A Stranger in Skyrim 15

Chapter Fifteen: Flammable

In which I don't want to set the world on fire.

She backed slowly out of the room.

The spider advanced slowly on her.

She tripped on a root, landing flat on her ass. The torch rolled off to the side. She grabbed the scroll in both hands, reading it aloud. The words were foreign even to her ears, the meaning incomprehensible.

There was a twisting to the air around her. Fire engulfed the scroll, then shot forward, exploding on the spider's face. It screeched, a high, awful, terrible noise. It lunged at the doorway, its forelegs clawing the air where she'd just been as she scrambled just outside of its reach. The thing hissed at her, spittle flying from its mandibles and sizzling where it hit the ground.

If she managed to kill it? Totally bottling that venom. She was sure she'd find a use for something that seemed to be melting stone.

She held her hands out in front of her, eyes closed. She felt the heat build in her palms. Giving the magic just a tiny push, she felt it roar to life like a dragon in her hands. Flame spewed forth from her hands, a continuous stream of it engulfing the spider. It screamed its agony, an inhuman sound that chilled her to the bone.

She peeked at it. It was wobbling from side to side, its legs not quite moving together. She shot another quick blast of flame at it, the fizzy reservoir of power she recognized as magic almost running dry. Another shot of flame, and another.

The spider fell, crisped, to land on its belly.

She thought it was dead. She was pretty sure it was dead. She shifted her backpack around, fishing in it until she found a vial of blue liquid. She popped the cork on it, downing it in one gulp. It felt fizzy against her tongue, and she knew she had a winner. Magic, in liquid form. Delicious. Or at least, she assumed it was delicious; she didn't really taste it so much as feel it buzzing down her throat.

That done, she hesitantly inched forward on hands and knees, towards the spider. She put the vial to one of its massive teeth, and black venom dripped down into it.

Fun. Definitely not a potion she'd be drinking.

That done, she cautiously stood up. Walking back out of the room, she collected the torch, which had burnt out. She lit it again with a small burst of flame.

All right, so …

She kept her distance from the probably-dead, still-burning spider, edging into the room. Several unidentifiable, web-wrapped corpses lay around the spider's lair, culminating in a webbed-up exit on the far side of the room. A man's mummified corpse hung from the sticky webbing, something shiny glinting at his feet. She approached him, hesitantly, and there it was: the golden claw.

Well, that was easy. She picked it up, looking it over. It bore markings not unlike the carvings she'd seen earlier. A bear, a dragonfly, and an owl. Hnh.

She shrugged, then stuffed it into her backpack. One objective completed, one to go. Hopefully the Dragonstone wasn't too big. Between the books, the potions, and the claw, her backpack was already getting heavy.

She cut the man's corpse down with her sword, then proceeded quickly on into the next room. More golden urns lined some kind of a circular stone table. The only thing of any interest to her was another purplish-blue soul gem lying between two of the urns. She collected it, and pressed on.

She entered a mausoleum of some kind. It was eerie, the light of her torch barely illuminating desiccated corpses.

Much to her surprise, one of the corpses started to get up and move.

Okay. Zombies she could handle. In their idle moments, she and her mom would discuss how they'd totally survive the upcoming zombie apocalypse. Obviously, killing zombies was a huge part of that.

The zombie approached her. It was a lot faster than she had imagined zombies being.

She blasted it with fire magic.

The zombie was then on fire.

It continued to advance towards her.

This was not turning out as she'd anticipated.

She continued to blast it with short bursts of fire, backing up all the while, and it eventually fell to the ground in a pool of molten flesh and charred bone.

That was easy.

A line of pain rolled down her right arm as another zombie caught her with an axe. She bashed it in the face with a torch, recoiling in pain. She could still use the arm, but it hurt, clouding her mind. She beat the zombie with the torch until it fell to the ground.

She focused on healing magic, conjuring the minty green light and picturing her flesh knitting up.

Zombie number two continued to burn for a few moments.

A third zombie courteously waited for her to finish killing its compatriots before it tried its luck with her. She pointed, and lightning engulfed it. The lightning was not super-effective. In fact, the zombie seemed largely unphased.

“Fire it is,” she announced to zombie number three. She proceeded to roast his undead ass. By this time she was halfway up the ramp that led down into the mausoleum proper, and the corpse rolled downhill.

Whew. That had been closer than she wanted to think about. Also, her nice fur armor and the robe were both sporting a new blood-soaked cut. Damn zombies.

At least she knew healing magic.

She continued on, further into the tomb. She bypassed an utterly obvious – but no doubt quite deadly – spiked wall and its ornamented stone pressure plate trigger.

Well, if that was all the more devious the traps in this place were going to be, she was going to have a grand time of it.

She made a point of incinerating every corpse she came across, many of which decided that they should get up and move again. She didn't have much trouble with the zombies, especially since they seemed fairly vulnerable to being set on fire, and they had to crawl out of their little shelves before they could attack.

