“Hmm… nope.”
*sizzle*
“Nope.”
*fizz*
“Nuh-uh.”
*tiny changeling disguise sound*
Fenora groaned and her eyes creaked open, her body refusing to sleep any longer. She rolled over to find the source of the noise that had woken her up. When she saw someone sitting on the bed across from her, she instinctively pulled up the blankets to cover herself even though she was still in her clothes… and her boots… and still had all her weapons and gear equipped.
The other elf to looked past the edge of his hand mirror and noticed that she’d woken up, and he immediately became flustered.
“Eek, don’t look at me! I’m not ready yet!” he screamed and pulled his grey hood over his face.
With her mind still half asleep, it took a moment for everything to fall into place for Fen. “Stross?” she finally recognized him.
“Fenora it's awful! I can't do Skyrim faces! I was up all night trying to make a new face, and I’m still hideous!” he pouted, still tugging the edge of his hood to below his chin. “Stupid humans and elves with your tiny noses, and your normal-sized eyeballs…”
“Oh come on, I’m sure you don’t look that bad.” Fenora said, trying to get an actual look.
Stross pulled back though, trying to keep out of reach. “Um… uh… ju-just give me like ten minutes, I’m sure I can fix-!”
Fenora pulled off his hood.
“…it.”
"Uhh..." Fenora gaped as the remaining embers settled. Stross had changelinged himself to a different form.
"I couldn't get my custom one right, so I tried fiddling around with some others." Stross told her. "I thought that this one would fit well with all the tombs we've been going into. What do you think?"
Fenora stared at Stross's current form: a man with short brown hair and defined features, rugged and handsome looking with the perfect mouth for shooting confident grins. And still, Fenora had to be honest. "I... have the feeling you'd get the shit kicked out of you if you looked like that. Like... a lot. And you'd probably get betrayed at some point too."
"Hmm, you may be right. Well okay, how about this?" Stross switched to his next form: an overly muscular man with a square jaw, a blonde crew cut, and balls of steel. "I feel like I spent fifteen years making this one."
"Then how come it still sucks?" Fenora asked bluntly.
Stross just frowned and changed to the next one, and Fenora nearly lost herself when she saw the suave/sexyness before her. "...Well?" Stross flicked the white bangs out of his piercing blue eyes.
"S-save this one for later." Fenora told him, trying to contain herself.
Finally Stross just went back to his default form and Fenora was able to relax. "Well what do you want me to look like. You're the one who said I can't just be another you after all."
"Just choose something that's not me, but doesn't look too outlandish or will draw attention too much. Just pick something normal. Anything."
Stross took a deep breath. "Okay." He then pulled his hood up and the sizzle of his magic embers could be heard under the fabric. "Alright, this is the closest I came to anything unique." he told her hesitantly, and revealed his mostly finished form.
Fenora blinked. It was actually pretty nice. He'd chosen the form of a bosmer like her, but his hair was a darker shade of grey. His face had a soft feel to it with very few sharp edges to it. His eyes were more normal-looking than in his natural form, but were slightly larger than average, and still held their sky-blue color. The only things that seemed truly ‘off’ were his ears, which poked out to the sides a bit too much, and the tone of his skin, which was almost sickly pale. Other than that though...
“That looks fine Stross. I'm surprised you didn't just stick with that one.” she told him, hoping to relieve the nervousness she saw welling up in him.
“But… my nose looks crooked no matter what I do with it. And… and my eyes always look either too close together or too far apart.” Stross complained while pinching the parts in question. Little bits of red embers slid them around, or made them a tiny bit bigger or smaller.
“Trust me, you look cute.” Fenora patted him on the back reassuringly. “Now come on, let’s get some breakfast.”
Stross lagged behind a moment, and a slight smile spread across his face. “Cute…”
Bodies decades old lay motionless inside their crevasses within Shroud Hearth Barrow, expertly embalmed and preserved against the relentless march of time. Small offerings of gold coins sat scattered and dusty on the floor, and the shriveled remains of fruit sat gathering cobwebs. In fact, signs of neglect were everpresent within this place; braziers were covered in excess soot, and vegetation had been allowed to take root, for none had dared to enter ever since the first sighting of the barrow’s grim guardian.
