8 Storm the Gates... or Just Stealth Kill Everybody

     Morila, alongside the Atronaches and Galeron's other undead, had worked tirelessly for three weeks to complete the cave that would connect Crystaldrift Cave with the Crypt of the Old Guard. The tunnel was now completed and the primary entrances to both caves had been covered over with illusions.

     Galeron planned to eventually seal them off physically as well but that was a bit more complicated than simple illusions. Once everything was in place, however, the only entrance to Crystaldrift Cave would be the hole in the ceiling, which would be covered in illusions. The only entrance to The Crypt of The Old Guard would be a secret door granting access to the cave they had just constructed.

     This was how he had planned to fortify his first hideaway in this new world. He was aware that all of this would require much more time and he would have to simply make do with his illusions and Saber Cats for now. 

     He had spent these past three weeks making progress in his attempts to modify summoned creatures, familiarizing himself with various runes, and practicing his mysticism. Although given the short amount of time, the progress he had made wasn't a lot and this was only his magical training. 

     During his time studying under his Forsworn tutors, Galeron had requested a quick rundown of the fundamentals of blacksmithing. Luckily, one of his tutors knew enough about the craft to give him a quick crash course. He hadn't practiced smithing anywhere near as much as he practiced his bow and swordsmanship but he had been through the motions of crafting simple blades enough times that he now had a foundation of knowledge and experience that he could build upon.

    Most of his time, during the past three weeks, he had spent smelting the Crypt's Dawnguard Armor into ingots and practicing his smithing. He didn't do this just to increase his skill in smithing. He also was attempting to create a unique weapon that would better suit a mage trained in Mysticism. 

     Previously, during his training, he hadn't given much thought to the type of weapon he would use. He simply chose the most basic close and long range weapons to train in, with the intention of keeping his physical reactions in good condition. 

     Now that he was on his own, it quickly occurred to him that, even if he carried a sword and bow, he would benefit much more from a weapon that actually utilizes his magicka and more importantly his skill in Mysticism as his primary weapon of choice.

     The thought of crafting and enchanting a staff was quickly discarded. Although it might be kind of cool to finally be able to wield a powerful magic staff, he technically already had a staff, despite it not being particularly useful. Ultimately though staves just weren't the most practical weapon for a mage and they were also quite cliched. 

     Galeron spent that time improving his ability to forge hollow metal spheres and also integrating the use of his magicka into his forging.

     Galeron had always wondered why magical blacksmithing wasn't a part of any of the Elder Scrolls games. Although it could be understood as being implied that whenever you interact with an anvil and create a weapon in less than a second that's magical but that, of course, was just a game mechanic and there were no lore based references, that he was aware of, that explicitly mentioned a mage integrating his skills in magic to assist or enhance the forging process. The closest thing to this would be something like the Atronach Forge, where the forge itself is magical. 

     While he was certain he couldn't have been the first to do so, he was also fairly certain that mages in general just never bothered to dabble in blacksmithing and so no formalized knowledge existed on the subject.

     It was, of course, his primary goal for these weeks of practice to establish a foundation on which he could create a formalized system of magical blacksmithing and also to craft a metal sphere that could be enchanted and used in combat.

     Morila, their Atronachs, and his undead were very nearly done with the excavation. The two tunnels should definitely meet one another some time today. At that moment, however, Galeron was in the middle of his final forging.

     The four Ebony ingots laying on the anvil before him trembled slightly, before rising into the air and seemingly moving themselves into a red hot ball of fire.

     Galeron had discovered that the blue fire smelter, in the crypt, was indeed utilizing the cold fires of coldharbour, although he wasn't certain how. What he did know, however, was that this smelter was heavily enchanted to allow the cold fires to behave like normal fire, otherwise how could something cold melt metal of any type.

     This being the case, made it quite difficult to forge with those fires, since they weren't accessible outside of the smelter. It was for this reason that Galeron had conjured his own high intensity flame to practice his forging.

