NOVEL WEB Chapter 2:Return Of The Underking
Drip
Drip
Drip
The water droplets from the moist interior of whatever he was in had started to irritate Ivan, especially since they always dripped on his bare skull, the cold seeping through his bones.
Though, currently he was a bit preoccupied to act annoyed from a mild sprinkling of cave water.
“No, No...”
He was pulling items out left and right from his bag. Coins, potions, weapons, but nothing he could use to light his surroundings up.
He could see to a degree, possibly because of the innate nature of a skeleton, but the absolute silence was unnerving to say the least.
“C’mon, AHA!”
Lunging into the bag, he pulled out a singular torch. The torch itself ignited the moment it left it’s confines, illuminating the area where Ivan had awoken.
The flickering flames cast shadows across the various tombs that stood upright, all lined with intricate carvings and designs in stone.
Looking closer, he noticed that all of these upright tombs were all occupied, many of them filled with mummified remains of men and women with…nordic gear?
“Ah crap, so this is what he meant.”
Clearly, even in his panicked state, he realized something wasn’t right.
The underking was supposed to be in a tomb in High Rock, I’m fairly certain there were no mummified remains there. Is this even Daggerfall!?
Both in Cyrodiil and High Rock, none of them mummified their corpses. This resulted in most undead rising being either Skeletons, Ghosts, or zombies.
Of course, the current body of Ivan was a bit different. He was specifically a lich, an undead sorcerer that gained an incomplete form of immortality. Being able to keep their intelligence and spirit despite being only bones, they were exceptionally rare and dangerous.
He actually suspected he was an ancient Lich instead of a normal one, but that didn’t matter to him much as he continued to inspect the corpses.
He reached out with his metal covered hand (he had put on his gauntlet earlier) and poked the mummified remains in the chest.
“RAUGH!”
The remains suddenly straightened as a blue glow filled it’s eyes, it immediately pushed off of it’s tomb and grabbed the closest weapon, which was a curved Nordic steel axe, and stumbled into the halls.
It looked left and right for the intruder before turning its gaze on the heavily armored skeleton. It tilted its head, not used to seeing such a corpse in this weird armor moving around, leaning left and right to study him closely.
Ivan would be lying if he said that he wasn’t a bit intimidated by this barely dressed corpse.
The glowing blue eyes were almost burning into his face before it turned back around, sensing no living creature worth fighting, and went back into its tomb.
Ivan stayed still until the creature went back into its confines and once again turned motionless before breathing out and moving again.
“Alright, so that was kind of creepy. Though, I’m fairly certain that’s a draugr which means I’ve definitely done some weird teleportation since they only exist in Skyrim.”
He glanced around at the walls until he found what looked to be a torch mount, which he placed the torch on.
FWOOSH!
“WHOA!”
A loud noise caused Ivan to stumble back in shock as the whole room lit up. Multiple unlit torches had been placed on the mounts, only for all of them to be activated when a single torch was lit.
The lit torches, in turn, caused a few draugr’s to become active. Snapping awake from their slumber, they grabbed their weapons and readied themselves for intruders, only to be confused when there was no intruder to be seen.
“INTRUDERS!?”
One of the more heavily armored Draugr’s with a huge battle axe had shouted out loud, glancing left and right at the others before looking at the lit torches.
“Strange…I believed there to be intruders here. Wait, you!”
Unlike the others who had looked straight past Ivan, this one actually acknowledged his existence, albeit looking a bit confused.
“You…you are a skeleton, yet why do I feel such danger?”
Ivan looked around him, making sure he was the one the draugr was actually speaking to before looking back.
He shrugged, not really knowing what to say.
“I’ll be honest with you, I have no idea. But, if I am correct, I’m known as the hero of Daggerfall if you know who that is.”
This got a head shake from the draugr who, after noticing that Ivan wasn’t trying to attack him, set his battle axe to the side and took a seat on the floor. The rest of the draugrs went past them and out into the hallways of the catacombs that they were currently in.
“How…can you speak the dragon language? We have been here for centuries; the dragons being wiped out for the same amount of time. So, what are you?”
Wait, the dragon language?
“Wait, hold on a minute. I can just understand you like I would anyone else, the hell is going on!?”
“Are you certain you were not a Dragonborn in your lifetime?”
“That-”
This caused Ivan to falter mid-sentence. The agent of the emperor was just a normal person but what about the Underking?
There were two possible candidates for the creation of the lich known as the Underking. One of them was either Zurin Arctus, the battle mage of Tiber Septim himself or Ysmir Wulfharth, the ancient Nordic king who was one of the few known in history as Dragonborn.
“Wait, but I’m not speaking the dragon language though, so how can you understand me?”
The draugr looked confused at this question.
“All draugr’s are not the same age. Perhaps the ones you know of are older than us but, in our time, both Tamrielic and the Dragon Language were spoken by the people.”
Ivan’s brows furrowed at this.
“So why not use the common language? People would understand you and you could possibly get people to leave”
“ We are the cursed, the forgotten, the wretched ones. Time is the only thing preventing us from passing on, this immortality caused by Akatosh. The ones with incorrect burial rites and criminal pasts are under oath to heed to the owners of this dreaded crypt and attack all intruders, in the name of the dragons of old.”
The draugr said this in a solemn tone before removing his helmet, setting it by his side with a resounding clang!.
Are you telling me I’ve been killing these guys the entire time, just for loot? Man, that’s just depressing.
“Wait, what dungeon are we in right now? And who the heck is your owner then?”