It was damp. It was musty. It was cold. And it was way too dark and creepy!
“Wh-why did we decide to come in here again?” Stross asked as he bravely ‘watched Fenora’s back’. That is to say, he totally wasn’t hiding behind her. Nope. Not at all.
“Because there’s a word of power located somewhere in here.” Fenora answered.
Stross had vaguely remembered Master Arngeir explaining how the ancient word walls were becoming active in response to Fenora’s own awakening as a dragonborn, and that they would send word whenever they sensed the location of one.
What he hadn’t expected was a mail courier bursting through the doors of the Vilemyr Inn while they were in the middle of eating, and shoving his way through everything and everyone in his path to deliver them the note. But just like that, Fenora decided that their first priority was to clear Shroud Hearth and find that word wall.
“…Leeeeeave thiiiis plaaaaace… …leeeeeaaaave thiiissss plaaaaace…”
Stross let out a fearful whine. There was no mistaking that sound as being ‘just the wind’. “What was that?” he asked, fearing the answer.
It was then that they saw it in all its terror inducing, trouser-soiling frightfulness; the ghost of Shroud Hearth Barrow! It was tall, glowing, and it seemed to glide across the uneven floor with every step.
“…Leeeave thiiisss plaaace… …Leeeave this place…” came its haunting echo of a voice as it strode just near enough for them to get a good look. “Leave… leave... LEAVE!”
“Fus… RO DAH!”
Fenora’s voice rang out in the enclosed space while the shockwave slammed the ghost into the wall behind it. Shaking itself out of its daze and scrambling to its feet, the ghost then made a very un-ghostlike retreat further into the barrow.
“After it!” Fenora yelled and gave chase, brandishing sword and thu’um.
“We’ll have to kill it again!” Lydia quipped as she followed.
“No, don’t chase it into further into its lair!” Stross called after them as he tried to keep up, “Don’t either of you watch horror movies!”
When Stross caught up with them, they’d cornered the ghost in some kind of improvised living quarters in what was likely a storage room, and he arrived just in time to see Fenora take a frying pan to the face. Lydia protectively stood over Fenora’s prone form as the ghost conjured a gale of frost magic. It wasn’t working so well; a thick layer of icicles was already starting to form over her shield and armor, and her skin was beginning to turn blue from the cold.
Stross immediately took action and hit the ghost with a stun spell, and to his surprise, it actually collapsed.
“Fenora!” he yelled and rushed to her side. “Are you okay?”
“Owwww…” Fenora groaned as she pulled herself off the floor, revealing a large, and likely very painful welt swelling on the side of her head. “Did someone get the number of that carriage?”
“Y-you… you are all trespassing within my sacred tomb.” The ghost ranted as it unsteadily got to its feet. “You shall all… …you shall… …I’ll… …punishment is nigh!”
*Spang!*
“Yeah, here's your punishment.” Fenora spat as she tossed the now twice-dented frying pan aside.
A gathering at the Vilemyr Inn wasn’t an uncommon occurrence in Ivarstead, as it was practically the only place to relax and share gossip. What was strange was a gathering in the middle of the day when there was still work to be done. It would take something of significant importance to grab everyone away for their daily duties, but as it was, solving the case of the haunted barrow was worth seeing.
“I don’t spend much time in Skyrim, but the ghosts are pretty solid around here.” Fenora joked a bit as they dragged the so-called ‘ghost’ to the inn, tied up and still unconscious.
“This… this is Wyndelius, the elf that went into that barrow.” Wilhelm identified him with a look of surprise. But it was nothing compared to when he read through the short journal they’d found, detailing the entire ruse Wyndelius had used to scare them away while he searched for the treasure.
“It says here he spent months just trying to get some puzzle door open, and meanwhile he was keeping himself fed by stealing our crops!” Wilhelm read, becoming more and more baffled and outraged with every passage. “And just listen to this… ‘All I had to do was wander about the entrance to the barrow at night and wave my arms about. I had to stop myself from laughing aloud as they ran away.’”
Wilhelm had finally read enough, and snapped the book closed. But rather than anger, his expression was one of shame. “I can’t believe we were all so stupid as to fall for this… foolish trickery!”
