A long, loud moan echoed over the ash-covered side of the island as Chip made his way up the dock into Raven Rock. The skies were grey and flakes drifted down through the air, whether from ash or snow he couldn’t tell. He wasted no time in the town. His business lay elsewhere. Up the stairs near the Ulen and Morvayn ancestral tombs he ran, climbing over the clusters of basalt columnar joints that anchored one end of the great wall of the Bulwark. This time he knew where he was going; he could run directly to his destination rather than take the long way around the coastline.
He neared the edge of the forest – or what probably once had been a forest before the Red Mountain had exploded, burning the southern portions and coating everything in tons of rock and ash. There were still vestiges of the catastrophe here, where the ash-coated spines of long-dead trees stood guard over a few spindly saplings clinging defiantly to any open soil they found. He heard the sound again, coming from the east. It reminded him of a hunting horn, but one that was enormous, its pitch deepened and hollowed.
Silt strider.
He’d seen the beast on his last visit to Solstheim, but while in werewolf form, so he’d kept his distance. It was remarkable that such a thing existed here. The gigantic creatures that had once been a primary means of travel on Vvardenfell had been rendered nearly extinct by the eruption. Chip couldn’t help but wonder whether the mournful sound was actually the strider calling for its own kind.
I know the feeling, buddy. It stinks to be alone.
He scrambled over several ledges as the terrain rose toward the mountains. The undergrowth was a bit thicker here, toward the central part of the island; as was always the case, life had found a way to re-establish itself in the wake of a disaster. It made Chip smile to see it. He slowed for a moment, admiring the tenacity of the plants.
The low moan of the silt strider was joined, then, by a scuttling sound. He looked around in dismay as several dun-colored shapes rose from the ash deposits around him.
Great. Why’d I slow down? What are these things?
They came scuttling across the surface toward him. The things looked like enormous fleas; at least in the front, where the first two sets of legs carried barbs like those fleas used to latch onto fibers, or hairs. The back legs were much larger, deeply bent, and clearly made for leaping. Their bizarre heads were covered with great back-sweeping chitinous shields. Chip drew his swords, hoping he could shoo them away.
He then discovered the worst thing about them. Not only were they prodigious leapers, but they burned, as if they carried in their shells some remainder of the heat from Red Mountain. He yelped in pain as the leading hopper made contact, and then started swinging. It wasn’t a long battle against the three creatures, but it was loud; for as each of them died, the short blade Chip had gotten from his mother drew out its tiny soul in a noisy explosion.
He sheathed his blades and blew out a breath.
“Well that was unexpect…”
Suddenly he was enveloped in flames. He shrieked, and whirled to find his attacker. It was a spriggan, but one unlike any he’d ever encountered in Skyrim. This wasn’t the green of a common garden variety forest spriggan. There was no deadly poison attack. No, this was glowing, bright orange and was attacking with steady gouts of flame, like a bizarre cross between a spriggan and a flame atronach; and Chip had not been prepared for such a thing to exist, much less be nearly on top of him.
He scrambled to get his blades out again, and began defending himself. Spriggans were never an easy adversary to begin with. The flames made it even worse. Chip had no time to think, no time to do anything but strike as fiercely and as often as he could. He managed to cast healing on himself with one hand while continuing to slice with the Bosmer blade. Even so, by the time he drove his dagger down into the spriggan for the last time and was caught by its fiery, explosive death, he needed to use all of the modest power he had to keep himself alive.
“Ok then,” he muttered, swatting the last few embers on his clothing. “That was way too close for comfort. Might have been useful to turn…” He considered that thought for a moment and shook his head. “Nope. Fire is bad in that form too.”
He continued cross-country, stopping several times to take samples of unfamiliar plants. There was a large, red plant with long, pointed leaves; a sickly, mustard-colored root that resembled the creep clusters of Eastmarch; and a spiny brown plant the likes of which he’d never seen before. He had a feeling that perhaps Uncle Roggi might be interested, and able to brew some nasty concoction or other with them.
