Life in Skyrim had a way of taking the simplest plans and snapping them over its knee. It was a land of strange twists and stranger turns, where a straightforward errand could spiral into a saga before you'd even finished your morning ale.
Take Torin's visit to the Silas Mine, north of Falkreath. He'd gone there with a hopeful stride, intending to inquire about lodestone with the mine's manager. A simple question.
Instead, he was met at the entrance by a soot-streaked miner who could only shrug helplessly. "Only the manager would know for sure, lad. And he's… indisposed."
Indisposed, as it turned out, meant "trapped deep in the mine after the crew accidentally dug into a natural cave system now crawling with frostbite spiders the size of hounds."
The miners were too terrified to mount a rescue, and the only way to get the manager out—and more importantly, to seal the infestation off for good—was to clear the beasts and then use a carefully placed fireball spell to collapse the tunnel entrance.
It was the magical equivalent of a stick of dynamite, and it required a steady hand and a complete disregard for arachnids.
So, that's what Torin and Qasim did. A morning was spent wading through sticky webs and dodging venomous fangs, Echo proving surprisingly effective at squashing the skittering horrors.
Then came the delicate work of blowing a hole in the mountain without bringing the whole thing down on their heads.
Finally, they dragged a grateful, dust-covered manager back to the surface, the man babbling thanks. Torin, wiping spider ichor from his armor, finally asked his original question.
The manager blinked. "Lode-what? Never heard of it. Sorry, lad."
Torin just stared, too tired to even be properly angry. He'd fought giant spiders and rearranged a mountain's innards for a shrug. Still, the job hadn't been for free.
The weight of the coin purse the mine foreman pressed into his hand was a tangible, satisfying consolation. It was a welcome boon, especially now that he had an extra mouth to feed besides his bottomless pit of a bear.
That little adventure was just the warm-up.
His next stop the day after was Lake Ilinalta, the great body of water west of Falkreath. He still remembered its beauty from the game and hoped to spend some time there to rest. A simple, peaceful bit of relaxation.
He'd barely had time to spot his first cluster of crimson fireweed when a man came crashing through the reeds towards him. He was a hunter, wild-eyed and frantic, his clothes torn.
"You! Please, you have to help!" the man gasped, skidding to a halt. "My friend—he's trapped in a cave back there! There are wolves, angry ones, bigger than any I've seen! They got him cornered!"
Torin wanted to refuse. He really did. He'd just finished one messy job and had been looking forward to a few quiet hours with his plants. But the hunter was offering good coin, and the weight of a certain silent, judging look from Qasim—the kind that seemed to say 'We're not going to let this man get eaten by wolves, are we?'—made it impossible.
So, they went. They found the cave, heard the panicked shouts and the bone-chilling roars echoing from within, and arrived just in time. The trapped hunter was a mess of scratches and sheer terror, but he was alive.
Between Torin's hammer and magic, Qasim's swift blade, and Echo's, well, enthusiasm, they drove the enraged wolves off. The two hunters thanked them profusely, pressed a pouch of coins into Torin's hand, and practically fled back towards civilization.
Exasperated but now richer, Torin, persistent as ever, insisted on returning to the lakeshore. "We came here to relax, and by the Nine, we're going to relax."
To his surprise, the rest of the afternoon actually did proceed peacefully. Qasim meditated by the water's edge. Echo chased frogs. Torin spent two hours appreciating the scenery and gathering alchemical ingredients to sell later, the simple, repetitive task soothing his nerves.
Feeling adventurous, he even dug out a small vial of waterbreathing potion from his pack. "Always wanted to see what's down there," he muttered, and after a deep breath, he drank it and slipped beneath the glassy surface of Lake Ilinalta.
The underwater world was serene, a silent kingdom of swaying weeds and curious fish. His heart leapt when he spotted it: a heavy, iron-bound chest nestled amongst some ancient, submerged pillars.
Treasure!
He hooked his arms under it and began the slow, laborious process of dragging it back towards the shore, his lungs burning as the potion's magic began to fray at the edges.
He broke the surface gasping, just a few feet from the bank, and hauled the waterlogged chest onto the mud with a final, triumphant heave.
This, he thought, wiping lake water from his eyes, was the payoff. This was Skyrim's way of apologizing for the spiders and the bears.
He smashed the rusted lock open with his hammer, his fingers tingling with anticipation.
The chest was completely empty.
Save for one item.
Sitting perfectly dry in the center of the damp, moldy interior was a book with a blood-red cover.
Torin stared. For a long, terrifying moment, there was only the sound of his own harsh breathing and the gentle lap of the lake. Then, the dam broke.
"Not this thing again! Fuck!" The roar tore from his throat, raw and furious. He snatched the book and hurled it onto the ground with all his might. It landed with a dull, insulting thump, utterly undamaged.
Rage, hot and blinding, consumed him. He launched himself at it, his boots stomping down on the leather cover again and again and again, a wordless torrent of fury with every impact.
He ground it into the dirt, kicked it, pulverized the ground around it. For several minutes, he committed himself to the utter destruction of the inanimate object, his breath coming in ragged gasps.
Finally, chest heaving, he stopped. He was sweating, his hands clenched into trembling fists. He glared at the book. It was scuffed, dirty, but otherwise looked… fine.
With a final, guttural snarl of disgust, he snatched it up and hurled it in a high, spinning arc far out into the lake. It vanished with a distant, unsatisfying splash.
But his wrath wasn't spent. He turned on the deceptively heavy chest itself, the bearer of the cursed gift. He didn't just break it apart; he annihilated it.
