If I had a septim for every time someone in Skyrim said “shortcut” and meant “near‑vertical death hike,” I would have two septims, which isn’t a lot but…I mean, c’mon.

 

Lane’s shortcut threaded through the upper ridges of the mountains between the plains outside Whiterun and the swamp that infested Morthal. It featured high, narrow paths where the wind screamed like it had personal grudges and the air felt thin enough to crack. The kind of place where you don’t fall so much as disappear, and everyone else just pretends you were never there because it just wouldn’t be worth the time and effort to try to find your body.

 

The cold didn’t bother me as I trudged along in my metal bikini while the others huddled under layers of furs looking absolutely miserable, but the wind was brutally strong. Snow dusted the stone in uneven sheets, hiding treacherous patches of ice that waited patiently for feet to slip or ankles to decide they had had enough, thank you very much.

 

After we had passed through the worst of it and come out on a snowy plateau, I heard a faint sound; voices, captured in illegible snatches.

 

At first, I thought it was the wind doing that thing it does—howling through cracks and gullies, turning into something that sounds like voices if your brain is tired enough. But this was different. Rhythmic. Measured. After a few more steps, I felt my blood grow cold as I realized what I was hearing.

 

Chanting.

 

Low. Deep. Familiar.

 

I stopped walking.

 

“Anyone else hear anything?” I asked, and much like the cheese shop purveyor, I expected the answer, “no.”

 

Kellan shook his head. Lazhah shrugged. The horses said, “Nay.” (Sorry about that one). Lane frowned, cocked her head, and listened. “I don’t hear anything.”

 

I felt compelled to complete the bit of sketch I had started (skipping a bit, as Brother Maynard may have suggested), so I mumbled, “Figures. Predictable, really I suppose. It was an act of purest optimism to have posed the question in the first place.”

 

They looked at me with very much the expressions you might have expected, were someone to describe the above to you and you had to picture them. Which I did and you do.

 

I apologize again. Apparently I’m feeling meta today.

 

Anway, cutting to the chase, I followed my ears, turning left and wading through hip-deep snow that eventually thinned out, and came to a wind-swept rock surface. Each step brought the chanting clearer and louder until it resonated in my chest rather than my ears.

 

Three syllables repeating. Ancient. Heavy.

 

I crested a rise and nearly fell straight off the mountain.

 

Below me, carved into a broad shelf of stone halfway down the cliff face, lay a dragon’s den.

 

It probably wasn’t originally a dragon’s den, although what purpose it may have served this far up a mountain, I have no idea. The ledge was wide enough to hold a small army (or one very smug apex predator). Jagged rocks formed natural cover along the edges, and at the far end stood a massive stone wall carved with glowing runes.

 

A fucking Word Wall way up here in the middle of fucking nowhere.

 

Of course, the reason I referred to it as a dragon’s den was because there was one of those as well.

It was enormous. Slate‑gray scales rimed with frost, wings folded in like a cloak of living ice. Each slow breath steamed into the air, crystallizing before drifting away. Its eyes were closed but its presence pressed down on the world like gravity had decided to get personal.

 

I dropped flat behind a boulder, heart pounding, as the others caught up, then made hushing sounds and pointed frantically at the edge as they began to ask questions.

 

Five minutes later, we were back where we had started trying to come up with a plan.

 

To be fair, it seemed like a good plan. It involved a very large boulder, a Shout, and gravity. The boulder was big but not so big it couldn’t move and, after some discussion, we agreed on an angle that seemed like it would make the boulder drop right on the dragon’s head. However, have I mentioned how fucking fast dragons are?

 

I positioned myself behind the boulder and gave it rip-roaring good Force Push. It obligingly left its place and shot for the cliff. However, the entire process was quite loud and the boulder was back a solid forty yards. By the time it dropped off the cliff, the dragon was not only already airborne, it was bearing down on us.

 

Now, I’m aware I have short-shrifted or even totally skipped my descriptions of a number of dragon fights up to this point, so you may, perhaps, be somehow under the impression that they were some kind of walks in the park. Easy game for us tempered warriors. The fact that I’m writing this, after all, is a spoiler alert of the first degree that I survived them.

 

Let me be clear, then, so there is no mistake: fighting dragons is not scary, frightening, nerve-wracking, or even panic-inducing.

 

It is fucking terrifying, to the extreme end of the meaning.

 

You may think I would have an advantage with my fancy shouts but what I learned very quickly was that I had exactly one (1) free shout  -- once they learned I could do that, they switched to a completely different kind of fighting using their own shouts and…well, let’s just say they had a LOT more experience with the fucking things than I did. They were able to counter everything I tried to use.

 

The only chance I had was to use the shouts I had in ways they did not anticipate, such as the aforementioned Force Pushing their shouts right back into their faces.

 

I bring this up because this was the first time I used that particular tactic with the full Force Push strength enabled, and it is the only reason we survived that fight.

 

See, the thing about dragons is, they can fly. We could not. Some of them landed from time to time, giving us an opportunity to actually hit them, but most of the time, they wisely stayed well out of range and just blasted us from the air or made sweeping dives, which were extra fear-inducing on a fucking ice-covered cliff.

 

In other fights, we were able to use terrain to get them down to our level -- it’s hard to kill something in a forest, since even if you burn the trees, the burned trees are still there. But there was nothing like that out on this snowy plain.

 

But then it swept down at us and I had a lucky angle. It started to breathe ice and I Force Pushed that shit right back up it throat and…well, we’ll just call it what it was. The thing suffocated on the ice ball that formed in its throat. It couldn’t breathe and stumbled over the cliff and crashed to the ground next to the word wall, where it convulsed for so long, I actually began to feel bad for the thing. Finally, it shuttered to stillness.

 

Two seconds later, I had a massive orgasm on the edge of the cliff that almost had me joining it in death. Fortunately, Lane and Kellan were there to pull me back.

 

It took us the rest of the day to get down to the nest, or whatever. It was clearly manmade, with old stone flagstones that remained impressively mostly whole. Presumably it was some sort of old altar or… I have no idea, I don’t know why I’m bothering to speculate.

 

As we approached the all, Lane reminded us that having orgasms like this was not very good for me. Lazhah immediately volunteered to help with that, which prompted Kellan to get over his dislike of extreme public displays of affection.

 

Which is to say, we made love to the sounds of my getting the next word and I gotta tell you – it was the best feeling I have ever had. The orgasms were already mind blowing, but the shared experience added another dimension. It did help with the pressure on my brain, so I felt less fearful of a sudden aneurysm, but somehow having that dick inside me during it made the rest of my body…I don’t know, balance things out. It still felt all-universe good, but it felt that way on a deeper level that didn’t feel like it would harm me.

 

Or something. I don’t know how to explain it. The point is, fucking when taking a dragon soul or a word from a word wall felt better while also removing the pressure that made me unable to think and made me feel like my head would explode.

 

Or, even more succinctly: Lane was right.

 

Anyway. This was where I picked up Freeze!, otherwise known as Fo Krah Diin. I did NOT like it. I still don’t, and I never use it. It gave my tongue frostbite the only time I tried it (which was right there at the word wall, and it’s a good thing my head was on Kellan’s shoulder – if we had been kissing, it would have likely frozen his head off). Freeze! Is the breath weapon the dragons use – the very same one the dragon we had just killed was using. It really hurts if your mouth is not a dragon’s mouth. 0/10, do not recommend.

 

Don’t feed the bastards. Feed yourself instead.

 

 

 

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