It had been as Jules had feared. He thought he was doing so well too, what with gathering all of the opposing soldiers and bringing them together on the idea of surviving against a common foe. Too bad reality had to rear its ugly head in and remind everyone that they actually hated each other. Jules and the many soldiers of both the Imperial Army and the Stormcloaks stood in the torture room in the basement of Helgen Keep. The pair of torturers looked confused and innocent of what was going on, completely in contrast with the fresh blood on their clothes and dead Stormcloak soldier in a cage hanging from the wall. For now, there was only silence. The air was so thick with tension that Jules could’ve sworn it was suffocating the fire burning in the corner.
“Once an imperial, always a bastard,” said one of the Stormcloak soldiers, looking at the caged corpse. “I’m pretty sure he was in the same platoon as me, we were brothers in arms. Denied an honorable death.” The anger and pain rolled through the air and hit all of his fellow soldiers, as well as Jules, in the gut.
“Alright Jules, you gotta think of something now. You know exactly what’s about to happen if you don’t do anything!” Jules thought to himself as every soldier began reaching for their weapons. “Shoot fire in the air maybe? That’ll get everyone’s attention for a second before they start tearing each other apart. Like the freaking starting pistol to a race to the death. Maybe shoot it at someone? Don’t want to take sides by aiming for the soldiers, and shooting the torturers would probably count as the same.”
“Forget that dragon, the real enemy is in front of us!” shouted one of the Imperial soldiers, finally losing his patience. He drew a heavy war hammer from his back and took a swinging stance.
“Shut the FUCK UP!” shouted Jules at maximum volume, throwing flames at both the brazier as well as the corpse hanging from the wall. Disrespect for the body probably won’t earn him many points with the Stormcloaks, but it was the only target that would elicit some kind of emotion from them that wasn’t bloodlust.
“Look at yourselves!” said Jules, realizing that aiming for the brazier made it more possible in a literal sense. “Are you telling me that Stormcloaks don’t also take part in the same?”
The Stormcloaks hesitated for a moment, some looking indignant but others shrinking ever so slightly. Jules didn’t give them time to vocalize a response.
“You see him?” asked Jules, pointing to the burning body. “That is what’s going to happen to us as soon as we leave this basement and make it into the light. Unless we have the numbers and a plan to take down that ugly sack of scales that’s flying around like he owns the place!” Jules let go of all pretense of shyness and subtlety. Something snapped within him, and either as an act of desperation or newfound courage, he was embracing it.
“You are all soldiers fighting for Skyrim! Free or apart, who cares right? You all love this country and want to see it at its best! Your idea of a perfect Skyrim is meaningless if there’s no Skyrim left. That dragon out there? That was Alduin, the World Eater! He’s back and he’s going to bring this country, no, the world to its knees! He’ll raise an army of dragons from the dead to fight with him, head to Sovngarde to eat the souls of your companions, and usher in a new dark age where this civil war will look like a tavern brawl compared to the horrors he’ll inflict on all of humani- the mortal races! Can’t you see how positively screwed we are if we kill ourselves here and don’t bring news to both armies? Now is the age of legends! Are you going to be part of it or die over something that the dragon will make meaningless?”
Everyone stared at Jules. At that moment, he realized he might have overdone it and cursed inwardly. He couldn’t help it. With the stress of everything he’d been through and his desperation, he was lucky he didn’t do anything worse. He spilled all of the cards, then and there, in front of a bunch of scared soldiers armed to the teeth and ready to start a bloodbath. From his outsider knowledge of the game, the full story and context of the world’s events was laid out bare to him. The dragon attacking Helgen right now was in fact Alduin the World Eater, first of dragons, son of Akatosh the Divine, etcetera, etcetera. And he was going to do all of those awful things he shouted about. There was even an ancient prophecy about it! The specifics of it were unknown to common folk, but the gist of it was passed down as a legend throughout the generations that many of the Nords recognized.
