Desmond deflected yet another swing of the greatsword. His attacker was a big man with a big weapon, but not much finesse.

"Tell you what," the bandit snarled through his filthy mustache, "you start running so I can stab you in the back."

"Dude, is that your idea of a witty remark?" Desmond feinted to the left, and when the bandit moved to block him, he swung his right arm round to slash the bandit's more exposed side. "I've already taken out your two pals. Why don't you just scram?"

Clearly the bandit was not a very intelligent fellow, or perhaps he was just intensely loyal to his fallen comrades, for he continued the fight, bellowing "Do your worst!"

And so Desmond and Kayd did just that.

After besting that final bandit, Desmond looted the weapon from one of the others. This, this was a good bow, not a crap-ass bow like the one Elrindir had offered for sale. This one had a durable leather grip in the middle, a strap to carry it by, and iron tips at each end to securely hold the bowstring.

He slung the bow over his back and closed each bandit's eyes with a whispered, "Requiescat in pace." Wishing peace on his fallen enemies wasn't usually that important to him, but in this world where zombies and gods existed, he felt it might be better to play it safe and try to avoid vengeful spirits coming back to haunt him.

He stood up from the last one and saw the unasked question on Kayd's face. "It's Italian. Or Latin, actually. Um, not that you guys have those languages here anyway. Never mind. Just a tradition from way far back in my family tree."

"What does the phrase mean?" Kayd asked, placing some looted gold in his waistsack. "Is it a spell?"

"No, not a spell. More of a blessing. It means 'rest in peace'. So their souls can be, like, you know, at rest."

"Oh," Kayd said with a nod.

Opening the heavy doors was a bit hard with the loud cold wind blowing forcefully, but Desmond's and Kayd's combined strength was enough to do it. Once they got inside, it seemed eerily quiet in comparison. The floor was wet with melted snow and grimy with moss. Desmond was glad he had acquired good boots.

A few large rats with grimy brown fur lay dead around the floor as they went further in. At least, Desmond thought they were rats, but they seemed overly large. Maybe giant rats, like that giant spider earlier. He felt a little sad; he'd always had a bit of a soft spot for rats, and even had a pet one named Christopher for a while when he lived in Ohio.

But he didn't have time to think about Christopher much, for soon his Eagle Vision flared on, and he gestured at Kayd to stop. On the other end of the barrow's entrance hall were a couple more red-aura'ed figures, chatting quietly over a fire. With a little focus, Desmond could extend his senses to hear their conversation.

"That dark elf wants to go on ahead, let him. Better him than us risking our necks."

"What if Arvel doesn't come back? I want my share from that claw!" the other one said, pitch rising in anger.

"Just shut it and keep an eye out for trouble." The first speaker caught sight of Desmond at just that moment, and quickly drew a bow to bead on him. "Like these two! Get out of my sight!"

Oops, detected. "I don't want a fight," Desmond began, "We're just looking for a Dra-"

"Dragon Claw," the second bandit spat. "We'll not let you take it! This is our job!"

Before Desmond could say anything else, the first bandit loosed an arrow at him. It whizzed through the air and grazed Desmond's ear as he dodged away. "Well fuck."

The second bandit raised up an enormous two-handed sword and came rushing at Desmond. But Kayd stepped between them before the distance was closed, and swung his axe into the meat of her arm. She roared in anger and turned her attention to the Redguard.

This freed Desmond to deal with the other one. He pulled the dagger from his hip and dashed in close to the archer, too close for him to get another shot in. The archer growled and flung his bow at Desmond, then turned and headed for a nearby table where a shortsword lay.

"Dude we don't need to fight!" Desmond reiterated.

"Coward!" the bandit roared, swinging the sword 'round at Desmond. "True Nords never back down from a fight!"

The sword tore through Desmond's shirt and sliced a line into his flesh, making him gasp in pain. "Fuck, okay, I gave you a chance!" He parried away the next swing and shoved his dagger into the guy's neck for a relatively painless death.

Then Desmond turned to check how Kayd was doing. He was standing triumphant over the bloody body of the other bandit. She wasn't quite dead yet. "Sovngarde awaits me," she said weakly as Desmond approached.