     The four ingots sailed smoothly into the center of the sphere of red flames, waited there patiently for some time, until they turned completely orange, and then exited the flaming sphere radiating a heat almost comparable to the sphere itself.

     Galeron maintained control over the four glowing ingots and quickly caused them to coalesce into one glowing hot sphere of molten Ebony and then utilized a bit more Mysticism to churn that sphere rapidly.

     During this churning, his magicka was working its way through the molten sphere ensuring that there were no impurities, ensuring that it was balanced in its composition, and that the temperature was consistent throughout.

     Once Galeron was happy with the purification and balancing, he calmed the sphere to stillness and began shaping it into the design he had perfected over these last few weeks.

     The sphere was suddenly split in half and the two halves slowly started taking the shape of hemisphere's with their insides hollowed out. The walls of these hemispheres were approximately one inch in thickness and extending from the center top of the hemisphere's insides was a protrusion that came down about halfway.

     These designs had been well rehearsed in Galeron's mind and so he gave shape to them in less than three seconds. At this moment, Galeron invoked a spell that he had to create specifically for magical blacksmithing. He knew that quenching the metal was a delicate process and, if not done properly, it could completely ruin all the work a smith had put into his forging.

     It was with this knowledge that he had constructed the spell that he had just activated. In the molten center of the hemisphere's walls, at or perhaps even surpassing the quantum level, the temperature of that space dropped drastically from its oppressive molten intensity to room temperature. This created a space from which that mild room temperature bizarrely spread out and instantly extinguished those scorching molten temperatures around it!

     With all of this having happened in an instant the moment Galeron activated his spell, the two hemispheres that had previously been glowing brightly and radiating a suffocating heat the previous second were now floating quite serenely and inconspicuously next to each other in the air in front of Galeron.

     Upon witnessing the successful forging of his weapon he smiled from ear to ear and took the two hemispheres in his hands to inspect them further. Although he was checking for defects, he knew they wouldn't be perfect. He was smithing with Ebony, a material he had very little practice with, and he had needed to use every single ingot that was available in the crypt in order to just get to this level. 

     Once he was certain that the spheres were as good as he could expect them to be considering his lack of experience, he brought the two weapon halves over to the enchanting table and began his inscriptions. The runes he had chosen to inscribe were mostly focused on drawing power, from the soon to be embedded soul gem, and harnessing the magicka within to form various spells.

     This was similar to the much sought after Ameliorating Staves that would reduce the requirements for a larger variety of spells. His was simply spherical in shape, made of metal instead of wood, and focused on a smaller variety of spells, due his lack of progression in the enchanting field.

     With the enchanting completed, he once again raised the two halves into the air along with a Grand Soul Gem and caused the extension on their insides to come into place on either side of the soul Gem. With one half on top and the other on the bottom, the two halves finally came  together perfectly encapsulating the soul Gem that had also been enchanted to form a connection with Galeron. 

     This connection allowed Galeron to use the soul trapped in the Gem as an artificial extension of his own soul, thus allowing him to pour his own magicka into it, instead of consuming the soul inside as a source of magicka.

     Galeron then cast a spell, inspired by the Transmutation spell, to cause the two halves to bond on a molecular level both with each other and the soul Gem, thus becoming one whole and complete weapon.

     Taking the newly dubbed Orbical in his hands, he sent his magicka through its Ebony walls and into the embedded Soul Gem. Once he did so, he could instantly feel a connection with the Orbical. Letting the Orbical rest in the palm of his upturned hand, he urged the spherical weapon to move upward and it immediately obeyed his command. 

     With a slight smile touching his lips, he then sent the Orbical forward ten meters and attempted to send a lightning spell through the Orbical and towards the wall. Less than a second after willing it to be so, the Orbical, hovering in the air ten meters away, was suffused with electricity and sent a small bolt of lightning towards the wall that Galeron was facing. 

     A grin tinted with wickedness now crept menacingly across his face as he began to chuckle to himself feeling quite satisfied, with his work. 

