Chapter XXVI: Of Greed And Dungeons

The walls and towers of Dawnstar became but distant spots on the horizon as Scorch carried me south, the two of us having left as soon as we were able. I still had to ensure my troops knew to return to Silruhn Fell to prepare for the next phase in our expansion and that Tullius would not have any problems in the near future.

It wouldn't do to have our army slowed by pigheaded malcontents still stubbornly holding on to Ulfric's shattered cause and I was nice enough to only steal their weapons for the crimes they planned on committing.

Even then the army would only march after order was restored and reinforcements arrived to bolster the upcoming siege. Even with our rather disgusting casualty ratio we still lost many thousands of soldiers and Windhelm would be a much tougher nut to crack than Dawnstar, even with our prepared strategy.

I just hope the dragons would be nice enough to wait a bit until they continued with their rampages, wouldn't want to give anyone an excuse for a 'gracious' truce.

'In fact...' I flicked a large scroll into my hand, holding it straight with a light application of telekinesis, and started writing down a massive order of some extra lower tier ballistae to be delivered in secret to every single loyal hold, meaning all but one, in preparation.

The scroll soon disappeared and I had Scorch speed up, almost feeling a hidden weight fall off my shoulders as Dawnstar's hold was left behind.

Now then, I do wonder what the others were up to...

(General POV)

"How is it that everyone already knows who we are already? We came here as fast as we reasonably could!" Minthara complains as her and a duo of her companions leave the Vylermir Inn, the central tavern of the town of Ivarstead.

Marco snorts and shakes his head "I wouldn't be surprised if Black Marsh already knew."

The Dragonborn closes her eyes and takes a deep breath, the raging flames of her irritation with her newfound reputation slowly smoldering back to a more controllable level, she slowly breathes out and curses "Fucking gossips."

Marco snickers at her suffering "Just imagine how bad it will get when those Winterhold orbs become commonplace for all mages." 

She suddenly stills and looks at him with despair in her eyes "We must destroy them."

"Sorry to say but they aren't even that expensive to build apparently." The bard shrugs with a glint in his eye "And at least four people know how to build them already, including our dearest teacher."

"They die." She declares with conviction, only to get shoved forward slightly by an amused Housecarl.

"Come now, my Thane." Lydia fails to hold back a chuckle "It can't be that bad."

Minthara's eyes narrow into slits as she gives her a glare, it disappears as swiftly as it came but it was more than enough to remind the target of her rage of what happened last time.

(Flashback)

"Hey Lydia" Minthara calls out, her Housecarl walking up the the stall as she looked at the pile of preserved food sheepishly "I seem to have bought a bit more than I can carry, can you help me out?"

Lydia held back a sigh and nodded "Of course, my Thane. I am sworn to carry your burdens." Her voice was almost without sarcasm.

The glint in Minthara's eyes as she said those words made the young Housecarl feel all kinds of in danger.

(Days later)

A sea of corpses, both human and horse, greeted the group as they passed the Valtheim towers, most of whom bore some kind of Stormcloak livery, and all of whom were pierced with familiar crossbow and ballista bolts.

Marco and Lydia reacted as one might expect when seeing such a thing, both of them showing revulsion at what they saw.

Delphine, being the only Blade in the group as Esbern decided to remain behind and study the dragon attacks with Farengar, and Junia showed no outside reaction to the scene but were internally analyzing every single clue they could catch.

Minthara's eyes, on the other hand, shone with greed. She wasted no time and immediately started searching the scene of the massacre for any valuable loot and before long she had a nice pile of rune-scripted swords and axes neatly tied into a bundle, even as semi-dried blood and other fluids still dripped from them.

Hearing a disgusted scoff and feeling a disappointed glare being directed at her back, the Dragonborn turned around far too quickly for anyone to react and just in time to see Lydia trying to control her expression of disgust.

A sunny smile spread on the demigoddess' face as she picked the bundle up and proffered it to the disgruntled Housecarl "Would you be so kind as to carry this for me Lydia? My packs are full already."

"Uhm..." Lydia shifted uncomfortably "My Thane, that is..." Many words she wanted to say but none would come out as the obviously fake smile of her lady chilled her to the bone.

Uncaring for the Housecarl's predicament, Minthara came near her and whispered coldly "You were sworn to carry my burdens, were you not?"

The Housecarl wisely decided to quit while she could and simply accepted her fate and picked the bundle up, knowing damn well her armor would be filthy by the end of the day.

She had to carry it for three.

(Back to the present)

Her follower appropriately cowed, Minthara led the way outside the thin palisades of Ivarstead and toward a small camp her group had set up when they arrived. Riften had supposedly switched sides a day ago but Junia advised her to not draw too much attention as they did not know that neat little fact before they spoke to the innkeeper.

Their campsite was well hidden, positioned in a small depression in the forest floor and surrounded by a thick wall of tall trees, someone would have to literally stumble their way into it to find it and somehow Delphine still judged it to be too open.

They were quickly noticed by Junia and thus avoided getting reflexively stabbed by the paranoid Blade, they shared the news with the two agents and soon came upon the topic of the fancy sapphire claw hanging off of Minthara's belt.

"Why do you have that?" Delphine asked suspiciously before quickly adding "My lady." She was still not terribly respected by her charge and had to repeatedly hold herself back from offering any kind of criticism.

