Sword Search

Saeko Busujima looks over upon the horizon while letting out a tired breath. She'd been walking for hours now yet had found little to no signs of civilisation. All she saw before her were more dunes of sand, and if she was lucky, the occasional rocky outcropping that'd provide temporary relief from the searingly hot sun.

"Perhaps I should have tried to find a guide..." she admits to herself, pulling the hood on her thin cloak tighter over her head.

Its been months since she'd set off from the Companions in search of the legendary Sword-Singers Shakeesh had spoken about. Yet she'd found nothing of the sort after all this time.

The Companions were very skilled warriors, but what they taught was not what Saeko was looking for. Their generally free-style type of combat and martial arts didn't suit her well at all. The hard programmed discipline and honour that her father had beaten into her since she was young wouldn't allow her to adopt such... Brutish methods.

A shield didn't suit her, and the swordsmanship taught by the Companions relied heavily on both strength, durability, and stamina. In her honest opinion, they were more like berserkers that relied on their armour to not die than proper swordsmen.

She would have continually gotten stronger while training under them but, she'd have to abandon most of what she'd already been taught... She wasn't willing to do that, even with her frosty opinion of her father, she refused to forget her ancestry and heritage... Which is why she found herself so stricken with how the Redguards regarded martial arts.

Their attitudes were similar to Japanese samurai, if the Japanese were middle eastern and lived in deserts... Indeed, if she hadn't learned how to make skincare and sun protection poultices before she entered the desert she'd have probably suffered third-degree burns by now.

Even with protection, her skin burned and peeled often, leaving her a saw, rather gross-looking moss most of the time. In her opinion at least.

The problems didn't end there however, since Hammerfell was at war with the Aldmeri Dominion the locals were very on guard against spies and the like... She was bad news for her who had snow-white skin and foreign purple hair, along with her eastern features that some misconstrued as Elven.

In the past she'd have laughed in the faces of anyone who mistook her as an elf, that or be flattered... But now? It was an annoying occurrence, one that impeded her progress in finding what she was looking for in this land.

It was for that reason she stayed well away from any major cities in Hammerfell, instead, simply sticking to smaller villages for supplies and maintenance for her equipment.

She was lucky she'd saved a good amount of gold while working with the Companions since she was often overcharged for goods, she would be mad were it not for the obvious squalor and distress of most villages, each one fearing an imminent attack from the Thalmor.

Saeko lets out a sigh and retrieves her flask before taking a sip, only to find nothing but a couple drops of water left in it. "Damn..." she curses, glancing around with squinted eyes to try and alleviate the heat-haze blurring her vision. Thankfully, she spots the top of some sort of mountain in the distance over the horizon, there more than anywhere else would be the place to get water...

It takes another three hours to reach the base of the mountain, sweat was pooling from her as if she were in a sauna, and her mouth was parched from thirst. Thankfully, she spotted a few small ferns dotting the mountainside, meaning that water was probably nearby...

"Wait... A path?" she questions aloud as she spots the faint outline of a path that'd been mostly obscured by sand. It looked very old, ancient even, but it would probably lead to water regardless. "Hmph, a camel would've been useful... If I'd had the gold." she mutters to herself as she shrugs her heavy backpack.

Following the path that winds through, over, and around the mountainous terrain, she eventually finds herself standing on a plateau that looked down on an isolated Oasis that was surrounded on all sides by stone cliff walls... Plants grew here and there, some vines even helpfully clinging to the cliff wall, vines that she could probably climb to reach the water.

The water wasn't the only thing of interest here however... Built into one of the cliff walls just above the water was an entrance of some kind, with visible decorative stone pillars and a stone path that'd been heavily damaged by the flora that started growing here. "No time like the present..." she mutters to herself before tentatively lowering herself onto a vine, carefully clambering down while making sure not to dislodge too much and potentially destroy her only exit out of here.

Once down, she quickly has her fill of water after making sure it was clean enough for consumption... Even if she were dehydrated, she was still Japanese, what people in this world would call a 'clean freak', 'picky', or 'snobbish'.

After taking a few minutes to rest, she gets up and decides to explore the strange tomb. First though, she needed to translate the letters she'd found buried by flora... It wasn't Tamrielic, but, she'd luckily had the forethought to purchase a book on the old Reguard language, Yokudan.

...

"Rest men of Onsi who dyed the ancestral lands red with the blood of infidels, and died honourably with blades in their hands." Saeko reads aloud, being unable to read the rest to the degradation of the stone. "Sounds like what I've been searching for...?" she questions while lighting a torch in preparation to delve into the tomb.