Inside his room, Torin sat at the desk, staring at schematics.
The candle had burned down about an hour ago—he'd been sitting in the dark for a while without really noticing. The only light came from the faint glow of frost creeping across the windowpane and the occasional flicker of magelight from somewhere down the hall.
Didn't matter. He didn't need light to see this. He'd drawn it enough times.
The foldable shield.
Paper was scattered across the desk in various states of failure—crumpled balls, careful sketches with notes in the margins, one ambitious attempt that had torn right down the middle when he'd tried to fold it to test the concept.
On the wall above, he'd pinned his latest version: a detailed cross-section showing every gear, every spring, every interlocking piece that would need to fit inside something smaller than his forearm.
The inner workings were solid. He'd gone over them a dozen times, tweaked the ratios, adjusted the tolerances. The materials for the husk—layered steel and dwemer metal, if he could get enough—were decided.
The miniature machinery, adapted from designs he'd spent years collecting and studying, was theoretically sound.
He could start building it right now. Had the skills, had the tools, had most of the materials. If it weren't for two problems.
Torin leaned back in the chair, letting his head thunk against the stone wall. The cold seeped through his hair, a small discomfort he barely registered.
Problem one: the magic.
The whole point of this thing was portability. A shield that lived on his arm as a vambrace, tucked away and unobtrusive, then deployed at a moment's notice when things got hairy. That meant the mechanism needed to shrink. A lot. More than any purely mechanical system could manage.
He needed enchantments for that. Space-altering enchantments, the kind that made dwemer storage boxes hold more than they should, the kind that let you fold a full-sized shield into something you could wear under your sleeve. He'd been turning it over in his mind for months, and every solution he came up with required magic he didn't know yet.
Alteration could do it. He was sure of that. The same principles that let him thicken his skin or levitate a war axe could probably be adapted to compress physical space. But that was theory, not practice. He'd need to experiment. A lot. And experiments meant failures, and failures with space-altering magic could get... weird.
Problem two was worse.
The shield needed to actually shield him without breaking.
Toughness wasn't the issue. He could make it thick, reinforce it with magic, layer on the strongest metals Skyrim had to offer to the point where most things would bounce right off.
The problem was the internal mechanisms.
Gears were delicate. Springs had limits. All those beautiful, intricate pieces that let the shield fold and unfold? They really, really didn't like being hit with massive amounts of force.
One good attack from a two-handed warhammer, and the whole thing would either jam open or jam shut—neither of which was a great outcome in the middle of a fight.
Torin could already see it. Some Forsworn briarheart winds up for a swing, he pops the shield to block, the blow lands, and suddenly he's got a folded piece of scrap metal stuck to his arm with no way to retract it.
Then he's fighting one-handed, dragging dead weight, and probably dying because his clever little invention just became a liability.
He could fix it after every fight, sure. Assuming he survived the fight. Assuming he had time to disassemble and repair a complicated piece of machinery before the next thing tried to kill him.
Not exactly a winning strategy.
Torin rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands, feeling the grit of too little sleep and too much thinking.
What he needed was a kinetic absorber. One of those dwemer devices that let their automatons take hits without shaking themselves apart. The spider soldiers had them—small ones, scaled to their size. The spheres had bigger ones. And the centurions...
The centurions had the good stuff. The kind of absorbers that could handle a giant's club or a dragon's tail swipe without the machine so much as stuttering.
If he could get his hands on one of those—study it, understand it, maybe replicate and miniaturize it—he could build it into the shield's core. Let it soak up the force of impacts before that force reached the delicate bits.
Suddenly the mechanism isn't the weak point anymore. Suddenly the shield can take hits and keep working, over and over, without falling apart.
But Centurion-grade kinetic absorbers weren't exactly lying around on shelves. They were buried in the deepest parts of dwemer ruins, the kind of places where the automatons still functioned and the air itself felt wrong. Places like...
Blackreach.
Torin stared at the wall, not really seeing it.
He'd always planned to go there. Eventually. The lost city beneath Skyrim, the heart of the Dwemer empire, full of knowledge and danger and things no living person had seen in millennia.
Every scholar of the Dwemer dreamed of reaching it. Every adventurer who'd heard the stories either wanted to go or wanted to stay very, very far away, and Torin was one of the few people who knew how.
He'd been waiting. Building knowledge, building skill, building the kind of power that might let him survive down there.
But maybe there was no such thing as ready enough for a place like Blackreach, and it was finally time to make the journey.
Then again.
Torin's pen paused mid-stroke, hovering over the paper.
Maybe he should save himself the trouble and put Enthir to work.
That was the other reason he'd let the little weasel live, wasn't it?
Enthir had connections. Enthir knew people. Enthir could probably get his hands on things that would take Torin months to find on his own, assuming he could find them at all.
And right now, Torin needed things. Centurion absorbers, sure, but also information...
Enthir could find what Torin needs. Or know someone who knew someone who could.
Torin set the pen down, flexing his fingers. The candle had gone out completely, but his eyes had adjusted enough to see the rough shapes of his room—the bed against the wall, the stack of books in the corner...
Either way, he wasn't pressed for time.
That was the thing. He'd finished the College's requirements in what, a few months? Tolfdir had practically said he was qualified to graduate whenever he wanted.
His time here was just... his. To do with as he pleased.
And what he'd chosen to do with it was research. The shield, obviously. But also the other thing—the real thing. The thing that had been sitting in the back of his mind since he was old enough to understand what Kodlak was.
The beast curse.
He'd been looking for a way to cure it. A real way, not just theories and might-bes. The Companions had been searching for generations, and they'd come up empty. But Torin had advantages they didn't—knowledge from another life, access to magic they'd never considered, a mind that didn't accept "impossible" as an answer.
