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Dardeh stood quietly for a moment, trying to catch his breath, trembling with fatigue.\u00a0 Ahead of him was a long room, well-lit by a central platform ringed in burning braziers. To either side, the passageway was overhung by an ancient Dragon Priest banner like the one he\u2019d seen in the courtyard. Against the right wall a sacrificial table nestled beneath one of the stylized stone dragon heads that peppered every barrow and temple in Skyrim.\u00a0 It was quiet, but Dardeh wasn\u2019t going to let that fool him.\u00a0 It was always quiet in a barrow.<\/p>\n
No sooner had he taken a step or two forward when the doors behind him burst open and one of the Draugr Deathlords he thought he\u2019d left behind stepped through.\u00a0 Dardeh whirled and raised his swords, but couldn\u2019t move quickly enough to avoid being staggered by the creature\u2019s Shout.\u00a0 He was forced down onto one knee, and looked up just in time to see a glowing greatsword coming down toward his shoulder.\u00a0 Dardeh blocked with his left sword, crying out at the pain as the two swords met and the impact rocked his shoulder backward, a part of his mind marveling at the sight of magic sparks flying when the shock-enchanted blade in his hand met the cold-enchanted greatsword.\u00a0 He pushed himself up and forward, raising his double-edged blade and running the draugr through before it had a chance to ready another swing.<\/p>\n
Dardeh lowered himself to the floor and sat, trembling, his muscles refusing to take him any farther without rest.<\/p>\n
I can\u2019t do this.\u00a0 There are too many of them.\u00a0 I need Roggi.<\/em>\u00a0 He hadn\u2019t really considered how large a part of the burden Roggi had borne over the past weeks, but the more he thought about it the more he realized that the big blonde Nord with the greatsword was probably far stronger than he was himself. Roggi was a trained fighter who naturally, unconsciously used tactics and experience to make up for any losses ten years away from the field might have exacted on his body.<\/p>\n I\u2019m not a soldier.\u00a0 I\u2019m strong, but half of what I do is by accident or sheer luck, and if not for having Shouts I\u2019d have been dead ten times over by now.\u00a0 How am I supposed to survive this?<\/em><\/p>\n He scooted over toward the wall, frowning as he realized that Miraak\u2019s mask, which he wore on his belt, was catching on the stones.\u00a0 Too tired to raise my butt up enough for Miraak to get out of the way.\u00a0 Good.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/em>He reached into his pack for a bit of cheese to nibble, found himself relaxing a little bit, and closed his eyes.\u00a0 Well, Miraak, we\u2019ve both ridden on that dragon of yours.\u00a0 We both knew Dragon Aspect.\u00a0 You were around a lot longer than I\u2019ve been but here\u2019s a place you never came, I\u2019ll bet; and if I make it out I\u2019ll be going someplace where you\u2019ll never go, thanks to Herma Mora.\u00a0 I\u2019ll never put it on my face but I\u2019m bringing your mask along on my backside; enjoy the view.<\/em><\/p>\n My neck hurts, Dardeh thought, and he opened his eyes.\u00a0 It took him a moment to realize that he\u2019d fallen asleep, and his head had slumped to the side in an awkward position.\u00a0 How long have I been out, I wonder?<\/em> He pushed himself to his feet, rubbing his neck and taking stock of himself; the fatigue was gone.\u00a0 He hurt in a hundred places, but he felt capable of moving on now.<\/p>\n I guess when you have to sleep, your body makes you sleep.\u00a0 Glad none of the other draugrs from outside decided to use what\u2019s left of their brains and come after me.<\/em><\/p>\n He was even more relieved that they\u2019d stayed outside after he\u2019d moved forward, just past the central platform in the room.\u00a0 Beyond it was an alcove of sorts, a table for preparing the dead, with burial urns and tools on it.\u00a0 Three draugr burst out of their sarcophagi to attack him.\u00a0 Two of them were simply ancient men with no special skills, and he took them down without issue.\u00a0 The third, though, was a spellcaster.\u00a0 He heard the humming of a spell behind him and turned to find a frost atronach raising its mighty fist to attack.<\/p>\n \u201cYOL!\u201d<\/p>\n The fire didn\u2019t stop the atronach, but it did give Dardeh just enough time to run around it and attack its caster. \u00a0He was glad for the rest he\u2019d taken as he was able to whirl and slash and dodge well enough to defeat the draugr with only a single ice spike being cast into his arm. That hurt, and it prevented him from using both swords for the last couple of swings but it didn\u2019t matter in the end.