     Galeron, high on the satisfying after effects of personal accomplishment, quickly left the crypt and went outside to play with his new toy. 

     A few hours later, as he was sending his Orbical flying through the air in various patterns, his Revenants approached him and began moaning, while pointing towards the newly excavated tunnel. He brought the Orbical to a hovering rest over his right shoulder and then ordered the undead to be silent and follow him back to the tunnel. 

     Now that his weapon and the tunnel were completed Galeron ordered that everything in Crystaldrift Cave be moved into the crypt. The cave would be used primarily for temporary and overflow storage and as a massive trap for would be invaders.

     With the cave now clear, he began placing runes and traps everywhere that there wasn't a storage container. He then cleared out all of the armor and weapons in the crypt primary. He set his undead to deconstructing all of it into ingots, after selecting the few he thought would be useful.

     Now he had plenty of space to store corpses and experiment on them. This crypt would now serve as his personal laboratory, for experimenting with necromancy.

     Finally satisfied by having made his crypt a home, Galeron was ready to set forth into the wilds and do some exploring. He would have to slow down the pace of his training, if he wished to venture outside of his newly crafted base, but there was still simply too much he didn't know about this world. He needed to travel at least as far as Winterhold and see if perhaps the College there could offer him any useful knowledge. If not there was always that artifact nearby. 

     After dawning a set of decent looking blue and green robes he'd found, which he had enchanted with Magicka Regeneration rune formations, he informed Morila of the obligations she would have while he was away and then set off with one of each Storm, Fire, and Frost Atronach following at a safe distance.

     While summonings didn't have any kind of forced expiration, the Atronaches that were summoned could only maintain their peak power for so long outside of the Planes of Oblivion. As such, they would slowly begin to lose power, after a day or so. The only exception being is if they were summoned and kept in a place saturated with magic of their elemental affinity. This required one to banish and resummon one's Atronaches periodically. 

     Although Galeron was still trying to increase the number of summons he could have active, reaching three had been a welcome development. While Storm Atronaches were generally considered stronger not only because of their physical size but also because their magical attacks were more potent. This, of course, didn't render the smaller summons useless because the Fire Atronaches were much quicker and Frost Atronaches had a greater defense.

     They each had their uses and worked quite well as a team, given that their summoner knew how to take advantage of their strengths and weaknesses. It was for this reason that Galeron was mostly satisfied with his three Atronach limit, even if he found it wanting at times.

     Galeron and his Atronach escort had set out at first light and began making their way towards Dayspring Canyon. Galeron knew that place would eventually be the Dawnguard's base of operations but, of course, it didn't have to be.

      'Assuming that they haven't already set up camp there, I should be able to clean the place up and with the help of a certain artifact I could easily fortify that place enough to keep out most invaders. Of course, getting the artifact out of those ruins and into the fort is the hardest part but, if the artifact works the way it's supposed to, that problem might just solve itself.' Galeron thought to himself, as he crested a small hill and could just barely see the entrance to Dayspring Pass in the distance.

     Galeron continued forward for another thirty minutes. Once he reached the small opening in the rock face, he noticed signs of recent Human foot traffic. Not only were some of the grasses flattened but there were also a few empty mead bottles cast off to the side.

     'Hmmm...doesn't look like I'm going to have it easy. Although, this doesn't really fit the Dawnguard's MO. I would expect them to be more careful than this. Bandits maybe? Well, I certainly hope so. I'm not entirely certain that those silver weapons wouldn't affect me in a similar way to Vampires. Although I'm not an undead, I am an abomination of sorts, after all.'

     After cloaking himself properly he made his way silently and invisibly through the pass and exited into Dayspring Canyon. He saw more and more signs of Human habitation the further in he went. Before he even exited the pass, he could smell the smoke of a campfire and the loud voices of the men sitting around it.

