“Yes, yes! I know about the claw, and the Hall of Stories! Just hurry up and cut me down! You won’t believe the power the Nords have hidden here!”

Faendal knelt at the edge of the circle of moonlight that cast the high-ceilinged chamber in somber blue. His head hung bowed, his eyes closed. The cold, night air that rushed in from above like an invisible swarm of birds and ran rings around the room bothered his clothes, but not the elf beneath. Through the narrow eye-slits of his old helmet, she saw his eyes closed in silent anguish. A prayer for a lost rival – someone who shouldn’t have died because of a minor feud.

“Hello? Can you hear me?”

She blinked and turned back to the man who was speaking. “Umm, yes. Of course, let me help you.” And she pulled Hod’s knife from her belt, the weathered blade flashing in that ghostly light.

Hadvar spoke, but he hadn’t taken his eyes off Faendal: “Hold on a minute, friend.” She watched as his shoulders rose and fell with a deep breath, and he finally regarded the captive man.

Wrapped in multiple layers of webs in a half-finished cocoon hung who she assumed was a bandit. He was wrapped in similar furs and leathers to those they had already encountered, and wore a studded leather helmet that clasped around his face. His skin was a deep, dark grey, and out from the sides of the helmet poked long, pointed ears – an elf, she assumed. His eyes were a deep, featureless black – with no other colours to distinguish whites, irises or pupils.

Hadvar clearly didn’t trust this man. “Tell me, bandit,” he said. “Do you have the claw?”

“I do. I do.” He spoke with a croaky, quick voice that snapped impatiently. “But I can hardly hand it to you. Cut me down and I’ll help.”

“Right…” said Hadvar. “And we are simply supposed to trust you.” At this, the man smiled in what he must have intended to be innocence, but his grin showed off rows of sharp, jagged teeth, which didn’t help her warm to him. He may have realised, and quickly shut his mouth.

“Hadvar,” Faendal said, and they turned to him. He stood up slowly and sighed, then walked over to them. “Cut him down. He can hardly take three of us.”

Hadvar studied Faendal for a second, but the wood elf avoided his gaze.

Behind them, the giant corpse of the spider lay limp. None of them had attempted to remove Sven from its fangs. She wasn’t sure there was much point.

Hadvar grunted in unconvinced acceptance and drew his sword. He began to cut away strands of that horrible, thick web.

“That’s it! I can feel it coming loose.”

With a final effort, his sword cleaved through one side and the bandit’s arm came free. With Hadvar’s help, he pulled himself out of the cocoon.

And then she noticed something that the others hadn’t. The bandit had been enwebbed over the arch of a doorway. On the other side, the moonlight crept across the floor, until it met that unpleasantly familiar blackness again.

It became clear that the bandit was also aware of this, and he took his chance.

As Hadvar attempted to wipe a mess of web from his sword, the bandit thrust out an arm and shoved him backwards. Despite being nearly half the height of the hefty Nord soldier, the bandit sent him stumbling, and Hadvar – caught off-guard – tripped over a pile of rubble with a yell.

Seeing what was about to happen a split second before it did, she lunged out with Hod’s knife in her hand, but her mind bounced off the reaction a halfway through the motion – was she really about to stab someone? Her clumsy blade missed.

“Stop!” Faendal shouted at him and fumbled to pull his bow from his back, but the bandit was already disappearing into the darkness beyond, his footsteps echoing off the stone behind him.

“After him!” Hadvar said and scrambled to his feet. He scooped up Sven’s discarded torch and gave chase. Faendal followed just behind.

“Wait for me!” She said and plunged herself through the doorway and back into the black.

A short, arched corridor took them into a strange, semi-circular chamber, filled with what looked to be larger pot urns, more soul gems of assorted sizes and colours, and unlit candlesticks with ancient wax depleted and frozen in drop motion.

Running to keep pace, she followed Hadvar’s torchlight, which silhouetted Faendal in front of her.

They entered a larger corridor which opened up to a higher ceiling, and the floor began to slope further down. She nearly tripped over the uneven stone and yelled as Faendal suddenly stopped. “Watch out!” Then added: “Sorry!”

But Faendal reached out for her and hissed a “Shush!”

The bandit shouted back to them as he ran on, just ahead of Hadvar’s light. “Why should I share the treasure with anyone?”

“Hadvar!” Faendal hissed back, his raspy voice loud in the space. “Hadvar, stop!”

Hearing the urgency in Faendal’s voice, Hadvar slowed and whipped around. Under his torch, she could see his features form a question.

And he was answered a split second later, as the bandit yelled out. Just at the edges of Hadvar’s illumination – she realised how close he had been to catching him – she watched the bandit stumble. Something on the floor had shifted, but she couldn’t quite make it out. Before the bandit could catch himself, there was a rumble and a scraping sound, and a huge object rushed out of the darkness ahead of him, colliding with his body. As if out of nowhere, a floor-to-ceiling wall of spikes swung with incredible force and caught the bandit mid-fall. Its immense momentum carried it on through and the bandit immediately went limp, his cry cut off as the contraption must have shattered his skull and neck.

The trap shuddered to a sudden halt with an ear-splitting bang as it reached the limit of its construction. She saw what must have been the trap’s trigger reset – a slightly raised stone that only just stood out from the surrounding floor in the dim light. The spiked wall slowly rotated back into its original position, dragging the dead bandit’s mauled body out of sight from where she and Faendal were stood on the slope leading into the chamber proper.