Although they might have objected to Wilhelm’s choice of words, the rest of the villagers couldn’t deny how silly they felt. For the past year they’d had a terror creeping in the shadows that they’d just learned to accept and ignore, and now they knew it was all some amateurish stunt by a greedy treasure hunter. All of it was like some cruel practical joke that had gone on far too long.
“I have to admit though, making a potion to appear ghostly was pretty inspired.” Fenora noted. “Of course using poisonous roots which gave him a constant delirium over a period of months was pretty dumb… but still.”
“Well, at least we won’t have to worry about it any longer. The guards here will wake him off to Riften where he can sit in a cell for all the trouble he’s caused us.” Wilhelm tried to look on the bright side. “I can’t thank you all enough for helping us.”
“That’s great and all, but we can’t get through that puzzle door either. We’re missing the claw-key-thing that unlocks it.” Fenora told him, “You wouldn’t happen to know anything about it, would you?”
Wilhelm got a look on his face like he just thought of something. “I wonder…” he mumbled and dug through a couple boxes behind his counter.
“Ah-ha! Here it is!” he finally said as he stood up once more. Our heroes’ eyes lit up in delight when he placed the golden claw on the countertop. The body of the claw was made of gold like the one for Bleak Falls, but its long sharp talons were made of solid sapphire. “I’d nearly forgotten about this old thing.”
“That’s the key!” Fenora exclaimed.
"Really?" Wilhelm said, astanished. "We had what Wyndelius needed to complete his scheme the whole time? I guess it's a good thing he never decided to come into town and raid us. How about I give it to you now? Consider it as payment for helping us with our little ghost problem.” he then turned an eye to Wyndelius, who babbled some incoherent gibberish in his sleep, and lamented as he shook his head, “If only we’d know sooner; could have saved us all a lot of headache.”
“Zzz… Look out, look out. Pink elephants on parade… zzz…” Wyndelius snored.
Moth.
Owl.
Wolf.
Fenora put the combination on the underside of the sapphire claw into the puzzle door just like in Bleak Falls. One twist of the key later and the door collapsed and slid into the floor, opening the way forward.
“Shall we?” she asked her companions.
“After you my thane.”
The first room they came across has several draugr coffins placed around a podium. There were rows of candles placed all throughout the room, melted down to almost nothing, yet still mysteriously lit somehow, and Fenora knew that they weren’t alone in there. They’d have to be careful, and ready for anyth-
“Hey look, I found another spellbook!” Stross said happily as he plucked the orange tome from the podium.
“Stross you idiot!” Fenora cursed as she and Lydia readied their weapons and stood back to back, ready to face the undead warriors that would surely come bursting forth from their tombs.
Only they didn’t.
Several seconds passed and nothing happened. Listening carefully, none of them heard a thing save for their own breathing.
“I don’t mean to jinx this, but that was kind of a letdown. I was expecting… y’know what, never mind.” Fenora said as she sheathed her sword.
“What was that book anyway?”
“Oakflesh.” Stross read the cover. “Huh, you know anyone that’d like to be a tree?”
From there the barrow only got more elaborate. You wouldn’t think it judging by the size of the hill from outside, but Shroud Hearth was actually built deep into the earth, allowing for generations of dead to be buried there, long before Ivarstead was even built. That of course meant generations of risen warriors to fight through, and dozens of deathtraps to deter would-be graverobbers. But by our heroes impeccable luck, those two things just happened to cancel each other out.
Quartet of skeleton archers? Hey, they’re standing in a pool of highly combustible oil!
Catacombs filled with draugr? Well it’s a good thing there’s a narrow hallway with swinging pendulum axes between us and them!
You want some popcorn while we watch? Sure!
No Lydia, don’t walk into it too! …oh, gods damn it Lydia, now I have to heal you again.
Fenora was getting disappointed that she couldn’t put her training with the Greybeards to any use. In fact, the only point where they really got stuck was with the puzzles keeping a bridge up. Not because it was challenging, mind you, but because Stross adamantly refused to skip it.
“Stross, hurry up!” Fenora called from the other side of the shallow chasm that allowed a small underground stream to flow through.
