//------------------------------// // 8: Arrival in Iverstead // Story: Sonata's Crazy and Wacky Adventure in Skyrim // by Sonata Blaze //------------------------------// Sonata spent the hour she had requested from Kree to regain her energy and read one or two of the spell tomes that she had picked up on the way to the fortress they had stopped in. She was trying to improve her skills, so that way she didn't have to resort to relying on her friends during each and every battle that they got into. Even if she was the Dragonborn, which she knew next to nothing about her new destiny, she knew that she had to train her new powers and get a firm grasp on what she could do. During that time Kree stayed near her while Lydia, on the other hand, stood on the upper walkway and watched for more enemies that she could remove from the world. When the hour was up the three of them gathered their gear and left the fort, returning to the road and heading in the direction that Iverstead happened to be in. A few minutes later they came to a bridge, though as they started to walk across the stone they encountered a pack of wolves that howled at them the moment they spotted them. Lydia, somehow sensing that they were a threat to her Thane, drew her weapon and charged forward, shouting at the wolves as her sword found its home in the head of one of the advancing wolves. Kree sighed and loosed an arrow at the second one, but the third one slipped by Lydia and charged at Sonata, who merely snapped her fingers as an ice spike erupted from the stone and impaled the wolf. "Strange... I've never seen an ice spike used like that," Kree commented, collecting her arrow and the pelts of the two other wolves, as the one Sonata struck had a ruined pelt, "I guess more of your natural powers are already beginning to return to you. Maybe the training the Greybeards will give you will, in some shape or form, give you the ability to use more of your magic again... though time will tell." Sonata hoped that she regained her full magical power at some point, but that also made her worry that she could, potentially, use those abilities to do more harm than good. She honesty had no idea what she would do if she suddenly reforged her shattered pendant and recovered all of her powers... though the thought of her using them to do harm made her shiver. She had promised herself, before entering the portal, that if she could regain her powers, even a fraction of them, that she would use them for the betterment of either Equus or wherever she ended up. "I guess I overdid it," Sonata merely said, not knowing that the spike was supposed to have been thrown, as the book made a vague mention of what to do with the spell... to which she cursed the mage that had been carrying it for treating it badly. Once they had crossed the bridge Lydia beckoned to the path leading up the hillside, indicating that this was the way they needed to go if they wanted to reach Iverstead. Sonata nodded and they continued along the path, following the dirt road that led them upwards and around a few stone piles that happened to be resting in their way. They spotted several wild animals that crossed their path, to which Sonata noticed that they actually ran away from them, as if they were afraid of a group of travelers. She guessed that made sense, considering that all they had seen were a few foxes, the occasional goat, a lone rabbit that stared at them the entire time, and a couple of passing deer. However, not an hour later, they found a brown furred creature, with wicked looking claws and a wild look in its eyes, that definitely wanted to rip them a new one. "Sonata, please activate your fire magic," Kree told her friend, as she drew an arrow and Lydia drew her weapon, to which Sonata let flames dance around her hand for a moment, "we've got a troll ahead of us..." Sonata had never dealt with a troll before, but she considered that Kree had asked her to use fire magic and determined that the troll's weakness had to be fire, regardless if it was an actual spell or an enchantment. She grinned for a moment as she brought her hands closer to each other and combined the flames into a single sphere, before stepping forward and throwing the spell right into the troll's chest. The troll staggered backwards for a moment before pounding its hands on it chest and then beating its hands on the ground, to which it glared at Sonata. She snapped her fingers as flames surrounded her, to which she summoned them all into another sphere and struck the advancing troll in the chest again, though it continued to look as if it was in pain while it was coming towards her. She gestured to Lydia for a moment, to which her housecarl ran through the flames and cut a diagonal gash into the troll's chest, knocking it to the ground. Kree, having never fired her arrow, slowly approached the downed troll with Sonata by her side, who kept her flames at the ready in case their attacks did nothing. After a few seconds they determined the troll was dead, which was determined when it didn't get back up when Lydia poked the creature's chest with her weapon. Once they had determined that the troll was actually dead, and wasn't getting back up, they searched the cave it had been resting in, to which Kree raided the beast's supply of fresh kills and discarded pelts with a smile on her face. Sonata figured it was because she could turn the pelts into armor for the three of them, as long as she had the metal required to make something for one of them. Once Kree had looted the entire cave of everything they could use, which happened to be the pelts she had collected, she returned to her friends and they continued along the path once more. It then took them roughly another twenty minutes to reach their destination, the small village called Iverstead, but before they walked over the bridge and climbed the Seven Thousand Steps, which Sonata was eager to climb, Kree informed them that it might be wise to spend the night in the inn before they set out. Sonata knew that she wanted to relax and get a decent sleep before they started the climb, so she merely nodded her head and followed her friend to the inn. When they entered the inn Lydia stood beside the door, to keep an eye out for