The fire flickered and sputtered as the four heroes descended into the yawning darkness of the ancient tomb. An unsettling breeze from deep within carried a fetid stench that seemed determined to quash the already meager lightsource.

"I will never understand your love of tomb-robbing." The blue-furred khajiit muttered in a voice forced to sound calm by sheer will, barely concealing a state of panic. "Anything could come reaching out of the walls, or come up through the floors with hands grabbing at us...!" He stopped to slow his fluttering heart with a deep breath or three..

"Maybe they'll fall through the ceiling!" the nordic warrior supplied with enthusiasm.

"Why thank you Lydia, I hadn't thought of that. The good news is, I don't have to use the bathroom anymore."

"Oh, it's not so bad," Rach said, scratching his shoulder scales with the sharp end of his war-pick. "Dead jerks is just live jerks, only smellier."

"My friend, I don't think you comprehend the seriousness of our circumstances! The dead are dead! They cannot feel pain, or fear, they have already died so who's to say they might not just rise up again once you've killed them? And look at all these ones on the walls, they don't seem inclined to move, but whatever animated their more feisty friends could animate them all at the same time and then we'd be surrounded by hundreds of these things! Clawing at us, dragging us down... only for what? Would our corpses join them in shambling around?!"

The cats voice got shriller and more panicky the longer he talked. Finally, Rach turned on him, halting the procession.

"Okay, Inigo, look. Yes, the undead are gross. Yes, they represent an existential threat and force us to face our own mortality and confront the terror of the unknown. But there is one thing that washes all that away."

"And what is that, exactly? I am eager to hear what keeps you sane in places like these!"

Rach glanced over to an ancient ceremonial urn. He reached out a claw and tipped it over. With a hollow cracking sound, it shattered upon the ground, releasing a pluming ash cloud. Rach kicked a clawed foot through it, further agitating the cloud, until he found something hard. He bent over and picked it up, then held it up to Inigo's face meaningfully. It was a ruby.

"Treasure." He said lustfully.

"Okay, yes, treasure is great and all, but still..."

"Still what? It's treasure."

"Bravely did the Dragonborn go forth," the bosmer bard at the back suddenly chimed in with her most poetic and ceremonial of voices, "Heroically robbing from the graves of the ancient ancestors of the Nords, violating the sanctity of their most sacred burial rites, with all the reverence of a drunk horse at a wedding."

"Oh hush. These are just a bunch of old dragon worshippers anyway. I don't think we're offending any important ancestors."

Lydia fell into a coughing fit. Inigo shuddered.

"Aaaaand now she is breathing her ancestors. Are you proud of yourself?"

Rach shrugged.

The traveled on in silence for a while. There was a distant creaking sound that seemed to be coming from up ahead. A large cobweb shifted in the breeze. It was a very large cobweb.

"Hey Inigo," Rach teased, "It could be worse... we could run into giant spiders. The first dungeon I went into out here, there was this HUGE one. There was this jerk was all caught up in the webs screaming for help..."

"It is not polite to try to freak me out, and anyway, I actually enjoy fighting spiders. They make such a crunchy squishy sound when you bash their faces in!" Inigo giggled.

"Wait, hold on..." Rach stopped them again. "You totally hate the undead, which are not that different from any regular bandit, but GIANT spiders who literally spit poison from a distance, whose goal is to paralyze you, wrap you in their butt-strings, and pin you helplessly up on a wall while they slowly liquefy and consume your organs, keeping you alive as long as possible.... those are fine. Am I hearing this right?"

Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.

"Do not try to look for logic in phobias, my friend. I just like the way they crunch. And they have so many legs! They are so silly! Silly spiders, hehehe..."

"Whatever, Inigo. Well I'm not concerned about spiders OR draugr. Hey Lydia! Astra! Any phobias I should know about?"

"Tomatoes" Lydia Said with a shudder.

"Oh no, this story isn't about... wait, did you say Tomatoes?" Astra said, suddenly losing her train of thought.