It wasn’t very deep, only about ten feet or so, but it was wide. For one person to get across, they’d have practically no choice but to solve the puzzle that lowered the wooden bridge across. But Fenora managed to get around it by having Lydia boost her up to the higher platform, and then reached down to her housecarl and pull her up as well. It was a struggle with all the stuff they were lugging around, but she managed. And Stross, he didn’t even need her help. He had wings to carry him up! Which only made it more infuriating how he insisted on getting across ‘the right way’.
“Stross, we’re here to find a word wall and loot the place. There is no right way!” Fenora argued.
“Well I’m pretty sure whoever designed these puzzles would disagree.” Stross said back as he rotated the animal pillars. “If they could see you cheating your way past all their hard work, they’d probably be bawling their eyes out.”
“Whoever designed these stupid things probably only put them in to waste our time, so that it feels like we’re accomplishing more than we actually are by getting past them!” Fenora pointed out.
“But doesn’t it make you feel clever for figuring out the solution to a daunting challenge my thane?” Lydia asked, joining in the discussion.
“It would… if they were actually challenging!” Fenora countered. “I mean have you seen these things? Most of the time they just GIVE you the answer, leaving you to fill it in like some trained helper monkey instead of solving it yourself. There’s no satisfaction in that; it’s just busy work. And when they don’t give you the answer, it’s a frustrating slog of trial and error with no clues as to what you’re supposed to do, and you just have to try every single combination until you get it right!”
A mechanism clicked, and the bridge fell across the chasm, allowing Stross to victoriously stride across to meet his friends.
“There, see? That wasn’t so bad. And besides, they might not be very hard, but they give a nice break from the action.” Stross said. At the confused look Fenora gave him, he elaborated. “Think about it. If we did nothing but run into these places, fight our way through a bunch of dead things and avoid the traps, things would get really monotonous really fast. Having to stop and solve a puzzle gives us a chance to slow down and catch our breath, even if it’s a mindless waste of time.”
“I… can see your point.” Fenora admitted. “But from now on, can we just skip these things if we can? We’re here to fight monsters, get awesome powers and loot, save the world, and chew bubblegum. Solving the picture puzzles on the backs of cereal boxes doesn’t really fit with all that.”
Finally inside the main burial chamber, the first thing our heroes noticed was the sheer size of it. Really they shouldn’t have been too surprised, a lot of people had to be entombed here over the centuries, and the last two burial ruins they’d explored had a large, unique main chamber. But it still didn’t take away from the sight of it.
The room was huge, with the ceiling darkened to the point that looking up was like staring into a yawning abyss. The floor was similar in a sense, flooded with water that they couldn’t tell the depth of. A pair of platforms stood apart in the water, each holding a metal sarcophagus on top. In the center of it all, an ascending pyramid of stone steps led to the exit. The stone bridge to the pyramid was lined with more metal coffins, as was the pyramid itself.
“Thirteen graves.” Lydia counted them all. “I’ve got a baaad feeling about this.”
“Finally something I can test out my thu’ums on!” Fenora grinned as she drew her sword.
Lydia similarly drew her bow, ready to pick off any distant targets, and Stross could finally join the fun with the Gauldur Blackbow he’d taken from Sigdis. Fenora however, was almost quaking in anticipation; all the targets… she had seen what her voice could do against illusions and pots, but now she could finally get some real practice in this deadly new art!
The second the first two coffins burst open and the draugr stepped out, Fenora was already on top of one of them with Whirlwind Sprint, bringing her sword down on the corpse with lethal precision before it could get its guard up.
The sounds of arrows whistling through the air let her know that her friends were already picking off the other.
The row of coffins on the level below her opened up just as they’d finished off the first two. She jumped down and cleanly decapitated one of them.
Two more closed in from her left, one with a two-handed axe, the other with a bow.
“Yol… Toor!” the first two words of fire breath finished off the axe wielder before it could become a hassle, the archer she could deal with using her sword.
She lunged before it could finish aiming, but unlike her quick kills on off-guard opponents, this draugr didn't die immediately. It jerked around on the end of her blade, causing it to get stuck in its ribcage. Fenora pulled and levered on the handle, but failed to get free.
Seeing another trio of draugr making their way to her she redoubled her efforts, but still couldn’t get her sword back. She also noticed the distinct lack of arrows helping her out, but a quick glance to check on Stross and Lydia only left her open to an attack.