He grinned at the thought.
Too bad I’m not nearly as close with Da as I am with Roggi. I don’t know why.
In fact, some of his earliest memories were of days spent fishing and swimming in Lake Ilinalta with his uncles. He’d never really known his father – not really – until he was five or six. They told him that he’d loved Brynjolf from the moment they met, but he didn’t remember. Roggi, though – Roggi had always been a father figure to him, and Dardeh was the kind of man who made an impression on a person no matter how young he may have been.
The ruined peaks of the Temple of Miraak came into view as the air grew colder. He turned to his left and headed for the trail up into the icy mountains, darkened by the passage of many a boot and hoof, and marked by a small rock cairn.
He reached the place where he’d had to kill the lone hunter, and looked wistfully off to the left where he knew Frostmoon Crag was. It surely was a temptation to go there again, to be among others of his kind.
Especially Rakel.
He thought of that chestnut hair shining in the sun, the smooth ivory shoulders and arms that had just called out to him to be touched. She was ever so much lovelier than the admittedly attractive working girl in Windhelm. He paused for a moment, almost heading toward them in spite of himself. Then he shook his head.
Who am I kidding? She didn’t have the slightest interest in me except as a curiosity, and she made it very clear that she doesn’t want to live inside four walls. The males would chew me up and spit me out if I even attempted anything. Besides, Hircine has called me.
To his relief, no Rieklings interrupted his progress up through the icy passage this time. He pulled his hood up over his head against the chill, and to cover his very visible hair, and before long found himself above the pool where he’d first spotted the werebears on his earlier visit to the island. He looked down – and gasped.
There was a large, black-furred figure standing just to the left of the water trough, looking out over the pool.
I thought I killed them! Are there more?
As he slid down the cliff face toward the trough he saw that yes, in fact, there were three more werebears patrolling the area. Perhaps the pack was much larger than Hjordis had suggested. It made sense that they would have started guarding the area once they’d found the corpses he’d left behind.
But I wasn’t expecting to have to do this again. But at least I have the Bow.
He dropped down onto the water trough and lined up a shot on the nearest werebear. It missed because the werebear was exceptionally fast, especially for such a large creature. It, and its brothers, disappeared from his line of sight under the stones beneath his feet. He listened for a moment, but couldn’t hear them; so he jumped onto the platform and moved around its right side, toward the shrine.
He felt the shrine pulling at him, but didn’t dare stop. After all the traveling, all the hunting, and the seemingly countless pelts he’d prepared in Hircine’s honor, it would not do to be eaten by werebears because of inattention. And he had no idea whether he would transform or not, nor whether he was a strong enough werewolf to take out a werebear. Instead, he made his way back to the same spot from which he’d killed them before: up on the rocks near the waterfall’s edge.
One of the bears had climbed onto the low platform across the pool. He shot it once; and as had happened before the bear dove into the pool, swam to the stairs, and tried to escape to the hillside beyond them. He unloaded arrow after arrow at the beast, missing some shots but making more until the bear collapsed and died just at the foot of the stairway up from the platform. He pulled another arrow from his quiver and started scanning the area for the other two bears. He couldn’t find them.
“Huh,” he said, relaxing his bow arm while he searched. “What in Oblivion? Where did they go?”
He scanned the hillside above the pool, staring intently at each gray spot of what seemed to be rock outcropping, waiting to see whether it was actually going to move and reveal itself as a beast with fur. After several minutes he hopped back down from the rocks and onto the platform by Hircine’s shrine, stopping every few moments to stare out over the pool.
“I know you’re here somewhere, you cowards,” he said loudly. “I would have seen you if you’d run away up the mountain!” That was not strictly true; he might actually have been looking the other way when they’d made a break. He hoped, though, that maybe he’d anger them enough to get them out into the open.