"Dishonorable bandits don't deserve Sovngarde," Kayd sneered. "It is for the righteous only."

Desmond knelt down by her. "We don't want to kill you."

"Speak for yourself, Desmond," Kayd said.

Desmond mentally rolled his eyes, and got out his last health potion. "Here, I'll split this with you." He gulped a few swallows from the bottle and then handed the remainder to the bandit.

"What are you doing?" asked Kayd.

"Being merciful, have you heard of it? It's not like we're mortal enemies."

The bandit woman - barely old enough to be called "woman", by Desmond's reckoning - managed to drink the last dregs, though she spilled a bit of it on the floor. Her wounds closed over into long dark scabs before their eyes, and she looked up at Desmond with a mixed expression. "You don't look like no missionary of Stendarr's mercy. What's your angle?"

"I don't have an angle," Desmond said.

"Looking to take advantage of me now that you've killed Harknir?"

Desmond recoiled. "What? No! We just are looking for something called a Dragonstone."

"Never heard of it."

"Well me neither before we got assigned to retrieve it. Maybe you could help?"

"Desmond, are you sure about this?" Kayd said under his breath. "She's a bandit, a common thief!"

"Hey, some of my best friends have been thieves," Desmond said loudly. Then he asked the woman, "What's your name, anyway? I'm Desmond."

The woman sat up shakily. "I'm Dorina. Dorina Hariksen." She shook her head. "I shouldn'a taken this job."

"Tell me about the job. You were supposed to get some Dragon Claw?" Desmond probed.

"Big golden one," she said with a slight nod. There was blood drying on her golden braids. "Me and Harknir and Arvel were gonna split the reward." She brushed a yet-forming tear from her eye.

"Okay," Desmond said, "do you feel up to going with us looking for it?"

Dorina pulled herself up to stand. "Yes, I can manage." She looked over at the other bandit's corpse. "Harknir was a bit of a pig's arse, anyway," she said, helping herself to the gold from his pockets.

"Yeah, seems like." Desmond gave a little laugh. He checked her in Eagle Vision again. She was no longer red, for what that was worth. "What about the guys outside?"

"Guys outside?" she repeated. "It was just us three, to my knowledge."

"Nah there was a gang of bandits outside, too," Kayd said, waving a hand in that direction. "Desmond didn't mind killing them for some reason."

"Well we gave the guys outside a chance to run off and save themselves, too, and they also rejected it," Desmond snipped back at him. "Dorina here's the only one who stopped attacking us eventually."

Dorina had by now taken Harknir's leather tunic and tied it around herself in place of the one thoroughly ruined by Kayd's axe. "All right, let's get that claw."

As they set off deeper into the barrow, Kayd was still miffed. "You got some romantic intentions clouding your mind?"

Desmond shot him a glare. "Dude she's like barely eighteen, if that. I just wanna give her a chance to live her life."

"You fellows whisperin' about me back there?" Dorina called with a light laugh.

"Sorry, Kayd doesn't trust real easy," Desmond answered.

"Well I don't trust Kayd much yet either, so we have that in common!" She laughed again, and then let out a small yelp.

Desmond leapt into action, drawing his dagger and jogging up to her. He soon found what had made her yelp. There was a thick sticky spider's web across the span of the narrow path here; thin and fragile enough he could easily cut through with his blade, but still, it was startling, as the darkness didn't allow one to see it coming.

"Ugh, hope there's not giant spiders again," Desmond muttered. "I hate those."

Beyond the spiderwebbing, the path widened into a room that looked like a crypt, with several coffins and burial urns. Desmond remembered Kayd's words about Draugr: undead warriors from eons past, kept animate by foul magicks.

Dorina twisted the top off one of the urns and poured the contents into her hand. "Fantastic! A sapphire!"

"Hey, not cool, stealing from the dead," Desmond said.

"I need the money more than the dead need the gem," Dorina retorted, pocketing the sapphire.

"You're gonna get bad karma."

"Bad what now?" she asked, brushing ash off her hands.