The trap finished its cycle and clanked to a halt, and silence fell once more.

And then, in the gloom, something croaked – like a cough or a splutter from a mouth full of sand. This was not the sound of a contraption, but something biological. And it came from the gloom, just past Hadvar.

A growl, but not that of a beast.

“Hadvar,” Faendal said,and reached an arm back to pick an arrow from his quiver.

Then another growl, this time closer - the sound of a thousand-year-old throat speaking for the first time after an indefinite hibernation.

“Hadvar. Come back towards us.”

And another. And another.

And she realised where they were. Lining the walls, rows of horizontal alcoves had been cut into the natural stone. A limb appeared from one of them – a leg, swung over the side of a bed.

They were in the tomb, and they had just awoken the dead!

She watched with mounting disbelief and paralyzing horror as a corpse stood up and out of its death slumber, metres ahead of them, at the foot of the slope. Even in the near darkness, she could make out its withered skin, sinewy muscles and the lank remnants of a mop of hair. Two hollow eye-sockets glowed an unnatural, ghostly blue, like that sombre moonlight, but they blazed with malice.

The corpse staggered round to look at her and Faendal, flexing its neck and shoulders, before raising a single hand towards them, which held a sword.

Hadvar crashed into the corpse from behind, knocking it down on all-fours. Faendal traced the thing’s movement with his arrowhead, then let it fly. There was a gentle whizz as it flew the short distance to the thing and pierced its shoulder.

And the corpse cackled.

But it didn’t have time to regain its footing, as Hadvar brought the torch down heavily onto its back, and it crumpled to the floor. Its dry skin, and what appeared to be torn rags of clothing, set ablaze. It shuddered and jerked briefly before it stopped moving.

But another set of blue eyes appeared at Hadvar’s shoulder, and she shouted out: “Behind you!”

The Nord spun and brought his shield up as an axe head bit down and stuck fast in the board’s wooden front. Faendal had drawn the bow back again but held the arrow steady as Hadvar pushed his attacker backwards and slashed with his sword, carving through brittle neck bones and sending the thing’s head arcing through the air – trails of blue light vanishing into the shadows at the edges of the room.

And Faendal fired his arrow. She didn’t see the third creature until it collapsed into view. Faendal’s arrow had hit it in the thigh, and it stumbled onto one knee, into Hadvar’s torchlight. A glint of metal revealed that it wore a battered plate of chest armour, and it had its own quiver of arrows slung over its back. Somehow, even with its ancient, rotted muscles, it had pulled back the bowstring and aimed. Faendal had caught it just in time, and the corpse-archer’s arrow was sent against the stone of the floor, ricocheting and skittering away from them.

Hadvar dropped his shield – the axe firmly stuck in it – and roared. He charged at the thing and jammed the spiked end of his stick-torch into its neck. It went down easily, letting out a strained croak as it did.

As the final weapon clattered to the floor, the three looked about them for any signs of another attack, but no more undead horrors came rushing out of the darkness. The only sound: Hadvar’s heavy breathing as he struggled to compose himself. His shield now more hassle than its worth, he tossed the torch to his other hand, and drew his sword. He wasn’t about to let himself be surprised again.

“What- what in hell was that?” She said, and Faendal stood up straighter.

“Draugr,” he said.

“Drawg-what? That thing was a zombie!” She hissed.

“Drawg-ur,” he intonated. “The undead bodies of the Ancient Nords, left in hibernation to protect their sacred sites from intruders like us. Come on.” Faendal walked cautiously down the steps, his boots barely making a sound against the floor as he went. His head darted one way then the other, cocked and listening for further threat.

“Undead? They are zombies! We just got attacked by zombies!”

“Quiet!” Hadvar hissed back at them, his attention firmly on the direction in which the trap – the swinging wall of spikes - lay. It would have been too easy for the fight to have led one of them a step too far away. She didn’t want to think about it.

“Not zombies. Draugr still have some of their minds. These were weaker ones, decayed and poorly preserved. I do not believe we will get this lucky again.”

“And by lucky you mean…?”

“I mean the deeper we go, the more likely we will find better preserved draugr – the more important Ancient Nords.”

“Gods above,” Hadvar muttered to them. “I’d heard the stories and tales, but to see one up close is…”

“Unnerving?”

“I believe so, elf.”

“Bandits, giant spiders, and now zom- I mean, drawg-ur?”

“I must admit,” Faendal said, once he reached Hadvar’s side. “I was not expecting this. We should turn back, while we still can.”

“Turn back?” Hadvar said, glancing back to them. “But we have come so far.”

“We’ve got the claw – there,” Faendal pointed towards the trap, meaning to say they could grab it from the dead bandit. “And we cannot leave Sven’s body back there like that. He would have wanted better…” His voice cracked.

“My dear friend,” Hadvar spoke, and broke his watch on the darkness ahead of them. “Even if we were to turn back now, I do not think it possible for us to give Sven the burial he deserves.”

Faendal pulled his helmet off with his free hand and wiped his face on the sleeve of his tunic. Sweat glistened on his forehead, and his white hair looked grey in the torchlight. She had never questioned his age, but in that moment, he looked old – tired. And then he looked to her. “If we find your stone tablet and make it out of here alive, I hope all this death proves worth it.”

