The Dockworker 20: Are You a Wizard?

• Posted by Clement Bilhorn July 4, 2012 - 425 views

  I'm not terribly surprised that a dragon charges me less than a minute after I take my leave of Karliah. And it's a familiar breed--the same as the first kind I fought. It has friends in the wild. 

  

  Lots of them.

  

  The heaving mountains of fur and muscle, otherwise known as bears and sabres, trap me in a crack in the glacier, and the dragon quickly takes advantage of my defenseless position.

  

  I manage to survive its assault, and as it flies away, I take the opportunity to crawl out of the crevasse and fight off some of the other animals coming to the fight. It's hard going, in the sun, what with the disease I seem to have contracted.

  Also, bears are generally pretty hard to kill in the first place.

  

  Fortunately, Karliah rushes into battle and lays waste with her own bow. Mercer said she was an excellent marksman, and he wasn't wrong. Although he's still a jerk and a loser and a traitor. 

  Anyways, while I'm down at the glacier's edge trying to fight off all the bears and sabres, Karliah actually slays the dragon by herself. 

  

  Now I'm impressed.

  There's still one sabre to finish, though, but I manage to ram my fancy new curvy sword all the way through its head and out the other side. It doesn't exit quite as easily as it went in, though, so I have to get creative.

  

  At this point, I'm so tired I'm a dead man walking. I can't catch a breath, and even my amazing regenerative capacities don't seem to be kicking in. 

  So when a fearsomely tough bandit ambushes me on my way to the college, I genuinely wonder if I'm done for, taken out by some ill humor I contracted who knows when.

  And then...it happens!

  

  I don't know what kind of magic I'm using, but it sure does the trick. Within seconds, my attacker is staggering on the ground, helpless, and my blood is pumping hard and fast in my veins once again. It's like we've switched places.

  By the time I arrive at Winterhold, I can't get over how excited I am to discover that I can use magic, so I'm pretty confident when the college's gatekeeper tells me she has a little test.

  

  Then she tells me to cast a "fear" spell. I don't know what in Shor's name that's supposed to be, even when she explains it to me (for a fee). So I demonstrate what I can do on a passing seagull. She's not impressed and still refuses to let me pass. 

  To say I'm disappointed is a gross understatement.

  I leave the college with anger in my heart but also feeling decidedly more chipper now that the sun's gone down. My nightly cycle is somewhat annoying, but at least it's predictable.

  Miffed, I realize I have no choice but to walk back to one of the other cities and hopefully find someone there who can actually teach me how to use magic more effectively. Seeing a huge statue on the way and curious what it's about, I take a small detour.

  

  My eyes adjust to the darkness, but the snow still makes it hard to see--at first, I wonder if I've stumbled upon the ghost of Heimskr. Happily, I find that it's just some creepy woman, worshiping a giant statue of a creepy woman. 

  She says something about prophecies and stars, but I'm already gone. Last priestess I listened to got my horsey killed.

  Over the next hill, I find some Stormcloaks at a fortress, assembling for something. 

  

  I can't resist the sight of seven Stormcloaks with their backs to me. At night. I start pouring arrows into the group of them. Four are down before they even realize where I am, and I'm only flushed out of hiding then because two civilians arrive on the road, from opposite directions.

  One of them is an obvious psycho, shrieking some unintelligible name repeatedly as he tries to hack me apart. The other is an obvious pansy, and takes two Stormcloak arrows to the neck before he even gets his knife out.

  

  I kill the crazy guy and then move on to the rest of the Stormcloaks.

  

  After that, I pick the fortress over for any valuables and then commandeer one of the now unowned horses wandering around outside. I ride south for Windhelm.

  

  A bear greets me a bit jovially on the round, but I don't trust him. No one with a smile that big can be up to any good. 

  

  As I pass through the ghostly Anga's Mill for the fourth time--a constant reminder of how dangerous dragons are and how I'm genetically superior to everyone else in Skyrim--I realize that I don't actually need to do anything at Windhelm now that I have a horse again. 

  I turn off the main road and head toward my property. Somehow, I manage to get lost even while staying to the path, but I see a familiar signpost and get myself back on track.

  

  I arrive at my property and get to work building a foundation for the house-to-come. It's fairly rudimentary, but it still consumes my small stockpile. While I'm happy with my handiwork, I don't like knowing I'll have to go shopping again so soon.

  

  Hopefully this next run doesn't leave an entire town extinct. 

  ...poor Dawnstar.