Desmond exhaled. "Never mind, loot away if you want. But just so you know, I been told that not all the dead people in here are entirely dead. If you catch my drift."

Dorina scoffed. "Draugr are a myth, like unicorns or dragons or Dwemer. Just stories for children."

"I've seen a dragon," Kayd said.

"Yeah, up close and personal," Desmond added.

Dorina scoffed again, and they continued on, deeper into the barrow. Thick ivy vines began to crisscross the walls and floor.

"I'm not lying about the dragon."

"Sure you aren't."

A deep rumbling sound began to be audible more and more as they descended several twisting stairways. "Okay should I be worried about that?" Desmond finally asked. It was giving him the heebie-jeebies.

"Just some underground river, probably," Dorina said.

"If you say so."

They came to another little room. This one had no coffins, but several almost-bare bookcases and a flaming sconce illuminating the area. Desmond gingerly picked up a small bottle from a shelf and dusted it off. The liquid inside looked a grungy blue.

"That's a magicka potion," Kayd whispered to him.

"Aren't all potions magical?"

"No, a magicka potion, it restores magicka. You're not a magic-user, you said."

"Uh, right." Desmond gave a small shake of his head and put the bottle back. I decided to be against plundering tombs, anyway.

Dorina picked up the bottle soon after and put it in a pocket of her tunic. "That'll be worth a few gold."

They continued on. Again, Desmond wondered how all the torches they passed by were already lit. "Who's that third guy you were with?"

"Arvel," Dorina answered. "I don't like him much either, but he got us this job."

"Come, look at this!" Kayd called from up ahead. Dorina and Desmond jogged to meet him in another room, larger than any of the previous ones. It had two levels, and all around there were faces and symbols carved into the walls.

Desmond turned around, taking it all in. The symbols seemed to be representations of animals: a whale, a snake, an eagle... On the floor in the center was a large lever, and a decaying corpse next to it. "Shit, that lever must do something pretty heavy. Let's be careful with that."

"I may have an impulsive streak, but wasn't about to go pulling it on a whim," Kayd said. He went up the room's stairway to examine items on the upper level.

Desmond went to look at the eagle carving in more detail. Oddly, all of the carvings had a faint glow in Eagle Vision. He touched the stone with the carved eagle, and found it loose. It seemed to be rotatable, like a Lazy Susan. On a hunch, he pushed it counterclockwise. Now the visible face of the stone showed a snake, just like the one on the second level. He looked around again. There were three of the rotatable stones here on the lower level, and two set into the wall on the upper level, and a third on the floor next to the lever.

"Fellows! It's a riddle!" Dorina exclaimed.

Desmond had just realized this himself. "We have to match the animals from up there to down here," he said, pointing.

"Oh, that seems too simple," Kayd said, looking between the two sets of carvings.

"It does, yeah. There's got to be something else." Desmond pondered.

"Oh come on! We know the solution!" Dorina said, moving the second rotating stone. "Come on, there'll be treasure!" She rotated the third one, and glanced to the upper level again to make extra sure she had it right. "Pull the lever, Desmond! I swear by the Nine nothing will go wrong."

Desmond moved the bones out of the way with his foot and put his weight into pushing the lever. To his surprise, it moved easily, and a metal grate on the other side of the room opened up.

Dorina laughed excitedly and entered the next room. "Oh, another gem! And a chest, let's see what's inside... Oh, only twenty gold?" She frowned.

"Well they would have done a much harder puzzle if it was a real awesome treasure," Desmond supposed.

"There's sure to be more treasure deeper in," Kayd said, pointing at a downward-spiralling staircase in a hole in the floor.

"Well if the rest of this dungeon is as easy as it's been so far, there'll be no problem." Desmond said with a smile. At least there were no freakishly frustrating timed parkour puzzles like some of the tombs he'd cleared to sync with Ezio.

They descended the stairs, and a flurry of rats crossed their path. "Ugh, skeevers," Dorina said.

"Skeevers? Where I'm from they're called rats," said Desmond.

She gave him a funny look.

"I had one as a pet."

"Gross," said Kayd.

"Well he didn't look like those ones!"

The next room was absolutely covered in more spiderwebs. The group moved through it cautiously.