His words cut her deeper than his sword ever could have. She swallowed and tried to utter a response, but no words came out. Faendal should have been grinding herbs at the inn, or cooking a fresh catch over his fireplace, not stuck in the bowels of this terrifying place. Immense guilt washed over her like a wave on rocks.

Faendal pulled his helmet back on. “Let us retrieve the claw.”

--

Getting at the bandit’s belongings was a nail-biting task that involved Hadvar scanning the floor for suspicious-looking stones beneath Faendal’s footsteps while he edged further away from them into the danger area and closer to their prize. Meanwhile, she sat on her feet at a safe distance and clenched muscles she didn’t know she had.

After what seemed like far too long, Faendal finally reached the body. With his feet firmly planted and his weapons sheathed, he crouched and stood, weaved left then right, dipped his head this way and that, and commanded Hadvar to shift the torch so he could better see the mess before him.

Only once did he stumble. She saw his hand climb to his mouth and his belly convulse. But he composed himself and returned to searching. How many times had he turned a hunted animal inside-out? Did this compare? Perhaps it was the brutality of the situation rather than any smell or visage that threatened to turn his stomach.

She ground her teeth so hard she thought they might crack as he lifted an arm and slowly dove his fingers into what must have been a pouch.

“If you hear a clanking sound or grinding of stone-“

“You do not have to tell me twice, elf.”

His arm stopped its descent, and she watched him take a deep breath. Nothing was to say that the shift in weight of the body wouldn’t set the trap catapulting into Faendal. In the torchlight, she could see it properly – a huge, square wooden lattice like a portcullis, motorised to swing like a door at alarming speed into an unsuspecting trespasser. It sat in its set position at such an angle that it would have been impossible to see walking up to it.

That broken body could have been any of them.

With a short release of breath, Faendal pulled free something large and heavy, bundled in brown rags. With Hadvar’s help, he stepped backwards, one foot at a time, until they were both far enough away from the device. When he turned to her, he unveiled the object, and she gasped.

Just as Lucian had described, the golden claw was just that – polished, gleaming gold, crafted with exquisite care into a shape depicting that of a large bird claw – or perhaps a dragon’s. Across its angled surface, indents and carvings wove shapes and lines like those in the doors of the barrow itself.

“Wow,” she said. “It- it’s really something. Is that solid gold?”

“It is,” Faendal said, and drew the rags around the claw once more.

“That is a piece of history,” Hadvar said. “My people’s history. I am honoured to have retrieved this from such a thief, but I am beginning to wonder whether Lucian’s shop is the best place for it to belong.”

“Indeed,” Faendal said. “But a promise is a promise.”

Hadvar nodded. “What of the matter at hand? Do we turn back, or keep going?” He looked to her as he spoke. She could see beads of sweat on his forehead, glistening in the flickering torchlight.

She took a deep breath and watched Faendal. “I made a promise to the people of Whiterun.” Her stomach roiled in guilt – or perhaps hunger was beginning to take hold.

Faendal didn’t say anything in response, instead, he busied himself with tucking the claw into his own pouch.

She flinched as Hadvar patted her on the shoulder. “We have a city to save.”

--

The deeper they crept into the barrow, the warmer the air became. It had taken her a while to realise she had stopped shivering. A gentle draught still chased her ankles, but it was weaker and no longer felt like sharp tendrils of ice against beneath her tunic. As they passed the trap without any further impaling and entered a smaller tunnel beyond, she realised – possibly for the first time since the whole nightmare adventure had begun – that she was in fact too warm, and rolled up the sleeves of her tunic.

Continuing into the darkness, Hadvar took the lead – his shield raised, his torch sweeping the walls and floor, looking for further signs of traps. Small alcoves and shelves cut into the sides of the passage disappeared into blackness, far deeper than they first appeared, and hitting her with a sense of claustrophobia she couldn’t quite rationalise.

A pungent smell started to tease at the edges of her nostrils. She couldn’t identify it, but she soon felt it burning in the back of her throat. Some sort of incense? Or natural gas - they had been descending for some time, and so it wasn’t unbelievable. Neither Hadvar or Faendal seemed bothered, however, and so the group pressed on in silence.

--

They spotted the next draugr before it had the chance to spot them.

As they rounded a corner, Hadvar held up a hand signalling for them to stop. He looked back to them and pointed a finger in the direction they were heading, then brought it to his lips – quiet.

He crept forwards, slowly, and Faendal and herself followed. A shallow flight of rugged stairs led down, and she had to hold onto the wall to keep her. As they went, that pungent smell became stronger, and she had to blink a tear from her eye.

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When she saw it, she almost gasped.

Stood in a floor-to-ceiling alcove barely metres ahead of them, a single withered figure stood, head bowed, eyes closed, and arms crossed as if in some depraved, eternal prayer. Hanging from a leather belt, it possessed an axe.

She could barely breathe – more from fear than the burning in her throat - as Hadvar reached the bottom of the stairs and crept closer to the creature. To pass it, they would have to walk straight under its nose and take a right turn.

She became acutely aware of the sound of her torch crackling.

