Hey guys...I'm rewriting this chapter on this part...I accidentally deleted it when I was renaming it...yeah, complicated, isn't it? 

Before I begin this [I'm just going to be ranting for a few paragraphs so feel free to start reading and skip this author's note and get onto the actual story] on this same Wattpad part so don't move unless you're skipping the note, just a shout out to all the students - hope you guys got good grades (Maybe it's just a CPS thing, or maybe all schools are having report cards today!) but, okay, I'm gonna start this story. Now. Grrrrr, y'know my Embershard adventures had started a month or longer ago, when I'd done this, so having deleted it a week or so by accident is kinda suckish, because that was a much cleaner...clearer, interpretation of what I did at a fresher time. But, let's see how good my imagination can remember this :3

See, I'm a great sport!

...Goodness...I just checked my phone, and it's there! Great XD See where being positive will get'cha? I know, you want me to write...I will, now, what I wrote approximately around the end of February according to my phone. What have I been doing with my life since then? 

Oh, before I begin, again....OOOOOh, I just love AudaciousAuthoress's stuff. She has this nice fanfic out called Mage (A Skyrim Fanfic), and another one following an OC in there named Toralf, called Companions. Read. Read. Read. (After this story I'm writing, of course.) It's like a second spring break today since we got no school! (And those of you who are workers...well, read on break :)).

This will be a long chapter, so let me know if I should perhaps break it up into the next chapter, like I've done with this adventure how many times, already. LOL Let's begin now now now now now now now 

The just-dead carcasses walked up the bridge to us, just animated, now. I tried to get past them, since I'd searched through cabinets and what not which one of the lucky bridges lead to, and so was ready to go to the other bridges. Nothing but mead was right here. How much I hated mead - but also, other things like potions which I took all of, I kinda liked (okay, so I was overexaggerating on what was exactly over here in the cabinets, however when there's mead anywhere, I just get so annoyed and pay attention to that. Though yes, these cabinets did  actually have something good to offer). I looked at Lydia to see if she would try to steal anything, or at least search the cabinets, since she seemed to be obsessed with either. I'd like to think it was only with stealing, but I had a feeling she liked the aura of just searching something that wasn't hers, as I remembered her actions in the gate - she stayed there for like ten minutes behind it while I was getting my butt beat by bandits. Now,  near me in this other part of the cave, she only looked at the dead guys standing near, amused. I guess this struck her fancy, too. Well, good: I didn't need her distracted and so stealing anything else, either, anyway, because we were still lopsided, lumbering about with bags and bags of Helgen stuff, and whatever corpses we looted on our way here already.

The skies of the cave were ice in here, and blue, and I looked down at the water that flowed from a waterfall at the far back of the cavelike room. It was a nice thing to think about, past all the blood.

And when dead corpses weren't staring you in the face. Since they were freshly dead, though, I didn't necessarily get too grossed out. They looked...almost alive, breathing their stinky breathe into my face.

But their distorted faces, and the moaning, got to me a little. How did it hurt to be alive against your will? It wasn't like I was pulling on their souls as if with strings, was it? Their bodies had not yet succumbed to rigor mortis, either. But I knew the corpses didn't last that long under my spell - I determined to venture on.

But they were in my way. I...scooted back a little, conclusively because they would follow me. They moved up on the bridge and onto the ledge I was on with all the empty cabinets, expectationally. I budged them out the way, now, Lydia and them, gently, with my hands and my shoulders and the wriggling of my hips and sides as if I was going through a crack in rocks, us all jumbled together on this narrow area between the bridge and a thin ledge of furnitureware. And everyone wanting to be sluggish to move, besides for the reason of being dead, I finally was able to emerge onto the other side and continue down the bridge onto yet another that connected to this one. Finally, I breathed, my adrenaline kicking in from being blocked-in on that ledge by the dead.

Was there a room over here, in the slit of the rock past the bridge and inside the icy walls of the cave? I felt my way across, no longer on the bridge since I crossed, but now on ice - and my feet slipped a little and I said God have mercy...I continued on, holding onto the wall that I met and really swallowing at the fact that I felt I was maybe just going to run into a thick wall of ice but it turned out to be an actual way to go. The ice reflected on itself - what I thought was a slit could be a shadow, instead, thrown by the whitish lights. But I was congratulated by my inner happiness when I saw another room, instead. 