Desmond, with his focused senses, was the first to hear a voice calling out from down the hall.

"Help! I need help!"

Desmond jogged up.

"Is that you Harknir? Dorina?" the voice asked.

"Oh that Arvel got hisself into trouble," Dorina said, rolling her eyes.

"Dorina! Help! Over here!"

After navigating a few more twisting hallways full of webs, they found Arvel. He was stuck with thick webbing to the side of a large room. "Oh gods, help! It's coming back!" he cried.

Desmond's senses made him glance upward, and he pulled his two companions back from rushing to Arvel. A humongous spider, deep reddish-brown, was descending from the high ceiling. Arvel kept screaming uselessly as Kayd, Desmond, and Dorina raised their weapons and began fighting it.

"I'm sorry!" Arvel sobbed. "I managed to wound it a little, before it spun me up like this!"

"Dude would you shut up!" Desmond shouted at Arvel.

The spider spat a glob of something across the room and it splashed on Dorina's tunic, causing her to hiss in pain. Desmond nocked an arrow and loosed it into the big bug's face, drawing its attention. It swung a big hairy limb at him and knocked the bow from his hands.

Desmond growled and pulled his dagger and sword, dual-wielding. "Come on, come get me, bastard."

The bastard scurried toward him and spat another glob, which Desmond ducked out of the way of. After ducking, he rolled under the spider and stabbed both weapons upward into its belly. It let out a curdling shriek and staggered toward Dorina, who slashed its mouthparts with gusto. Kayd added some axe swings from behind the spider, and soon it fell dead, curling on the floor.

"You did it! You killed it! Now cut me down!" Arvel demanded.

"How'd you get past the riddle?" Kayd asked.

"Riddle, what riddle?"

"With the moving stones."

Arvel shook his head as best he could with the webs restraining him. "The only moving stones I saw were the big ones that fell and closed off my way back as I was going through a side passage."

"Well your side passage made you miss out on this," Dorina boasted, jingling her sack of twenty gold.

"Can you and your new friends just cut me down already!"

"Alright, alright," Desmond muttered, beginning to saw through the webs. These were a lot stronger than the ones which had blocked his path before. Arvel's skin color was odd, Desmond thought. Apparently in Nirn, some people were actually literally black. Or very dark gray at least.

Once the webs were half-cut, Arvel kicked and pulled himself out the rest of the way. "You fools! I'm not sharing the treasure with anyone!", he called, running off down a passage behind where he'd been strung up.

Desmond, Kayd, and Dorina followed him with haste, chasing him through a round room filled with urns and down another winding sloped hall. They got into another crypt-like room with shelves holding mummified bodies.

And then the bodies started to get up. Their eyes were glowing a magical menacing blue.

"Zombies," Desmond muttered, pulling out his sword again. He swung at the neck of the first one that approached him. The draugr's head came clean off, flying away and bouncing off a wall.

Kayd cheered and did the same to a draugr approaching him.

That left two more in the room. A big brawny one had Dorina cornered against a wall. She kicked it in the nuts, but it had no effect. So she stabbed it with her shortsword instead. That at least slowed it down. Desmond snuck up behind it and jammed his dagger in up from the base of its head, causing it to finally fall.

"It's the head, you gotta disable the head," Desmond told her from his knowledge of zombie movies.

Dorina thanked him and ran off to confont the final draugr with this new tip, which put it out of commission quite fast.

"Where's Arvel, why isn't he helping?" she asked the group.

There came a familiar cry of "Ahh! Help me!" from another room, and the group followed it. Another draugr squad was in here, including a big ol' one, which was wielding a giant and ancient-looking sword in one hand, and spraying a torrent of blue ice shards from the other hand. Arvel was near-frozen already, and bloodied from the sharp shard edges.

"Hold on," Desmond yelled, running up to swing at the zombie's thick neck. The zombie turned around surprisingly quickly and growled "Dir volaan!", then aimed his ice spell at Desmond.

Desmond just barely dodged the brunt of the spell. He felt a chill all up his left side, but ignored it to hack the draugr's head off. This dude had a pretty thick neck, and it took several swings and several more dodged ice blasts before Desmond finished him off.