But the draugr seemed unbothered by the noise. Very slowly, Hadvar stepped as close to the creature as he needed to, then round the corner to the right.

Her heart in her mouth, she followed. Self-consciously, she pressed one hand to her dagger to stop it from banging against anything that could make a sound. As she stepped before the creature, she looked into its dead face, and saw better what she had not seen in the earlier chaos. The draugr’s skin was pulled tight against its bony frame. Cheekbones jutted out at sharp angles and its nose bent to one side, broken and rugged. But it wasn’t rotted – even despite its sunken features, it still had eyelids to shut and skin covering hollow cheeks. She saw it wore a bind around its chest and guessed it must have once been female – perhaps a strong, Nord warrior woman.

The draugr’s chest did not rise and fall with breath as it stood in its death slumber. Neither did it wake as she passed, and she wondered whether it had any life within its shell at all, magic or not.

She rounded the corner after Hadvar and her foot plashed in something in the dim below her. She looked down and saw that water covered the floor. But as she went to take a step, her boot slid against stone ever so slightly, and she had to stabilise herself. She looked down at the water again and saw something else – spirals of greens and purples in the still liquid. It wasn’t water at all: it was oil.

She looked up in alarm, suddenly gripping her torch very tightly, but Hadvar returned her worried look with a soft, confident nod.

To proceed, they had to step over some rubble, which was made considerably more difficult with their need for silence. Hadvar held out a hand to her as she toed a pile of collapsed wall. At least it got her out of the oil. She could put the visions of a horrible burning death behind her, at least for now. Who knew what other surprises the barrow held for them.

--

“Do you hear … water?”

Once they had put a safe amount of distance between themselves and the sleeping draugr, Hadvar seemed to deem it safe to talk again.

“I do. I can also feel a breeze,” Faendal said from behind her.

She picked up on the sound of water as they walked through an archway and suddenly emerged from the tunnel and into an open chamber – smaller than the previous one, but just as unnecessarily tall – at least, so it seemed to her.

The room was split down the middle, quite clearly and abruptly, by a stream.

“Ah, see there,” Hadvar said, and pointed his torch to one of the walls. “This stream must have broken in from above, right there.”

She’d expected Faendal to have some sort of nature insight to share, but his face remained cold.

The stream ran across the floor, perpendicular to them, and exited the room through another archway. Splashing fur and leather boots through the water, they followed it as it led into another tunnel, and then into a cave that opened out around them.

“This was not built,” Hadvar said as he looked around them. “This rock looks natural.”

The walls of the cave were black and slick with moisture. The stream ran ahead of them, wove around a pillar in the centre of the room, before disappearing around a corner. She could see where it had eroded its path into the cave’s floor, but the walls seemed undisturbed, as though the cave had been incorporated into the barrow’s construction.

Tiny pockets of blue light softly illuminated the cave walls, and as they continued, she saw what appeared to be small, blue mushrooms that glowed in the low light.

Even the air in the cave tasted fresher. It was moist and crisp, almost as if they were outside - and then they were. As they rounded the corner, following the stream, a sudden burst of blue moonlight shone across the cave floor, refracting from the flowing water and carving out a space on the walls where the mushrooms refused to grow.

“Fresh air!” Hadvar rushed forwards. An opening in the cave wall ahead of them must have been made by the stream, which flowed out of it. As the group stepped up to it, that freezing, Skyrim air hit her once more. But she found herself grateful for it, scooping in lung-fulls. Beyond the opening, the cavern grew even more drastically - an enormous, vertical cylinder of space that must have been eroded by water or some such natural force. Above them, she could see the cold grey-blue of night sky. Below, the stream fell as a waterfall, and the loud crashing of water reached her ears, though she could not see its source as a bridge of rock cut across the space, providing their path forward.

The sight would have been breath-taking had it not been for the foreboding promise of further descent. Sightseeing would have to wait.

One at a time, they crossed the natural bridge. It was wide enough for two of them to walk shoulder-to-shoulder, but the gravelly surface was wet and slippery underfoot, and vertigo hit her like a meat hook as she made the crossing, quivering with arms held wide to maintain balance.

A fall into that unseen crashing water would likely not have brought a happy ending.

The tunnel on the opposite side plunged them back into the barrow again. The group resumed their slow, silent formation as they passed exposed tree trunks and wall collapses, clambered over rubble and squeezed through thick, dry vines.

Another large chamber culminated in a huge set of double doors – wooden and framed in that black iron. She and Faendal watched Hadvar’s back as he pushed one open just wide enough for them to slip through, and he shut it behind them again.

“This way, we will hear if anyone tries to sneak up on us.”

“Anything, you mean.”

--

It was not long before they encountered their next trap. Like the stream, they heard it before they saw it.

An awful racket of metal grinding on metal grew louder and louder until they rounded the corner of yet another tunnel, and saw an obstacle that made her stomach drop.

Ahead of them, in the narrow tunnel, metal glinted and violently threw itself back and forth. At first, she didn’t understand what she was looking at, but as they got closer and her torchlight touched it, she saw.

“Stendarr, grant me the strength…” Hadvar muttered.

What appeared to be four swinging axe blades, arranged in rows, swished and sliced the air between them and the dark beyond. Each axe looked heavy, and their handles which disappeared into the ceiling must have been longer than she was tall. The curved, double-sided blades whispered sharp threats as they swung.

