Mortal; Day 4 of @tes-summer-fest
Death has a habit of catching you unaware. One moment you have plans to discuss whaling rights with the master of Tel Seyduhn, only to hear the next that his prentice and half his leg got eaten by a daedroth— leaving you to flounder alone before the parliament‘s congregation. A right fool it makes of you.
Other times, death simply leaves you climbing through a Skyrim snowstorm with rapidly diminishing bemusement.
The problem really lay less in the weather as much as it lay in the insanely wobbly and unbalanced stairs. Whoever had come up with it had been a failure of a mathematician, a mediocre architect at most. Fyahelm could state with significant certainty that they had been no conjurer at all, prior experience with Nords of yon considered.
Extant Nords too, judging by the gravely insulted innkeep, likely held back from rash action only by indecisiveness whether he wanted to spit in the summoner’s or the summon’s face. The name ‘Windcaller’ might have done the trick too. A right shame, and that where the man had been so helpful about the single local landmark for just that moment.
As a boy Fyahelm was fascinated by the Seven Thousand Steps, wanting to follow quite literally in his father‘s footsteps. Their sailing turns on the Sea of Ghosts had given him a harsh sodden idea what freezing really meant, but still, stairs, how novel! What mad genius! An entire mountain‘s worth of stairs!
Instead the war had made his father hesitant enough about sending a blatantly Chimer child into Alessian hands that he got to prentice under mighty Ysmir instead. Less divine and imposing if you grew up climbing him at dinner parties, but what an honour indeed. A blessed year that one, before the mainland decided they‘d had enough of Nords altogether and would stop at nothing to drive them out. Not that House Telvanni minded, or registered really, but Jurgen Windcaller had never quite mastered carelessness at his fellow Tongues’ antics.
Self-imposed isolation while mulling about the secrets of insane power was only to be expected of a native of Port Telvannis really, as was domination by sheer might. The right way of the voice is peace, guarded by violent mastery. Hardly a culture shock.
The Telvanni had taken to calling him Jarl years ago, with his father‘s disappearance. Why bother correcting them, for few would pay any heed at all. Few Telvanni would even know what a Jarl was if their towers depended on it; the only reason most were aware the title had passed on from his grandfather to father was that very public fatal duel —just the proper way to do it indeed. Half their neighbours likely assumed Fyahelm had killed his father at some point in the war, removing a distraction, an obstacle. Alas, it was only now that death had come knocking for Jurgen Windcaller.
Still, Fyahelm is here as a Nord on this sorrowful day, taking measured steps up the stairs instead of simply levitating up to the far mountain top. If water walking keeps the snow from swallowing his calves whole, that’s only to add to the solemn mood. A one man funeral procession treading soundlessly up the highest peak in the land.
One man; and the dremora. Veritable pack mules, both daedra bound to his will and swaying under the piles of light travel luggage. His mother has heaped him full with scrolls and trinkets enough to summon the hosts of Oblivion to stomp out of the harsh ice a tomb worthy of his father. Passwall and pitfall spells for carving the earth in broad strokes, hulking ogrims to carry stone and rubble, scamps for mixing the mortar and all kinds of humanoid daedra with restless hands nimble enough to put to shame any mortal mason. Charms and gems and traps to set the finish once his father lay interred.
Mistress Reynel had told him a last time in no uncertain terms to bring her bones and ash for the waiting door, then thrown all her grief into her treatise on soul gem refraction. Jhanel still has netch to herd in Apocrypha –a fine saying it might make once his wizenly wizard brother deigns help on their last filial duty– but for now it is him and an endless icy staircase leading up to the heavens and the feet of a corpse. An icy staircase like a drawn spring leading the then four of them back down the jolly way to a tomb yet unbuilt with a view of the sea his father loved so much.
“Little monotonous, eh?” Fyahelm asks one of the silent daedra in a terrible attempt at a proper Nord drawl. Not his fault both his parents were brought up speaking Chimeris. “Shame bout the view, but the things you could carve into this mountain…” The heavy clouds gravid with snow they had to traverse are fittingly mournful, but any student of his father’s could have cleared the skies and paths with a word. Such inhospitable recluses, just like home.
When they circle around there is a break in the clouds –almost as though his father’s ghost has heard his lamentations– light pouring through the window onto Skyrim below. Not one to dismiss omens, Fyahelm pulls himself into a lounge a good metre above the ground, motioning for tea as he regards the scenery. The Sea of Ghosts breaks on the horizon, blinding white in white– “There. Where he can hear the waves.”
No response, but then he needed the approval of neither thrall nor monk to lay his father to rest.