“You’re full of it, what kind of nonsense was that about a dragon ending the world?” began one of the imperial soldiers. “You’re not a soldier, I bet everything’s finally gotten to you and you’ve gone crazy...”
“Watch your tongue! Those are ancient Nord legends he speaks of!” interrupted another soldier. Interestingly, he was also from the imperial legion. “I’ll be honest, it does sound crazy that Alduin himself is out there, but the return of the dragons is the signal of the end of times. I joined the legion to fight for what is best for Skyrim, and that mage is right. That dragon may very well be the biggest threat to Skyrim and the Empire, nay, Tamriel!”
“I say let’s fight the dragon!” shouted a Stormcloak soldier this time. “More glory in that than fighting men, especially imperial dogs!”
“Of course a Stormcloak like you would agree to something so ridiculous,” replied an imperial soldier in frustration. “Legend or not, do you really think that fire breathing lizard out there is really going to bring about the end of the world? I’ve seen mammoths bigger than it! I bet that mage is just trying to play us for a fool so he can get out of here alive.”
He most certainly wasn’t wrong about Jules’ motivation, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t hurtful. Of course, Jules wasn’t playing them for a fool. He was just trying to keep everyone alive, including himself.
“Even if that is what the mage is playing at, we don’t need your help to get out of here alive. In fact, I don’t think we even want your help!” shouted an entirely different Stormcloak soldier in reply, pointing his arm at the corpse of his fellow soldier in the cage.
“And that’s why I joined the legion. Stormcloaks don’t have any sense, especially if you’re going to start a fight at a time like this over something you’re guilty of as well! But if you really want to, I’ll happily oblige,” said a third imperial soldier, hand falling to his weapon.
No, no, it was all falling apart. Jules wracked his brain for something to say or do that would calm them down. More shock? He’d already done everything he could think of to get their attention the first time around. The Stormcloak soldier that the latest imperial soldier was addressing began to pull his sword out of its sheath. Not much time left. Jules had to…
A low whizzing sound filled the air for only a moment, followed by a wet squelch. Out of the arm of the Stormcloak who was reaching for his sword was the hilt of a dagger. Following the direction it was pointing, every person in the room turned to see one of the torturers, the younger one. Everyone simply stared, words frozen on their lips.
“You bloody idiot, what’d you do that for?” lambasted the other torturer, breaking the pin drop silence.
“I-I’m sorry, sir, he was pulling out his weapon and...”
Their conversation was interrupted by another Stormcloak soldier. “Of course it had to be this way. To battle, Stormcloaks! Let your blades taste the Empire’s blood!”
He and every other soldier in the room pulled out their weapons and raised them with lethal intent. Swords, warhammers, axes, all were swung for the sole purpose of drawing enemy blood. Steel clanged against steel and leather to reach soft flesh. That was what Jules heard, as he was already in the next room. As soon as the battle cry went out, his legs were piloted by a subconscious force and had taken him out of the torture chamber and away. Away to anywhere but there.
Everything had fallen apart. Who did Jules think he was, believing that he could convince two groups of people who hated each other's guts to stop killing each other for an hour? It was a miracle that he brokered some kind of peace for as long as he did, but he should’ve realized that the ensuing fight was inevitable. He ran past a drawbridge and down a flight of stone steps. To Jules, it wasn’t even an issue of fate, destiny, or whatever anymore. If you stick a pair of wild animals, natural enemies, in a cage and they’ll tear each other apart. Do the same with people who already want to kill each other and then agitate them? That wasn’t even a question, it was two corpses and a cage that needed to be washed.
The river Jules ran alongside splashed his feet with water through his rough footwraps. It would’ve provided him relief from the tiredness he felt from running, but adrenaline and brain fog made him completely unaware of the discomfort in the first place. He turned left and ran into a winding tunnel. He could recall the path he needed to take to reach the surface without focused thought, which was fortunate as his grief left him none to spare. Death, hopelessness, misery, it was all a painful cloud that muddled Jules’ mind, it made him numb to it and any other pain. Jules knew that of course it wasn’t his fault, any other kid in his situation would already be dead, so he was doing better than he could’ve ever hoped. Too bad knowledge doesn’t make it hurt any less.