“There is no hope for all three of us to make it through that horror,” Hadvar said, speaking her own thoughts aloud.

Even if one of them could somehow slip past, the chances of each of them reaching the other side unscathed was unprecedented.

“We … we have to … try …” she muttered to herself.

“I think it is about time we turn back,” Hadvar patted Faendal on the shoulder. “My friend, I am sorry for not listening to your wisdom sooner.”

Turn back – past the treacherous bridge and the oil and the sleeping monster and the swinging wall of gory death.

“You two don’t have to go any further,” she said. “I’ll go on alone.”

She heard Hadvar swallow.

“You’ve both already done more for me than I could ever repay you for. Please…”

“Girl. Friend. You are not speaking sense.” Hadvar said, stepping around her to block her path, but she shrugged out of his way and put herself between him and the swinging axes.

“I have to do this, Hadvar. I’ve come so far!” She said, her voice quivering.

“And what will you do without us when you reach the other side? If you reach the other side? We have already spoken of this!”

“What will I do if I have to leave here and return to a village where I know nobody? What will I do if I have to leech of off Gerdur and Faendal for the rest of my life? What if a dragon appears? Hadvar,” she said through tears. “I have nothing but this! I have to go on.”

“Girl, please. You know me, and Faendal here-“

“But you don’t know me! And I don’t even know me!”

“-you have people who care for you. Maybe we can take you to Whiterun. Or you could come to Solitude with me! It is a beautiful old city full of life. See the heart of the Empire. I am sure we can put you to good use.”

“How am I supposed to go back that village and see Sven’s mother, with the knowledge that her son is … is dead, and I have nothing to show for it!”

Hadvar looked to Faendal for help, but he stared at her, his eyes diamonds, flickering in the low light. He knew she had made her decision.

“I have no other choice.”

--

The other two didn’t leave her. They kept a safe distance as she edged closer to the swinging blades. She knew that one slip would lead to a gory end, and she felt them bracing behind her. Would Hadvar leap to grab her? Would Faendal weep at another lost soul?

As she stood inches from the first blade, feeling the air displaced as the ugly thing tore through the space before her, she studied the passageway. It was narrow – narrower than the tunnel they were currently stood in, not extending further outwards than the archway that led into it. She held her torch above her head, its flame buffeting and scattering the shadows around them. Between each blade, there was a small gap, just wide enough for someone to stand. It looked like enough space to accommodate her, but she would have to dart past one of the weapons and immediately stop herself from stumbling into the next. Even the smallest mistake could lead to death.

And what lay beyond? Her torchlight lit up more of that same stone floor beyond, but anything beyond a few paces fell away into complete black. She had no idea what she was about to run into. For all she knew, she’d make it through one trap only to spring another.

She took a deep breath.

Without a saying a word to Faendal and Hadvar, she leapt into the passageway. She felt, rather than saw, the first blade duck into a rivet in the wall on the inside of the passage as it readied to swing back. But she made it, and grounded herself against her forward momentum with just enough force that she came to a stop, but not so much that she lost balance and fell backwards into the blade she had just passed.

“Oh god,” she said out loud, panting and straining against the instinct to lean over and breathe. She wanted to close her eyes. She wanted to turn around and run straight back the way she came. But there she stood, as the blades swished, swished, swished in front and behind her, promising dismemberment at the faintest sign of failure.

She thought she heard Hadvar sigh with a mix of exasperation and relief, but she couldn’t be sure.

Though, the challenge now was to make the same movement without the space behind to position her footing for the dash.

Swish. Swish. Swish.

She watched the blade swing left, right, left – and then she darted through it, crying out as she felt her foot nearly go over on a stray stone she hadn’t seen. But she managed to keep her limbs intact, her blood within her veins, her life secure – at least, as secure as it could be in that desparate moment.

“Are- are you okay, girl?” Hadvar called from behind.

“I’m okay,” she said, with a shaky voice. She wanted to turn and offer a reassuring wave, but restrained herself.

She was in the middle of the four swinging blades when her torch blew out.

She was plunged into blackness. The glinting, black metal of the axe heads before her vanished from her sight and she yelped.

“Girl! Friend! What happened? Are you still there?”

“I- I’m still here. I’m okay,” she said. “My torch has gone out. I- I can’t see anything in front of me.”

In the faint glow now several metres behind her, she could barely make out the glint of that metal, mere inches from her face.

“I can try to pass you one through, wait there! Do not move!”

She listened as the blade swished to her left again, then her right. If only the torch had lasted until she had made it past the third axe, then she wouldn’t have had to worry so much about where her feet landed. But with no vision, she would have to guess where to stop. A single step too far and her face would be sliced from her skull, her ribs cracked and her lungs punctured. A step not far enough, and her foot would be torn off.

“Oh, no. No, no, no, no, no,” she closed her eyes and fought increasingly shallow breaths with deep, shaking draws. “Guesswork. All I’ve got is guesswork. I’m dead. I’m going to die here.”

“I am going to try to throw you a torch! You will need to catch it!” It wouldn’t have worked – she knew it wouldn’t. She couldn’t have even gone backwards.

“The only way is forwards. The only way is forwards. Oh, god.”

And she did it. She moved without thinking. She heard the axe swing right and she took a single stride, planting her leading foot on solid stone and whipping the second up to follow, counting as she did, the time between swings.

