” What a bald-faced lie. I’m terrified by it. But I don’t have a choice. “I’ll go ask Arngeir if he knows anything about this Shout. Maybe he doesn’t, but I think it’s the only option we have at the moment.”
Delphine nodded. “I’ll look around this place and see what else the old Blades might have left for us. It’s a better hideout than I could have hoped for.” She smiled, a small and slightly grim expression but a smile nonetheless. “Talos guide you.”
Talos guide me, Dardeh prayed silently as he walked down the hillside and toward Markarth. I don’t know what I am doing or how I should proceed. But I do know that I have to climb all the way up that godsforsaken mountain yet again.
Unrelenting Force. Fus-Ro-Dah. It was a devastating weapon when he allowed himself to release its full power, and it was the reason he had survived those three dragon attacks in such a short period. He’d aimed wrong, once, and seen the effects of it on a human. An attack that could push back a beast the size of a dragon could pick up a large man and send him head over heels through the air. He’d been lucky that the man had landed in a spot well-cushioned by grasses or he might have had yet more blood on his hands.
And who am I to have power like that?
Son of a sweet Nord mother and a Redguard father I know nothing about aside from this pair of swords.
Why me?
Oh yes, Delphine, I am afraid of this. I am afraid of what it is doing to me. I am afraid of what is to come. But I have no choice. It is a thing that just – is.
He eventually found himself before the little thatched-roof hut that had belonged to his mother, and let himself in. He sighed, tossed his pack onto the bed, and then shed his armor. The house seemed dead now, dead like his mother, even after he laid a fire for light and made himself a cup of her favorite tea. There were no old Nord stories, no giggles from a child chasing her pet fox, no answering chuckles from a beautiful warrior pretending to be a mother. It was empty, and dead, and he wanted to go home.
There was an old set of his mining clothes in a chest. He smiled and put them on, then gathered his pickaxe from the corner where he had left it.
They’d been surprised to see him, at the mine, but had gladly accepted his help for the time he was there, especially when he told them no, don’t pay me, I just need to hit the rock for awhile.
He did just that, thinking about nothing aside from the rock, and where the minerals were, and where the weak spots were so as not to strike them by mistake. The things he knew, the things he could see, and feel, and control with the force of his muscles; those were the things before him and nothing else mattered for a long time.
When he finally fell into his bed that night he slept without dreaming.