Minthara frowned momentarily but still explained "The innkeeper asked us to find out what is happening in the Shroud Hearth Barrow near the town, apparently the people are growing paranoid about it being haunted." She holds back a scowl "The fool is lucky I am actually trustworthy enough to do what he asked instead of just running off with the claw."

"There are tales of undead armies being broken and of dragons returning and the locals are afraid of a little haunting?" Junia asked, genuinely astonished, and not in a good way.

"Oh, I wouldn't count on them to worry about anything beyond their walls." Marco spoke up, his tone that of amusement "They would worry about a wolf stealing their chickens before they even bothered with mentions of dragons." He gave Minthara a quick glance at that "They would need to land on their homes for them to care."

"Great." The Imperial agent deadpanned.

Delphine nodded her agreement "That much is known, but why are we wasting time with this to begin with?"

"We are waiting for Reyvin." Minthara's response was clipped "If I have to deal with a bunch of cryptic old men who haven't left their cave for decades then I am bringing someone who can infuriate them as much as they will probably infuriate myself."

She earned multiple odd looks for that but she was long past caring about that, and simply picked her blade up and started walking, uncaring if anyone would follow her.

------

The ethereal body flickered back into its physical form as a spectral Blade slashed its head off, revealing a rugged looking Dunmer well into his two hundreds.

"A potion effect." Junia declared immediately.

"So much for haunting." Marco quipped, even as he wiped a small bead of swat from his brow when he thought no one was looking.

Delphine connected the clues just as quickly "He must have been relying on the Nords' superstitions while he looted the whole place as best as he could" She pointed toward a dustless leather sack in one of the corners of the room "That is probably all the plunder he managed to gather."

The greedy half dragon was already half way through the pile by the time she finished her sentence.

The group waited for Junia to go through the tomb robber's journal, pretty much confirming their earlier assumptions, and then all of them descended deeper into the Barrow. 

Just because he was stupid enough to be noticed by the locals doesn't mean Minthara wouldn't use the opportunity to enrich herself. She knew deep down that she would never have to worry about money again, but the memories of her little trip to Cyrodiil were still fresh and she could always just send the money from the loot to Solitude.

------

The far too lich-looking Dragon Priest's spine shattered completely under the surprised Dragonborn's unarmed strike, the creature was not even able to rise from its coffin as it was immediately beset by a flurry of armored fists and lightning bolts, the two adventurers having such hatred for the undead creatures they did not even hesitate to consider the danger and simply unloaded on the poor thing.

The rest pointedly did not comment on the reaction and also ignored Minthara's twitchy hands as she declared the place safe for pillaging.

----

Three days later the group found themselves in front of a cave carved into the side of a small hill, the entrance echoed with the sound of running water and smelled too fresh for what they knew it to be.

"Are we sure we don't want to wait?" Marco asked tentatively.

Lydia also looked hesitant, their previous descent into a dungeon having thoroughly informed her of just how numerous the defenders usually were.

"We are not weaklings anymore." Minthara declared "If there is a threat to us in there then we will all die to the dragons anyway."

"And this has nothing to do with you being bored?" The Altmer asked wryly.

Her eyes narrowed and a small smirk emerged on her face "Maybe if you could sing better we wouldn't be bored enough to prefer fighting the walking dead."

He winced and clutched at his heart "Oof." This prompted a few light chuckles but that did not last as the group soon turned serious and entered the supposed tomb of Archmage Geirmund.

(Reyvin's POV)

My connection to Marco's lute quickly led me toward the group's general location. I frowned as I realized they had already entered the tomb but I did not worry overmuch, any loss of theirs would have to be a fuckup of galactic proportions in this situation.

And so I found myself walking through the ruined halls at a leisurely pace, many of the underground water flows on the way having been bridged seemingly by Alteration magic and even a brand new stairwell led down into the depths, where any invaders would once have had to take a leap of faith to enter.

I passed almost the entire burial site before I started hearing the sounds of battle, mostly demands for someone to stop running and warnings of not overextending.

A grin unwillingly spread on my face as I walked in on the scene of a spectral Draugr leading Minthara and her group on a merry chase as he teleported from one platform to another, a small web-like network of mark and recall runes connecting the massive chamber and all of the twenty pillars within allowing him to do so for almost no cost.

The frustrated demigoddess even tried stopping time but the madlad once known as Sigdis Gauldursson had just enough time to replace himself with a mere illusion. This continued for a good five minutes.

They tried everything, Delphine and Junia attempted to position themselves to ambush him, Marco attempted mowing the illusions down and Minthara even tried just overwhelming the entire room with wind blades, this all failed.

The final son of Gauldur kept teleporting just out of range and resummoning his illusions while constantly peppering the group with his spectral arrows, luckily not achieving much of anything either.

They would have probably ended him after a while as teleportation was draining no matter what you did to prepare, and his illusions did not help, but after a while I grew bored with the merry chase and simply targeted all of the runes at once, blasting them with a forking lightning spell and shattering them all in an instant.

The spectral Draugr was caught completely off guard when his little network disappeared right from under him, his surprise overcoming his undead battle drive just long enough to have a pommel smashed into his head with the force of a giant, promptly turning said head into mush and launching it away like so much shrapnel.

Seemingly realizing that there was something off, Minthara slowly turned to where the spell came from and the moment she saw me her expression immediately shifted to that of a deer caught in headlights.

I think she would have preferred chasing the teleporter to this.

-----------------

Give me the stone ye filthy crone!

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