It was only the sound of chittering that started to snap him out of that pain. Jules entered a large room of the cave. Its walls were lined with rocky platforms, and natural light came through from the ceiling. The floor was dotted with large rocks and a few massive stalagmites, and the entire room was covered in webs. Webs that were made by giant, poisonous spiders. Spiders with a taste for human flesh. The realization completely snapped Jules out of his funk. If it hadn’t, he’d be blaming himself for the blunder and probably let the spiders eat him out of a nonsensical sense of self-pity. Thankfully the human fight-or-flight response was very well adapted to such situations, even in a fantastical setting.
Jules pulled both of his hands up to his chest and let the burning feeling fill him. It wasn’t quite the same will to rage against the world he felt before, rather it was the burning will to live. Jules really wanted to live.
From behind the features on the ground crawled out giant reddish brown spiders, each of them easily reaching a foot in length. They came for the sounds of Jules’ footsteps, or the vibrations his movement made in their web network covering the room. Either way, they were hungry and ready to eat.
The sight of them filled Jules with a primal fear. The spiders weren’t so bad in the game, they were somewhat cartoonish and moved with a goofy gait. Real life, however, had transformed them. Gone were the plain color textures and basic patterns that made up the game models and in their place was the real deal. A mass of fine hairs coated their legs, swaying as they scuttled. The chitin that made up their exoskeleton was rough and shiny at the same time, and the pieces of it slid across each other smoothly as their legs moved. The fangs right outside of their mouths gently pulsated as venom carelessly dripped onto the floor, heedless of who or what may die from it. But their eyes were the worst part. They were no longer a solid black, but held finer details and truly beheld their malevolent sentience. In other words, this was the most primal horror turned manifest, what an overactive imagination would consider the worst case scenario of the thing that goes bump in the night. And with a scream, Jules made it burn.
“AAAAAA! Come get some, arachno-bastards!” Jules turned his “flight-or-fight” into “fight-and-burn”. He unleashed streams of wicked flames from his hands towards the ground, burning any spider who dared pick a fight with him. They came as a dozen, thinking Jules an easy meal. As the heat approached them, they hesitated. But that was all the time Jules needed to cover them in a burning blanket. They writhed at the scorching heat and slowly, each of them stopped moving.
“YEAH!” Jules shouted, taking in several deep breaths after exhausting himself physically and magically with the attack. Jules even began to smile and started towards the center of the room so he could find the exit. He stopped after taking two steps. He could hear even more chittering, but no longer from the structures on the ground. He looked up and saw several, much larger spiders descend on lines of webbing. While the spiders Jules just fought were the size of small dogs, these ones were comparable to a bulky motorcycle, reaching up to two thirds of his height and as long as he was tall.
Their chittering filled the room and put that same primal fear Jules felt earlier into overdrive. “Fight-and-burn” was now back to just “run” and Jules didn’t need time to consult a dictionary to know what that meant. He blasted a quick gout of flame to distract them as he turned around and promptly tripped on a rock. He tumbled to the ground, unable to immediately get up due to the webs sticking to his limbs. The first of the giant spiders looked at him with hungry eyes, the other two behind it and waiting for the first move. The leading spider leapt at Jules, dripping maw wide, ready to avenge its babies.
And it ran into the blunt, metal end of a warhammer. Ralof screamed as he motioned to strike the oversized bug again, while a hand grabbed Jules and pulled him up. A human hand belonging to Hadvar. He didn’t need the natural lighting to see the obvious look of confusion on Jules’ face.
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“Why did you run off on us like that?” he asked, half jokingly. “That was a commendable attempt to get everyone under control, but that idiot apprentice just had to mess everything up.”