“That…I cannot answer. This was originally an old tomb from some other place but, after what was called the warp of the West as one of the mage’s invading our territory called it, it seemed we had merged and gotten a new leader. Whoever that leader is, he is probably dead.”
“Wait, if I remember correctly the warp of the west was a dragon break where everybody, including the underking, got the totem of Tiber Septim.”
Moving towards the halls where the other draugr had headed out, Ivan was confused to find something that the halls had, midway, changed from dark rocks to some type of polished red brick as walls and gray polished bricks as the floor and ceiling.
All of it almost looked completely new, when compared to the dark tombs of Skyrim this was much more enjoyable and lavish.
But before he ventured further, he looked back at the seemingly depressed draugr, something Ivan would have never thought he would say in his life.
“You coming?”
“For what? I live to die and die to live, if there are intruders I fight and, if not, I rest.”
“Alright, you know what? You’re coming!”
Grabbing onto his mummified arm, he hauled him off the floor with surprising strength for a pile of reanimated bones, reaching towards the ground and grabbing his helmet before pushing it into his chest.
Striding into the more polished room, with a reluctant draugr in tow, Ivan glanced around in wonder at the architecture around him. Everything was different from what he remembered when playing Skyrim, the rough stone supports had been replaced with bronze pillars, there was a massive fireplace in the center of this area with the sounds of crackling wood in the room.
Right in front of a throne.
The other draugr’s were busy cleaning up the area, sweeping the barely dusty floors and adding more wood to the fireplace, with the smoke mysteriously dissipating despite being in a confined area that had no chimney. Other than attack, draugr’s also routinely cleaned areas and maintained the tombs while also worshiping their ancient dragon gods. Although most wouldn’t know that, seeing as they generally attacked living on sight.
“I do not see how it will be beneficial to see who the ownership has shifted towards; they are more than likely dead now with their curse on us being eternal”
Ignoring the draugr’s depressing outlook on absolutely everything, Ivan took a step closer to the throne. Made out of some type of carved stone made to imitate wood, it still shone with the same glint as if it was newly made.
Walking up to it, Ivan touched the chair's armrest. Knowing what he was about to do, the draugr quickly rushed forwards to try and stop him.
“Stop! You do not know what curse was put on that, it could send you into the realms of Oblivion!”
Ivan didn’t know why, perhaps it was because of the lack of feelings for danger after turning undead, but he felt drawn to this seat. He gingerly, and carefully, took a seat down on the throne. And that was when everything in the dungeon felt it.
“Holy-”
The moment he sat down, nearly all the draugr’s fell down to the floor from the pressure. Arcs of electricity, all various colors of blue, red, yellow and white surrounded his body. The entire throne let out a combined light, almost like a huge beacon, and launched the light upwards and past the ceiling towards the surface.
“What, what is this!?”
Ivan REALLY wanted to ask the same question. He was like a puppet on strings as he stood up, clutching the ebony blade in one hand and raising it towards the sky.
“MY FOLLOWERS, MY FRIENDS, MY LOYALISTS! YOU’RE TIME OF NEED HAS RETURNED, DANGER HAS ONCE AGAIN ARRIVED TO THREATEN THE ENTIRETY OF TAMRIEL. AGENTS OF THE UNDERKING, THIS IS THE LAST MESSAGE OF THE KING OF THE PAST. A NEW KING HAS ARRISON, ANSWER HIS CALL!”
Almost as if shedding his armor off completely, his body felt light as a feather as the bewildered Ivan got off of the throne. Glancing down, he noticed that he was levitating a few inches off the floor.
The Draugr’s finally recovered from the insane pressure that pressed them into the floor. Shakily getting up from the floor, they had no idea what just happened. The lower leveled draugr was still on the ground but a few, like the one that Ivan was just chatting with, stood up straight.
Ivan took a deep breath in, there was one more thing to be said. However, for some reason the voice had given him control to say it. He didn’t have much of a choice, as the statement was flashing in front of him.
“Residents of Bleak Falls Barrow, assemble under your King!”
This caused the ones the Draugr that had just got up to fall to their knees again. However, more than this, he heard multiple caskets and tombs breaking open.
Hordes of Draugrs filled the halls, the usual groaning mummified bodies so silent that you could hear a pin drop. Crowds of glowing blue eyes stared back at Ivan, who was silent as well. He couldn’t really comprehend what was happening, but he heard a number of thuds behind him as well.
That’s when those coffins opened. The coffins that lined the room weren’t the same, they were distinctly imperial, engraved with symbols and jewels. The lids burst open, revealing a number of well armored skeletons.
None of them wielded any Norse weapons, instead, many of them held Mithril and Adamantium weapons, far better equipment than any undead should be able to use.
They kneeled as well, towards the man on the throne, the one that had summoned them after hundreds of years.
“The subjects of the First Underking greet Charon, the second coming of the Underking!”
At this moment in time, unbeknownst to most of the factions, a power shift had just occurred across all of Tamriel. A new faction had just been reborn, one that hadn’t been seen since nearly 200 years ago, the faction of the dead.
The Underking was back.
And that’s a new chapter! Hopefully it was decent, though I’m researching a bunch of things between eras and lore so I get most of it accurate because I don’t need elder scrolls fans after my blood.
I’m having an honest blast writing all of this, I’ve loved the elder scroll lore for quite some time, almost more than the games themselves. Now, I’ll be rewriting history into something of my own creation and I couldn’t be more excited!
Until then,
W.O.V
Please subscribe to my patreon if you wish! As of now it is purely for supporting me but in a few weeks there will be 3, 5, and 10 advance chapters (Or at least until Bethesda comes after my ass ), but even without donations I still appreciate you guys!
W.O.V