He smashed the iron bands with a rock, splintered the waterlogged wood with furious kicks, and gathered every piece. Ignoring the perfectly dry branches all around them, he built a bonfire specifically from the chest's remains, going to absurd lengths to dry the wet wood over a smaller fire first before finally setting the whole pile ablaze.
He stood there, watching the flames consume the last physical reminder of his disappointment, the orange light dancing in his furious eyes.
Qasim, who had watched the entire explosive performance in silent, wide-eyed astonishment, finally cleared his throat. "I… take it you have history with that particular volume?"
Torin just shot him a look that could freeze lava. "Don't ask."
The journey out of Falkreath Hold did nothing to break the pattern. If anything, the strange, twisting momentum of their trip only picked up speed.
Trouble followed them like a persistent skeever. It wasn't just the wandering bandit groups they had to fight off, or the hungry wolves and territorial saber cats that saw Echo as a challenge. It felt like every other bend in the road had a new problem waiting for them.
They passed through the hamlet of Granite Hill, only to find the place in a uproar. The villagers were convinced a terrible curse had befallen them, sent by angry gods.
They spoke of visions—prophecies of the world's end, heralded by armies of giant, vengeful mudcrabs.
It took Torin half a day of poking around to trace the "curse" not to daedric influence, but to a patch of vivid, blue-spotted mushrooms that had taken root in the communal well.
The spores were leaching into the water, causing vivid, collective hallucinations. The solution was less about exorcism and more about hauling buckets and a lot of elbow grease.
Every step of the way, some new, bizarre task materialized. A farmer's missing cow led to a cave full of beasts...
While Torin had fully intended to take on as much work as possible to fill his coin purse, he'd never imagined being this sidetracked. It was relentless.
In a strange way, it was also deeply nostalgic. It reminded him, with an almost painful clarity, of his past life playing the game. He'd load up with a single goal in mind—I'm just going to deliver this letter—and three hours later, he'd be the thane of a hold, the leader of a guild, and halfway through a daedric quest, having forgotten the letter entirely.
Skyrim, it seemed, operated on the same principle in reality as it did in code: distraction was the default state of being.
He was getting so monumentally sidetracked that he started to jokingly mutter to himself.
"At this rate," he grumbled one evening as they patched up wounds from a surprise skirmish with a group of bandits poorly masquerading as Vigilants of Stendarr, "I'm starting to think I might be the Dragonborn. Only the legendary hero destined to save the world could possibly be this gods-damned busy."
But beneath the dark humor and the growing weight of coin in his pack, a deeper, more corrosive frustration was building. It wasn't the jobs or the monsters. It was that damned book.
It kept appearing. In his bedroll one morning. Tucked in a saddlebag on the back of a horse that randomly wandered into their campsite. Balanced perfectly on a rock in the middle of the road.
Each sighting was a fresh spark to his temper. He'd fly into a rage, stomping it into the mud, hurling it into a river, tossing it onto their campfire, or once, in a fit of pique, burying it under a pile of fresh mammoth dung they'd passed.
Yet, through it all, his will remained ironclad in one regard: he refused to interact with it in any other way. He would not open it. He would not read a single word.
He would not even smooth out its scuffed cover. His interaction began and ended with violent rejection.
It was a battle of stubbornness, Torin against an inanimate object, and he was damned if he was going to lose by giving it the attention it so clearly craved.
Just like that, in a blur of odd jobs, minor calamities, and one increasingly abused red book, two hectic weeks slipped by, and they finally crossed the rugged border into the Reach.
Despite its reputation for turmoil, the hold proved strangely peaceful, at least on the surface. The Forsworn, it seemed, were lying low after their bloody defeat in Markarth, licking their wounds and biding their time in the high crags.
The relative quiet meant they made excellent time. It only took a single day of travel from Granite Hill to push them more than halfway to their destination.
For the first time in what felt like ages, Torin found himself with an excess of hours that weren't already claimed by some immediate, screaming crisis.
He spent it the best way he knew how: by reading while he walked, his steps falling into an automatic rhythm on the stony path. He pulled out the thick, meticulously detailed book Skjor had given him—the one on enchantment theory he'd dubbed the Enchanter's Codex.
He'd barely had a chance to crack it open since the troll hunt, having only managed to slog through the dry, philosophical introduction.
That part had thrilled in its own way; it was a bold assertion that one could learn and even create enchantments from first principles, without needing to destroy an existing magical item on an altar to steal its secrets. It promised a deeper, more fundamental understanding of the art.
Now, with time finally on his side, he was eager to dive into the meat of it, to unravel the mysteries of weaving magicka into metal and leather.
His excitement lasted for about three pages.
He quickly came upon a detailed diagram meant to illustrate the "foundational lattice of a simple Frost enchantment."
The text accompanying it was dense with terminology that made his head swim.
"...by aligning the soul gem's resonant frequency with the tertiary aetherium lines drawn using a distillation of magical essences, the enchanter creates a conduit for the elemental..."
Torin's brow furrowed. He stopped walking, causing Echo to bump into his legs. "What in the seven hells," he muttered, his face darkening, "is an 'aetherium line drawn using magical essences'?"
Just as he'd wanted, the book proved to be far more advanced than the simple Enchanter's Primer he'd studied back in Whiterun. The problem was, it was too advanced.
It was like jumping from learning the alphabet to being handed a thesis on quantum physics written in Dwemeris. He could grasp the individual words, but the concepts they formed were a locked door, and he was desperately missing about five intermediate keys.
He let out a long, frustrated sigh and snapped the book shut.
The mysteries of enchanting, it seemed, would have to wait a little longer.
...
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