From behind them ran the same mixed group of soldiers, albeit with a fewer number of them than before. They streamed into the room with their weapons at the ready, looking slightly worse for wear but still prepared for a battle. They split into small squads to take on the remaining spiders, of which two more of similarly massive size joined in from the ceiling.
“B-but, I thought you’d all killed each other back there,” blurted out Jules.
“Oh, we were,” confirmed Hadvar, “but then the head torturer loudly swore about how you were going to run into the spider’s nest up ahead, and that snapped out enough of us that Ralof and I were able to get everyone under control. Luckily the soldiers burned off enough steam with that little skirmish, otherwise it would’ve been much more bloody. Besides, you obviously know more about this dragon attack than you originally let on, we can’t just let you die without giving that information to someone who can do something with it.” Hadvar’s look grew uncomfortably cold for just an instant, before returning to his usual calm demeanor.
“Uh, I guess that worked out after all,” commented Jules. “But where are the other soldiers, there were more than this. Are they...?”
“Injured, and keeping their distance from the fighting. The empire knew that Ulfric and his elites would be at the border, so we sent our own elites along with General Tullius. It takes more than a few swings to take anyone here down. Except for you, of course.”
That thought calmed Jules. Somehow, he hadn’t entirely failed and the soldiers were all still alive. It felt like a miracle, but there was something that still concerned him. Hadvar said that elite soldiers don’t go down to a single blow, but in real life that’s still only what it takes. You don’t suddenly gain the ability to shrug off fatal injuries by growing stronger like you would in a game. Maybe Hadvar was talking about the grade of their armor and its ability to shrug off blows? On the other hand, Jules had his magic weightless backpack on him, so there very well could be more blending between real life and game mechanics than just that. And even then, such things only manifest in such a way for everyone to believe it’s normal.
As Jules was deep in thought, the soldiers slammed their steel into the arachnid carcapaces, drawing black blood and other viscera. The spiders tried putting up a fight, by waving their limbs like flails and even spitting venom, but the elite soldiers were easily able to block or dodge the incoming attacks while retaliating with their own. It only took moments for the spiders’ numbers to thin, and after almost a minute, they all lay dead.
The soldiers were breathing heavily. It might not have been much of a fight for them with their speed and lack of casualties, but they fought with their full aggression against this enemy, an act done more out of disgust and fear than actual deserving rage. After a quick inspection of the room, they concluded that everything else was dead, and that it was safe to continue forward. Ralof walked up to Jules and clasped his shoulder.
“Don’t go running off like that again!” chided Ralof, as if Jules was a child who ran off from his parents in a store. “Until you get used to fighting, you have to be more careful. And when you’re out and about like this, you can’t let your feelings get in the way of thinking. That’s how you get killed.”
Jules nodded, accepting the well deserved lecture. Taking a moment to calm himself down, he decided to take Ralof’s advice. Jules remembered in the game that it was mostly smooth sailing from here until right before they exited the cave. There would be a sleeping bear, but it would be injured and a perfect opportunity to learn the mechanics of stealth. Of course, that would be quite difficult to pull off in comparison with a small platoon of soldiers.
“Hey, you there?” asked Ralof, snapping Jules out of his thoughts. “The scouts say the way is clear, let’s get going!”
Jules followed Ralof and Hadvar, both at the front and leading the now mixed group of soldiers. Their fight against a common enemy helped create enough camaraderie among them that they were fine grouping up together like that. Soon enough, after passing additional winding tunnels and another path that followed a small river, they reached the final obstacle. It was at the center of a large room, once again lit by natural light coming from the ceiling. The bear was laying on the floor where all of the light converged, as if it were a broadway star in the middle of a spotlight. In the game, this particular bear was supposed to be injured and trying to sleep, thus giving the player the opportunity to try and sneak past it, as a tutorial for the game’s sneaking mechanic. Thanks to the greater realism offered by real life, Jules could make out several injuries on the bear that weren’t visible in the game. Several long, red gashes that had only begun to heal, a bite mark along a patch of hairless skin, and several fresh arrows sticking out of it whose wounds were still bleeding. Wait a minute.
