‘What do I do?!’ Septimus could hear the man on the other side moving around.
‘Do I leave, but he ate a guy?
I can’t just do nothing and let this psycho wander around killing people!’
Septimus felt very conflicted; on one hand, he never killed any human being even after coming to this world; rabbits and crabs didn’t count!
On the other hand, a man just got cannibalized, and Septimus felt that leaving would make him seriously question his morals.
‘I’m no saint, nor do I have a bleeding heart, but eating people is too much’
*Sigh*
‘Alright, you’re freaking dying tonight, you piece of shit!’
Steeling his resolve, Septimus defaulted to the stealth archer approach: shoot him from cover, use Summon Familiar to distract, and keep peppering with arrows.
When the noise stopped, he grabbed his bow and prepared to shoot the cannibal.
Slowly, Septimus peeked his head and saw the man sitting by the fire, using a cloth to clean his weapon.
‘Now or never!’
The arrow flew true and hit the cannibal in the back.
The man fell forward, catching himself with one arm.
Feeling the pain radiating from the arrow piercing his back, he let out a roar of rage.
“WHO DARES!?” The cannibal spotted Septimus.
“YOU FILTHY HEATHEN, I WILL DEDICATE YOUR MEAT TO MY LADY!” Then he charged.
Septimus was ready; he began casting immediately after attacking, his spell ready just before the man moved.
The purple portal lit up the night; the summoned wolf met the cannibal’s charge, fang and claw met iron sword.
The cannibal was obviously skilled in combat; even injured, he reacted swiftly and swung at the wolf.
The summon managed to dodge and bite the man’s leg; unfortunately, his trousers were padded with metal, so the damage was minimal.
Swinging a second time, the cannibal struck the summon and banished it.
As he was preparing to turn around and charge Septimus again, an arrow flew and struck him below the armpit.
“CURSE YOU!” The cannibal changed his grip on his weapon; with the arrow stuck in his ribs, he could no longer hold the sword with two hands.
“Come at me, you freak!” Septimus dropped his bow, grabbed a knife in his right hand and started casting with his left, then jumped backwards to create space.
The cannibal was fast; it almost seemed like he entered a berserker state!
With three large steps and a leap, he swung at Septimus; thankfully, he missed as the purple portal appeared between them.
The last thing the cannibal’s beady eyes saw was a blue translucent maw closing in on his head.
====================
Confirming the kill, Septimus proceeded to do his best impression of the thousand-yard stare.
“That was terrifying, nords are freaking scary man.” Seeing a giant of a man charge at you, mouth frothing with blood, was not pleasant in the slightest.
Make sure he’s dead, bite his head off.” The summon complied, and squelching noises filled the air.
“Alright then, time to loot and get out of here.” Septimus did a thorough check of the camp; there was not much, around 100 or so septims, and some fishing equipment he didn’t bring with him.
The fishing rod looked nice, but it was long and cumbersome.
He did not take any of the gear used by the cannibal, not due to moral reasons but because it stunk so bad Septimus thought the man crawled out of a sewer.
‘What are the chances I run into a cultist here of all places?
These guys have a cult in Markarth, I think; the quest gave a decent early game ring.’
With the adrenaline from the encounter still raging through him, Septimus pushed on till morning.
As the sun rose over the horizon, light returned, and to his surprise the other shore was clearly visible.
‘I’m almost there!
I remember there being a bridge next to Riverwood; no matter how exaggerated the disparity in the sizes between game and reality was, there is no way the bridge could be too large, which had to mean there was only a short way left to go.’
Feeling impatient, he hurried along, ignoring the exhaustion he felt from one full day and night of walking.
As Septimus lifted his gaze to check the horizon for signs of civilization for the nth time that day, he spotted something atop the cliffs to his right.
‘Hmm?
It’s hard to tell from here, but those look like the standing stones!’ Excited, he half-ran, half-walked to the base of the hill; the terrain was so steep he had to use his hands to climb up.
With a final push, Septimus grabbed a thick root and hauled himself up.
The climb was particularly difficult; the large bag on his back was pulling him down, and the exhaustion finally caught up with him, leaving his whole body caked in sweat.
Blinking away the drops of sweat that fell into his eyes, Septimus got up and looked around, a happy smile filling his face.
The place was just as he remembered: three stones sitting next to each other on a platform, with thick roots all around.
Standing in the middle of them, he could see that each stone had a different image on it: a warrior, a thief, and a wizard.
‘Which one should I pick?’ He felt giddy; in-game, the stones would increase the experience gain in the skills specific to the path depicted on the stone.
Septimus slowly examined each stone one by one without touching them.
‘The first one is the stone of the warrior.
I think this is the one I like the least.
Why would I become a warrior in a world with magic!’
‘This one is the thief stone.
I’m really tempted to pick this one; if it turned out I had no talent for magic, I would for sure have picked this one.’
‘And lastly, the mage stone, my beloved.
While I only know one spell, I am for sure heading to the college; there is no way I am not learning magic.
Fantasy must have magic!’
Giddy with excitement, Spetmius placed his hand on the Mage Stone.
And nothing happened. Get faster updates on novelping.com.
“Huh?
Don’t tell me…”
Not giving up, he stirred his magicka and pushed it into the stone; still, nothing happened.
“No, no, no, come on!”
Unresigned, he went over to the Thief Stone and tried it too; nothing happened, same with the Warrior Stone.
“This is bullshit!” Angry, Septimus dropped his bag and leaned his forehead on the Mage Stone, the cold sensation helping to calm him down.
‘I don’t believe this!
Why don’t these stones work?
In the game, the dragonborn only walked up to them, and voila, you’d get a buff, damn it!’
“Not being the chosen one sucks…”
Tired, he stood there, leaned on the Mage Stone, and gazed over the lake for a long time.
Absentmindedly, he began training his magic, as he’d been doing for days now, half-casting the spell over and over again when Septimus felt an odd sensation: his magicka was catching onto something.
‘What’s this?
Whenever I release the cast, the magicka flows back into me with close to no loss, but now something is absorbing a little bit, causing my reserves to go down!’
Trying it a few more times and realizing that it was not a one-time thing, Septimus jumped up and turned to the Mage Stone.
“It’s you!?
How?
I thought it didn’t work!?” After finding hope of the standing stone working once again, Septimus excitedly kept half-casting a spell, trying to figure out where the magicka was going.
At first he couldn’t tell much, just that his magicka reserves were diminishing.
When he used up about half of the total reserves, he finally felt something.
‘This is it!
I see it!
Whenever I cast, some of the magicka passes through the stone before returning to me, but there’s some kind of signature in the stone trying to activate by using part of the magicka before it returns to me!’
‘I think I understand: the stone obviously has a mechanism that activates with a small amount of magicka, so small that someone not able to control it would still be able to activate it, but it’s not accepting my magicka; in other words, these stones won’t activate for me but might for other people!’
“Ha!
This means that I have to find a stone that accepts my magicka for it to activate!”
Excited with the feeling of solving an arcane mystery for the first time, Septimus grabbed his bag and followed the path leading down towards Riverwood.
‘This is great, I didn’t like this lame stone anyway.
The other ones have much cooler powers!
The problem is now I have to visit them one by one and try to see which of them accept me, if any, and there’s like a dozen of them all over Skyrim!’