<\/p>\n Dardeh crept forward, up the stairs to the left of the dead draugr, and entered another large chamber.\u00a0 This room ended in two gated corridors, one on each side, and had a series of the familiar rotating animal totem plinths in the center.\u00a0 He studied the area before moving in.\u00a0 It was easy enough to see which animal was the correct choice on either side, for overhanging rocks just above each of the plinths had plaques mounted on them.\u00a0 It was the one in the middle that perplexed him.<\/p>\n He moved farther into the room and heard the unfortunately familiar sounds of sarcophagus lids falling open.\u00a0 A few minutes later, there were three more draugr on the floor, dead once again, and Dardeh studied the far wall.\u00a0 Each of the gates had a plaque over it.<\/p>\n Two things can happen. It\u2019s possible that only one of them is correct and I die if I pick the wrong one.\u00a0 Or \u2013 the plaque I pick is the one that will allow that lever to open that gate.\u00a0 I guess I have to hope that\u2019s the case.<\/em><\/p>\n He swung all three of the plinths into position and threw the lever, and the gate on the left side rose.<\/p>\n Thank Talos for that. I\u2019d hate to have come all this way and die to a damned puzzle.<\/em><\/p>\n The corridor led up a flight of stairs and around a corner to the left. An archway opened into a closed chamber, open in the center with balconies ringed along three of four sides.\u00a0 Edging forward, Dardeh could see a wooden staircase leading down into yet another burial area, lined on all sides with sarcophagi and with an embalming table in the center.\u00a0 A draugr stood there, one hand raised, a ball of magical energy shimmering in it.<\/p>\n Dardeh tried to move silently down the wooden stairs and did, at least most of the way down.\u00a0 Then two of the plates on his ebony armor rubbed together and the draugr turned, alerted to his presence.<\/p>\n Damn it. I need someone like Delvin Mallory for this kind of thing.\u00a0 I\u2019ll bet he can just disappear.<\/em><\/p>\n The draugr raised its hand.\u00a0 Dardeh stood, and Shouted \u2013 \u201cFUS!\u201d \u2013 and just the single word of Unrelenting Force was enough to throw the draugr backward into the table, tangling it up with itself, giving Dardeh enough time to rush forward and hammer his swords down on it.\u00a0 Just as the draugr was collapsing onto the floor, two more burst out of their sarcophagi.<\/p>\n Of course.\u00a0 It couldn\u2019t be just one, could it.<\/em><\/p>\n He was getting tired again by the time he\u2019d taken out the two additional draugr.\u00a0 His arms ached and his shoulders were on fire, especially after the hammerings they\u2019d both taken from blocking blows.\u00a0 Behind him, in a niche under the wooden stairs, was a chest.\u00a0 He peeked inside and spotted the familiar reddish color of a potion bottle.\u00a0 He swooped it out of the chest and downed its contents, gratefully.\u00a0 Healing.\u00a0 Warmth.\u00a0 Dardeh sighed in relief, turning back to the matter at hand.<\/p>\n What had initially appeared a closed room wasn\u2019t, any longer.\u00a0 At the back wall, one of the sarcophagi had fallen completely apart, releasing its draugr but also opening a gap into a corridor beyond.\u00a0 A corridor which, he noted with a grimace, was full of spider webs.<\/p>\n Dardeh drew his bow and inched into the tunnel.\u00a0 This was a typical barrow tunnel, lined with niches and, as he\u2019d suspected, full of spiders.\u00a0 He took them out.\u00a0 Splat, splat, splat, \u2026and splat, as the last one was larger and required two arrows to kill.\u00a0 The corridor rose and wound through several turns, ending in a small chamber where he caught three more spiders by surprise and was grateful for the years he had spent shooting with a bow and arrow, as a boy back in the Reach.\u00a0 Just beyond the spiders was a pair of wooden doors. He pushed them open with his bow, using it for extra reach, and stepped back, just in case.<\/p>\n The doors opened into an enormously tall chamber, with a bridge leading from one side to the other.\u00a0 Another puzzle pedestal sat in a notch in the bridge\u2019s base, directly in front of him.\u00a0 There was a stairway to his right and, walking back and forth along the platform at its top, a draugr.<\/p>\n Dardeh nodded to himself, eased forward a step or two, and neatly dropped the draugr with one arrow.