Part IV: Making a Plan
Saarthal proved one thing to me: I needed backup. No way was I going to survive long enough on my own to earn the coin to get out of this frozen deathtrap. But that was a problem within itself. Anyone I could have trusted to have my back, died before we reached Winterhold.
For obvious reasons, I wasn’t trusting any random merc not to stab me in the back in the middle of the woods or leave me to die in some crypt. Not to mention I led an unlawful kind of life. But who could I ask?
My classmates were off the table. Brelyna had too much to prove and she was too soft. She wanted a peaceful life to learn magic without pressure expectations. A life of crime and subterfuge would wreck her. Onmund was too stuck on family values. His principles would get in the way especially with anything concerning the nords. J’zargo was no good either. He stroked his ego too much. I could practically hear him fapping away every time he opened his mouth. He’d fall apart the moment he lost control of the situation. He was also a complete idiot. He outright admitting to wanting to steal. Who does that? He’d get us caught bragging about his accomplishments.
Making friends would take too long which meant hiring a merc. Easier said than done. Winterhold was dead and I wasn’t trusting anyone from Windhelm. If the rumors were true, they didn’t like any non-nords too much.
I had the coin to buy passage wherever I needed to go. I planned to go to Riften, but that was where the Thieves Guild hung out. No way was I trusting a city run by liars and scoundrels.
In the meantime, Savos, the archmage, put me to work researching that weird orb. Goody. Homework. The moment I tried to look up anything I hit a dead end. It seemed the books were stolen by some upstart mage trying to prove himself and I would need to get them back from a bunch of mages kicked from the college for illegal experiments.
Somehow I knew diplomacy wasn’t going to be an option. No way was I storming a place full of demented mages alone. The closest city I felt comfortable going to was Whiterun. Asking around, I learned it was neutral in the war which was my best bet. Hopefully, I could find someone there.
While I was there, I looked up the strange writ of sealing. I couldn’t find anything except a book that mentioned something about a mage with an extremely powerful amulet. He was supposedly murdered by his sons who broke it up between them and then went on to terrorize the world until they were hunted down, killed, and sealed away. Sounded like something made up to me, but then again, the draugr I fought was beyond anything else in that crypt and the writ of sealing wasn’t some prank by a bored mage. I jotted down the location of the crypt the book mentioned for future reference. The one amulet piece I found hummed with power.
What would happen if I had all three?
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