The room finally went quiet. The floor was littered with bodies. Including Arvel's.

"Well it's his own stinkin' fault," Dorina said, "running off on his own, especially when he already got almost killed once by that spider!"

"Mm," Desmond said.

Dorina went to her ally's body and picked it over, finding some gold and a potion in addition to the most important thing, the Golden Claw. She lifted it in the air triumphantly. "Well, fellows! Let's head back and get our reward!"

Desmond held an arm out to stop her. "Wait, we still need the Dragonstone. If you help us get that too, you'll earn even more gold."

She thought a moment. "All right, sure. Hope there's no more of those draugr we gotta fight."

The next hallway had three swinging blades crossing it back-and-forth. Desmond watched it for a minute.

"Got any ideas?" Kayd asked.

"Yeah. Hold on." Desmond leapt with precision timing past the first blade, then waited a few moments in the clear space, then dashed forward past the second and third. He turned around and gave a thumbs-up. "C'mon, it's not that hard actually."

"Well my body's a lot thicker than yours," Kayd responded, hands on hips.

"Oh c'mon."

"I could get a whole arm sliced off!"

"You can still be badass with only one arm! Lemme tell you a story about a-"

"Desmond!"

"Oh wait hold on! There's a mechanism here!" Desmond pulled the chain and the blades retracted into the walls. "Shoulda used Eagle Vision and seen it sooner."

"What's that you say?" Kayd asked, walking up to him.

"Uhh." Desmond almost didn't want to say, but hey, he trusted Kayd, didn't he? "I got these special senses sometimes, help me to spot things."

"Well that's a blessing," Kayd said with a smile.

"Let's move on, fellows!" Dorina urged. "Tell me, what's this Dragonstone look like?"

"Well, uh. Not sure, exactly," Desmond said as they walked on.

"It's got some kind of map on it, is all we were told. And it's probably in 'the main chamber'," Kayd elaborated. "Maybe Desmond's special senses can help find it."

They descended yet another set of stone stairs. The roar of the underground river was getting louder. They got a little lost down a side passage that dead-ended, but Desmond uncovered a treasure chest underneath a pile of dry bones. "That's what I'm talking about," Kayd said, smiling again. "Special senses!" The chest contained an amethyst, 4 gold, and a small potion. Dorina took the gem, Kayd the gold, and Desmond the potion.

The potion came in handy in the next halls, which contained more draugr that rose from slumber to attack the trio. Luckily, none of these were wielding magic like the one before, so they weren't that hard to take down. Then there was another long passageway, and then another. And then they reached an almost-dead end, where they had to fight another draugr and then wade through a babbling stream of water to continue. And then a long stretch of cavern, lit by bioluminescent mushrooms. And then the path headed downward steeply, the ground becoming thick with snow. And then the snow disappeared and was replaced by more vines.

"How much fucking longer is it gonna take to find the 'main chamber' of this place?" Desmond griped. "It feels like I been in this dungeon for four years!"

As if by fuckening magic, the next chamber they approached seemed pretty damn "main". There were three archways before them, and past that were giant pillars and large wooden doors.

"Do you sense the Dragonstone in there?" Kayd asked.

"Wait," Desmond whispered. His Eagle Vision highlighted another draugr through an archway covered with vines. He nocked an arrow and squinted as he aimed carefully through a small gap in the vines.

The arrow flew true and landed in the draugr's eye socket, drawing a roar in some dead language from the creature, which burst through the archway and began swinging its sword wildly at them. All three contributed mightily to the fight, but Kayd's axe struck the final blow to its skull.

"Thanks, guys," Desmond said, breathing heavily. "That one was pretty tough!" He and Kayd pulled the wooden doors open to reveal... another hallway. "Oh fuck my life," he muttered.

"Hey look, it's your favorite thing, Desmond," Kayd said, pointing down the hall. "Swinging blades!"

"Get bent."

"What?"

"Never mind."

After traversing the blades the same way as before, they came to another large two-level room, another candidate for the "main chamber".