Not one with a door, but it's just an opening to another sector of this cavelike iceland. It was like a balcony, looking over the wet, slippery cave. I could fall, but I felt safe, and charred down a chest with my eyes. It stood right at my feet, staring me back.

I expected it to laugh with glee as I opened it with my lockpick, and felt the grooves of the lid with my hand and it's heaviness as it strained against my wrists, and man, look at that gold - and that...armor. Not fur...Dwarven. 

The metal was heavy and dark, like the chocolate it reminded me of. I only knew because of my serious care for armor. And smithing. I read about Dwarven armor - how almost no Dwarves existed anymore. How their ruins carried their metal. How their metal was impossible to weld. How I was gonna carry this...

I put the breastpiece over my head, and Lydia took the steel one I had, saying her disregards..."How am I gonna carry all this?" she asked. I looked at her and laughed. I put on the greaves and leg pieces and the loincloth and the arm bracers. Lydia looked like she was having an asthma attack, and I heard the corpses - the male and the female bandit - cry out in astonishing agony. "What's-" I began, then turned to see them lean on the narrow wall near us and fall down, cringing and rolling on the ground in agony.

Lydia said "Uh..." and looked at the writhing bodies in shock.

I turned to her. "That just happens all the time...don't worry." She only glanced at me with blank eyes.

"What?" I said. Honest. I'd done this trick only once on dead people, actually, sometime before I'd ever met Lydia. It was fun, and I remembered the effects it had on dead bodies, crisply.

I brought the purple flare to my hands, again, just to stare into the power that brought them alive in the first place. This Dwarven armor really brought out that color. Then I changed the color to green, my transmuting spell, and then to yellow, my healing, red, my fire. Lydia folded her arms in contemplation. I stared at her. "You were lollygagging before, y'know."

She walked to the bandits and shook her head. I realized there was no more army and so I'd have to go into the next room, if there was one, by myself, with Lydia. Well, we didn't meet anymore bandits out her, at least, so that moment of no fighting chaos was nice. 

I walked up to the bridge, again, after feeling the tight ice-walls around us to it. I couldn't use any of my powers more than once in the same day - it was too draining. Not the magicka, but the things that were ingrained into my being - allying some animals, raising the dead. It makes sense to have limits like that, or I could make a whole zombie army, and a whole rabid animal race, that would fight for me any day, for any period of time I pleased. But, it wasn't like that. These powers were only temporary, when I was in my purest state of spiritual connection. I could be at any time...but not for a long time. Now I'd have to wait another day for that power to, upon cue, consume me, once again.

The steel helmet still on my head - because the Dwarven armor didn't include one - covered my brows and some of my sight, but I pushed it up as I pushed the door to the other side, having not heard anything past it. The waterfall parted above and surrounding it, though, gave me some sense of security, to the point I thought I was exiting the mine...

It looked like a camp set up here. There was a gate that led to a room with cabinets and a weapons storage rack, but the part of the room that was nearer our side had a desk, and since it was blocking the only opening that there was to the mini room but excluding the gate, which mean it wasn't locked up, I scrounged everything off that desk. Almost. After taking the purse, I heard Lydia breathe heavily as someone said almost as if they were talking to themselves, "Hey, where are you?" It was that loud - not very, but enough for us to hear.

I'm not here, pass me, I thought as she pulled out her arrows, and I tried to fit everything I pulled off that desk into my bag the right way due to all the loot that was poking out already - good thing my bad was made out of sabre cat leather, by the way, because my bad was sturdy, thankfully - and then she began to fire the iron arrows that seemed limitless with her - I really should've given her some steel ones as well, but she used hers just fine. Please, I thought as I scavenged. Don't see -

"Ugh -" I said, stumbling backwards and to the left, and I was awakened from my blissful scavenge to see it: a female. But a mage. A mage-female that wielded frost. The third one I've seen in my life, yet the second in this cave.  Why were they so populous? "C'mon and wield an axe," I spoke to her as I wiped the blood off my chin. Why did she have to punch me? Like...Ugh, whatever. What a way to begin the fight...like the other annoying female mage that crossed my path - talk about faulty AI...