“The scouts already took care of that bear,” said Ralof to Jules and the other soldiers. “It was already injured when they found it, and probably would’ve put up a fight if it saw all of us approaching it. Judging by its wounds, it was a quick mercy.”
Jules couldn’t help but feel that was anticlimactic. But compared to the swarm of giant spiders, how scary could an injured bear be? The group continued onwards, until they met up with the scouts Ralof talked about. They were four soldiers, two stormcloaks and imperials each, all of them holding bows and having a sword sheathed to their sides.
“There you are, we were beginning to think you were all eaten!” joked one of the scouts.
“By the dead bear?” asked Ralof, returning the joke.
“Who’s to say? It wouldn’t surprise me if that happened to a bunch of Stormcloaks,” replied one of the imperial scouts.
“If anything, that would just mean Imperials are terrible at killing!” chuckled Ralof, with only the slightest hint of hostility in his voice. Now wasn’t the time for fighting.
“Ha! Keep telling yourself that!” replied the other imperial soldier. “Anyway, the exit to the cave is just up ahead. We looked around outside and there’s nothing else out there, especially no dragon. We’re safe to go.”
“Excellent,” replied Hadvar. He turned back to the group of soldiers following along and shouted at them. “We’re at the exit everyone! Grab the injured and we’ll make our way out together. As soon as we find out where we are, we split up. Stormcloaks one way and Imperials the other. We all escaped with our brothers in arms, and nobody else. Understood?”
The other soldiers nodded in acceptance. It hurt Jules to think that all of this bonding was for naught, but the civil war still raged on, and who knows what would happen to these soldiers if any of their officers found out they helped each other? Still, it was worth something, namely getting them all out of this situation alive. The soldiers began to group up by their respective allegiances and account for their numbers. The healthier soldiers propped up their injured compatriots, and they all made their way outside.
Sunlight shined into Jules’ face, making him reflexively shield his eyes with his arm. He couldn’t help but smile, with that nightmare behind him. Ralof and Hadvar walked beside him, with the other soldiers slowly filtering out of the exit behind them.
“So, who does Jules go with?” asked Ralof? “I don’t think he’d be much for travelling, and we have a camp closer by.”
“Why does he get to go with you?” asked Hadvar in reply. “We probably ransacked that camp before this dragon business started.”
“Hey guys,” interrupted Jules. “Isn’t Riverwood nearby? We still need to warn them about the dragon.”
Both men looked at him with surprise.
“I nearly forgot!” exclaimed Ralof in frustration. “We have to warn them and the Jarl. I’m definitely going to be headed there now, the other soldiers can head back to camp.”
“I’m going too, I’d like to visit my uncle and I’m not going to leave the defense of the city to just you!” joked Hadvar.
By then, everyone was out of the cave, the remaining soldiers finally able to feel sunlight again. Next it was off to the small town of Riverwood and then the city of Whiterun, capital of this region of the country where Jules could warn the local lord and maybe find a living for himself while he tried to figure out what was going on. Jules still felt lost in this new world, but he had some hope in him now. Maybe he could use his outsider knowledge to do some real good and even make a life for himself? He could make new friends, save the world, and maybe even go back home? Still, Jules felt that there was something he was missing.
He felt a vibration in the air, they all did. Reality itself seemed to tear at the sound. It was a single word, and the will behind it made its magic manifest. “Yol”
A massive explosion of fire and force consumed the space behind Jules, sending him and his two companions flying forward into the thick vegetation. The mass of soldiers behind them were less lucky, being at the epicenter. Most were killed near-instantly, the heat and force granting them a quick release. The others were conscious only long enough to attempt a scream, the superheated atmosphere preventing any sound from leaving their mouths. It was fortunately quick for them as well, and they were thrown to the ground as burning husks.
