Crossfire (A Skyrim Fan Fiction)

Chapter 5: Adventure Awaits

I stared at myself in the slightly musty mirror, eyes captivated by the distinct absence of a sword at my left hip.

In a pinch, or perhaps if I were pitted against many enemies and didn't need to aim well, I could use a bow. Maces and axes I disliked for their lack of finesse, and battleaxes and greatswords took considerable strength to wield.

Not that I lacked strength, of course. I had fought for hours in the Second Siege of Whiterun, and those hours were but a small piece of the sheer amount of time I had spent wielding my blades.

No, I didn't lack strength. I just preferred to pour that strength into swinging two short swords, not a greatsword or a battleaxe.

Except now, I could only wield one sword.

The first time I had faced Miraak, I had lost one of my Daedric swords in Apocrypha. The only- the only- good thing that had come of my forced visit to Hermaeus Mora's plane of Oblivion had been the recovery of my beloved sword, which had still lain exactly where I had dropped it all those months ago.

It was ironic, really, because although I had found the priceless weapon, I could no longer wield it. One of the least deadly wounds I had ever been dealt had proven to be the most grievous, robbing me of the ability to fight with my right hand.

I would adjust; of that, I had no doubt. But for now, I could feel the emptiness where, for almost as long as I could remember, a sword had rested against my left hip. The sword hadn't always been Daedric. First the make had been steel, then ebony, and only then, after years of fighting and mastering my techniques, had I gone to Eorlund Gray-Mane for a pair of Daedric blades.

Even so, there had always been a sword, and now that there wasn't, I felt... unbalanced, even slightly vulnerable. If I reached with my right hand for a weapon to protect myself, there would no longer be anything there.

But what sense did it make to carry around two swords if I could only wield one? Elegant, beautiful, and deadly as Daedric blades might be, any sword held in my right hand would be nothing more than scrap metal.

"Perhaps a mage could help?"

"Karliah, I just got back from a place where everything wanted to kill me. Don't do that," I coughed, one hand on my throat and one hand on my side where the bandage had probably just bled through again on account of my sudden, panicked whirl.

"Sorry," she said apologetically. "Do you know a thief who doesn't have stealth enchantments on their boots?"

"No," I admitted, my heartrate calming somewhat. "Sorry," I added. Really, I should have just been paying more attention. Getting lost in thought at the wrong time was a quick way to get lost in Sovngarde instead.

"Brynjolf mentioned your hand was slow to heal, so I thought a mage might be able to help." A bed creaked as Karliah sat down.

"You don't need to be tactful." I raised my chin, rubbing the fading bruising on my neck. "It's not just slow to heal. It isn't going to heal."

Karliah's eyes followed my hand as I raised it. Their brilliant violet shade unnerved many, but I had grown used to their piercing gaze long ago. "No, I think it is healed. I think it healed incorrectly, and that is why potions will not work. If you speak to a mage skilled in Restoration, they may have a solution."

"Maybe, but the College is a long journey from here and I have no time to make the trip." I smiled wryly. "Can't a man get a break when he comes back from the dead?"

"You're a man whom many trust and rely upon. If you wish to escape that, you'll have to do a lot more than die."

Her words were compassionate and filled with earnestness, and they tore a jagged hole of guilt straight through my heart. If she still believed that after this war was over and I was forced to kill Mira and Jiran, then.... Well, she wouldn't. All her trust in me would turn to hate, a hate just as bitter and regretful as the hate I had heard in her voice and seen in her eyes whenever she spoke of Mercer Frey.