\u00a0 He was about to turn, to rib Roggi about how he was getting to be nearly as good a shot as him, and then his face fell as he remembered once again that he was alone.\u00a0 A snort above and to his left made him whirl and ready another arrow.\u00a0 It was another magic-wielding draugr, and Dardeh took it out with a single shot as well.<\/p>\n Dardeh inched his way around the central platform.\u00a0 There was nothing of interest in this room except the animal totem plaque embedded in the wall, where a person couldn\u2019t possibly see it from the room\u2019s entrance.\u00a0 He grinned and walked back to the plinth and rotated it to match the plaque.\u00a0 Then he crept up the staircase, where alcoves at either end of the stone bridge held more rotating pedestals.<\/p>\n All the puzzles.\u00a0 Maybe our ancestors were worried about souls getting into Sovngarde the easy way. At least I know that I\u2019m going to be near the top of this place by the time I get out.\u00a0 If I get out.\u00a0 That is where I need to go, after all \u2013 up.<\/em><\/p>\n Dardeh threw the lever at the center of the bridge and, after the bridge fell, walked across it and opened the door at its far end.\u00a0 This next chamber held an embalming table just before a staircase up.\u00a0 Dardeh scanned the upper level quickly. A partial collapse had blocked the balcony to the left of the stairs but there was a bridge crossing the center of the room at that height. If he could run around to the right he could cross the bridge.<\/p>\n The problem was the magic-using draugr waiting for him in front of the stairs.<\/p>\n This one also had a frost atronach ready and waiting, as well as Shouts of its own.\u00a0 Dardeh rushed forward, but had to dodge as the atronach materialized just in front of him; and at that moment the draugr shouted \u201cFUS\u201d and knocked him sideways into the edge of the table.\u00a0 The atronach swung its arm and caught him full in the back, forcing him forward and forcing all the air out of his lungs.\u00a0 He would have cried out with the pain but couldn\u2019t.<\/p>\n Help.\u00a0 Please help.<\/em><\/p>\n Dardeh wasn\u2019t sure whether it was because there was no air in him or not.\u00a0 Maybe he was in the process of passing out.\u00a0 But it seemed to him as though a hugely-muscled dark man in barbarian armor stood just behind him, raised him to his feet, lifted his arm, and pushed him forward.<\/p>\n Go, son of my son. <\/em><\/p>\n He went.\u00a0 His momentum carried him forward; his double-edged blade sliced into the draugr.\u00a0 He planted his feet, caught a huge breath, pulled the blade free, whirled, and struck again, slicing the creature in half.\u00a0 The atronach fizzled out behind the embalming table and disappeared.<\/p>\n Dardeh stood for the smallest of moments, catching his breath and looking around for the man who had helped him.\u00a0 Jine?\u00a0 I thought I felt\u2026 Jine?\u00a0 But that is just plain crazy.<\/em><\/p>\n He had no time to rest.\u00a0 An arrow whooshed past his head, close enough that he was sure it would have caught in his hair had his hair still been loose.\u00a0 Above and to the left, yet again.<\/p>\n He rushed up the stairs and around the corner to the right, to find an archer draugr at one end of the stone bridge; barreling forward he brought his main hand sword down on it as powerfully as he could and, somewhat to his surprise, the creature crumpled like a ragdoll.\u00a0 Another arrow clattered to the stones at his feet.\u00a0 He turned and ran across the stone bridge and into the archer on its far side, whirling and slashing with the moves he\u2019d once used with dual Alik\u2019r scimitars.\u00a0 The archer went down.<\/p>\n On the far side of the bridge was a small antechamber with a circular staircase, leading to a larger room with a gated exit.\u00a0 Dardeh heard the snorts and growls of draugr and turned to see two peepholes, one on either side of a set of wooden doors; the draugr were moving around behind them.\u00a0 He stepped to one side, noted the lever behind the nearer of the two peepholes, and took out one of them with an arrow carefully placed through the peephole; then the doors flew open and the other two emerged.\u00a0 They weren\u2019t difficult to dispatch, for which he was very grateful.<\/p>\n Beyond the gate the barrow rose slowly through a room heavy with oil slicks to a room with a familiar door at its far end.\u00a0 The room was hung with plain red banners down its length.\u00a0 Dardeh could see a draugr pacing back and forth before the great stone circles.