The Dockworker 35: Nope Nope Nope

• Posted by Clement Bilhorn July 28, 2012 - 608 views

  So it's another long walk out from Falkreath--that place needs a carriage, badly--to get to Riften. I meet an old man by a cottage on the roadside. Something about him gives me pause.

  

  I think it's the dead pools of nothing where his eyes should be. I'm almost hypnotized by the weirdness when a wolf suddenly comes out of nowhere and bites the guy.

  And then this happens.

  

  I don't quite know what to make of this. I'll buy that the dragon was using magic to hide himself--I do kind of the same thing all the time. But how did he fit? 

  But I don't have time to worry about it--he's brought a friend, and now I've got to kill two dragons. A tall order, but nothing I haven't done before.

  

  Um...

  

  ...

  

  So I guess this is it. The dragons have had enough of the polite, one-by-one approach, and I have decided to just annihilate me in the most inordinately excessive manner possible.

  I'm about to just explode from terror when one of them lands near me and I fire off an arrow.

  

  To my immense surprise and relief, the dragon just bursts into flame and crumbles away into dust. So he wasn't real. Now I just have to figure out which of the four or five monsters swirling around me up above are actually there.

  But I'm in something of a poor place to defend. There's almost no cover from the constant fire raining down from on high--these dragons may be illusions, but their fire is anything but. I hit the road and book it out north, when one of them crashes down in front of me. I poke it experimentally with an arrow.

  

  Yep, he's real.

  But he takes off before I can do any real damage, and I'm soon beset on all sides by the whirling maelstrom of fire. The very air seems thick with the dragons' roars, drowning out even the sound of the storm. It's impossible to place the location of even one of them, much less track a particular individual, so I'm forced to just shoot at everything and hope one of my arrows hits the alpha.

  

  I don't quite keep up with the alpha and his illusions. Soon, the sky looks nothing short of apocalyptic. I've lost count.

  

  And then, I get lucky. I wonder if I should thank Nocturnal for this one.

  

  Okay, show's over, Riverwood. You can go back to your homes.