Chapter 4: The Benefactor — Ver. 2.0
Call us unlucky, because we just found not one, not two, but five fully grown wolves. These fuckwads are massive. They stand at an easy meter tall, and was at least a meter and three quarters in length. These wolves I'm quite confident I could ride on easily. Wolves of this size wouldn't have to hunt in packs of a dozen to 60, unlike Earths'. These five are definitely enough to take on a bear, although I don't think they could even come close to being able to handle a mammoth.
After the first wolf jumped out, the other four came from the woods around the trail and started circling us. Hadvar and I stand back-to-back, and considering how unprepared we were getting caught like this, we're probably about to make our final stand.
The universe must hate us. 'How dare you have the gall to survive a dragon?' it must be thinking. 'If not to a dragon, die to a wolf. Better yet, die to several.'
In the game, when you face the wolves, it's just two or three small ones. But these...
Now, normally wolves would be no problem to a player in Skyrim. That is of course, unless the player is low-leveled, like I believe I am, unfortunately. And usually, wolves in Skyrim traveled in pairs, but we just found five. As a capable person might be able to tell, this is obviously not a usual situation. Nor is it one anyone should prefer to be in.
The wolves circle us, moving clockwise, and me and Hadvar aren't very in good shape right now because we're out of breath and our legs hurt after running much more than a mile. Besides the fact that we fought quite a bit of people today, this does not seem like it will end up well for us.
The wolves snap at us, pouncing a bit in and back out again. I was a little bit confused until I realize– they're searching for an opening.
The wolves start to close in the circle, bit by bit, until there wasn't much room left to work with. At this point, I got tired of waiting for them to make a move, so I try and take the advantage.
"Rraaaggghhhh!" I shout, and slash at one of the wolves. It hops back, and rebounding off of a rock, pounces on my left shoulder. My armor tears open as it rips its head from side to side, trying to get at my flesh. Its jaws are strong, and hurts even through the armor.
Pain shoots through my arm, and another wolf springs onto my left leg. With the weight of the first wolf tearing at my arm and now the weight of the second, I fall backwards. My sword falls from my hand to the cobblestone road below me. The air bursts out of my chest and the first wolf's weight starts to press down my chest and restrict my breathing.
The first wolf finally lets go of my shoulder, but now goes for my throat. I try to grab its head, punching and pushing it off, but it quickly snaps at my hand.
I tear my hand away, and a moment of total clarity happens, and I enter a near dreamlike state where everything moves slowly. The adrenaline finally kicks in extra hard, and time slows. Hadvar's yelling as he cuts down one wolf, and kicks another starts to sound clear, then clearer, until it feels like something snaps and everything moves back to normal speed.
The wolf's maw was moving towards my neck. 'Is this the end?' I think. 'It's just... It'd really suck if it was.'
As it turned out, yes. Yes, it was my time to die. My blood spurts out as an immense pain rips through my neck. The wolf drives it's jaw around my neck even further. The wolf's fangs, now at the back of my neck, quickly pierce my spinal cord, paralyzing me, forcing me to watch as it rips parts of my neck out.
I watch as it looks past me, as if I were already a corpse (I suppose I am, but that's not the point). Its eyes burn into my soul. It has no human intelligence, only it's instincts, and somehow after all I've survived so far, a beast... A... a mere *dog!* draws my downfall. It's fur, now covered in my blood, only drew it more terrifying in my eyes. 'Man, fuck this shit.'
'If I somehow survive this, I don't think I'll like dogs as nearly as much as I used to.' Bursts of pain now dulling, (probably from the blood loss, and or the missing neck), brought my attention back to my injuries.
My nerves, once living, quickly die as my lifeblood flows from my throat to the dust under me. My lungs, covered with the weight of the wolf, squeezes out one last, painful pitiful breath. The pain receptors in my body break as the pain grows too much to bear, and my consciousness starts to fade.
I try to inhale, but my lungs are completely crushed. Air won't enter my mouth, let alone my throat, ironically. You'd think that with a torn-open throat, it might be easier to breathe, but no.
My heart pounds even faster than before, trying to pass oxidized blood throughout my body but as my lungs were... incapable of gathering air, it was all for naught. My blood. I can see it. 'Why is it such a bright red?' Other blood from me mixes in it, creating a a sticky, murky dark red, and bright crimson puddle.