\u00a0 He nodded to himself, drew his bow, knelt for balance and fired off three quick shots, taking the draugr down.<\/p>\n He didn\u2019t rush, walking to the room\u2019s far end; in fact he paused for a moment to take a drink of water, glad to clear some of the dust of the barrow from his throat.\u00a0 There wasn\u2019t any rush.\u00a0 Whatever\u2019s on the other side is going to want to take me down, and I am going to need this throat and any other tricks I can come up with.<\/em><\/p>\n The draugr had been carrying one of the dragon claw keys, as he had hoped, this one a beautiful thing with diamond tips on its claws.\u00a0 Dardeh stared at it for a moment, in awe of the craftsmanship that had gone into each one he\u2019d seen, and then thought about Arvel the Swift, all that time before, in Bleak Falls Barrow.\u00a0 He looked down at the draugr and poked it with his foot.<\/p>\n \u201cIdiot.\u00a0 You had the answer in the palm of your hand.\u201d<\/p>\n The circles swirled, the great stone mechanisms groaned, and the doorway dropped down into its slot, revealing a short corridor with a turn into a great stone hallway.\u00a0 At the end of the space stood a word wall, its chanting pulling Dardeh forward to learn its secret.\u00a0 Bah.\u00a0 The word was BAH and it would call a lethal lightning storm, Dardeh sensed as its energy flowed into him as had so many words before it.\u00a0 He stood and savored it for a moment, gathering up as much of his strength as he could, knowing that he needed it; then he passed around the side of the wall and out through a doorway, into the bright sunshine, onto a landing before the final stairway up.<\/p>\n A part of his mind registered the fact that he\u2019d spent at least one whole night fighting his way up to this point.\u00a0 Another part of his mind was riveted by the roaring, shimmering pillar of light directly at the top of the stairwell.\u00a0 But most of his attention focused on the movement: two dragons, one red and the other silvery-blue, perched atop the pillars he\u2019d seen from far below.\u00a0 Oddly, they did not seem to be aggressive.\u00a0 They were merely watching.\u00a0 Between them, though, and at the top of the stairs, Dardeh could just make out the head of a creature floating back and forth in front of the pillar of light.<\/p>\n Floating.\u00a0 Of course.\u00a0 Another Dragon Priest. The one who was in charge of this place when he was alive.<\/em><\/p>\n For a moment he considered using Dragon Aspect on himself.\u00a0 But that would attract attention and he needed every second of time he could get.\u00a0 So Dardeh pulled out his swords, gathered his breath, and hurtled up the steps toward the floating creature he saw at the central platform, just before the pillar of light.<\/p>\n It turned and saw him.\u00a0 But rather than attack, the Dragon Priest turned back and reached into the light; and the light disappeared.\u00a0 Dardeh wanted to stop, to puzzle it out, but knew this was his only opportunity; he kept running.\u00a0 The Dragon Priest floated away from the center, to Dardeh\u2019s right, and raised its arm, holding a staff.\u00a0 It began moving as if it was about to fire the staff at him.<\/p>\n \u201cFUS- RO DAH!\u201d<\/p>\n It caught the Dragon Priest and threw it back against the stone, where Dardeh barreled into it.<\/p>\n A few moments later, as he stood looking down at the mask, the staff, and the shimmering pile of dust, Dardeh shook his head trying to remember what he\u2019d done and couldn\u2019t.\u00a0 It was disquietingly like the moments he\u2019d told Roggi about, the times when he\u2019d found a burned or butchered bandit or Cultist before him without any recollection of having done the killing.<\/p>\n Dardeh sighed and picked up the mask and the staff.\u00a0 He walked down the length of the platform, peering up at the two great beasts that had observed his progress, and placed the staff back into its resting place.\u00a0 The enormous, roaring pillar of light burst back into life from a round depression just before him.<\/p>\n Dardeh turned and looked around at the beautiful mountaintops surrounding Skuldafn, and smiled grimly, knowing that he would never see them again.<\/p>\n Then he stepped forward into the light.<\/p>\n Dardeh stood quietly for a moment, trying to catch his breath, trembling with fatigue.\u00a0 Ahead of him was a long room, well-lit by a central platform ringed in burning braziers. 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<\/p>\nPart II: Duality<\/a><\/div>\nPrevious<\/a> \/ Next<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"