“Mey Jul, Kotin Dii Jot, let them burn” shouted a black figure flying past them. The dragon was oozing its feelings of disgust for all of them, luckily so as it didn’t care to see if it finished the job. Jules lay on the soft grass and dirt with a ringing in his ears. He didn’t know what to feel. In the end, everyone still died. All of his effort in trying to keep the peace was for nothing. In the end, in the face of reality, everyone’s fate was eventually death. And here had come the dragon, Alduin, bringer of the end times, to remind Jules of what “end” means. Even though he couldn’t understand a word of it, Jules could feel how the dragon’s speech dripped of contempt for their mortality. Jul, mortals. “Joor!”
Jules leaned his head towards the sky long enough to scream his pain to the world. The suffering born from his realization at his and everyone else's mortality was poured into his voice, and became something more. The world around his guttural yell warped at his rage and will, bending to its knees to accept the truth he demanded. And then Jules promptly collapsed for the second time.
It was only much later did he regain consciousness. He was still too dazed to open his eyes, but he could hear the sounds of nature around him, and felt a rhythmic bumping beneath him. Being knocked out like that could not have been good for him, he thought, but the birdsong and roar of the nearby river put him at ease. He wasn’t in a state to worry about what had happened to him precisely because of what had happened to him. Nor was he in a state to worry about the cyclic nature of that statement. Instead, he let out a groan of pain at his splitting headache and stinging leg.
“Hey, you’re finally awake!” exclaimed Ralof. Slowly, he lowered Jules from his back, gently placing him onto the grassy floor.
“You really have to stop saying that,” replied Jules groggily. “That has to be the third time you’ve greeted me that way.”
“Well you should stop getting knocked out so much!” laughed Ralof. “So, how are you feeling?”
Jules took a moment to orient himself. He’d just been knocked out, after all. Again. He had a sense of how he was lying- down, and where Ralof was in relation to that- up. Jules could feel pain along his body, namely a light stinging on his chest from where he landed, and a harsh pain on his left leg, where some fire from the dragon must have hit him. He said exactly as such to Ralof.
“That’s not good. Hadvar and I have been taking turns the past half a day carrying you on our backs. We were hoping you’d have the strength to walk, since we’re only about halfway there.”
“Oh, Hadvar,” started Jules. “Where is he?”
“Out hunting for lunch. It’ll be well into the night by the time we reach Riverwood. Now if only you had a healing potion or something, that’d patch you right up.”
Jules remembered that he did in fact have one. As he reached for the mysterious backpack he didn’t see or feel until it was needed, he felt an uncomfortable lump on his back, between his back and the grass. There it was, and Jules was certain it wasn’t there until now. He had an instinctual understanding of what was inside, namely the three potions he put in there earlier. He pulled out the red tinted one, uncorked it, and drank the brew slowly. Almost immediately, he could feel the stinging disappear and the burn on his leg healing, blackened flesh falling away and being replaced by fresh, soft tissue.
“Glad you had that potion, it should save you a lot of pain. Now let’s get you up,” said Ralof, as he helped Jules to his feet.
Jules’ headache was also healed by the potion, he thankfully realized. It let him better focus his thoughts, and it allowed Jules to raise a question.
“Say, Ralof,” began Jules. “You saw me put that potion in my backpack, why didn’t you take it out and use it on me?”
“Err, I’m not entirely sure, now that you mention it,” replied Ralof. “Why didn’t I remember it?”
Ralof’s thoughts were interrupted by Hadvar, who approached them from behind a tree holding a dead rabbit by the legs.
“Lunch is ready, and I see that you’re awake, Jules!” said Hadvar, with a melancholic cheer in his voice. “At least someone else made it out of that mess alive.”
And finally, the memories of what happened just before Jules was knocked out came back to him. The cave, the dragon, the death, his shouting. His heart lurched when the memory hit him, and it showed him no mercy. The healing potion could heal him of his physical ailments, but it wouldn’t do anything about his mental anguish.