And she didn’t die. Her face stayed glued to her skull, her foot attached to her leg, her insides unbroken.

“Stop! Have you lost your mind?” Hadvar shouted from behind her, his torchlight now even further away.

“It- it’s okay Hadvar, I can do it.” And she stepped past the final axe head and into the space beyond.

It was pitch black, apart from the dim, short-reaching cone of light that was cast from the other side of the passageway.

And nothing moved under her foot. She waited for poison darts that never fired and swinging trap doors that never swung.

“Oh, god. Hadvar! Hadvar I’m through.” She turned back to look through the swinging blades. Her two friends seemed so far away. In the little light that reached her, she saw the glint of something metallic on the wall next to the archway. She jumped, her brain weaponizing her paranoia and fear and melding into something it was not. But as she blinked through tears she hadn’t realised she’d shed, she saw it was a lever.

“Hadvar! Hadvar? There’s a lever here of some kind. I’m going to pull it and see what happens.” As she reached out and touched the cold metal of the contraption, she heard Hadvar shout something, inaudible to her beyond the blades. But without light, without the ability to fight, she knew she had few options.

The lever was a pull-chain that hung off the wall. She grasped the hooped handle and yanked it down. It took an effort as old chains uncoiled and groaned, but she grabbed it with both hands and threw her whole body into it.

An awful noise of scraping metal screeched from the passageway, and then the blades fell silent. She held her breath as the echoes died on the walls around her.

For a very long moment, she heard no sound beyond her own nervous breathing.

“Hadvar? Hadvar, I think I’ve stopped it.”

She heard rustling clothes and equipment, and that cone of light stretched further and then around her, embracing her in a warm, orange glow. The sweaty face of a worried Imperial soldier appeared around the archway.

“Gods above, girl, you actually did it.”

“I did it,” she said, and laughed in disbelief.

And then an all too familiar cough from somewhere behind her turned her veins to ice.

Hadvar stepped between her and the black void beyond as an arrow whistled over her head and plinked off the wall next to her.

“More draugr!” Hadvar shouted and passed a second torch to her as he reached for his sword.

She saw the room properly, then. Or at least as far as the torchlight allowed. From what she could tell, it was the largest chamber yet. Easily stretching up to two floors, a pillar in the centre supported a bridge that crossed above their heads. Equidistant from the pillar was the far wall, up which a crude looking set of stairs had been made out of logs hammered into spaces in the stone. A balcony, concealed at points by palisades of wooden planks, ran around the edge of the room and met the bridge, which then led off into what she assumed was deeper into the barrow.

It makes a change going up, rather than down.

On the bridge stood two sets of glowing blue eyes. She could see a third set occupying the stairs.

To their left, two large metal coffins – wide, and ornately crafted in black metal – stood in a line on a raised section. Out of one, a fourth draugr was beginning to climb.

Faendal fired an arrow as he moved into the room and said: “We are exposed, we need to find cover from that archer!”

Still keeping himself between her and any flying arrows, Hadvar dropped his torch and leapt onto the raised platform to their left. He thrust a hand into the coffin out of which the draugr was climbing. She watched with awe as he grabbed the undead monster by its shoulder and dragged it up, towards himself. He thrust his sword at its gut and the thing croaked an angry, pained gurgle. Hadvar then maneuvered the draugr in front of him like a shield from the archer, which was up on the bridge.

“Stay close to me,” he said to her. She watched in horror as the draugr, not dead, growled at Hadvar. She ducked behind him and he began to press forward, pushing the draugr stumbling backwards. “Keep your head down!”

She felt Faendal’s arrow fly past them and heard it bounce off metal armour; the draugr on the stairs, she saw as they slowly drew closer, had more armour on than the rest, and a huge sword.

The archer shifted its aim from Hadvar to Faendal who had no cover between him and the pillar. She watched him at the edge of her torchlight as he feinted one way and then quickly ducked the other to avoid an arrow, before sending back one of his own.

The draugr Hadvar was pushing growled and raised its head, baring teeth. “Hadvar, the- the thing,” was all she could say as her brain tried to connect the dots, and it bit down onto Hadvar’s shoulder. Luckily, the bite wasn’t powerful enough to penetrate his leather shoulderpad, but it still caused him to flinch.

“Gods! You disgusting creature!” Hadvar shouted and pushed the impaled draugr off his sword and away from himself. He did so just in time to see the armoured draugr step towards him and raise its sword. “Move!” He pushed her sideways, and threw his own sword up to parry the blow with the loud crash of metal on metal.

She stumbled and cursed as the solid ground met her knees, but she knew she couldn’t stay there, or she’d get an arrow in the back.

“Get under the bridge,” Faendal said, and appeared in front of her, his bow raised for another shot.

She scrambled to her feet and threw herself sideways, but misjudged the distance and overshot, colliding instead with the back wall. She turned to see Faendal make it under the cover of the bridge above, and Hadvar ducking one way and then the other out of the way of the powerful swings of the armoured draugr’s large sword.

A gurgle to her immediate right made her jump back instinctively, and her instincts saved her from an axe swing as the final draugr appeared at the bottom of the stairs and swung for her. She screamed as the axe blade missed her by centimetres and clanged off the wall in front of her head. Faced with the creature, she felt the piercing glare of those unnatural eyes, and the impossibly ferocious strength the withered thing maintained.