I've long stopped my resistance against the tearing of my throat and indescribable pain shatters through my body, nearly knocking me unconscious. 'Why am I still alive? Haven't I lost too much blood? How am I even awake? Isn't that my jugular?'
'There! What was that?' Something dances at the edge of my hearing.
My eyelids flutter as I remember music. The Song of the Dragonborn! I can hear it! Not just an echo, but the song itself. It flows through my ears. The music of the game. I can hear it. Every note. The proud horns, the orchestral strings, the chorus. 'Is this what it takes for the game to act as it should? My death?'
My vision was not lost, yet. The wolf finally lets go of my throat and runs away. My life doesn't so much flash before my eyes, as echoes of my past fill my mind. Long regrets and embarrassing events whisper their tongues in my ears, despite my inability to focus on my hearing.
My head rolls to the right, no longer having strength to support it. The wolf that had ripped my throat out was now attacking the person to my right. He was fighting off 3, 4 wolves? I don't know. My vision blurs.
'What was his name? I could swear I knew it...'
As he kicks off one wolf, and slashes at another, my vision finally darkens, and it feels like I'm falling asleep. A feeling crosses over me, as I fall into the black, like something isn't quite right. Bright lights fill my eyes, before I dip completely into the shadows.
-------------------
I gasp, breathing as much air as possible. I stare above me into a black sky, and sit up. Looking around, I'm sitting on a shiny metallic black surface, that stretches off for what looks to be infinity in all directions. Around me is... Nothing?
It's almost completely dark around me, and there's not much in the air, except smoke. Tasteless, scentless, this smoke might as well be cold steam. I can see myself fairly well though, so I think there's light coming from somewhere, but I can't tell where. The fact that there's light reflecting off the ground indicates that the light must be above me, but there's nothing but a black abyss up there.
All that there is in this place, is smoke. The source of the smoke I can't find after exploring around for a bit, but it didn't prevent my breathing in any way, it was just... there. Having done that, I sit down somewhere around where I started, and take a few seconds to figure some things out.
I look around at my body, and felt around my neck. My chest and neck were perfectly fine, as though they weren't even touched by the wolf. I check my leg, and it was similar. Perfect condition, maybe even better than before. My head started spinning, trying to figure out my situation.
'Impossible. I most definitely just died. How am I alive? Why am I alive?' I quickly pinch myself, checking if I'm dreaming. If this is a dream, then it's extremely vivid. The pain I feel lets me know for sure that I'm alive, somehow restored back to life, and that I was in even better condition than before.
My skin is much clearer.., and significantly paler, too? Not just pale, but white. My scars from my life on Earth are gone, and my muscles are larger and more defined. My eyesight's sharper, and I'm taller by more than a couple inches, too. I didn't even notice it this entire time, but the glasses I used to wear all the time have been gone for the last several hours — since I woke up in the carriage, actually.
My bones feel like they've been realigned, and the posture pains I usually feel in my lower back are gone now. All that is great and all, but... Why am I white now? I liked my tan skin.
I try to stay calm, but I think I might be a bit traumatized. I don't know what's happened exactly, but something is absolutely different. This wasn't the way my new life in this realm was supposed to go. Why did I die? Why am I alive again? And why am I white?! I didn't realize it before, but I guess I really loved my old body, despite its' imperfections. With my bone structure, especially with my jawline, it won't look right if I'm white.
Wait – if my skin color is different, is my eye color different as well? Did I get turned into a Nord or some bullshit like that? I swear, if that's what happened...
Dying and coming back is an impossible experience. But now... Not only do I have a new body, I can feel something that wasn't there before in the air I'm breathing. It's in my lungs, my skin... I can feel that it's in my blood. If I concentrate on it, I can feel it flowing in and out of my body, just as I can taste the dust and smell the smoke. It's everywhere. 'Magicka?'
I also feel a new power lying within me, close to both my heart and my mind at the same time, like a memory. It's not something to do with my physical strength, but something innate. Whatever I am now is different, no longer completely human. Or maybe... just a different kind of human? 'Goddamn it. I'm a Nord, aren't I?'
I wouldn't say that my physical form is absolutely different than before (besides my skin color), but it was noticeably distinct (my – yeah, you get it). But I can't simply just call my new physical form different. It's something else. Something... beyond the normality of my old "human" experience.