"We must be a hundred miles underground or somethin'," Desmond mused. His musings were interrupted by the awakening of more draugr from coffins around the room. They fought brutally, and ended up needing to share another health potion after it was over.

"Maybe after this I'll go to that Magic College you mentioned, Kayd," Desmond said as they were catching their breath. "Learn some spells like the ones these boss-ass zombies kept hurling at us."

"You want to do that rather than join us Stormcloaks?"

"Well, maybe." Desmond had another reason for wanting to go to the College, of course; for the chance they could magic him back to his own world.

"You are a Stormcloak?" Dorina asked Kayd, excitedly.

Kayd smiled broadly. "I certainly am."

"Oh, I wish that I could be one!" she lamented.

"What is stopping you?"

"Well, they don't take women, do they?"

"Pft," Kayd scoffed, "we do indeed take women. Anyone who's willing to devote themselves to the cause!"

Dorina's eyes sparkled.

"Awesome," Desmond said with a little smile, "you've got a nice new job lined up."

"And you do too, if you'd like it?" Kayd said.

"I'm still thinking," Desmond said, standing up and walking on.

"Bolog aaz, mal lir!" roared the next draugr. Desmond wondered what language that was. Probably a dead one.

Up the stairs and through some twisting halls, they found another big set of doors. "If this isn't the main chamber, I'll shit myself," Desmond said, the words echoing around the cavern.

"Please don't shit yourself," Dorina said.

"It's a figure of speech."

"I figured it might be."

"Sorry, I'm not from around here."

They pulled open the doors to reveal a long wide corridor.

"Please don't shit yourself," Dorina said again, but grinning this time.

They trudged down the corridor. "Man, and think, we're gonna have to walk all the way back once we get to the friggin' Dragonstone."

"Might as well get aquainted. Where are you from?"

"It's uh, nooorth-weest of here," Desmond slowly attempted.

"Northwest High Rock," Kayd supplied helpfully.

"Yeah, on the... coast," Desmond added, hoping that was believable. "A litte ol' town, you probably never heard of it anyway. Where're you from?"

"Here in Skyrim," she answered, skipping along. "Riften."

"How'd you end up a bandit near Whiterun?" Kayd asked.

"Well the Horse's Ass Orphanage kicked me out when I aged out, right?"

"There's a place named the Horse's Ass Orphanage?" Desmond asked, incredulous.

"Well it ain't really named that, but- oh." Dorina stopped at the end of the hall. There was a big bronze door before the group, featuring concentric rings and animal carvings, stylized like the ones in the riddle room before. "Ah!" Dorina exclaimed. "The claw has the solution!" She pulled out the golden thing and examined its inner surface. "Fellows, help me move the rings to match this pattern," she said, showing them the claw, where similar animal designs were emblazoned.

With the three working together, they aligned the door images to match the claw. Nothing happened.

"Wait, here," Desmond said, poking at the door's center. "Three little holes. The claws on the claw can fit in there, I bet ya a hundred dollars." Just like the cave temple that opened up from the Apple.

"Here goes," Dorina said. She pressed the golden thing against the holes. It clicked some mechanism deep within the door, and with a great grinding noise the whole door sunk into the floor.

Holding their collective metaphorical breath, the group passed through the doorway and up a slightly sloping path. The path widened out into a cavern full of pillars. A couple dozen bats burst out from somewhere and flapped over their heads, screeching.

"Oooh, bats! Cool," said Desmond.

"Don't tell me you had one of those as a pet too?" Dorina asked, looking askance at him.

"No, of course not. I just think they're neat!"

The cavern opened up and was illuminated by high blue light; Desmond was reminded again of the Grand Temple.

"This has got to be the main chamber," said Kayd tiredly.

"Maybe," said Dorina, stepping forward with infinite caution.

Desmond walked slowly up some stairs toward an altar. A noise was thrumming in his head. It was markedly different than the roar of the underground river from before. Glancing over at Kayd and Dorina, Desmond could somehow sense that they didn't hear this noise. He looked back ahead at the altar, and at the curved stone wall behind the altar. It had a dozen different designs and markings carved on it all over, including some that looked almost like a kind of code or language.