Fortunately, despite its strengths, the draugr’s movements seemed slow and deliberate, and she shoved her way past it and up the stairs before it could bring the axe back for another swipe.

The wooden logs felt unstable below her feet, and she slipped to all-fours as she went. But she made it to the top and turned to see the draugr fix her with that cold gaze before it charged up after her. She followed the balcony round the wall, ducking behind one of the palisades into the tight space it left between it and the wall. When she came face-to-face with the bridge, that vertigo hit her again – from up here, it seemed unexpectedly high.

She had little time to contemplate it as she watched an arrow pierce the skull of the draugr archer only metres in front of her. But instead of collapsing, the creature uttered a dry, rattling laugh, and reached back for another arrow.

Behind her, she heard the slapping bare footsteps of the axe-draugr, and knew she had to push forward. Fear climbing her throat, she fumbled a hand around the hilt of Hod’s dagger, and she drew it, holding the small blade out in front of her. The archer must have heard her, or it got tired of trying to range Faendal, as it turned its head and regarded her. If it had been a living man, Faendal’s arrow would have killed it instantly. The haft stuck out from its right eye socket, the metal point protruding from the back of its skull.

The draugr turned to her. Below, she could still hear the clashing of metal and Hadvar’s grunts as he fought his opponent; Faendal was out of sight; it was just her and a murderous enemy either side of her.

“I- don’t- don’t make me hurt you,” she said in a tiny voice as the draugr straightened up and reached an arm to its side. She saw the dark metal of a sword hilt, hanging from its belt.

She knew she had to act then and there, before it could draw its sword or pull an arrow from its back – so why couldn’t she move?

Hod’s dagger shook in her small hand. She couldn’t do this. Dodging traps was one thing, but fighting an animated creature?

Another of Faendal’s arrows came flying out of the darkness below, colliding with the draugr and knocking both it from its stance and her into action. Without thinking, she charged forwards. She might have yelled or screamed; she couldn’t tell. All she knew was the feeling of burning danger lighting up every part of her body that passed near to her enemy as she ducked and threw all of the force she could muster behind a thrust.

She felt the dagger pierce leathery skin and plunge into muscle, bone and ancient organ. With a gasp, the realisation of what she had done broke over her. She even felt as though the undead creature experienced disbelief at her sudden, explosive action – or perhaps it was simply part of the thing’s nervous system juddering to a halt – if it had one.

She knew she hadn’t killed the draugr with her measly but surprisingly successful stab, and so she jerked the dagger and yanked it out from the creature’s abdomen, feeling – in some isolated, compartmentalised section of her brain – the vibrations of metal blade scraping against bone and cutting through sinew, before she was free, and past it, and truly onto the bridge.

Vertigo clawed its way up her legs, but she forced herself forwards, putting as much distance between her and her attackers as she could, and hoping that Faendal could pin them back with another shot.

She ran across the bridge and into the space beyond, her torchlight shoving aside the darkness. She reached a door and crashed into it with her shoulder. It was heavy but she managed to push it open and lunge into the passage beyond.

She took a left, then a right. Panic tried to take over her senses as she realised she was also running further and further away from her friends and protectors.

“Oh dear, oh no, oh god,” she panted as she went.

She reached another set of heavy double doors and forced her way through. The corridor beyond was different to any they had yet come across. Its low ceiling was domed, making it more of a semi-circular chamber, like a much smaller version of the one all the way back at the entrance. But instead of large stone pillars and rumble strewn about, this one was much better preserved. Across the ceiling and walls, she made out etchings and carvings of scenes – what looked like people stood in lines below a stormy sky; a dragon breathing fire; some strange figure that could have been a masked priest. And at the end of the corridor stood a door like none she had ever seen.

At first, she thought it was a wall – a dead end to the long tunnel, spelling her demise. But there was more to it than that. Strange discs sat behind a metal brace. On them, more carvings, this time of animals – a dragon in flight, a bear, what looked to be a moth, or an owl. They reminded her of the snakes and whales back in the puzzle room, with the poison darts and the dead bandit.

That seemed so long ago.

This was no ordinary door or wall but a puzzle – and at its centre, a metal rivet with three holes, clearly depicting a claw.

The doors behind her shuddered and she jumped, spinning round to face her attacker. But it was Faendal, and behind him, a breathless Hadvar. They clattered into the chamber and shoved the doors shut.

“Faendal! Hadvar!” She shouted to them. “Faendal! Give me the claw!”

“The claw?”

“Yes! This is another puzzle! I think I need the claw to work it!”

Faendal threw a worried glance back at her.

“Go, elf! I can hold the door,” Hadvar said, and Faendal ran down the corridor towards her. He produced the bundle of rags and unravelled them to reveal the golden claw.

“What do we need to do?”

“I- I’m not completely sure, but see here? These pictures.”

“I do. There must be clue on these walls. I see dragons but, ah! No bears! Or … is that a moth? Or an owl?”

A heavy thud made her and Faendal whip back to the doors, and she saw Hadvar straining against them. “Whatever you are trying to do, do it quickly!”

“Right. Okay. Umm-“

“There has to be more on these walls! I do not understand! What are we missing!”

