Lucy's Journal #18: Burning for Lydia

• Posted by Piper Jo December 28, 2011 - 738 views

   

  Lydia, Lydia, Lydia…  She is brave and true, but just not the sharpest sword on the rack!  I’m sure that anyone who has met her would agree with me. 

  Esbern was leading the way as we wormed our way through the Karthspire looking for Sky Haven Temple, and we came to a room in which the entire floor was pressure plates.   Esbern took a step back and said, “We’ll come across once it’s safe.”  I took that to mean he was volunteering me to figure out the puzzle, make my way carefully across the room, and deactivate the trap.

  I took a tentative step onto the first pressure plate showing the “Dragonborn” symbol—nothing.  I reached out my foot and tapped the “King” pressure plate next to it.  A gout of flame blew across the room, narrowly missing me, so I felt the heat on my helmet.  I looked back at the others.  Delphine and Esbern both nodded, and Esbern repeated, “We’ll come across once its safe.”

  OK, I stepped carefully onto the next “Dragonborn” pressure plate.  No flames.  One more, one sideways, one forward…  Suddenly a blast of flame hit me in the face.  I ducked and covered my head until it stopped, then healed myself.  What in the blazes, I thought.  What did I do wrong?  Did I brush against a wrong plate?  My confidence shaken, I stepped to another plate, expecting another blast.  Nothing.  So I tried another.  Still good.  Another step, and once again a flame to the face.  A sudden suspicion made me look over my shoulder, and there was Lydia, standing right behind me, on the wrong plate.  She’d apparently assumed it was safe to follow me in a straight line.  This is why Lydia stresses me out.

  “Lydia, please wait right where you are.  Don’t move a muscle.”

  “As you wish, my Thane.”

  “We’ll come across once it’s safe,” Esbern repeated, and I gritted my teeth to avoid saying anything I’d regret.

  I made my way across the rest of the room without further injury to the pull cord that disabled the trap.  Esbern and Delphine leapt forward in childlike eagerness to reach Sky Haven Temple and I jogged after them, thinking that a word of thanks would not have gone amiss.

  The Temple itself was amazing!  Alduin’s Wall was like nothing I have ever seen.  While Delphine and I stood back to get the full view, Esbern put his face right up against the stone, examining the smallest details to get clues to the history depicted there.  When he had examined the final panels, he told us that the ancient Nords had used a special dragon shout to defeat Alduin.  I suggested asking the Graybeards what they knew about that shout.  Boy, that suggestion opened an unexpected can of worms!  Turns out the Blades and the Graybeards don’t see eye to eye. In the end though, it was agreed I would go.

  I then took the opportunity to wander around the place.  Besides the great meeting hall we’d first entered, there were storerooms and sleeping chambers. I imagined the place bustling with life, the Blades reborn and rebuilt.

  “Come on, Lydia,” I said. Then “Lydia?”  I looked around and realized she was nowhere to be found. I smacked my head with my hand as it occurred to me that she was still standing in middle of the fire trap room. 

  I worry about that girl.