His annoyance growing by the second, Chip slipped quietly under the stone archway that held the water trough, and made his way to the corpse of the bear he’d brought down. He sensed that he was being watched, but again saw nothing that gave him any sense of where the others might be. As he mounted the steps, his sense of anxiety grew; he was out in the open and would make a perfect target if, say, one of the werebears had transformed back to his human form and had a bow of his own. He had no cover.
Finally, he inched out to the very edge of one of the icy ledges that overhung the pool and looked down. At first he inhaled sharply with surprise, and then he snorted; for there, right below him and right next to each other, the two upright werebears sculled in place, completely submerged. He growled.
“You two assholes are going to die now, you know that, right?”
He shot first at the black werebear, the one he’d seen first when coming across the ridge. It jumped, and immediately made for the stairway to get out of the water. Chip buried one more arrow into its thick fur, and missed a third shot as it scrambled up and out of the way. Chip readied another shot and waited. A couple of moments later, a lumbering black form appeared under the archway and charged, snarling and snapping. He held the shot, and held it; and then, when the beast was so close that he could see just exactly how long and how sharp its claws were, he released. The arrow smacked into the werebear’s face, buying him just the slim moment he needed to turn and leap into the water.
His breath left his body for a moment from the shock of the frigid pool. But he would far rather be wet from icy cold water than from hot blood spilling out of his body; of that, he had no doubt. And of the fact that would have been the case in another moment, he also had no doubt.
He pulled himself out onto the rocks, shivering, and snarled again as he watched the werebear turn, run back through the archway, down the steps, and back into the water. He readied an arrow and waited, watching the shadow of the bear crossing beneath the surface of the pool; but the creature didn’t emerge to follow him, as he’d expected. He inched across the boulders to find a spot where he could look down and, sure enough, there was the werebear in the water, looking up at him with its fangs bared and a growl in its throat. He managed to sink one arrow into it, nearly point-blank, before it swam away and disappeared again.
“Why are you afraid to fight me?” he yelled. “You’re bigger than I am and I don’t have claws. Come out where I can see you!”
He peered at the surface of the water for several long moments, willing his vision to bore through its darkness. Finally, something caught his attention. He wasn’t certain whether it was a shadow or a figment of his imagination; but he loosed an arrow at it and saw something beneath the surface move. He fired again; this time the werebear emerged from the pool, ran under the archway and, as Chip tracked it with arrow drawn, tried to escape up the second stairway onto the mountainside. It hadn’t taken its own condition into consideration, though. It was bleeding and weakened, and it was soggy. The air was frigid and the mountainside path already packed and icy. As the bear scrambled toward safety it slipped and fell, and struggled to get up. Chip took the opportunity to finish it off.
It’s not an especially honorable way to down an opponent but truthfully I’m more concerned about staying alive at this stage. Now then. Where’s the last one hiding?
He was fairly certain he would have seen the third werebear move if it had done so. That meant it was likely still in the pool, near the inside edge. He hopped down across the rocks and partially-submerged bits of ancient masonry and out across the ledge, looking down once more. There was the werebear, a rich, chocolate-brown beast.
“It’s kind of a shame I have to take you out, you know?” he murmured. “That’s a beautiful coat you’ve got.” He reached for an arrow. “Mine’s red. Like my hair. I’ve always stuck out like a sore thumb.”
The werebear growled.
“Yeah, I know. It’s no fun being the hunted. But you know Hircine wants me to do this, right? That’s why I have his bow.”
He sank an arrow into the beast’s chest, and then another. It snarled and submerged; but this time Chip was watching and saw that it had slipped around to his left, toward the small platform at the waterline. He had to get a better angle on the beast, so it was his turn to run around the pool to the far side.
At that point, it became a seemingly-endless waiting game. The werebear would react to being struck by an arrow and slip down into the water, but stop moving there. Chip would shoot it again, and it would clamber back up onto the platform. Chip would shoot it again; and the whole process would repeat. After what felt like an eternity, the werebear slumped down into the water and ceased moving.