But just now, I feel that there's an... indescribable thing inside me now. It was like the center of a three-way Venn Diagram of the acknowledgement of new information, the memory of an old ability, and the epiphany of an indescribable concept. I don't know what it is, but I feel as though if I were to part with this, I would die, just as surely as I would if I were to remove my heart or head. I shiver. I don't know what this is and I'm not sure I like it just yet.
[
A deep, crackly voice that was definitively masculine echoes out among the space. The voice sounds almost comically like the voice of a villain using a voice-changer from Earth.
I jump to my feet when it speaks. It sounds like it's mocking me. The voice comes from behind me. I spin around and there an Orc warrior stood, his two orichalcum axes gleaming red with blood. He definitely wasn't there a moment ago.
The Orc's green chest lay bare, the only covering being that of blood splatter. His legs and groin are covered in a fur kilt armor and boots. Out of the tops of the boots pop the hairy furs of rabbits.
He's also wearing studded leather bracers that extend nearly across his entire forearm, and his brow is pierced with golden pin-like jewelry. His head is almost completely bald, save for his beard, and the hair at the back of his head that's gathered into a ponytail. Upon his neck lies a necklace, styled in the designs of the ancient Nords.
His body, though, is clearly frozen as though it's locked in time and space. The voice couldn't have come from him.
[
The voice comes from the surrounding darkness once more. God-fucking-damn it. I knew it. It's nothing personal against the Nords, it's just that I knew what to do with the aesthetics of my old body, and now I don't know what to do here. Something like a new body doesn't come free though. 'What does this... entity want?'
"Who is this?" I call out to who I presume to be my saviour. I spin around, trying to pinpoint the source of the voice. I nearly fall over, losing my balance turning. The new height and strength has me trying to regauge my capabilities. I eventually figure out a happy medium, though.
[
[
The Benefactor continues.
[
The Benefactor speaks again. So that's what he wants. For me to both live, and die? Chances are, he's getting something out of this deal. What is it?
[
The Benefactor tries to skip over that part, but I speak out.
"W-wait... Now, hold on, W-what was that part about the maintenance of my sanity? And what is it you get from my compliance?"
The Benefactor explains a bit.
[<... I gift all those who I help power. Unfortunately, though, they seem to all fall into an... eldritch madness eventually, regardless of what I, or they did. Ah-uh... Anyways, I have to check on some of my servant's mental capacitors. I hope they haven't gone crazy yet, either.>]
"Wait, no, what was that bit about my sanity? And what do you get from my cooperation?" I respond.
'I don't know this person? God? Celestial? Thing? Whatever it is, I don't know it, so I should be ready in case they decide that maybe I'm not worth keeping alive. Although, it doesn't seem like there's much I could do, considering that they very easily brought me to life, and could probably kill me just as easily.'
I think about what the Benefactor just said. 'Wait... Mental capacitors? Their brains? The hell's happening here?!' Some semi-astral being just saved me from my death, and leaves, saying that he has to check on his servant's minds? Could my Benefactor be Sheogorath, the Daedric Prince of Madness? It would make some degree of sense if that were the case.
The smoke surrounding me fades away, and I'm left with more questions than the Benefactor answered. My vision darkens, and I find myself in the Guardian Stones ring.
The bright sunny sky fills my eyes as I look back on the dais of the Guardian Stones were in. Their shadows were dark against the moss and vine-covered ground. The cracked and weathered stone dais has small shards of stones missing, almost as though they've been chipped off. 'Strange', I think.
I walk up to the Thief Stone again, and pray to the Celestials like Hadvar showed me the first time we came here. The beacon lights up once more, and the desires and power of the Thief once again flows inside me. This time, though, it feels different. Stronger, by about three times what it was previously. I guess being given a new body makes it easier for the power to flow, or something. That's probably actually the case.
I shake out my arms and legs. Getting perfectly used to my new height, reach, and strength is going to be necessary for the future. Having a new body made for this world makes it easier to understand just how some people in this world grew to be so strong.
"We need to keep moving," someone from behind me says.
When I turn to look, Hadvar is standing there, his arms crossed. It looks like he doesn't remember anything that happened from before. What is this, a save file I was reset to?
