Maybe I'm not the Domesticated Type

Maybe I'm not meant to settle into one place.  Maybe it is because I miss my home, especially my home by the sea, though my small estate in Skingraad was comfortable too. My house in Whiterun is nice, and the estate in the Pale, is coming along. Gregory is a good builder.  But it doesn't feel right, not yet.  Not like home.  Even Dragon Falls, which is lovely, doesn't feel like home, even though I've trusted some very powerful items to its walls. 

I spend some time with Gregory working on finishing out the great hall, though there is much work to do.  He hired some local labor and they have dug out a rather impressive cellar.  And at the least we have beds now at the end of hard day's work. 

But one evening he and I knocked off early as rain had come in.  And we sat and talked over several rounds of Nordish mead that he had secured on one of his many trips into town for supplies.  Fortunately due to my harvesting of various items from people and creatures that keep trying to kill me, and the premium for dragon bone, gold is holding steady.  But anyway, Gregory and I talked.  He is the third son of landed noble of Dawnstar.  He didn't say much about his brothers or his father, but he went into service as a armsman and becoming a knight in service to the previous Jar.l  of Dawnstar.  This one, he didn't have much to say about.  But I get the impression he likes being in the service of a Thane. 

We have added a forge and workshop outside and I spend a few days hammering out and improving a set of steel armour taken from some idiot bandit down the road a few days ago.  Perhaps because I  knew I may need it soon, that dreadlord in the barrow that I dare not face keeps coming to mind... who is he, what is guarding if anything... does he have anything to do with these damn dragons?  Is it enough to just keep slaying the beasts?  What of this monster I keep seeing flying the heights?  Why do I feel that  destiny is coming?  That the root runs deep and the thorns that have pricked my flesh are nothing to the poison that comes?

That night I woke from a nightmare.  I was in a fight for my life.  Fire surged around me.  My gift was at full flare and yet I could feel my life seeping away.  The word was expended and my weapons though great seemed to bounce off an impenetrable evil.  Then this face was in front of me... of pure hate, hunger,  and arrogance confident in victory.  My death was here... I snapped awake..but the face remains.  Is this destiny?

Later that morning I set out for Whiterun.  Lidia asked to come along, and this time I thought I could use the company.  We returned to the estate in Pale, I introduced her to Gregory.  Funny... I sensed a kind of magnetism between them.  Gregory told me that he had seen a giant nearby, so Lidia and I went giant hunting.  I had made a gift to her of a great ebony waraxe.  She made good use of it.

On the way back to the Pale I kept thinking of my dream, and what it might be telling me.  Did this perchance have something to do with that gate to the demonic realm of oblivion that I had seen in the Labyrinth?  Could this have something to do with what had occured before in Cyrodil?  I began to think once again of that idiot in Dawnstar with his museum to the cult that sought to open a portal between this world and the demonic to bring change that had lead to the crisis and to Martin's death.  Could these dragons be the result of further tampering? Or the previous tampering?  This was a crucial question.  I resolved to return to Dawnstar and seek out this museum curator and find out what he was about and what he knew. We departed on the 1st of Morning Star.

Once again the fortress of Dunstar was in the hands of independent mercenaries that attempted to kill Lidia and myself.  We took out the outside guards.  One fellow was very good and almost had me, but I staggered him and Lidia took him from behind with her ebony axe.   We passed through quickly. 

In the pass of Pale the spiders were once again in abundance.  I had dismounted to deal with them when a dragon decided to add himself to the mix and Lidia found herself in a fight with a frost demon.  All at once.  All I needed now was a troop of marauders to come riding down on us and it would have been an excellent party.  This was not a blood dragon, something new.  It didn't seem as strong as the others.  I brought it to ground rapidly with magnified fire and finished it with Glamdring and Dragonsting - my dragon scale blade.  Lidia finished off the frost demon without my help, which is good, because I couldn't get in close with fire without taking the chance to kill her.

We rode into Dawnstar and made straight for the museum.  I put own my most impressive armour and weapons and face and made a strong entry seeking to know why he was here.  This man considers himself the descendent and remnant of the priesthood of the Mythic Dawn and seek supposedly only to preserve their memory and the story of how they impacted history for good or ill.  But he shared that he is looking for Marun's razor, that is is busted into three pieces hidden here in the North.  He even told me where these three places are.  He wants it to display as a tribute to the demon god of change, destruction, and ambition.  Those three words seem to sum up nicely what is happening here, now.  Maybe here is a hint at the source of the coming of dragons in the north. 

I decided to pursue the Razor, first to secure it.  It is too dangerous to have around in just anyone's hands.  And secondly, to earn the confidence of the curate and hopefully find out more if there is more to find about the currents below the surface.

We headed far west, past Markath.  Never been there.  Don't know the territory at all.  Neither does Lidia.  So we made first for Rorikstead, as far west as I've been.  Resupplying we headed into the mountains. Winter was upon us. 

The western mountains are an imposing boundary.  I could see tower rising on one set of peaks, dragons.  Another ancient and dread place for another day. 

We tried to find a way around.  Discovered a tower.  Lidia said she thought this was the Tower of Sundered. Light was fading so we pressed on.  Nearby was some kind of ceremonial ring that offered little beyond a view that  showed this way was impassable.  We backtracked.

In the evening darkness we spotted fires in the distance.  We approached carefully and found royal armsmen guarding a mine site.  We approached with confidence of welcome, and indeed were, but were warned to stay away from the mine, it was infested with restless dead.  This problem I have seen before, in ancient Nordic burial sites, the dead angry and awake.  It also must have something to do with the coming of these dragons. 



The local manager of the mine named the place the Soljund sinkhole and said they it was a wealth of moonstone, but had become dangerous.  The graves had awakened he said in the past weeks.  

I resolved to explore the caverns.  I would find myself in the most challenging fight I have faced since coming north.  Yes my arm grows strong again and the gift is flowing again and the newness of the Word in my blood begins to hum... but I am not yet the warrior I was and this I almost forgot to my demise.