Northbound Pilgrimage II

Chapter I - Four Words

Author's Note:

Dear all,

as the title suggests, this is the continuation of my fanfic Northbound Pilgrimage. The story follows the journeys of my Dragonborn, Aeyrin – a Bosmer cleric from the city of Chorrol, and Bishop from Skyrim Romance Mod (as well as other minor characters).

For those of you who have read the first book, I am very glad that you stuck through the entire thing, and I am eternally grateful for your support and readership. Without all of you, I'd never take my writing this far :)

For those of you who didn't read the first book, I would suggest that you do, if you plan on reading this one. This is a direct continuation with tons of references and spoilers for the previous events and I'm pretty sure that you'd get lost very soon. The first book is available in its entirety on SRM website, Wattpad, FFnet and AO3.

In any case, I hope everyone enjoys the read, and I hope that you stick around to see where the story goes. There's a lot of unfinished business yet and I can't wait to share it all with you.

Enjoy :)

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It was finally over.

Her grip on the mildew-covered grass eased as her tense body finally relaxed a little.

It felt like it was getting worse.

She took a couple of deep breaths, while her heart continued pounding in her chest and her body heaved, covered in sweat. She could have sworn there was smoke coming out of her.

But of course there wasn't. There never was.

She was getting better at handling this before. At least it felt like it. But now, if anything, it felt much worse than it used to. Almost as bad as the first time.

She got back up on her feet unceremoniously before taking one more deep breath. It even took her so much longer to calm down when it was over. It was devastating to think of all that progress just... gone.

She wasn't left with much time to concern herself over it, however. A second later, a large hand squeezed her shoulder and a familiar voice echoed from behind her, full of worry: "Are you alright?"

"Yeah, thank you, Erik," she smiled a bit, as much as she could while she was still recovering, and she gently patted his hand on her shoulder.

Erik let his touch fall from her a little uncertainly, but soon enough, his attention was captured by something else as he approached the remains of the dead beast.

"I can't believe we killed it! I helped the Dragonborn kill a dragon!" he suddenly clapped his hands together in excitement. She almost expected him to start jumping up and down with joy. It was quite heartwarming to see such joy from their success. The battle was rough, but they both managed to persevere in the end.

Aeyrin looked over the dead bodies on the ground – four heavily armed men were lying at her feet, unmoving. If she had gotten there a little sooner, perhaps this could have been avoided.

But there was nothing to do about that now.

At least Erik was alright.

He had appeared like a saving grace, running into the fray alongside her when she least expected it.

For quite some time, she feared that she'd be left alone to face the dragon. It would have been the very first time for. Up until now, there was always someone with her. There were always soldiers, Companions, armed travelers and... Bishop.