skyrimkinkmeme | Skyrim Page 5 - "NAKED! Naked naked naked "

Skyrim Page 5 - "NAKED! Naked naked naked "

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The girl had studied his face intently while he had been lost to his worries. “I guess you know what it does.”

Einarth simply bowed his head in response.

“I don’t know what will happen to me when this is over, and I’m not sure I’ll make it even if I win.” The Dragonborn closed her eyes and turned once more to the sky above. “If I die... someone else needs to end this war.”

Ulfric.

“I don’t know if leaving the Empire is the best thing for Skyrim. Even if I do trust and respect many of it’s supporters. But the Aldmeri Dominion is so heavily entrenched in Imperial governance, that I’m not sure they’re capable of protecting anyone anymore. They certainly can’t protect themselves. Look at what happened to the Blades, and what they replaced the Blades with. Not even the Emperor…” The girl choked a little at that. The strangest expression crossed her face, and the old man thought he saw shame, though he knew not why. Perhaps the girl was more emotional than he gave her credit for, for her to feel the enormity of the situation so keenly. She was, he realized with a start, not so unlike what Ulfric in that regard. There was a love of country in her that he had not noticed before now.

“And the Thalmor… The Thalmor are playing the long game with us. They’re no better than the Daedra: they first take our beliefs, they slowly twist and change our identities, and then they do what they want once we’ve lost ourselves. Bloody battle is obvious, but this is a war of the mind. They’re trying to take who we are, and once they have broken us as a people, it’ll be easy to take the country in a war. General Tullius knows, Rikke knows, so many of them know. But who can do anything to stop it? The Legion can’t, because they’re stuck upholding that treaty. And the Altmer have had a long time to plan. They’ll have a long time to act on those plans, too. Time many other people don’t.”

If that were true, then perhaps even High Hrothgar would not be safe. The Greybeards were followers of the Way of the Voice, and as such were the keepers of a long honored tradition of the Nords. If the Thalmor sought to destroy all the cultural symbols of Skyrim, they were most certainly a target.

“But Ulfric? Don’t tell Arngeir I said this, but Ulfric might destroy Skyrim more readily than the Thalmor. He has so much hatred. Enough that he sees enemies in those who would be allies, and would make allies of many who are less than honorable. The things that happen in his city are simply inhumane. The Elves and Argonians have been reduced to living in poverty and filth, driven to shady dealings to make ends meet. There is even murder in the upper streets. And he does nothing! Absolutely nothing if they are not Nords. If all of Skyrim were to be run like that, there might not be anything left to save.”

Then what in Oblivion was she doing asking Ulfric for more?

Einarth didn’t bother hiding how perplexed he was, and the girl rushed to explain herself: “There’s a good man in there, I know it! He wasn’t always like this. You would know better than I.” But that still doesn’t excuse what he’s become. Einarth thought darkly.

“He’s too- he can’t truly hate foreigners so much. But it’s something he’s come to wrap himself up too tightly in. He’s lost sight of his goals, of himself. That hatred was put in him by the Thalmor. He intends to fight them. They’re never very far from his mind. It’s impossible not to be so painfully aware of them, given what they do to people, to the things they say, to how they say them. It’s so hard not to hate everything about them! That’s simply the way they were raised to be; how do you overcome the ideology that you were shaped from birth to believe in? There are Altmer who do, though, and I can’t fault them. They say that the Thalmor have twisted and ruined everything it means to be Altmer. I can't speak for them, but I daresay it’s true. Whatever the case, Ulfric’s been taking out his hurt and anger on all mer, and that isn’t right.”

The girl clenched her fists and squeezed her eyes shut. But none of that stopped her from crying.

“They’ve hurt him. Broken him. They’re using him even now. And I don’t know how to stop it. How can I save him from them? How can I save him from himself?”

As a hermit sequestered from the world, Einarth had never learned how to deal with crying women. Men did not weep openly. Men were not supposed to. Women were considered soft, but in the case of the Dragonborn, that softness was not necessarily weakness. It allowed her to find the nuance of things, to see the world with eyes unfettered by an unyielding worldview. It allowed her to have compassion born of understanding, and not mere pity. But this? To oppose Ulfric and yet shed tears for the man?

So he stood there, dumbfounded and silent. It had been a long time since he had been so unsure, so lost for what to do. Perhaps this was what Ulfric had felt not too long ago. For a man of action, he’d been just about useless when the Dragonborn had been on the verge of tears earlier. The old man might have been amused at finally finding something in common with the boy after all these years if the situation had not confounded him so.

The tears slowed, but it was hard to say if they had stopped. She made hardly a sound as she wept, and Einarth wondered, not without worry, how the girl had learned how to weep silently.

“Maybe it’s only because I am Dragonborn, but he doesn’t seem to hate me for being an outsider. He had seemed shocked at first, but did not contest my title after a demonstration.” Perhaps there is hope for the boy. Or was she simply an acceptable exception? “Maybe he’ll listen to me. I don’t know if he will, but there has to be some way I can reach him.”

What was it about Ulfric that had compelled Arngeir, and now the Dragonborn?

“You should hear him when he talks about the old legends.”

Einarth’s gaze sharpened. Was it for the sake of building his own legend that the boy persisted in such bloody pursuits?

“No one tells stories the way he does. Especially the old songs when he thinks no one is watching. If I could give those back to him, restore his dreams, then maybe he might be able to see Skyrim again. To really see what it is, and what it has become. He loves the stories too much because he thinks they’re all he has now. He’s not fighting for the future, he’s fighting for what he’s lost. And there’s so much he’s missing because of it.” The Dragonborn wiped her face with her hands before turning to the old master, “He cares in spite of everything that’s happened to him. Skyrim needs people like that. People who can find it in themselves to fight, to love even, especially when they’re past hope. At the very least, he deserves a chance to be the kind of man he wants to be, to be the man he sought to be all those years ago.”

Passion. They were all full of it. It simply manifested in different ways. They were all so driven by by it, that perhaps he really should have realized much sooner that it was inevitable that they would clash. Arngeir was passionate in his devotion to the Way of the Voice, Ulfric was passionate about following in the footsteps of his heroes, and the Dragonborn was passionate about helping the helpless. The image of a helpless Ulfric flashed across his mind, and Einarth tamped down his amusement immediately; the girl was counting on him to be a font wisdom, and snickering in her face would have been highly inappropriate. Still, the girl was not wrong about the man; he needed help, it was a ailment of the soul that tore at the man, and who better to help him than one who might understand him best?

“I think that, given the chance, and a push in the right direction, he could be exactly what Skyrim needs. It may be enough to make leaving the empire worth it. And to be rid of the Thalmor.”

That was an awful lot of hope to place on a man with such a dismal record…

“I don’t know if I can do enough for that to happen. Or if I’ll even be around to do anything at all. But no matter what, Skyrim needs this to end. This war is unsustainable, and the Thalmor cannot be allowed to do this to Skyrim, or to anyone else. But someone has to do it. Someone willing to risk everything to save her. We need someone who will try and succeed.”

The Dragonborn was herself a hero, and yet looking for one other?

Einarth marvelled at the revelation, but the girl fell silent, and it seemed as though her near-admission had drained her. It wasn’t often the girl talked so much, and it seemed that she was done speaking for the time being. So they stood in silence, both lost in their own thoughts.

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