If that made me growl, her next move definitely did - and I took it upon having been surprised in the first place. It was a nasty gash across my face - the ice cut it, deep - and I yelled, lashing out at her with my frost axe - not sparing her with my sword, at all. I wasn't letting her leave unscathed.

It was bloody and I knew she wasn't as harmed by the frost since that was her specialty power - however, the axe still dealt some frost damage, and chops. I hit her once in our rumble -  once on the arm, and that was enough to take it off and have her still try and hit me with frost with the other one - I had to dodge it, and the frost projectile curled along the floor, towards the door, in one big splash of iciness. I detached my eyes from the icy sight to duck another blast of icy coolness, then uppercut her with the axe up on the momentum of my rising. That was the end.

I fingered my gash on my face and said "Apple bums and peach pie." It was that bad. It hurt, and the cold from the hit I received didn't retreat...it, like, froze my face off. 

At least I still had a face, though...hers was collapsed from the mandible, up. I sniffed, and looked down at her, kicked her in the side, stomped her gut, kicked her butt. A few times. Looted her all the while. 

Maybe I had a right to be mad, but man, it's like someone coming from a great gambling session just to get robbed and an attempt to be killed. But I did enter in on their territory...but anyway. 

Meanwhile, I had been blocking out all the other voices. They were here - I was just being too passionate about her to notice. I looked, adjusting my eyes to the darkness that I heard the voices emerging from, but suddenly the noise stopped. What was up with all these bandits clinging to the dark? I mean, they had nothing to hide in their own homes...maybe they were used to raidings.

I flinched, grabbing onto my hilt as some shadow I considered was one of the voices emerged from the darkness - "Huh," I said, drawing it from the scabbard, and then the person, clear enough for me to see, now, held up their head a little pompously and smiled. "The gate's open, you know," Lydia said.  It was her. Oooh.

Well, I just looked at her and smiled back, not wasting my breath to tell her I almost ended her life as well, and I gave a big huff as I started to pack even more things. The gated room had furniture but only enough for weapons and miscellaneous items - not much of a "home", I had to remember this was a mine, not some nice cuddling habitat - and I looked at a pickaxe which I expected to be there because of the fact and said "Hi," to it, while moving my hand to really the thing I wanted to say hi to - this orschich sword - in the weapons rack and I glanced sadly at the mace. That rack also had some swords and a battleaxe that I would rather not mess with, but a mace has proven handy for me but... the weight would just bust up my knees if I tried to carry it, too. I shook the bags that were on my back, not wanting to drop them, but to at least resettle them while I packed yet another thing into the one I'd taken off my back. Man...packrats, I mumbled to myself. 

I looked back at the mace, again, reminiscently. I snatched it and placed it in Lydia's hand - ouch, she said, and it clattered to the ground.  I gave her the eyebrow. "I can't carry any more," she explained simply. 

"What a wuss," I said, hoping she didn't hear because I knew it was too loud, but I bent down and put it back, disregarding that as a necessity to think about. I guess the human frame could only carry so much. 

I'm happy none of this stuff got ruined by the other woman's surly ice blasts because I would've gotten fairly annoyed. Thinking about the dangers that could befall our weapons and other belongings tied unsafely and vulnerably on our backs, I kept going forward through the tunnel of the cave, and then...well, just went back into the gated room and checked a drawer. It was one that I didn't check before...a weird, y'know, white object, that looked like a golf ball - multiple dents in it, but it was shiny like a diamond, and though I couldn't see through it, rested in there, alone. I sighed, but picked it up anyway - I knew it was probably a valuable gem.  Lydia woyld've smacked me in the back of my head if she was m mother. 

I had that hard time letting go of things as a child. My mom used to definitely chastise me for picking up animal bones and deformed rocks from the ground - said I'd get some kind of autoimmune disease that makes my hands cramp up and look like a swan's neck - but I never believed her. 

