I stood there—a broken woman, a trembling wreck with bones splintered and pain flaring white-hot through every fibre of me. Perhaps I blacked out for a moment, for voices rose around me when I came to. Odd voices. Guttural syllables spoken with a ceremonial cadence, like incantations hauled up from the oldest tombs. And then—if that sound could be called a laugh—there was a laugh: sinister, mocking, as if something delighted in my wasting away. It was unlike anything my tumultuous years had taught me to expect. The sounds struck the stone and folded back in ways that made me doubt my own ears.

  But I did not linger to philosophise on the acoustics of ancient, cursed vaults.

  Hands shaking like late autumn leaves, I grubbed for the flask at my belt. The poppy milk slid down my throat—putrid, vile—yet it dulled the sharpest edges of the pain. I tore at my leather jerkin with desperate, sharp claws and bared the shoulder beneath: swollen grotesquely, throbbing with such exquisite agony that tears ran free. I smeared the precious tincture over the wound, soaked a strip of cloth from my pack, and bound it tight, pretending for a moment to be some field surgeon—or a meek sister of Stendarr, if any such sisters still pestered the world. I doubted it, they were wielding swords at the late.

  No time for dawdling, though; the draught would steal my senses soon, layering them in wool; I needed them keen a little longer.

  I slipped along the narrow corridor and froze in a cold of pure terror: both sarcophagi yawned open, their massive lids slid aside like black doors thrown down, like graves welcoming me inside. Had the barrow-king awakened his guardians? How had he done it? What rite, what word, what gesture? Was it blood magic? Yet do these stone-stinking things know of blood at all? Arvel had flesh, rotten flesh, and blood, rotten blood—but he was an unfinished thing. Did the draugr rise together in perfect synchrony, or one after the other, limbs creaking as they shook stiffness from joints centuries old? Did their eyes snap open at once, or flutter like moths from cocoons?

  Laugh if you will, dear reader; laugh at such questions. Still, they tormented me as much as the wound in my ribs, despite my sorry state.

  Heavy, measured footsteps rolled out from the vast chamber. Rare. Deliberate. The clatter of steel on stone set my nerves jangling like a broken harpsichord string. I steadied myself—Nocturnal knows I tried—and peered deep into that hungry dark.

  Shapes resolved: three figures, moving with the patient method of some peasants at work, sweeping the chamber like ploughing a field. For now, they were mercifully distant. I began to crawl toward the gallery that led back to where Lovis and I had come.

  The tincture worked its slow and deceiving miracle. Pain dulled first; then scent, then sound; finally, sight softened into watercolour. I crept across that yawning space like a laudanum ghost, half-dead, half-dreaming. Sleep crept at me with velvet claws. Oh, such sweet, dark sleep—how I longed to lie down, close my eyes, and never wake.

  Never to wake again!

  Yet I remembered the monstrosity that Arvel had become, and the shambling dead that obeyed their king. No, they would not let me rest in peace—not even in the long sleep I craved. The king would rouse me, twist my body, force it to do things—vile, unspeakable things. Revulsion and hate burned through me, and with it, a shard of strength.

  I dimly recalled that I must be patient, though. Move slowly, with infinite care. Yet the darkness swarmed with danger, and my battered body screamed for shelter, food, warmth, water. My lips were cracked, my belly hollow, and the cold stone floor beneath me drank me empty.

  But these were only dreams—silly dreams of comfort. Reality was a long crawl through blackness, and beyond that, snow. Riverwood—my mind clung to its name like to a charm—Riverwood seemed not a real place at all, but some mythical town from another age, another world.

  So I clenched my teeth and crawled. Crawled long, crawled hard, until I thought myself no longer woman but worm: blind, deaf, senseless.

  And in this state—this pitiful delirium—I came among the butchered remains of Arvel's gang. There, my strength failed me. I sank amid the butchered carcasses, and at last I fainted.

  And I slept... though what dreams claimed me, I dare not tell.

  I woke up with a clear and rested mind, and this didn't surprise me because I knew that the strange alchemy of my body quickly turns poisons—well, most of them—into something useful, or at least harmless. But the entire right side of my torso hurt terribly, so I poured the last of the poppy milk onto the bandage and stood up, staggering among the silent, mangled corpses. Ah, those dead were good and peaceful and could do me no harm! Or so I hoped, though I feared that the barrow's foul magic might yet stain them with that unwholesome curse that robs the deceased of the so deserved rest.

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  Worried, I sniffed around but could only smell the pungent odors of decomposing bodies and rotten blood. So I headed as quickly as I could towards the great portal that stood like a monument of salvation before my hopeful eyes. And I was once again free, in the fresh and cold air of the subarctic night. Because it was night outside..." How long have I lingered in that damned barrow?" I croaked, hardly daring to believe I had crawled alive from that temple of Despair.