He spent some time collecting the arrows from his missed shots, and pulling the pelts from the werebears to offer to Hircine. After all, these were still his lord’s creatures, even if they did seem to be rather dull-witted. He considered that, while he worked. It was true – very true, in fact – that the first time he’d transformed he’d been barely aware of himself as anything other than an animal that needed to feed. From time to time since then he’d also found himself, the part of him that was a thinking human being, more or less tucked away into some corner of the great werewolf’s consciousness. But it had been easier with each transformation; clearer, less a complete alteration of his awareness than a shifting of it into something larger than himself. The Frostmoon Crag werewolves were clearly self-aware, intelligent beings. They were part of generations of werewolves. They would never have survived as a society if they’d been simple dumb beasts.
And Sinding talked to me before he died. In his wolf form. He was self-aware. So does Hircine favor us over these, his werebears? Or did they simply choose not to fight back or speak? Do they consider us a lesser form?
Once he was finished, he approached the shrine of Hircine. He pushed his hood down off his head and knelt to pray.
“Here I am, Lord Hircine. I’ve killed many, many animals in your name, everything from mudcrabs to dragons. I’ve returned, as you wished. What would you have of me now?”
Well done, my hunter. Place the pelt offerings upon my altar and I will give you your rewards.
Chip did as he was told, both fashioning the pelts into other items and simply listening to Hircine as the surface of the altar shimmered and other items appeared. He’d stopped trying to make any sense of it all. It was clear to him that both the Aedra like Kyne and the Daedra like Hircine worked in their own ways, and that what might look like magic to him was simply them using their power in the same way his uncle Dardeh could Shout and burn an enemy to a crisp.
The first thing he took from Hircine was an amulet. It would enhance his power of the bow even further, Hircine said, and would protect him even though he wore only light armor. Chip nodded solemnly and fastened the amulet around his neck. Then the voice explained to him how to fashion a staff.
“I don’t use staves, much,” he murmured.
This staff will bring a werebeast from my Hunting Grounds, in the same way your arrows summon wolves. There may come a time when you are glad for it.
“So the Hunting Grounds are real?” Chip asked. “I’d always thought it was just a story.”
Yes. Make the staff, and more arrows. Then I shall give you my boon.
“There’s more? Very well,” Chip said, doing as he was directed.
Once he was done, he watched as the surface of the altar shimmered once more. On it appeared a horn: a simple bone instrument with a metallic mouthpiece, made from what looked like a goat’s horn wrapped, in two spots, with thin, finely-finished strips of fur. Chip picked it up and examined it, turning it from side to side, admiring the beauty of it.
When you are ready, my hunter – rested and prepared in mind and spirit – use the horn. You will come to my domain, my plane of Oblivion, and face the true test of a hunter.
“You mean there’s something more significant than a spectral mudcrab, then,” Chip found himself murmuring with a grin. In a quiet corner of his mind he wondered how it was that he was trading sarcastic comments with a Daedric Prince. Who in his right mind would do such a thing?
He heard a hearty, otherworldly chuckle.
Oh yes. We will see whether you are truly worthy to be my Champion.
Chip felt his temper flare for a moment. He was worthy enough to receive the blessing of Kyne – why would there be any question as to his worthiness to be Hircine’s Champion?
Then it occurred to him. A blessing was different. Lesser. It could be given out to multiple people. Hircine had already given him so much: his Bow, his ring, and now a staff and a horn, to say nothing of his great strength as a werewolf. It was only right that he prove himself worthy of all of it.
“Am I good enough, my Lord?” he asked aloud.
There was no answer.
I suppose I was asking too much. That’s the whole point of this.
He yawned hugely, and realized that he’d gotten wet too many times on this day, gotten too cold too often, and had exerted enormous amounts of energy. He was exhausted. He spread out a rough hide that he carried with him for just such occasions, and lay down on it to rest for a bit. He was asleep almost instantly.