"Let's," I answer, nodding to the road. I'd like to figure out whether we went back to past, or if a 'save file' has been 'reloaded', but we don't exactly have time for this, after all, this place isn't very safe.
Hadvar turns around and starts jogging, with me close behind. I keep pace with him, until about 50 meters before where the wolves attacked last time.
"Hadvar, hold on!" I call out to him. He's a quarter of the way to the wolves' ambush spot when I stop. Hadvar slows to a snail's pace and turns to face me.
Before he could say anything to admonish me about stopping, I say, "Listen. Do you hear that?"
I could just barely hear them barking and growling at each other in the distance. I think that before, the reason we didn't hear them was because we couldn't hear anything over the sound of our breathing and our boots hitting the ground.
He turns his head, listening, and smiles. "You got good ears, man. Alright, you switch to a bow, and draw them out, and I'll fight them off with my sword while you shoot them."
I smile now too, but for a different reason. I answer him, clenching my teeth. I've had enough practice to be able to fight with a sword, but archery's not really something I'd been interested in.
"Great plan. But it's got one kinda big flaw. I can't shoot a bow. I've never been trained."
Hadvar considers it for a moment, then speaks.
"Alright, then give me the bow. I'll shoot them, you draw them out."
"Even better plan." I agree. Now that we had some time to strategize, we should be able to kill the wolves.
I pass Hadvar the bow, and give him my quiver. After he had drawn the bow to test its draw weight, I set my bag down.
I jog forward, pretending as though I were just out for an afternoon run – or.. something. I keep my eyes and ears wide open though, and mentally prepare myself for the wolves' attack.
I hear the wolves quiet down and I slow to a walking pace, keeping my arms and legs loose, ready to sprint if needed. I even my breathing and take a few deep breaths.
'Fuck these guys', I thought to myself.' I'm going to win this round.' Right after I have this thought, leaves crackle, directly behind a bush to my right.
I stop, and at the same time, the crackling did too. The wolf pounces, ramming its head into my body, trying to take out my legs it looks like. Unfortunately for it, I'm ready to greet it head on. In the same second it hits me, I grab onto it, swing it over my shoulder and slam it's head right into the ground. The inertia combined with my newfound strength work perfectly with each other, and are the things that made it even possible.
The wolf, yipping and snarling, worms around, trying to get out of my grip. I kneel on top of it, squeezing with my thighs, and hold it in place.
Forcing it's head still with my left hand, I reach to my armor with my right, where one of my daggers is strapped and smash a dagger directly into the wolf's head, right in front of it's ears. My arm, fueled by my rage at these beasts force the dagger's blade in, grinding past fur, skin, bone, flesh, and brain, hilt deep. A final yelp and a sickening crunch are all that's heard when the wolf dies, it's skull impaled and/or crushed.
Five more wolves jump out from the same brush as before, and practically skid across the cobbled granite road behind me. I turn to face them, and draw my sword, ready to fight. 'I will not die this time. That is a fact!'
An arrow flies out from my left and hits one of the wolves in the side. It yelps and winces, and one of the uninjured wolves run up to Hadvar, the injured one following, with it taking on a more defensive role. The other two begin to approach, so I burst forward and take the advantage on one. I swing my sword diagonally, down and to the left. My blade gets stuck halfway in its neck, and blood surges out. The wolf at this point is very dead, but the other wolves are about to attack me.
Two jump for me, one going for my head, and the other at my legs. I drop into a pistol squat, kicking out. The first wolf flies over my head, and the second gets its snout kicked in. I scramble to get on top of the wolf that went for my legs, and quickly pull out one of my daggers and stab it in it's eye, holding it's head down. As I stab it, I feel it struggle at first, before dying. 'How does that feel?! Good, right?!'
A dangerous smile breaks out on my face as I start to feel bloodthirsty. The adrenaline kicking in again certainly doesn't help, but I almost lick the dagger in my hand before realizing how cringe that was. My 21st century mind has caught back up with me.
I shake my head, getting my mind out of a very dark place, before refocusing on the situation. Two of the wolves are dead by my hand. The last... Where is it? There, near the brush.
The last wolf facing me backs down, seeing that I'm coming for it. However unintelligent it may be as a mere beast, it knows enough to know which direction death is when it comes face-to-face. Wolf #5 turns away, and bounds off into the woods.
