Northbound Pilgrimage II

Chapter CXXVIII - Secunda Waxing

Aeyrin and Bishop spent the rest of their day in Sky Haven Temple, listening to Esbern's stories and raiding the Blades' supplies.

They didn't want to take too much from them – resupplying here must have been tough – but they did help themselves to some food and then they started to scour the Blades' research and records.

There was one thing of particular interest to them – Erik's maps.

He had dozens of them, one more impressive than the other. He was clearly a very good scout. They had so much detail scribbled near each location. They did mostly cover just the Reach, Hjaalmarch and Haafingar, but it was still very useful information. Not only for their adventures. They managed to determine a possibly perfect location for their next stay.

Erik had labeled it 'Four Skull Lookout'. They weren't sure if it was a name given to it by a previous explorer or by Erik. Maybe it was a lookout that had... four skulls somewhere around. They couldn't really say anything to Erik's poetic abilities, but it didn't really matter. His notes said 'small structure' 'bandits' and 'cleared' by the place. That sounded perfect. They wouldn't have to do any 'clearing' themselves, likely, it was far from the roads and any settlements, safe for the ruins of Karthwasten, and it was well situated in the Reach cliffs. It was also rather close. They would just have to traverse the River Karth at some point and scale up the cliffs to reach it. It was very easily doable in a matter of a few hours.

And unlike many other areas in the Reach, this one didn't have any of the 'Forsworn' notes by Erik anywhere too near it. Although Bishop did quip about the fact that if there was a perfect place to let Aeyrin in her werewolf form loose, it was in a Forsworn camp. She didn't seem to appreciate the jest.

They spent the night at the Blades' stronghold and headed out right after breakfast. It would have been nice to see the rest of the Order when they came back. Well... maybe not all of them. Erik at least. Delphine was never really 'nice to see' or just... 'nice', and they didn't really know any of the others.

In any case, Aeyrin didn't want to linger at all. She was always worried that they wouldn't make it to a safe place in time, even if they had plenty of it.

The journey did require them to take the long road several times, so she wasn't really wrong to worry. It wasn't an easily accessible area. But they made it there by the afternoon.

The place was cleared, just as Erik's notes had promised. There were a couple of decomposing bandit corpses there, but Aeyrin and Bishop promptly shoved them down from the cliffs so that they wouldn't have to spend their evening around the smell. Other than that, there was only a small outdoor barrow with one sarcophagus inside.

There were no skulls there though.

The two of them worked diligently on securing the structure with their traps first before they started to make dinner and set up their camp. The only place around to bathe was the river below, but it would take a long time to scale down to it, so they had to make do with the water from their waterskins for washing. It was far from ideal, but they were used to taking these measures in less than perfect places by now.

They spent the rest of the afternoon idling in the camp lazily until the time came for Aeyrin to get chained to some of the sturdy stony pillars in the ruins. It wasn't exactly 'time' yet, but she was getting more and more fidgety by the minute and Bishop knew all too well that there was no convincing her of her worries being irrational.

"You still scared?" Bishop smirked at her a little as he fastened the collar around her neck. She kept glancing at the skies, as if she was expecting the moon to suddenly jump up several inches to its highest peak in a second she wasn't looking.