So far, though? Nothing.
He'd read everything in the Arcanaeum that even mentioned lycanthropy. He'd talked to Phinis Gestor, carefully, without revealing too much, about the nature of soul-binding and transformation magic.
He'd even considered—briefly—reaching out to some of the less savory contacts Enthir probably had, just to see if there were any rumors out there.
He found nothing but dead ends everywhere else, after all.
Torin let out a sigh, running a hand through his hair. It was getting too long again. He needed to cut it. Or find someone to cut it. Or just let it grow and look like a proper Nord barbarian, which seemed to be happening whether he wanted it or not.
Before he could dive deeper into that particular spiral—
Knock. Knock. Knock.
Three sharp raps on his door.
Torin's head came up, his eyes narrowing instinctively. Visitors at this hour? In this part of the College? Auri was his only visitor, and she would just walk in—she'd made that clear a while ago, something about "Nord manners being a waste of time."
This was someone else.
He pushed back from the desk, his joints protesting slightly from sitting too long in the cold, and crossed to the door. No point in being cautious—if someone wanted him dead, there were easier ways than knocking.
He opened it without ceremony.
And blinked.
Standing in his doorway was a Nord man. Brown tunic, brown pants, worn leather boots. A hat—one of those floppy ones that looked ridiculous on everyone but that nobody in Skyrim seemed to question.
And on his face, the most impatient expression Torin had ever seen on another human being. Like he'd been waiting for hours, even though the knock had come exactly three seconds ago.
A courier.
Before Torin could say a word—before he could even process the question of how this man had gotten past the bridge, past the gate, past the patrolling atronachs, past everything—the courier reached into his satchel.
His hand emerged with a sealed roll of paper, which he thrust toward Torin like he was delivering a royal ultimatum.
"A letter from Whiterun." His voice was flat, rushed, the voice of a man who had thirty other deliveries to make before dawn and would not be slowed by things like "explanations" or "common courtesy."
"Farewell." And then he turned and jogged away.
Just... jogged. Down the hallway, past the flickering magelights, around the corner, and gone. His footsteps faded into nothing, swallowed by the ancient stone, leaving Torin standing in his doorway like an idiot, holding a piece of paper.
Torin stared at the empty hallway for a long moment.
Then he looked down at the letter.
Then back at the hallway.
How?
Torin thought back to his past life. To the game. To all those jokes about couriers showing up in the most ridiculous places—on top of mountains, in the middle of dungeons, in different realms altogether.
Everyone laughed about it. Everyone assumed it was just game mechanics...
But here he was. In real life. Holding a letter that had apparently been delivered by a man who shouldn't have been able to get within a mile of his room.
Torin shook his head slowly, a disbelieving smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.
The game had exaggerated a lot of things. But the couriers?
If anything, the game had undersold them.
He closed the door with his foot, still staring at the letter.
The seal didn't have a crest. No official stamp, no Jarl's mark, no nothing. Just wax, pressed with what looked like the butt of a dagger—Kodlak's dagger, if he had to guess.
The old man never bothered with fancy seals. Said they were for people who needed to look more important than they were.
Torin's thumb found the edge and broke it open.
He unfolded the paper and started reading.
Torin,
I hope this letter finds you well, and that the College hasn't frozen that clever brain of yours solid. The mages up there have a reputation for losing themselves in their books—don't let that happen to you. You're a Companion first, always. Live proudly.
Torin snorted softly. Trust Kodlak to open with a reminder of who he was, like he might forget.
There's a matter here that needs attention. A request came in from Falkreath—from the Jarl himself. Someone's been killing his people. Not just killing, either. Torturing. The bodies have been turning up scattered around the hold for weeks now, and no one can figure out who's doing it or why.
The Jarl wants them found. Wants them stopped. And he came to us.
Normally, we don't accept such work. We are warriors, not city guards. However, something about this makes me feel uneasy, and so I can not easily dismiss the request.
Unfortunately, right now, we're stretched thin. Aela's indisposed—nothing life-threatening, don't worry—and the others are tied up with contracts of their own. I'd send Vilkas, but he's got his hands full with the new whelps, and Farkas... well. You know Farkas. This needs someone who can think as well as fight.
Which brings me to you.
Torin's eyes narrowed slightly. He could already see where this was going.
I'm not ordering you. You're your own man, and you've your own path to walk. But if you can find the time, if you're willing, I'd entrust this to you. You know Falkreath. You know how to track. And you've got Echo, which gives you an edge most of us don't.
This is simply a request. Nothing more. Say no, and I'll find another way. Say yes, and I'll have the details waiting for you whenever you arrive.
Take care of yourself, my boy. And keep doing me proud.
—Kodlak
Torin read it twice. Then a third time, slower, letting the words settle.
The old man's handwriting was the same as always—firm, practical, no wasted strokes. But there was something underneath the words.
Kodlak didn't ask for help lightly. If he was reaching out to Torin, so far away, it meant this thing in Falkreath was bad. Or maybe that was just Torin reading into things. Maybe it really was as simple as everyone else being busy and Torin being available.
He hummed softly.
This could be a way to clear his head. He'd been staring at schematics and spell theories for weeks, trapped in this room, trapped in his own head, circling the same problems without making progress.
A hunt—a real hunt, with blood and tracks and something to actually bash with his axe—might be exactly what he needed.
It could also be a chance to enhance the college's reputation in Skyrim, and by extension, improve Torin's position in the college itself...
He folded the letter carefully and tucked it into his belt pouch, his mind already made up to make arrangements as soon as the morning came.
...
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