     Just outside the pass exit, he could see a group of four presumed bandits sitting around a campfire. They certainly didn't seem to be from the Dawnguard. Galeron guessed that, if four of them were sent all the way out here for guard duty, there might very well be as many as fifty bandits in total living inside the fort.

     Galeron, being the cautious man that he was, decided that he would wait and see if any of them left the Canyon tomorrow. 'Surely they have to go out for supplies and such. I'll just wait, until they voluntarily reduce their own numbers, before putting my plan into motion.'

     After exiting the Canyon, Asmond scouted the mountain near the pass' opening for a suitable place to make camp. Finding what he was looking for about half a kilometer to the north of the pass, Galeron levitated up the side of the mountain nearly sixty meters, until he reached his destination. He once again reconjured his Atronaches and instructed them to guard his campsite, while he slept.

     The following morning Galeron woke up with the sun. He wanted to get back to the Canyon and find a good hiding spot to surveil the bandits activities.

     Passing through into the canyon, he was being extra careful not to draw the attention of the bandits, while searching the terrain for a proper stakeout location. Ultimately, he decided on a spot near the top of the waterfall, located on the right side of the canyon not too far from the pass.

     'Aaannd here comes the boring part. Note to self: Stakeouts are not fun. Taking on fifty bandits at once, though, is a bit much so there's no helping it. I might've been able to catch a few of them by themselves but pulling the same stunt here that I did in the crypt is damn near impossible. I'll just have to play the waiting game and be sure to strike at the most opportune moment.'

     Sometime just before noon on the following day, Galeron could hear the bandit leader rallying his men all the way from the fort. He had gotten a pretty good read on the bandits numbers and composition, during his surveillance. He was quite tired, however, after staying up all this time, but, once the majority of the bandits left, he would still have to get to work tired or not.

     Galeron watched as the contingent of bandits, numbering twenty seven men, walked down the Canyon and eventually into the pass, leaving him alone with sixteen bandits scattered throughout the canyon and the fort itself.

     Stepping carefully out of his hiding place, he cast Muffle and Invisibility and stepped into the freezing water of the falls to properly wake himself up and chase the tiredness from his bones. Once his mind was clear and focused, he made his way down the waterfall and crept stealthily up through the canyon towards the fort.

     Sticking close to the right side of the canyon, Galeron worked his way all the way up to the place where Fort Dawnguard met the mountain it was built into. Sitting down at the corner of the fort wall and the mountain, he took a moment to recharge his magicka. Luckily, all of the guards were focused on threats from the front and from south of the fort.

     Once he was topped off, he immediately stood up and used his levitation to clear the wall and land softly atop the fort, scanning his surroundings for bandits. He immediately spotted a bandit guard leaning on the parapet, near the front of the fort.

     After recasting his stealth spells, Galeron crept up behind the bandit and slit his throat. Letting the bandit's body lay on the ground, he turned the corpse into a Revenant, set him back to his guard duty, and then began scanning the rest of the fort's rooftop.

     Galeron only encountered one other bandit on the roof and, after recharging his magicka, finally made his way into the fort proper. Once inside, he collected two more Revenants and realized he was starting to run low on Black Soul Gems.

     Morila had taught him the method for creating Black Soul Gems long before he started studying Hedge Magic and so restocking wasn't a problem, as long as he had Grand Soul Gems available.

     He had obtained several Black Soul Gems Grand Soul Gems from the crypt and had brought them with him on this mission. He figured this would be as good an opportunity as any to Transmute his Grand Soul Gems into Black ones.

     Transmutation was a key aspect of the Black Soul Gem creation process. In order to create a Black Soul Gem, one had to use a specially modified Soul Trap spell on a Human, allow that soul to interact with the Grand Soul Gem, and then Transmute the two into a single entity, before they could reject each other. As such, two Human lives were required in order to fill a Black Soul Gem. One for its creation and another to be trapped inside it.

     The Soul Trap spell would normally bind a soul temporarily to the caster, thus drawing it towards his or her body. The Soul Gem would be placed in between the caster and the victim in order to intercept the soul. Since it wouldn't be able to enter the body of the caster, it would be forced to yield to the attraction of the Soul Gem. This of course wouldn't work on a Human soul, unless it was a Black Soul Gem.