She did, however, run into a slight problem in the next hallway.

The traps had become more devious.

Swinging blade traps, the kind she recognized from all sorts of video games. Eternal Darkness had them, at least. These swinging blades were set as a particularly deadly pendulum.

Oh, hello. It was actually pretty simple. Long wooden shafts swung from the ceiling. The blade was suspended with rope. So, she set fire to the ropes. The blade hung at an angle, and it ground to a halt, the careful calibrations that let it swing back and forth completely ruined when its balance failed. She grabbed the pole leading down to the blade. It was still valiantly trying to swing back and forth. Grabbing the blade with her other hand, she spun it sideways. The whole thing screwed together, so she unscrewed it. The blade fell to the floor with a loud clang, the flat side of it landing on her foot. Ow.

She repeated the process with the next two blades, painstakingly dismantling the trap.

That was actually rather fun!

She continued down the winding hallway, incinerating every corpse she came across.

Finally, she came to a room with a small stream and a bridge. A large black coffin stood on the other side, the front of which fell off as its occupant pushed against the inside. This corpse, too, got roasted. That done, she looked around. At first, there were no obvious exits. A chest sat next to the coffin, and she looted it as was becoming her custom.

The stream started from the left side of the room – since she was facing the other way, now it was the right – on the ceiling, and continued down towards a grate with a pull chain beside it.

Well, there was her answer. She pulled the chain, and the grate lifted into the ceiling.

Onward, now with slightly wetter boots.

The nice, orderly tomb gave way to a more natural cave. It was lit by glowing mushrooms which, she was pretty sure, were poisonous. Bright colors meant poison, after all, right?

Right.

She spotted something unusual in the river, and she knelt to pick it up. It turned out to be a skull, though not of any beast she could identify. For one thing, it had three eyes.

Whatever. If she had a home to decorate, she'd definitely take it there. Since she didn't, there was no point in taking the skull with her; she dropped it and it fractured.

Another chest – why were there boxes just lying everywhere? – and then an open-aired section with a waterfall. Pretty, but cold. She pressed on after a moment of admiration for the scenery and to push a zombie off the cliff into the water below.

Fun.

The cave eventually intersected with a tomb again, complete with a big set of double-doors, and another zombie flambé.

She pushed the doors open. The tomb continued on until she reached another swinging axe trap. She carefully picked her way past the first two axes, dismantling them just for the fun of it. With the right timing, the things were utterly trivial; she just didn't have a great sense of timing. Destroying the traps forever was safer.

Then, a zombie climbed out of the nearby coffin.

It took a swinging axe to the face. The axe embedded itself into the zombie's belly, so now, not only was the axe swinging from left to right, but it also had a zombie flopping from one end.

She edged past the zombie, and into the room proper.

It was lit by two jugs filled with some kind of substance that happened to be on fire. Two zombies – Draugr! That was what Hadvar had called them! – made their way down a wooden staircase towards her. The ground seemed to be covered in some kind of oil. She considered her options, then set fire to the rope holding up one of the jugs of flaming goop.

The Draugr-zombie immediately under it burst into flames and died instantly.

Its friend was somewhat smarter; not only was it using a bow, but it waited to approach until the flaming oil had evaporated. In the meantime, she had to narrowly dodge an arrow to the face. When Draugr-zombie the second was right under the other jug, she burned the second rope. The second jug fell on his head, and he, too, burned to death.

Somehow, killing zombies didn't pack the same punch as killing people did. Possibly because they really didn't look human anymore. That was probably a big part of it – dehumanization.

She climbed the staircase, then felt her way along to the next big set of double-doors. Pushing them open, she entered a room that felt … eerie. It was a long stretch of hallway with an arching ceiling, leading up to a massive door. She thought she saw carvings on the walls, but she couldn't really make them out in the dim light offered by her guttering torch.

At least, she thought it was a door. It looked like it was supposed to open, but it didn't have a door handle or any kind of keyhole – no, wait, there was a series of three indents in the center of the door. Around the middle circle of stone, three stone rings formed a bull's-eye. In each ring, she saw a carving. She was unsurprised to discover the carving matched those on the golden claw. In fact, she'd been kind of expecting it.

She inspected the claw, then inspected the door. Then back to the claw. Okay, she knew what she had to do. Bear, butterfly, bird. Setting the torch on the ground, she reached up with both hands to pull the first stone circle into position. It was old, and not particularly cooperative, but it eventually turned so that the bear was on the top. Next, the dragonfly, then the owl.

She frowned slightly.

Okay, everything was in place. Now what?

She considered the claw, then the three holes in the center circle. Pushing the claw against the 'keyhole,' she found that its talons fit perfectly.

There was a loud grinding as the wall sank into the floor.

Puzzle solved. Now for the main chamber.