"Ahh! Where?!" Lydia shouted, drawing her axe.

Inigo facepalmed.

"I have such a hard time reading her. Is she making fun of me?" he asked.

Rach examined at his houscarl as she put away her axe, cautiously.

"You know... I can't tell either. Lydia is either a satirical comic genius or a complete loon."

"I resent that." She said, still eyeing the nooks and crannies for any potentially offensive fruit.

Astra examined the Nord, herself intrigued by the question. Suddenly Lydia giggled.

"Butt strings." She said, and laughed out loud.

At that moment, there was a burst of light as a dozen torches in the chamber they had entered all sputtered magically to life. They were surrounded by movement and rasping groans as a half dozen draugr started rising from their slumber, dragging heavy iron weapons out to gleam in the torchlight.

"Time to rest in peace!" Rach shouted, charging the first and battering its rotten shield with his warpick.

Lydia had her axe out in a flash; with bright arcs of blue light, she swung the lightning charged weapon into the side of a draugr with a bow.

Inigo and Astra had their own bows drawn and were launching arrows into the advancing wave of shamblers at an incredible rate.

It was only a few moments before all six of the draugr were unmoving cadavers once more. With a raucus metal creaking and a resounding *CLANG* a metal grate in the floor gave way, revealing a rickety wooden staircase below. Rach crowed.

"See? No problem at all. And one of them even had magic! Time to loot"

"Just because they terrify me does not mean I cannot fight them, my friend. If anything, it is even more encouragement to send them to oblivion as fast as possible."

"Can you go search those two, then?"

"Ahhh... no. I'm not feeling up any thousands-of-years-dead men, thank you."

"Suit yourself. Though you don't mind feeling up freshly dead men?"

There was a loud silence as no one spoke for a long moment.

"You know..." Astra said diplomatically, "Eventually, Rach, you're going to be a famous hero, and at some point it would be a good idea to learn how to hold a conversation without making everything awkward and weird."

Rach, ignoring the bard, pulled a potion out from the mildewing rags of one of the draugr's clothes. Inigo gagged.

"Tell me you're not going to drink that."

"Well, it's labeled as a potion of conjuration. So me? Probably not. But I bet Arcadia will pay a few coins for it."

"Aren't you going to put a warning on it or something? How long has that been down here, surely they have a shelf-life of something less than thousands of years..."

Suddenly there was a shuffling sound from the rickety staircase and the well of darkness below. Each of them drew their weapons again and turned to face the threat. Rach with his pick and a fairly sturdy shield he had just picked up; Lydia with her axe, crackling with power; Astra with an elven arrow gleaming orange in the torchlight; Inigo holding back a sweat aven as his ebony bow creaked with power waiting to be released.

...as a large rodent clambered laboriously up the steps. Inigo let out a sigh of relief as Astra launched her arrow and swiftly ended the scavenger's existence.

"Heh, no draugr after all." Inigo said, "I know it's.... Rach? My friend?"

There was a distant patter of clawed feet on ancient stone, back the way they'd come. The three others stood there, shocked.

"Did he just..." Astra asked, a grin spreading across her lips.

"I think so." Inigo sighed.

"Over one skeever?"

"Do not try to look for logic in phobias, my friend,"

"I suppose. But we're not..."

"Oh we are definitely not letting him forget this." Inigo grinned wickedly.

***

Somewhere else. A place of darkness and swirling vortexes of pure energy and raw chaos. Indescribable cries from undiscernible creatures echoed across a roaring nothingness. No mortal life could exist in a place like this.

A primordial voice ripped through the void, dripping with hatred, power, and wrath; speaking in a tongue that transcended language.

"A new hand touches the beacon... awaken, Zagrath'Ur. The time has come to serve my will once more. "

In the darkness, a red eye cracked open, wreathed in a terrible flame. A flame that was reflected in the deep fiery glint at the heart of a ruby in the pocket of Rach Wingcutter.