     By binding the soul to the Grand Soul Gem, the caster forces the soul to interact with that which would normally repel it. Of course, the magic would soon expire and the soul would be lost if the two were not acted upon immediately.

     Upon interacting with the soul, the Grand Soul Gem would release a purple-ish light and begin to vibrate slightly. This, of course, was the key moment in which the Transmutation spell needed to be cast. Once the two were successfully Transmuted, a Black Soul Gem would be born.

     In this manner, Galeron cleaned up the other bandit on the second floor and two more on the first floor, using their souls as crafting materials for his Black Soul Gems.

     After going back up top to recharge his magicka, he was now heading towards the central chamber where the last bandit inside the fort was located.

     There was a table at the side of the room where the bandit sat, while eating off of a wooden plate. Making his way slowly towards the bandit's right side, Galeron prepared his paralysis spell. However, after only having taken a couple of steps into the chamber, the bandit hastily stood at attention and looked in Galeron's direction.

     "Show yourself, sneak thief! I know you're there! Who are you and what are you doing in our hideout? Barden, Garrel, get in here, there's an intruder." The bandit shouted at Galeron's General direction, after drawing his sword and taking a ready stance.

     "Hmmm...it seems I've been found out." Galeron thought out loud, as he cancelled the effects of his spells. "Let me guess. You have an item enchanted with Detect Life? How hard was that to come by, if you don't mind me asking? I haven't actually seen one yet." Galeron asked him trying to stall for time.

     "You don't get to ask the questions here. Who are you and who sent you? How did you get inside this fort? Our men are all over the place. Dammit, what are those idiots doing? Barden, Garrel alert the others and get your lazy asses in here now!"

     "Well, let's see, as for who sent me? That would be me. As for who I am? That would also be me. Also, I don't think your friends are coming...also, that's what she said. By the way, do you know if any of your other friends have items like this?"

-----

     Garen was completely on edge. As soon as he noticed the intruder, his mind had been running in circles. 'How could there be an intruder in the fort, without anyone but him knowing? If he had made it this far, wouldn't that mean the others were dead?' 

     No one answered his call for help, which only increased his anxiety even further. He was certain that they were all dead. 

     'If this intruder could so easily kill all of the others, could I really be a match for him? I can't even escape, while inside this fort. Dammit, why did it have to come to this? It doesn't look like I'm going to be able to get out of this without a fight. Alright, just calm down, Garen. Maybe he isn't as tough as he seems. Just calm down and focus on your opponent.' Garen coached himself, with comforting lies.

-----

     "That's enough of your nonsense, intruder! Stand and fight!" Garen shouted, as he started to charge at his opponent, who had remained calm and motionless the entire time.

     Before he could take a second step, however, a sword burst through his neck and then quickly retreated. The last thing Garen saw was the tip of a silver blade that briefly flashed before his eyes. Then his consciousness faded as his body fell to the floor.

     Galeron had cast Soul Trap on Garen just before he started to charge and now his last Grand Soul Gem was glowing with a faint purple light and vibrating slightly. Casting the Transmutation spell, Galeron brought his number of remaining Black Soul Gems up to seven. 

     'Unless I've counted wrong, that should be enough to make Revenants out of all the remaining bandits except for one. There were eight here in the fort and so there should be eight more in the canyon. So in total, I'll have eleven Revenants and three Atronaches to contend against twenty seven bandits. 

     'Hmmm...this should be doable, if I plan this right. They'll have to go through Dayspring Pass, if they want to get back in. As long as I don't leave any signs of my work, I should be able to quickly lower their numbers to a level my small undead squad can handle.'

     With a wicked grin quickly becoming a permanent fixture on his face, Galeron set himself to work. He had a delectable murder stew to brew and all of the ingredients needed to be prepared with care and precision.