enemies that might enter the inn looking for Sonata, while Sonata and Kree approached the innkeeper. While they were renting their room for the night Sonata discovered that the barrow across from the inn was apparently haunted by some sort of spirit, something that was causing less visitors to come through their village despite the fact that High Hrothgar rested near them. There was also a mention of someone named Wyndelius having gone into the barrow, no doubt he was searching for something, but he had never returned and the villagers suspected that he was dead. Once they had that piece of information, and the decline of the visitors because of the haunted barrow, Sonata checked her weapons once more and headed outside, with Lydia and Kree hot on her heels. "You are definitely insane!" Kree exclaimed as they walked outside, glad that most of the villagers had returned home and that the three of them were the only ones outside, "Sonata, please listen to me. We are ill prepared for anything inside that barrow... and I really don't want to tell anyone that the Dragonborn was killed because she couldn't leave a single barrow alone. I especially don't want to bury one of my friends, not when you have more to give than just clearing up problems like this." "I'm only going inside so I can search for this specter the innkeeper mentioned," Sonata replied, turning her head back to face her friends, "I want to see how far this spirit is in the barrow, because if it is close to the entrance we can simply remove it and be out before the other residents even know we're there. Its one enemy and the people will be glad to have it gone, that's all." Sonata knew that Kree wasn't expecting that reason at all, as her friend seemed confused by why she wanted to go inside for a moment, but then sighed and nodded her head. The three of them then entered the barrow, to which they walked down a staircase and entered the crypt... where they heard something telling them to leave at once. Sonata walked up to the corridor that connected to the entrance and turned to her right, to which she spotted the spirit she had come to lay to rest. Before she could do anything the spirit turned around and went deeper into the barrow, to which she turned to the open room to her left and looked at the switches for a moment. As Kree and Lydia joined her in the room she started flipping the switches, closing a few of the doors and opening them again before all three of them were open. Sonata then followed the path deeper into the barrow and opened another passage, pausing for a moment to let the traps go off before the next door was open. She ignored the door on her right and focused on the one in front of her, but before she opened it she had her friends stand back, to which she ignited her magic and summoned lightning to her left hand. Instead of the original lightning she used before she had it focused into the tips of her fingers, like a blade made of pure lightning, to which she beckoned to Lydia to open the door. The moment the door opened, and the ghost happened to be standing on the other side of it, Sonata charged forward with her hand extended in front of her... to which she tore through the ghost's chest and spattered blood on the ground behind her. "What the..." Sonata started to say, before the illusion that had been on the ghost ruptured, revealing that the ghost had actually been a living person... who she had just killed, "What is this?! I thought he was a ghost..." "Apparently that was a trick to fool the villagers," Kree said, slipping passed her friend and finding the man's journal, discovering that this was the man that the innkeeper had said had disappeared some time ago, "well, I guess we can tell the innkeeper about his 'ghost' and show him the journal." Sonata, having pulled her arm out of the dead man's chest, nodded her agreement and followed her friends back outside, determined to wash her arm off before even going to sleep. ------------------------------------ A duo of cloaked figures entered the inn across from the barrow as darkness slowly descended on the village, to which they approached the innkeeper as the other patrons stayed away from them. "What can I do for you?" the innkeeper asked, staring at the two strangers as they approached him, wondering if they were guests for the night. "The Dragonborn!" the stranger on the right demanded, clearly female by the tone of the voice that came from behind the mask, "Where is she!?" "I don't know who the Dragonborn is," the innkeeper replied, before thinking back to who had walked into his inn, "but a group of three rented our room for the night..." The two strangers drew their swords and silently drifted into the bedroom, somehow guessing which one was the room he rented out to people, before they lifted their weapons above their heads and started stabbing the bed. After a few seconds one of them flipped the bed into the wall, before the two of them walked out into the open chamber and started looking around for their target. They looked at the scared patrons for a moment, studying them for a few seconds, before they walked outside and started their search all over again. That was before Sonata and her friends emerged from the barrow, to which the two cloaked figures pointed their blades at Sonata the instant they spotted her. "Oh what now?" Sonata demanded, annoyed by the death of a person that hadn't actually been dead, which was only increased by the duo standing in front of her. "Its time to die, False Dragonborn," one of the strangers said, "When Lord Miraak appears all shall bear witness. None shall stand to oppose him!" Sonata sighed and snapped her fingers, to which the stranger was struck down with one of Kree's arrows, before patting Lydia on her shoulder and letting the warrior go. Within seconds the second stranger's head was rolling on the ground, but all Sonata was concerned about was the fact that someone else wanted her dead in this world. She'd deal with this 'Lord Miraak' in time... once she had figured out what to do with the dragons and save the world from being destroyed by the 'Harbingers of the End Times'. She knew, in that instant, that her life was only going to get harder the longer she stayed in this world.