The night passed quietly as nothing came to investigate the scent of blood that might have moved with the wind before I torched the stuff. There were also no bandits who were out of the mine at the time of my slaughtering their friends. Turns out even dumb meathead bandits knew better than to be outdoors after dark. Not that that saved them but the thought has to count for something right? In the morning I got up and ignored the demonic(draconic) chanting coming from the word wall as I relit the camp fire up here and ate a simple egg and cheese breakfast.-
'No point in putting this off any longer.' I thought with a sigh as I finally steeled myself to approach the wall.
The wall itself was a massive curved gray stone thing at least three feet thick and twelve feet tall at the highest point. In the center of the wall at the top above the written words was the ancient nordic icon of a stylized dragons head. Below that in big jagged bold indented script was the words of the wall that the things were named after.
{Nau daar revak golt drey Freda zahrahmiik ek laas ful tol ek pogaan kiir filok ahrk osos sul qahnaar ek hokoron.}
Or
{On this sacred ground did Freda sacrifice her life so that her children could escape and some day vanquish her enemy.}
This wall was no doubt later written by one of said children so their mothers sacrifice would echo for as long as the wall stood. An expensive and grand memorial but one done with care. The word Laas or Life was the one full of deep intent and meaning but even as I ran my finger tips across it the word remained upon the wall alone and not imprinted into my soul as it would if I was Dragonborn.-
This was both fantastic and absolutely dreadful news for me. A true bittersweet revelation. Fantastic because the eventual fate of having to deal with Miraak and Alduin was none of my damned business. A misunderstanding that was quite prevalent in the fandom of Skyrim the game was that being the last Dragonborn was all perks and power when in truth it was an EXTREMELY heavy burden. To clarify there were absolutely a lot of perks to being that person but the responsibilities were WAY higher.-
For example stopping Alduin who was literally the closest thing to a god that this world would allow upon it's face had to be stopped by this person from LITERALLY ending the world. So no pressure there or anything. Then there was Miraak who was supposedly the "first" Dragonborn. A man born in the Merethic era and served the dragons until for some reason or another he discovered his nature as dragonborn and turned on them. The guy made a deal with Hermaeus Mora for knowledge and power to dominate the wills of all who lived, even the dragons. -
In exchange he had to serve Hermaeus for eternity. When he was banished from Nirn by the dragon cult he had done so from Apocrypha(Mora's realm of Oblivion) until the dragons returned. It wasn't specified in the game but I was fairly certain he specifically chose that moment to return because it was the only time he could get away with it. The trick was he planned to shift his chain binding him to Mora onto the last dragonborn which would be the only way to free himself without Mora coming for him with a fury.-
Daedric contracts were a deep and complex topic that I hadn't gotten that far in but even my limited knowledge made it easy to guess the reason for Miraak targeting the last dragonborn like this. Balance, equivalent exchange, whatever you wanted to call it the concept was the same. Miraak couldn't just pick some random dragonborn from history because he had tied the concept of "first" to himself. None of them were his equal on a conceptual level as a result. "Last" however had the same conceptual weight to it which made the last dragonborn the only acceptable target.-
It was also why Miraak let the player learn all the secrets he learned in the game. This would "match" their levels letting him substitute the last dragonborn for himself in the contract with Mora. Or that would have been how that would have worked if Mora hadn't rigged the game so he won either way. Mora making you fight Miraak in Apocrypha made it so that no matter who won the loser would perish forcing the contract on the winner regardless. It was a sort of realm rule with these contracts that you couldn't substitute yourself for something currently IN the realm, one of you had to be out of it for the swap to work.-
Whether or not I was right didn't matter to me anymore because it wasn't my business until one side won. This brought us to the bad news portion of me not being the last dragonborn, I wasn't protected. The fun thing about prophesized people is that until the prophecy is complete they were basically invincible. I didn't mean they couldn't be messed with or even defeated but NOTHING that could impede or stop them from fulfilling the prophecy was allowed. It was like the ultimate plot armor, enforced by reality itself.-
If something were to happen that would genuinely threaten the prophecy the world itself would move to stop it. Sometimes subtly and other times violently. The best example of this was the opening bit of the game. It was no coincidence that Alduin would show up right as the last dragonborn was about to lose their life to the headsman's axe. The world basically unleashed the bringer of the end to prevent it, moral of the story was don't fuck with prophecy if you value your life.-
I was pretty sure I didn't have a prophecy involving me however since I wasn't the last dragonborn. This meant I had to be EXTRA careful with everything I did because I had no safety net. If I snarked at a daedric prince I could very easily get swatted to death like a fly for it. Don't get me wrong the princes had limits to what they were allowed to do on Nirn but making someone go crazy or get cursed to hell and back was well within that range. They could also just drag you into Oblivion and then kill you or worse.-
Thankfully the princes were typically too prideful to do something like that and instead had their mortal servants on Nirn handle that kind of annoyance. I sighed but resolved myself to step carefully around things in the future. I grabbed my pack and mounted up finally before making my way back to Shor's stone. At least that was the plan until about halfway to the village.