Thinking quickly she managed to put the pinned draugr in front of her as a shield, stopping the other three from getting to her all at once on the narrow walkway.
Relentless, the first draugr wielding a pair of longswords shoved its way forward despite impaling itself on the end of her sword. This in turn pushed the first within swiping distance as well.
Even though she tried to keep her distance, rotting fingers groped for her face and hair, swords just barely missed her sides, and she was quickly losing her balance. Fenora had to concede that she wasn’t getting this sword back.
Darting to the side she used Unrelenting Force to shove both of the undead, still stuck on her sword into the dark water below.
Fenora slumped back for a second against the stone behind her, but the sharp, crushing pain to her stomach told her there was no time for a break. There was no air left in her to even groan in pain, and she tasted blood in her mouth as she kicked away from the mace draugr.
Instead of trying to finish her, the draugr bashed its mace against its shield in a show of challenge. Fenora was unarmed currently, so she had to wait for an opening.
The draugr wound up for a big swing, one that Fenora was easily able to sidestep. She got in close, and now that any power from the mace’s swings was gone, she twisted the dead soldier’s wrist until it popped and relented the weapon to her.
It brought up its shield to defend against the counter attack, and managed to deflect two hits from its mace before the elf smacked it away. She grabbed the collar of its decaying armor and smashed the mace into its bony head with a sickening, yet satisfying crack. Over and over she drove the mace into its skull until there was nothing left but bone splinters and paste.
Pain flared up in her left shoulder when arrow suddenly struck her. The offending archer was already getting another ready, and reinforcements of two sword draugrs looked to back it up.
“Iiz!”
Ice form lived up to its name, encasing the archer in a literal block of ice, giving Fenora time to grab another sword out of her pack. It was like she said earlier… you can never have too many swords.
With the sword in her off hand and an iron mace in her right, she was able to hold off the opening attack from one draugr and shove it aside long enough to deal with the other. Dealing with any kind of enemy was easier when there wasn’t a whole group hitting you at once.
The archer was last, still encased in ice, it only took two good hits to shatter it into pieces.
“My thane, come quick!” she heard Lydia call.
Finally able to get a look back at her companions, she saw the reason they’d stopped covering her. Lydia was busy finishing off the last of the draugr warriors, with two more corpses laying nearby. But what made her whirlwind sprint back in an instant was Stross.
The changeling was doubled over on his hands and knees, spewing some oily black substance from his mouth at a frightening rate.
“Stross! Stross are you okay? What’s wrong?” she asked, ignoring her own minor injuries and kneeling beside him.
“Tainted life force… cursed bow… shouldn’t have- BLEEUURRGGG!” he choked and coughed out, vomiting up more of the acrid black stuff. “I’m sorr-” he tried to say, but was cut off by another bout.
“It’s alright.” Fenora told him. “What do I do?”
Stross couldn’t answer her though, and just kept painfully throwing up more and more. For the first time since Helgen, Fenora felt helpless. She had learned the power of dragons, managed to slay a crypt full of undead almost on her own, and yet what stumped her was her own friend and a sickness she knew nothing about. She couldn’t stand feeling like there was nothing she could do, whether it was not being able to save a village, or save just one friend.
Her mind raced and she quickly dug through her pack, pulling out a healing potion as well as an antivenom. She wasn’t sure if they would help, or how to get Stross to drink them for that matter. She considered having to knife a hole in him somewhere and pouring it in, just to get the liquid inside him.
Stross grabbed her hand though, staying her.
With one last great heave, Stross finally got the last of the tainted life force out of his system, though he still had the horrible taste in his mouth.
“A-are you okay?” Fenora asked shakily. “What happened?”
“My system was trying to purge itself.” Stross told her. "It happens when we changelings get poisoned. Or if we feed off something tainted like the undead... or each other.”
Fenora's eyes drifted to the bow Stross was using, still sitting in the pool of rancid oil. She immediately snatched it up and tossed it over the edge of the platform into the water below.
"NOOOO!" Stross yelled, nearly diving after it. "Why did you do that?! I needed that!"
"You're kidding right? Look what it did to you!" Fenora shouted.