Chip didn’t sleep long, but long enough that when he rose and gathered up his bedding the sun was on its way below the horizon, its last ruddy light fading to purples. He pulled the horn he’d received out of his pack and examined it once more. It was such an odd thing; plain and simple in its make and yet enormously attractive in the way a pile of leaves attracted a child to leap into it. He yearned to blow the horn, to see what it did. But Hircine had specifically told him to be sure he was prepared for the occasion; and he was certain that he needed to go home, rest, and work on his armor and equipment before he undertook any more major battles. He tucked the horn back in his pack and started up the stairs leading to the hillside. He needed to get back to Raven Rock, and cross-country was easier than jumping back down through the water and risking freezing to death.
The slick, blood-spattered path up the mountainside led to more stairs, up to a ridgeline, to another stone archway and a trough filled with snow. On the other side of the ridge the path led sharply downhill via stairs and arches, some intact and others partially ruined. The path curved to the right and around the edge of some very sharp peaks. Chip thought he heard faint sounds in that direction. He was definitely north of the Riekling-infested pass, and perhaps slightly to the east of it.
“Well, may as well go see what’s going on down there. At least there are stairs.”
Around the end of the nearer peak was the ruin of some great, ancient complex. The most stunning features he could see were two huge stone columns topped by stylized dragon heads. He recognized them as being the same very ancient Dragon Cult monuments as those that dotted the landscape in Skyrim. Even more massive stone archways spanned the passage through the peaks.
As he scanned the area movement caught his eye. Several figures scurried up over the mountaintops far ahead of him and to his left; below all of them, on the path that went through the grand stone arches, was a Riekling. Chip inched forward, watching, and decided to follow the men over the mountains.
After scrambling up the icy slope, Chip passed through another of the small stone arches and gasped. There at the top of the pass was a shrine to Auriel, recognizable by its ancient sunburst-shaped monument. Before it, though, one of the men he’d watched head this way lay dead on the ground, pierced by a Riekling spear.
Sounds continued to draw him forward. He crept past the shrine to Auriel, out onto the lip of the mountainside, and looked down, hissing in surprise. Below him was the shrine, the ancient Dragon Cult fane cut into the side of the mountain, with its impressive stone archways marking all of the paths to and from it. A ruddy glow and a low snort pulled his attention to a draugr, shuffling up a set of stairs that led from the snowy arches to a platform beneath Chip’s feet. Chip’s gaze followed its trail up, and to his left; at the back of that platform was another of the massive curved walls holding the words that looked only like deep ruts to him.
More startling, though, was the large, light-colored shape resting atop one of the stone arches. Its wings were folded, and if not for the fact that Chip’s enhanced hearing allowed him to hear its breathing he’d never have known it was there. The urge to shoot it was enormously strong, clamoring in his ears along with the pounding of his heart. It was prey. It needed to be hunted. He was pulling his bow around in front of him when the beast startled him by rising up into the air with a great roar. It fought its way into the skies in front of Chip and soared over the crest just behind him. Chip heard a gigantic percussion as the dragon landed, somewhere just out of sight.
He scrambled back up to the shrine of Auriel and over the ridgeline, peering toward the open space beyond. Great slabs of carved stone, the ruins of some great structure, lay in curved lines along the snow-covered flats; and between them and the ridge on which Chip crouched, the dragon had landed and was fighting Rieklings, men, and a snow troll.
At least it’s not a forest dragon.
He watched, fascinated, as the dragon rose and returned again and again. When the dragon was on the ground, all eyes were on it. When it rose, sending plumes of snow out to all sides, the ground-based combatants turned on each other. Mounted Rieklings tossed spears at the trolls, men attacked the boars on which the Rieklings rode, and in general chaos reigned. As it got darker and darker, Chip’s heart beat louder and louder.
And then the thing he’d most hoped would not happen – the thing that had not happened for so long he’d nearly forgotten what it was like – happened. He doubled over in pain, a pain that rendered him completely breathless for a moment but from which he emerged howling, his claws and muzzle raised to the sky. He had just enough time for a single fully coherent thought – namely, that Hircine clearly hadn’t given him full control of his lycanthropy – before the werewolf took over completely.