  Secunda shone ironically high in the vault of the deep, starry sky, and that filled me with anger. "Ah, I would have liked to see what you would have done in the face of that tool of death!" I shouted angrily. " You are not a panther, whelp," Nocturnal mocked, laughter like silk on steel. "You are but a little, sweet, whining kitten! Ha. Ha. Ha," the Goddess said, full of mockery. " Yet you are my foolish kitten, so, pretty please, head down to Riverwood as fast as you can! They'll give you milk!" And She left, roaring with laughter.

  "You are the worst thing that's ever happened to me, you cruel, selfish monster!" I shouted after Her, wanting—more than I'd ever wanted anything—to lunge, to gouge out those terrible, beautiful, beloved eyes.

  "Yeah, yeah... I know," She answered, amusement like a knife through my heart. "You needn't remind me. Oh, and do be sure to take the sack of gold and rubies you plundered from that stinking tomb." Her giggle came from the distance where the outer spheres fold in on themselves.

  Rage flamed through me so hot I forgot the wounds, the hunger, the thirst. All I wanted then was to prove myself to Her—to show Her what I could really do. Fate, it seems, liked my eagerness. Sooner than I expected, the chance came because that very cursed night, I met my first snow-troll.

  As I would later learn, trolls are not mere beasts of bulk and brutish strength. They are old things—flesh bound with stone, muscle threaded with mountain. In some old tales, trolls turn to rock when the sun touches them; in others, they wither into monuments of their own hunger, petrified corpses dotting the high passes. What I saw that night was the real thing, a Nordic variant, though: they are big and slow, yes, but relentless. Their skin, thick and rubbery as damp bark, laughs at steel, their wounds knit with uncanny swiftness, and when they seize you, you are caught as in the jaws of a landslide.

  Yet, these trolls do have a weakness. Their eyes. Some have three, some only one, but if you pierce that luminous, staring orb, you strike at the root of their strange vigor. Still, it requires calm, patience, and steady aim. None of which I had that night because I was gravely wounded and near my physical limits; in fact, I believe I crossed them quite a long time before that dreadful encounter. The air was cold and bit like a wolf's teeth, and the north wind, howling deep, swept the frozen snow from the mountaintop so that it seemed like a blizzard despite the clear sky above. On the small plateau, all around me appeared as a silvery, frozen brodery, and I walked with rare, tired steps toward the narrow and slippery trail that led to the river and to my salvation: Riverwood. That was when I saw it: a hulking silhouette, shoulders like boulders, three glimmering eyes glowing faintly in the dark. It moved with deliberate weight, each step like the fall of a tree, and the very mountain roots seemed to shudder beneath it.

  I stopped in amazement and terror; oh, there was no time for sneaking or trying to avoid the creature, for it already saw me and was coming up on the narrow path. I knelt down, cocked my crossbow with its masterful crank, nocked a bolt, and loosed it. It clanged off its hide and ricocheted into the night. I cranked and loaded again my weapon as fast as I could—alas, although it was crafted centuries ago by the finest craftsmen of the People of the Deep, this operation is slow, painfully slow in situations like that—and sent another bolt flying... useless, just another spark against a wall of living stone. The troll did not flinch, did not even acknowledge the sting. Only the snow hissed under its feet as it came nearer.

  Then I desperately thought: the eyes. It had to be the eyes! I steadied my breath, ignoring the hammering of my heart, the burn of my broken shoulder. I reset the crossbow again and time seemed to pass quickly, much too quickly, and I loosed it again when the troll was mere paces—its paces—away from me; the string sang, and the bolt flew true. It struck—yes!—into one of those pale orbs. The troll shrieked, a wet, alien bellow that curdled the air. It staggered and, with the force of a falling oak, toppled to its knees; it stayed so for a moment long as an age, then trembled deeply, and with a terrifying roar collapsed.

  But fate, especially mine, is often cruel: when it fell, one vast limb crashed across me, pinning my leg under. A scream burst from my lips, and pain filled me. I clawed, stabbed, and hacked with the Lucky Dagger at the thick flesh pressing me down. The beast writhed, still half-alive, its claws gouging the ground. I struck again and again—under and up the elbow, along the armpit, anywhere soft. Red blood gushed out like a geyser, steaming into the snow and over me. At last, with a strong convulsion, the troll shifted just enough for me to wrench my mangled leg free. I crawled toward the trail and—behind me, the troll was still moaning; I thought I heard it making desperate attempts to get up; I was moving so painfully that everything seemed like a terrifying nightmare, played out in slow motion. I got up, limped, staggered, fell down the slope, rolled with every breath torn from my exhausted lungs.

  And so, through a haze of agony and fever, I made it to Riverwood. The first colors of dawn painted the roofs with pale fire as I stumbled into the town. I reached the inn's door, Delphine's inn, and there I collapsed—bloodied, broken, more dead than alive.

  The last thing I remember was the taste of ice on my lips and a single thought in my head: Never ever let a troll catch you alone.