NOVEL WEB Chapter 3:Up To The Surface!
“Alright, hold on a second. I don’t even know what the hell is going on so one of you better explain all of this to me.”
One of the skeletons stepped forwards, albeit still in a low bow. The sounds of clinking armor now replacing the silence that once filled the tomb.
“We were the once living agents of the Underking. After his passing in High Rock, some of us had the chance of staying with him, some chose to leave. We are the ones that stayed, just in case the Underking required our assistance once again.”
There was a shift in the ranks as a few more undead in imperial armor and weapons moved to the front of the crowd, merging with the ones at the front. Charles was somewhat apprehensive of the whole situation to say the least, especially with dozens if not hundreds of undead kneeling at his feet.
It was uncomfortable to say the least for him. Just a while ago, people looked at him like human trash. A person who couldn’t accomplish anything in life no matter how much he tried and truly, he stayed like that for years. Rather getting lost in stories and games than confront the real world.
And now, he had entered one of the games that he had loved so much.
Maybe this was a chance given to me…
Or maybe it was just a way for him to cope with the rapidly changing situation. He glanced over the draugr’s, the ones who probably had no clue what was happening in the slightest. Truth be told, Charles felt extremely bad for them who were cursed to stay guard for all eternity. However, now he could change that, change all of it.
“All residents of the crypt, I release you from your duty as death guards. You do not need to guard this place any longer, nor kill anyone if you choose not to. It is up to you now.”
A few draugr’s glanced at each other to make sure they heard it correctly. They had been bound by oath to kill whoever entered the crypt, whether harmless or not. None of them wanted to cut down a harmless forager, nor a child who wandered down the wrong passage, yet none of that mattered when their axe or sword sliced through them.
The one that he had been talking to, the one with a huge battleaxe, stepped forward. He was one of the few whose eyes were not confused or, at least, didn’t seem to be faltering.
“We have killed, we have murdered, we are not worthy of any forgiveness. However, now that you have given us this opportunity, we will do our best to make up for our sins. Underking, whoever you are, guide us towards our redemption”
Charles nodded, not even sure if he was himself anymore.
“Very well, however, please tell me your name before anything. It’ll be easier to talk to you that way”
“In my lifetime, it was Kralse, my king.”
Not really recalling that name, all Charles could do was nod.
“Alright Kralse, it seems that something much larger than me nor you can understand is happening. For now, everyone find all the weapons, resources, and whoever could be an ally in this crypt.”
A shift occurred among all present, even the skeletons next to him, which he assumed were skeleton champions or guardians from Daggerfall and Cyrodiil, faltered a bit. All of them had stayed there for hundreds of years, the draugr’s for longer, they hadn’t done much besides fight, kill, clean, and sleep.
“When I am king, we are not immobile. We will change the world, mark my word. Kralse, agents, with me. Everyone else go around and find whatever looks useful.”
The armored skeletons and Kralse stayed in place while the rest of the draugr’s cleared out of the area. He could hear the stomping of boots down the hallway, unlike the normal lazy movement of draugrs, they almost felt…alive.
He looked around him. There were roughly a dozen skeletons, plus Kralse. All armed to the teeth, various maces, swords, shields, and various other weapons as well as armored with mostly mithril and adamantium.
Kralse was, now that Charles looked closer, fully equipped with heavy ancient nordic armor. The axe he was carrying was glowing a dim blue, surely an enchantment of some kind. The helmet he had on was fitted with long horns, so much so they would hit a doorway if he tried to walk through.
Though…I know Kralse is a Draugr but what kind?
“Er, Kralse. Do you know the terms for different draugr’s that people use nowadays?”
“I believe so”
“What do they call you, exactly?”
He paused a bit, almost like he was frozen. He was surely going through his memories to recall what people called him.
“From my memory, they called me a Deathlord”
Charles shook his head, absolutely stunned. A Draugr deathlord was rare, extremely so. The only thing above them was an overlord. They used enchanted weapons, and even dragon shouts. Most normal soldiers would get absolutely slaughtered by them. They’re sort of like discount dragonborns.
“wow..WOW. A deathlord. Well, I guess that means I’m quite safe with you then. Wait, that means you can use Thu’um, correct?”
“That is correct”
That was when Charles remembered a very specific word. A shout that he rarely used, because he used to just kill people in his way. However, now that this world was VERY real, he had to change his thoughts from when it was just a game.
“Zun Haal Viik?”
“One of the ones I know, yes.”
The disarming shout, causing anything under level 30, which is more than most imperials or stormcloaks, to lose their weapons.
He was certain that the living would not take too kindly to him hacking through everything. Undead were already a stigma across Tamriel, he was certain that they were all under a “kill on sight” list without hesitation.