Kill!
The werewolf joined the fray. By the time he reached the fighting, he had been nearly frozen solid at least twice by the dragon passing overhead, and had consumed all of the dead he could find along the way. The dragon landed one last time and was set upon by a group of scruffy-looking men. They weren’t Skaal hunters or Redoran guard – he knew that not that not only by their skins but by their smell, which was atrocious even for an animal. These were bandits.
Reavers.
The Rieklings and the Skaal hunters fell to the dragon. The dragon fell to the Reavers. Then the Reavers fell to the werewolf, one after another, the last dying to a ferocious attack of claws that left little of the man aside from scraps that the werewolf gobbled down eagerly afterward.
“Ah, what a gorgeous day,” Chip said as he stepped out into the bright sunshine. A full week had gone by since the werewolf had emerged, unexpectedly, high on the mountainside in Solstheim. He had returned to Skyrim without making the side trip he’d wanted to make, to see the Frostmoon Crag werewolves again. He’d kept to himself and hunted very little, really, only using his bow if he was directly threatened. It had been uneventful, his trip back to his cabin – a fact for which he was extremely grateful.
He was grateful, because he had needed to think.
He wanted to know why it was that he never seemed to be good enough for anyone, in any way. Not good enough for his father, who always seemed to want more from him without telling him what it was that he wanted. Oh, sure, Brynjolf always went out of his way to apologize after the fact, and Chip was grateful for that; but the fact remained that the message he always got from his father was “you’re not good enough.” His mother wasn’t much better. She was more diplomatic, for certain, but it had always felt to him as though she was watching, waiting for him to explode into violence.
And she’d have been right to think that, wouldn’t she? he thought, angrily stripping pelts down into strips and chopping firewood in his yard. But she wouldn’t have expected a werewolf. Was she expecting a temper like Da’s? Or something more like her own father’s? Chip didn’t know much about that side of his family other than the fact that Dardeh never had anything good to say about their father. And Dardeh had a notorious temper, once aroused, a fact that made him potentially the most dangerous person alive.
Qara always pretty much takes me at face value, but she’s the only one. I’m not… royal enough for Harald’s family. Not compliant enough for Da. Not enough of a… Brynjolf… for Mom. Not selfless enough for Uncle Dar, and not tough enough for Uncle Roggi.
He’d grinned, in spite of his anger, when he’d realized that about Roggi. He might be married to another man, but Roggi was definitely a true Nord, tough as nails, a real warrior, and possessed of a fierceness that was unsettling when he let it show. Chip knew he’d never live up to that expectation. Maybe as a werewolf, but not otherwise.
So he’d decided to be a hunter. That was something he could do, at which he was good enough.
But even then I wasn’t. Not good enough to kill Sinding; someone beat me to it. Not good enough for the dragons – not on my own, anyway. Not good enough for Kyne. I killed the guardians, but just barely. Not even well. I had to use dozens of arrows. I thought I was good enough for Hircine, at least, after doing what he wanted to get this horn. But even that wasn’t enough. Now I have to go to Oblivion and prove myself yet again.
That’s what he’d been pondering, while he rested and prepared himself. He’d wrestled with the facts over and over: what people wanted of him, what he’d done, what he’d become. After days of arguing with himself over it, he’d come to a conclusion about his situation.
He smiled again, looking around himself at the beautiful day. It had dawned on him, finally, why he was so angry at his life. It wasn’t just that he wasn’t good enough for everyone else – if he was truly honest about it he had to admit that all those people really did care about him, and for him. No, that wasn’t the problem.
The problem was that he wasn’t good enough for himself.
“So, my lord,” he said quietly, “let’s just see about that.”
He drew out the hunting horn he’d received at the altar on Solstheim and raised it to his lips. It emitted a loud, heroic call like that of any other war horn.
The air around Chip began to shimmer in hues of blue and purple.
Then he disappeared.