"But you didn't have to throw it away! Maybe it doesn't purify the essence of dead guys like I thought it would, but it might have worked on living ones! Right?" Stross argued. "That was supposed to be my alternative to feeding! Instead of having to leech off of innocent people all the time, I could just recharge myself whenever we fight bandits. Wouldn't that be so much better?!"
Fenora shook her head. "Not if it might kill you. That thing was clearly cursed; you got it off an evil spirit from an old legend after all."
Stross wanted to keep fighting her on that, but couldn't. Instead he wiped his tongue on the edge of his cloak and let out a sigh. "Nothing's ever easy."
Fenora hugged him. "Hey, you'll be fine. As long as we've got each other we'll be fine. That's what friends are for. Speaking of which..." Fenora grimaced, clutching her broken ribs, "You think you could maybe help me out here?"
Fenora found herself incredibly grateful for Stross’s newly learned healing magic; it certainly made it easier to move around when her ribs weren’t cracked, and it also meant she could use fewer of the ingredients she gathered on the road for healing potions. She was a little surprised he’d learned it back in Whitetrun only a day ago. Magic was probably just easier for Equestrians she guessed.
She’d even managed to spot a replacement sword, just waiting for her to pick up! …once she whirlwind sprinted across a broken bridge… and dug it out of the rubble… and then used it to slay its previous undead owner that was buried along with it.
But it was worth it! The blade definitely of Dwemer make, and like the old pots and gears she’d seen before, it was was far heavier and bulkier than any normal metal. A bit unwieldy, but it would deliver a much harder hack.
Right now, they were focusing on the word wall again.
“Here lies the body of Helg, a friend to all beasts and servant of Kyne. May she find eternal rest in the forest of dreams.” Fenora read the inscription, and each little scratch made a little more sense to her as an actual language. “Why’d you want to know?”
“Hold on! …for-est of dreeeeaaamss. And done.” Stross copied down the inscription from the word wall onto one of the old faded books, finally finding a use for the battered old things. “I’m cataloging these old inscriptions we find with the words.”
“Uh, okay. Why?” Fenora wondered. She already learned the word that would translate to a shout, wasn’t that all there was to these things?
“Well, the words of power were used in those… epitaphs? Anyway, they were used to signify a certain aspect of someone’s life. Knowing how the words fit into those lives could be important for learning the true meaning of the words themselves, like Master Arngeir said.” Stross explained.
Fenora looked back over the word wall, thinking about that for a moment. Helg was apparently a friend to animals, and so the shout she learned would make them more passive around her when used. Really it all seemed like a convenient coincidence.
“Are you sure you’re not looking into this too deeply?”
“Meh… probably.”
"...St-...stro-...ross-...ss..."
Stross perked up his ear to hear the tiny echoing sound. He left the others behind as he walked in the direction it was coming from.
"...Stross...It repeated itself and got louder, almost as though something were heading right towards-
"STROSS!" Reyda's ghost suddenly appeared right in his face, alive and well as a ghost could possibly be. "Come quick!" she said in a panic, "I need you! My brother needs you."
Narfi sat alone in his house, looking at the tiny picture of his family. Just that morning, not two hours ago, the guards had delivered the news of his sister’s death. At first he didn’t believe them, he shouted and raved that Reyda couldn’t possibly be dead. It wasn’t until they showed him the body that he finally broke down in the face of the reality he’d evaded for so long. His sobbing likely woke the rest of the village if were they not already awake. And the guards, either out of pity or politeness left him be. He didn’t care through, he didn’t care about anything any more.
Narfi was alone. For the first time in over a year he finally had to accept that cold, unmerciful, undeniable fact. His family were all dead, and he… he was all alone now.
Narfi didn’t want to sleep anymore, he didn’t want to eat either. All he wanted was to be with his family again. Closing the locket and clenching it tightly in his hand, he went outside.
He walked to the cliff just outside his home, the one he’d often go to as a child, where he’d sit and gaze out at the valley below as the sun rose higher and higher into the sky like it did this day. He remembered the picnics he’d have with his family, and how he missed them now more than ever.
But now it was okay, he thought with a smile. It was good knowing they were all gone, because now he didn’t have to stay here and be sad. He’d finally be with them again... if he just took a few more steps.