I placed the unnatural gem in my pocket, and Lydia yawned, me knowing that she wanted to say more than just expel tired breath from her lungs, and then I continued my natural habit of exploring everything and opened up this other gate in this area of the cave with my own lockpick after figuring out I had the key; it was lost among a bunch of herbs, ingredients, and was looted from the frost girl's corpse; and this gate opened to an about 3 meters circumference. I searched and placed my hand on every stone. No ore, special or regular, and as I searched the area ocularly, there were no chests. Um?

Lydia looked at me with a raised eyebrow as I emerged from the room. "What, I wanted to see if something was in there..." I said, grumpily.

"Nothing was?"

I walked towards the opening that was a few feet in front of us, and while, tried not to notice the fact that Lydia wasn't looking at me, neither laughing...I didn't know what she thought about me, and it made me annoyed. I fingered some herbs out of my pocket, something to soothe my nerves after all this fighting...Uthgerd would've busted out laughing at me immediately because I did something that would be funny to her, I thought. I think Lydia was just trying to leave here, and I hoped it was that and not that she thought it was her job to be housecarl and not give insight or any special advice...just to follow me around like an adult ready for her pay.

I looked at her, again. Her baggy eyes making me not really guilty, I am guilty to say, but actually laugh on the inside. I didn't know we didn't sleep for that long. Was I actually restraining her from that, though, her real purpose, by wanting her to be something more? She was great for a replacement for Uthgerd, but I don't know if I should be treating people like that - everyone has their own personalities and therefore places in life, and so no one is the same. I had a fun follower - don't think I could wish for or command more 'o them to bow at my feet - I was such a hog -

The ground shook beneath me and I almost threw up from the sudden convulsion of the earth. "Ahh, Lydia, what's going on?" I asked in a distressed voice, hoping that my freaking-out would lead do a much less dangerous foe than a dragon, because I didn't want to go through that anymore...

Not today...

"Eerie voice words I can't remember." I turned in the space I occupied, looking for the source. "Lydia," I whispered,"you hear that, don't you?"

 As the voice continued, I notice her gravitate closer to me. 

 I wanted it to end...the light filtering through the cave only did so much for my nerves...I stuffed my hand deeper into my pocket for the right color of butterfly wings, because those monarch ones made me ill. Her mouth was stretched wide in horror - I faltered, my head ringing - I prayed it would be over, with my eyes closed. 

It was done. Done speaking. I lifted myself slowly, not without falling back to my hands again - the Dwarven armor was a little heavy that I needed to get used to. And I wobbled like a child, or a drunkard, once on my feet. That voice, what was it?

Lydia stood, patiently beside me as I used her shoulder to steady myself. Lost fr words, or just maybe not feeling up for conversation. Whatever What the heck, Uthgerd wasn't much of a talker, either. It didn't offend me much. But the heck was that?

Dawnstar. Return it. The name ringed in my head, along with the weird, siren-y sound that occupied my audible foramen when I didn't pay close care to not expose my ear to loud noises. It was the artifact. It caused that voice. 

I think...or maybe...it was the protector of the artifact. A God. I shivered in my armor. Then grew stiff. "L-Lydia. I-I think that was a God."

Her hazel eyes scraped the opening, ahead. She looked almost afraid to move. "I - I think we should...um, let me mine this ore," I said, spotting some iron ore by the cave opening.  I  listened to the cling of rock against steel as I did, and Lydia just stood watch in silence. Did she hear what I heard, or was I the one that was crazy?

Well, since were were both scared, I think we heard the same thing.

Dawnstar, the voice said. I had to get the gem back there. Dawnstar was a place of the vampires.

The last time no one followed this command, something grotesque followed, it said. I didn't want to be another sorry fellow. But why was this still in the drawer, if the previous owner failed, yet still had the gem? It didn't just transplant itself back into the same, old, dusty, chipped drawer...or did it?

I hinged the bags I placed with ore back on my shoulder, truly unable to hold any more, and I stiffened my back to not fall over from weakness. I'd buckled from the fear, but I had to move on, and hope we didn't get jumped by any more thugs.

And speaking of some thugs, I'd read Hilde called the thugs on me. Ha, serves her right. But why not this be the time to pay her a visit sometime, aye, and take a break from all this venturing?