A Guilty Conscience

I should seek out a priest of the All Father, but have not seen any in this land.  It is a land lost in myth and legend, serving messengers of the All Father as gods, and in some cases serving demon lords themselves.  And I wonder if I am any better, for found myself in having to make a choice, and there was no good choice.  A choice was made, for better or worse and I bear the guilt.

Lidia and I made our way into the fortress to find it in the hands of the rebel tribesmen known as the Forsworn.  We made our way slowly through the fortress taking out isolated pockets of resistance that were not expecting us to be there. 

Near the top, we found a mage, and bloody remains, a shrine to Dibella, and book on how to open passways between this world and the demonic.  The mage we were forced to kill and I found the priest in his cell.  He was an arrogant man named Logrolf, a servant who had dedicated his life to another demon, a rival of the demon who had sent me seeking for him.   The priest said he had the power to contain the gateway in the basement of the house in Markarth, so I set him free but followed him there.

I found him in the basement calling upon the power of his rival demon, when he was trapped by the master of this altar.  And the master called me to make a choice.  Beat this priest of rival demon into submission or he would enter the world in force to do so himself.  I realized that somehow, the demon was still unable to fully touch this world.  Or at least unwilling.  I decided to take a chance, if somehow it could be distracted or the priest might be able to summon the last of his power and the close the portal if his life depended on it.  But at all cost I could not let the demon come into the world.  The last one had all but destroyed the Imperial City and taken my friend Martin's life. 

So I beat the priest and he died rather than submit.  But the demon restored him and we resumed again.  This time the priest submitted.  Then the demon ordered me to slay him, a man deserving of death anyway for consorting with another demon, but I was torn.  To slay at the command and beheast of demon... it was wrong.  But to avoid the demon might be able to enter the world.  But I knew this demon.  A fresh soul delivered into oblivion, it would depart here and seek out that soul.  An I could with its absence ward the portal and close it from this side. 

I slew the priest.  The world must come first. And the demon departed leaving me an evil mace as reward, a weapon that will be forever locked away in this world.  I waited a moment, and its presence was gone.  I warded the altar with the strongest of my gift drawing on all the source available in the city.  It should not be able to return from its side as long as the wards stand.  The power flowed through me and I lost track of time, space...myself.

I awoke in my own bed at the estate.  Lidia had carried me all the way home.  She had taken me to a medicus in Markarth who told he I would likely never awake from whatever strange disease had taken me.  But I did awake, and my gift is present and returning as I rest. 



And I hope I made the right decision.