He walked to the very edge of the cliff and looked out at the rolling plains and streams below, knowing it would be the last time he would see it from this world. Thinking of his family one last time, he spread his arms and leaned forward, falling to greet the jagged rocks of the river below… and his family in the afterlife.
But something suddenly stopped his fall. A pair of hands had grabbed his leg as he dangled, far beyond the edge of the cliff, and far too far for anyone to have stopped him from jumping.
Looking up, Narfi couldn’t believe his eyes. There, flying in the air and holding onto him for dear life was his sister.
He couldn’t believe his eyes, even as she flew back up to the cliff and deposited him safely back onto solid ground.
“R-reyda? H-how!?” Narfi stuttered, scrabbling to his knees.
Reyda knelt down to him, though just out of reach. She spoke in a voice that was ghostly and distant, yet still held the warmth and love he remembered from her. “Narfi, listen to me. Don’t give up on your life, brother; it’s too soon for you to die. We’ll all meet again in time, but for now, there is still far too much to leave behind.”
“B-b-but… Narfi- I’m all alone!” Narfi nearly cried.
Reyda just smiled back at him though. “No… you’re not.” She told him before vanishing away.
Behind her Narfi saw something that shocked him; a large crowd of townspeople from Ivarstead were rushing towards him with their faces full of fear and worry.
“Oh thank the gods.” Wilhelm said as he arrived ahead of the others, grabbing him by the shoulders as though he might slip away if he didn’t. “When we saw you go over that cliff we thought... Listen to me. Don’t ever do that again, you hear me? We’re not ready to lose you yet.”
“Narfi you crazy fool,” Klimmek put an arm around him as well, “where did you get a dumb idea like that?”
“Indeed,” Bassianus chimed in, “life here in Ivarstead is dull and depressing enough as it is. We don’t need you gone too.”
Narfi found himself surprised. In the past when he went into town to beg for food or drink, they’d looked at him with disdain to the point that he stopped going into town, and instead hid in his house all day. It never would have occurred to him that any of them would miss him if he was gone, yet here they all were, rushing to make sure he was alright.
“Come to the inn, friend. What say we get you something to eat?” Gwilin, the abnormally cheerful elf joined in.
“Thank you… Narfi would… I would like that.” he told them, speaking in the first person for the first time in months. “And I’m sorry I tried to jump.”
“That’s alright,” Wilhelm told him, “and I’m sorry I kept the truth from you for so long; it wasn’t right of me, and I intend to make it up to you, starting now. From now on, we’re your family too, so don’t try to leave us like that again.”
…
Just out of sight of the town, Fenora and Lydia waited near a grove of trees where they watched the whole thing. They turned their heads to a less-than-faint rustling next to them, welcoming Stross back to them as he dropped his invisibility and his disguise.
“So that’s what you went running off for. Nice catch Stross.” Fenora complimented.
“Indeed, my other thane.” Lydia smiled.
“Couldn’t have done it better myself.” Reyda’s ghost said with a smirk.
Then there was screaming and swinging of swords at the spontaneous ghost, all of which Reyda sat through with a deadpan expression as the weapons wooshed harmlessly through her.
“Anyway…” Reyda continued with a roll of her eyes. “Thank you again for the physical assistance Stross, I literally couldn’t have saved my brother without your help.”
“Really? Why couldn’t you have gone to one of the villagers for help? Wouldn’t they be closer?” Stross asked.
“I did.” Reyda told him and pointed to Fenora and Lydia, who still had their weapons drawn. “The first three people I spoke to gave me that reaction before running away screaming.” She then let out a ghostly sigh, “I guess I’ll just have to get used to that while I watch over my brother from now on. Do come and visit if you ever find yourself in Ivarstead again. Farewell.”
For a few solid seconds after Reyda vanished again, likely to go watch over Ivarstead and her brother like she said, Fenora and Lydia were at a loss for what to say.
Finally, Fenora managed a question. “Stross, how in the world does Equestria hate changelings? You’re so nice you can befriend the dead!”
At that point, Stross could have pointed out everything that Fenora was missing which made her statement invalid, but he just settled on a hug instead.
Now with Ivarstead free of its ghost problems (sort of), they made to take the long way back to Whiterun, and saddle up for more world-saving adventure!