Faendal’s torch glinted off the golden claw, and she spotted something she hadn’t noticed before. In its palm were three small circles. They jutted out from the relic’s design ever so slightly, just enough to cast a difference in amongst the shadows.

“Give me the claw!”

“What? Why?”

“Just,“ she wrestled it from his hand and held it up next to her torch, “give it to me”. Within each of the three circles was an image – a moth, a dragon in flight, and a bear. “Hold my torch up! No, higher! I need to see.” She reached up and grabbed one of the rings. Despite its ancient construction, it turned remarkably easily in her grip. She turned the first ring until it showed the image that matched the first image on the claw.

Behind them, there was an almighty crack as the doors shuddered and Hadvar went stumbling backwards. She heard the creak of wood and string as Faendal drew his bow back.

She turned the second ring so it showed the dragon.

Faendal let his arrow loose, but she heard it ping off that metal armour again. Hadvar yelled in anger as he barely parried a blow from that black metal sword.

The final ring – the smallest one – was the easiest to turn, and she did so until it showed the bear. With both hands, she pushed the golden claw against the metal circle at the door’s centre, and it locked in with a satisfying click as through engaging a magnet. With its own motion, the puzzle accepted her offering and the contraption spun. She heard the all too familiar sound of stone on stone as something shifted, and the door began to slide down, into the ground.

Another arrow hit the draugr, this time breaking flesh, but the creature barely reacted. She watched as it batted Hadvar’s sword to one side and hit him in the chest with a solid punch.

“Everyone through the door! It’s open!” She reached down and grabbed the claw. It easily disengaged from the lock. The door slowly descended, and when it was low enough, she swung a leg over the top, squeezing herself through the gap and out of the corridor.

Faendal retreated back to her, firing arrows as he went. He aimed for the draugr’s legs, but they were clad in heavy plated boots, and his arrows found no effect. He reached back for another, but his hand grabbed empty air. Cursing as he realised he’d used up the last of his most effective weapon, he shouldered his bow, brought his shield around from his back, and drew his sword. “Come on, Nord. Get away from that thing!”

Begrudgingly, Hadvar ducked a swing from the draugr and disengaged, running backwards towards them. The two clambered over the door and out into the space beyond. As soon as all three of them were past the threshold, the door halted its descent and began to grind upwards again. The draugr stomped towards them, closing the distance fast, but Hadvar and Faendal raised their shields, its sword clattered off of them through the diminishing gap. The stone puzzle door reached the ceiling with a clunk, and the grinding mechanism ceased, leaving them in quiet once more.

Hadvar collapsed to his knees, panting for breath. “Gods above, will this place ever end.”

“Hadvar,’ Faendal said calmly. “I think we have found it.”

“Found what?”

“The end.”

The three of them turned to look at where they now found themselves.

Ahead of them was what could only have been the main chamber – the place Farengar had described, but could he ever have imagined it to be so grandiose? An enormous cavern opened out from where they were stood. From somewhere in the ceiling, moonlight beamed down and illuminated the space in an ominous glow. The Ancient Nordic construction gave way to that natural stone once more. In the back of the cave, not one but two waterfalls roared. A stream, perhaps the culmination of the one that had followed earlier, encircled a plateau that stood proudly in the moonlight. At its rear, a wall designed of unfamiliar stone and carvings, different from those of throughout the barrow, dominated the space.

“This… this is…” Hadvar panted.

“Somewhere we shouldn’t be,” Faendal said. “Let us find the Dragonstone and leave as soon as we have it.” He began to walk towards the plateau, and she followed. Steps and bridges carved into the rock led up to the platform on which that strange, curved wall stood.

Perhaps she felt it. Perhaps she heard it. She wasn’t sure what it was, but she suddenly became aware of … something. Something about that wall drew her gaze – but not just her eyes: her soul. It was as though her whole essence was reacting to … whatever it was.

“Faendal…” she said, but she couldn’t compose thoughts. She barely recognised her own limbs as she reached the pinnacle of the plateau and stood before that source of … of what? Power. Knowledge. It was all-encompassing. She looked at the wall with her soul and it burned something into her. Voices – thousands of voices – cried out to her, chanting in tongues that tried to rend her skin from her skull.

She might have screamed before everything went black.

--

Unconsciousness came restlessly, emerging through thick, damp fog. The stagnant air of the lake betrayed its existence before she saw it. No insects buzzed; no birds cried; not even the water lapping at the muddy edges reached her – this was a dead place.

A single wooden pier extended only a few metres into the murky soup like a ghost, slouching into the water without summoning a single current, before it collapsed into nothing, its decay frozen in time.

Nothing moved until the fog permitted.

And then a lone island rose from the viscous centre, appearing as though it had always been there, not a single ripple in the lake’s surface betraying unreality. Dressed with a fetid salad of algae and slimy leaves: a single morbid feature – a weeping willow, its branches all but bare, and its trunk ringed with yellowed ivy.

As she watched, it cracked and creaked to life, shuddering and growing as though with breath, like a petrified rabbit returning to life. Beneath her skin, her blood roiled and churned as acid, burning through glass veins and neutralising her blood into that same, stagnant fluid. It scratched a dry croak from somewhere deep within that infested body, and she realised she was no longer staring at a dead plant: the tree spoke to her.