I get up and check if Hadvar's alright. He had killed the first wolf that ran up to him by shooting it in it's eye, and was facing off the other with his sword. He swings down as it jumps to bite him and splits it's head nearly in half.
I walk up to Hadvar, and call out.
"Not much of a fight for you, are they?" I ask.
He laughs heartily before responding, "Ha! Nor you, it seems. Let's retrieve our arrows and grab these pelts. I'm sure you've not been taught how to strip a pelt, if you haven't been taught to use a bow, huh? Here, let me teach you a little of what I know."
I retrieve my bag. Then Hadvar starts on the ones he killed by first retrieving his arrows. He shows me how to remove them, by first planting a hand next to where the arrow was and removing it by grabbing as close to the arrowhead as possible before jerking it out.
After that, he shows me how to skin a wolf. He demonstrates this by taking a dagger and slicing from the stomach to the neck of the wolf, then slicing from the stomach to the buttocks, and then slicing up from the inside of the ankles upwards. Starting with the legs, he peels the fur up, and it very nearly slides right off in some spots. In others, though, Hadvar has to rip it because the skin connected to the tendons are too tight.
He holds the pelt up, and it drips with blood. Besides the bloody mess on one side, the other looks nearly beautiful, despite the small holes from the arrows leaking light.
I walk back to the other corpses and start on the ones with arrows in them first. I place my hands exactly as Hadvar had done, left hand against the flesh surrounding the arrowhead, right hand as close to the arrowhead as possible. I grasp the arrow as tightly as possible, and try to rip it out. Unfortunately, however, the arrowhead breaks off inside the wolf, against one of the ribs. I pull what remains of the arrow I can find out of the wolf, then squeeze my finger inside and try to take out the arrowhead.
Unfortunately, I can't get the arrowhead out, so I leave it and start on removing the fur. I do exactly what Hadvar did, but given the difference in experience, the edges of my cuts didn't look as nearly as clean as Hadvar's. Not only that, but when I finished and held it up to compare it to Hadvar's, it looked like a fur someone had hacked at with an axe rather than a pelt someone had tried to remove with great care.
It looks bad enough that I don't actually know if I'll be able to get any gold at all for this, but I trust Hadvar, so I tie what little of the pelt remains together to one of the straps to my knapsack, so that the blood still on it could dry off. After doing that, I get started on the other two, removing the pelt.
When I finish with the second one, it looks a little better and the cuts look slightly cleaner compared to the first one. On the third one, it looks at least a third of the way there to Hadvar's skill level. It still looks kind of bad, though, and is obvious it was done by someone new to skinning wolves.
I tie the other skins to the same strap the first one is on, and set the bag on my back.
"What do we do with the rest of the corpses?" I ask.
"Normally, we'd drain the blood, salt the meat, and clean the bones, but given the time we have before dark, we shouldn't. We'll dig a hole far off the road and drop the remains inside. They will serve as a natural fertilizer and keep predators and scavengers away from the road by the smell of blood and flesh." Hadvar explains.
So we do exactly that. We set our gear down, drag the remnants of the wolves away from the road, leaving large streaks and puddles of blood over the road. We go about a hundred feet away and dig a hole using our daggers and hands. We dump the remains inside, cover it up with dirt and jog back to the road. We cover the puddles of blood and the streaks up with dirt, making red mud and clay form.
We grab our packs and jog the rest of the way to Riverwood uneventfully.
As we pass a large Nordic ruin across the Ilinalta river and atop a mountain, Hadvar says, "See that ruin up there? Bleak Falls Barrow. When I was a boy, that place always used to give me nightmares. Draugr creeping down the mountain to climb through my window at night, that kind of thing. I admit, I still don't much like the look of it."
The Nordic ruin he points out happens to be one of the most well-preserved remains of the ancient Nord cities, and it certainly looks it. Large stone structures; towers, pillars, arches and the intricate designs of the ancient Nordson them are visible even from here.
I shiver at the look of it as well as we run past. 'Draugr crawling down the mountain? What a strange tale...' The river Ilinalta, the one we've been running alongside for a while now, unsurprisingly leads to Riverwood, while also being the river for which it is known.
Old, moss-covered cobblestone walls about two feet high appear, and the oaken palisades and walls of Riverwood come into view, so we slow to a walk and enter.