“Hey!” shouted Ralof, placing his hand on Jules’ shoulder with considerable force. “We’re alive, and that’s what matters. They were my brothers in arms, and that gives me more of a right to mourn for them. Do you see me tearing up now?”
“You did plenty of that when Jules was still unconscious,” interjected Hadvar.
“As if you didn’t either,” said Ralof, with a wicked glare directed towards Hadvar.
“I never said otherwise. Now, we were able to scavenge some of the food we all took from the Helgen storeroom, and we should have enough to make lunch. After we eat, we can get going again. I want to get to Riverwood before the sun sets and if we have enough time, and we can properly mourn there. On the way, we might have enough time to show Jules the Guardian Stones.”
“Yeah, let’s be quick about it. There are wolves out here and I swear they can smell fear,” replied Ralof. “But maybe we should skip the Guardian Stones, Jules here isn’t in a good state of mind to make that kind of a decision.”
Listening to the pair bicker like sitcom characters helped to put Jules at ease ever so slightly. They were right, he didn’t know any of the soldiers, but death was still something he wasn’t familiar with. And something he didn’t want to get to know either. Jules figured this would be the start. But what was that they said about the Guardian Stones? Jules remembered that in the game, they were stone obelisks that dotted the country, thirteen of them in total. Approaching one and interacting with it would bestow the player with some sort of blessing, based on the stone. The first three that the player encounters can increase the rate at which they improve at skills related to one of their archetypes: Fighting, Magic, and Thievery. In the game, you could switch between them and any other stone if you ever encountered one with a boon you liked more than your current one, but what the two men in front of him were saying, the case seemed to be different here.
“Hold on, can you only select one stone? I thought you could switch between them?” asked Jules, voice still strained from his sadness.
“No, that’s a common misconception, but once you pick one stone, you’re stuck with it,” replied Hadvar. “Anyway, let’s find a place to cook lunch.”
They did just that, finding a small clearing amidst the overwhelming presence of nature. Both Ralof and Hadvar worked to butcher the rabbit, skewering pieces of it on wooden sticks stripped of bark. Jules was tasked with peeling the garlic and crushing various spices together, as well as starting the fire that they roasted the rabbit on. Working on a monotonous task helped Jules relax his mind and put everything into perspective. He could take his frustration out on the spices, crushing the garlic and mix of herbs with a fire-sanitized stone.
“I just remembered,” began Hadvar, interrupting the serenity of their work. “Right after we were blown away by that dragon, you said something. It wasn’t a language I’ve ever heard, but whatever it was, it got me back on my feet almost immediately.”
“Yeah, whatever you were shouting, it filled me with some kind of urgency. I felt like life was too short, and I’d better get moving if I want to get anything done before my end,” added Ralof.
“Mm… I’m not that sure, actually,” replied Jules, only half-lying. “I just remember really angry at that dragon and screaming before falling unconscious. Maybe it was just another spell?”
Jules was pretty sure what that was. According to the story of the game, the player character would be the hero of prophecy who was destined to defeat Alduin, the dragon at fault for most of Jules’ grief right now. To do so, he would be able to cast magic just like the dragons, with his voice. Jules posited that he’d done something like that before falling unconscious, remembering the overwhelming anguish he felt at the time. Still, the thought was somewhat troubling. The hero wasn’t supposed to find out about their ability until much later, and only by killing a much lesser dragon and absorbing its power. Was it still the same thing? Would the story of the game no longer apply to what Jules was experiencing with such drastic differences? Worst of all, would Jules, the pacifistic coward, have to take the place of this hero to fight and kill? These questions wracked Jules’s brain, but he knew there were still plenty of enigmas to uncover before he would find out. In the meantime, his biggest focus was sating his hunger and making it back to civilization.
After eating their fill, the trio put out the fire, washed their hands in the river, and headed back on the trail with heavy minds and full stomachs. Their path was clear, and by the time they reached the outskirts of the town of Riverwood, the sun was finally beginning to set on their hellish day.