“Use that first if we ever find anybody with possible hostile intentions.” He let out a smile at this, though nobody could see it through his bony features. He had to start changing the way he looked at everything, this was real life now.
“We’re going to the surface.”
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“Sir, I am not sure this is the best idea.”
The group of undead were moving quickly through the winded halls. It was a clear combination of nordic and imperial design, so the usual narrow hallways were a bit larger but still held that “charm” that normal dungeons had.
The clanking of armor of all sorts could be heard echoing throughout the stone halls, the torches along the hallway casting shadows of the draugr’s that were moving at alarming speeds, almost like they were soldiers preparing for war. Their normal groans of death were no more, only the controlled breathing of them walking throughout the crypt.
“Clearly, I am not the old Underking. Also, I am not a pile of bones in a coffin anymore so I’m doing things.” They started passing by the other waking draugrs, all who heard his command were doing just as he told them to. Gathering a multitude of armor, weapons and whatever else they could. Charles reached into his bag once again, pulling out a shield.
A dwarven made shield, to be specific. In daggerfall, and in Skyrim, it is known as spellbreaker. It can deflect any spell up to a certain damage threshold before it stops. However, it seems that this one is much stronger than the one obtainable in Skyrim, a shield that has a near infinite threshold of magic attacks.
Clearly, this place was much larger than Charles had first imagined. As he went through the halls, he thought he saw ghostly figures lurking in a few of the deserted halls only to disappear once he got close. He ignored them as he moved forwards, the armor he had on barely held any weight at all.
He had figured out long ago that he was wearing daedric armor, the heaviest and strongest armor to date of any elder scrolls game ever created. Of course, this would not help with his whole “trying to be a good guy” image if he wore these things, but the dark, jagged armor helped protect his bones from being crushed.
The stone stairs started to go upwards, with the torches following them up. Soon enough, they reached the start of a spiral staircase where skeevers were infesting the ground.
“SKREE!”
As one of the skeevers pounced at Charles, he raised spellbreaker up to stop the critter from biting into his armor. The enlarged rat slammed into the shield before he backhanded the skeever into the wall, killing it instantly.
The remains of the creature actually splattered against the wall. Either because of my armor or because of my strength stat I accumulated during my playthrough of Daggerfall, it was enough to disintegrate a small animal with one hit.
“Damn it”
He wanted to continue to kill them as practice, though they offered much less of a fight than normal. The moment one of the skeevers had been ragdolled across the place, the other skeevers scampered off into cracks of the building.
“My King, we are near the entrance.”
Kralse moved next to him as the group of us neared the entrance of the staircase. All of the undead unsheathed their various weapons from their sides, with Kralse taking his enchanted war-axe from his back as well.
Charles unsheathed the ebony blade he kept at his side, though he knew that it wasn’t the strongest weapon he had; it was clearly efficient enough to be listed in legends. A weapon of a daedric prince was not to be trifled with.
He looked back at everyone with him. It truly looked like they were going to start a full blown war, most of them were better equipped than the imperial legion, which was quite impressive to say the least. Shiny armor that didn’t show any apparent signs of aging, all of them were definitely capable of dealing with whatever was ahead.
“Soon enough, people will notice our movements. We must move quickly and assemble my followers. Stay hidden, out of sight, and avoid confrontation unless absolutely necessary.”
With those final words of confirmation, they headed up the stairs. Dust falling down from the large amount of people in heavy armor walking up it, luckily it was strong enough to not collapse onto anyone but there was always the risk.
The hallway led to a large, open area. Cracks in the ceiling let down large rays of light in the dark, stone floor with ancient stone pillars holding the structure upright. Moss had overrun the stone, creeping along pillars and the floor and covered it all in the green, grassy substance.
There was a raging bonfire near the entrance of the spiral staircase, where Charles finally heard people, the living, speaking for the first time. He heard sounds of bottles and laughter as he saw them drinking quite merrily.
He took a second look at the group, though they looked like normal adventurers they were far too lax to be them. Their armor was far too cheap and beat up, while loot was scattered all around them.
Charles put up his hand for the ones behind him to stop, crouching down onto the ground which prompted all of them to do the same.
“Kralse, get up here”
Kralse carefully moved forwards, making sure not to hit any of the rocks to avoid alerting any of the people.
“Is it me, do those guys look like bandits?”
He had mistaken them for normal adventurers at first, but adventurers didn’t wear studded armor. They also didn’t keep crates and chests full of loot around them while laughing around a bonfire in the middle of a dungeon.
“That seems to be the ca-”
“Guh- Damn you bandits! The Jarl will have your heads for this!”