The thrumming in his head increased. His Eagle Vision went on involuntarily, and he didn't like that, and tried to shut it off. His head ached from looking at the code-or-language, but he couldn't look away. One of the sections of carving was outlined in shining silver-blue.

The thrumming became almost voice-like, almost like a chorus of war-song in some language Desmond didn't know, in some language he'd forgotten in another life. Time seemed to slow. The glowing word on the wall leapt out at him as he reached a hand toward it.

Silver-blue air, imbued with some kind of power, swirled off the carved word, rushing toward him, flying into his body. It tingled and melded with his headache. Everything but the carved glowing word went dim. The thrumming war-song reached a peak, the voices yelling zealously.

What in the high fucking hell is happening?!

The silver-blue finished rushing into him, and the war-song in his head decrescendoed. His vision returned to normal. He turned around, meaning to call for Kayd and ask for explanation.

But there was a draugr rising from the altar, and so instead, he yelled, "Watch out!"

The draugr brandished an axe and a worn leather shield. It roared something and a blast of air pummeled into Desmond, knocking him back against the carvings.

Desmond got back on his feet and roared back at him, "Die!"

"Qiilaan us dilon!" the draugr retorted, gravelly and menacing, and swung with his axe, grazing Desmond's arm as he dodged away.

"No, fuck you!" Desmond answered, trying to swing at its neck. But it was wearing a heavy helmet that covered most of the neck. Fuck. Oh well, alternatives are plentiful. He knew several different ways to kill a human. Surely some of them would work on magic zombies too. He stabbed a downswing with his dagger, right through the draugr's eyehole, and wiggled it around.

The draugr roared again, and pushed Desmond away. Gore dripped from its open eye socket. It did the thing again, knocking Desmond backward and off the platform. He fell on his ass in a patch of dirt. Kayd rushed and helped him up while Dorina approached the draugr from behind.

"Take this, you fiend!" she yelled, slashing into its back.

The fiend growled and turned to her, and bashed her away from it with its shield. It ignored Kayd hacking at its arm and advanced on Desmond again. "Faaz! Paak! Dinok!"

Desmond rushed straight at it with his sword and dagger out, yelling, "I'm sorry I don't speak your fucking language!" His sword went straight through the draugr with a sickening noise, and it let out a groan, but didn't stop moving.

"By the Nine, this is a tough one!" Kayd exclaimed, running up to join Desmond.

The draugr swung out his axe arm and cut through Kayd's chest armor, slicing into his flesh a good inch and then kicking him away.

Desmond became incensed. "Don't you dare kill my friends!" he yelled, and grabbed the draugr's helmet, twisting it mightily.

The draugr attempted to speak. "F- foo..." A feeble rush of air pushed at Desmond.

"No, don't talk to me ever again!" Desmond pulled the helmet completely off and kicked the draugr to the ground. Standing over it, he swung his sword down once, twice, three times on the thing's neck, until finally, it was beheaded and it lay still. Then, panting, he ran over to Kayd who had fallen in a patch of mud.

Dorina was there already, feeding Kayd the last drops of a potion. "This is the last one we have."

"I know," Kayd said weakly. "T-thank you."

"Fuck, that was intense," Desmond said. "You're going to make it, right?" He ran a hand over Kayd's torn armor, watching the deep cut slowly scab up. "Maybe we should invest in chainmail for the future."

That drew a little laugh from Kayd. "Good idea."

"Is the Dragonstone up there?" Dorina asked, gesturing at the altar.

"It fuck well better be," said Desmond. He searched the pile of stuff laying beside the coffin from which the draugr had arisen. There was a mace that seemed to pulse with blue energy, and an emerald amulet, and some bags of gold, and...

"Aha, yes!"

There was a brown stone the size and shape of a baseball base, with a crude map carved into it, as well as one of the symbols from the curved back wall: a strange shape that seemed like an ominous helmeted head. Maybe a dragon's head? On the back of it, there was more of that weird language. Desmond feared he would go into another weird trance from looking at it, so he tucked it in his pack as fast as he could.

"Now let's find our way outta here," he called to his friends.