Kralse was cut off as he heard a shout from someone to the far side of the room. Charles popped his head up again, looking towards the wall where he had heard the voice. That was when he got the confirmation that they were bandits.
Three people in iron or steel armor were tied up in one corner of the room. They all had their helmets off, with a yellow cloth or strap across their armor.
The bandits who were drinking paused, before laughing out loud.
“HA! The only way he’s getting to us is if he has the guts to send troops all the way here, up on a snowy mountain in the middle of nowhere. Face it, no one’s coming here.”
The bandit who spoke grabbed the person’s blond hair and pulled it back, revealing them to be a female nord who was baring her teeth at the bandit, no doubt imagining how his head would look on a pike.
“Actually, now that I look closely you’re quite the looker aren’t you? You sure you won’t be my lover? There’s loot everywhere where we work.”
“Go to Oblivion!”
The man shrugged before slamming her across the wall, causing cries of outrage from her compatriots.
“Heh, either way you’re all dead. Blame you’re beloved Jarl for killing off my brothers, we were just robbing a caravan, not sieging his city. He just had to kill off half of us.”
As the man was rambling on, Charles turned behind him and looked at the rest of his subordinates. They could easily take out all the bandits without breaking a sweat (literally) and bandits were one of the people that he could kill without remorse.
However, he knew those guards' clothes. They were the guards from Whiterun, the city that was more or less accepting of every faction that didn’t try to murder innocents. In other words, the first ones that could possibly accept him as a neutral or allied faction. He did not want his first interaction with Whiterun to be accidentally killing their guards when it wasn’t necessary.
He carefully reached around in his bag before pulling out a bow. A curved, deeply intricate bow made out of wooden metallic material deeply resembling an elven bow. However, this was anything but normal as it was known as Auriel’s bow, one of the most broken bows in elder scroll history.
“Does anyone know how to shoot a bow here?” Taking the arrows out with it, he turned behind him and whispered quietly to his soldiers, before one of them took a step forward. This one had a quiver on his back. Charles had neither touched nor shot a bow and arrow before, though it looked easy in game he wasn’t about to risk it and get people killed, especially on his first day here.
Charles handed him the bow, making the skeleton buck under the pressure the mythical weapon had. However, he recovered just as quickly as he was handed the arrows as well.
“Two of you, stay here with him at the entrance. The others spread out and stay low. I’ll give you a signal to shoot and the rest of us will pounce them.”
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Captured Guard P.O.V
“ARGH!”
The guard slammed across the wall before falling to the ground in agony. The scream echoed throughout the building, but the bandits just laughed at her pain.
“Anya! Goddamn you bastards, if you want a fight then let me go then we can brawl it out. She’s a new recruit, leave her out!”
And that was when the bandit who was doing all the speaking pulled out his sword, a slightly rusty nordic sword that he had surely robbed off of a victim or a tomb.
“Perhaps you all need a demonstration. We have been much more courteous to you damned dogs than you were to us.”
He brought the blade next to the older man’s neck, making him glare but also stare at the blade intently. Though not nearly as sharp as it would have been in its prime, one stroke and his neck was gone.
“GRR, bloody cowards!”
The bandit turned around and looked at his compatriots, before letting out a booming laugh.
“HA! Of course we’re cowards! Have you ever heard of a bandit that plays by the rules? What matters is you’re in binds and I’m not, I’m with the weapon and you’re not.”
“NO! Boss, I’ll take your place! I don’t have a family anyways, goddamn coward kill me instead!”
The woman, Anya, was struggling to get off of the ground but forced herself upright. The bandit glanced at her before smirking.
“Not you pretty lady, I’m sure you would fetch a verryyy nice price in the slave market.”
Raising the blade above his head, the bandit let out a smirk as he aimed for the guard’s neck. The latter closing his eyes, accepting his doomed fate.
“NO!”
FWOOSH!
The bandit stood still, blade still in place but the blade didn’t slice downwards.
CLANG!
The blade fell to the floor as the man clutched his throat. Where his throat originally was, all that remained was a small, smoldering hole that went straight through his throat and out the other side.
He let out one last gurgle and fell to the floor, much to the shock of both the captured guards and the bandits, watching him drown in his own blood.
And that’s chapter 3. And yes, I’m pulling artifacts out left and right just because I don’t want whole chapters introducing them and whatnot when he already had them. There will be the dragonborns P.O.V of things eventually, but for now it’s just the New Underking and a few others.
Also, for anyone asking why he isn’t killing everything since he’s so overpowered, it’s because he doesn’t want to kill unprovoked or in specific situations, like a hostage one. If he attacked, all the prisoners would have been killed but this is less about being kind hearted and more about using their safe release as a bargaining chip
Anyways, comments are always appreciated!
Thanks for reading
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