Into the Barrow

John slowly walked alongside Talia, both of them following Frida into the barrow. She had been quick to volunteer herself, stating that she was the strongest mage of the three of them. John had tried to counter her point by saying that his asking for volunteers was meant to be funny, he would be best to go first as he would take no permanent damage with his Gamer’s Body, and he would probably have a higher chance of seeing any runic traps before they happened. She had dismissed him, saying that even with his skills he was still weak and had never explored old barrows like this before. She told them that, before Talia’s brother had been born, she and Hálfdan loved to go exploring in some of the old barrows up north in the hills. She said that, while most of them were cleared out by bandits and animals, there were still plenty of traps left that gave her enough experience to know what she was doing. John had then pointed out that he was the one with the light spell and it would still be best for him to lead.

Turns out his magical light spell was beaten out by her flashlights. Not as magical, but a lot more reliant.

Originally John had grumbled about this. This was his quest after all, he felt like it was his role to lead the party into the barrow. However, his protests were silenced when he realized an advantage of following Frida: the moment he stepped next to Talia, she interlocked her hand with his and gave him a passionate kiss. When John was finally released and his brain returned to normal function, she muttered softly: “Don’t you ever dare to scare me like that again…” He murmured back a promise, softly stroking her hair as Frida looked on with a warm smile.

When they started actually walking down the stairs into the barrow, John noticed the cherry on top of all this - Frida had an amazingly shaped ass he got a nice full look at it from behind her. Granted, he was nervous to look for too long as Talia would certainly notice, but still, a nice motivator to keep going forward nonetheless.

At first, the barrow seemed to be nothing of interest. After the stairs it had simply led to a basic stone door, which, after a bit of pushing, opened into a short, small hallway. There were some interesting carvings on the wall, including some runes, but nothing magical for John to learn. One thing that John did note was that there seemed to be some damage inside of the hallway, such as blackened spots dotting the walls and parts of the stone architecture which had broken away, probably as a result of strikes by swords and axes. It appeared that, the last time anyone had been in here, a battle had taken place. John’s first thought was that perhaps someone had attacked some people that had been living in here, but then the more plausible thought occurred to him that whoever was coming in was attacked by the barrow’s defenses. If Skyrim had taught him anything, that could be anything from giant spiders to bears to zombies.

John’s grip on his flashlight tightened as his other hand went to rest on his sword, still housed within its sheath. He looked at Talia, who seemed to have picked up the same dangerous vibe that he had, as her hand now rested on her sword as well. Frida walked ahead with a calm composure, seemingly not troubled by the signs of battle that now surrounded them. Very slowly, the two of them followed her as she opened the door and led them into the barrow’s first chamber.

The moment John’s eyes adjusted, they grew wide and his jaw dropped in awe of what he saw.

First of all, the room was HUGE, with a roof that sat three or four stories above them. It shouldn’t have been possible, as they hadn’t gone down far enough for the barrow to be hidden and the ceiling to be so high - and yet, here it was. John couldn’t deny what his eyes saw. The roof was held up by six large pillars, each one carved to look like a man supporting the weight of the ceiling on his shoulders, much like the Greek Titan Atlas. That is, if Atlas were dressed in traditional Nordic clothing and was equipped with the finest of weapons for a man of his size. The two statues nearest the trio seemed to stare directly at them, their gaze almost judgemental and fear-inspiring. It was as if the statues themselves were saying: ‘Congratulations. You found the barrow. Now, let’s see you survive it.’

The walls were covered in more carvings. Some of them seemed to depict Beowulf’s life, others seemed to be runes, and the rest just blessings and prayers to the gods. However, on the walls behind each statue sat a painting, mounted to the wall. These, despite being over a thousand years old, were still brilliantly colored, almost as if they had been painted yesterday. Torches hung next to each of the paintings - and John had just noticed Frida was walking around the room, lighting each one. The paintings were obviously depicting moments in Beowulf’s life, and John could recognize many important ones, such as him killing the giant, Grendel, and him being crowned king.

“Do the paintings seem… out of order to you?” Talia questioned, her hand once again tightly gripping John’s.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, look over at the paintings on the left. The first one shows him being crowned king, surrounded by a pile of loot. But the next one shows him killing a giant, with no crown on his head, and the one after that shows him fighting a dragon WITH a crown on his head. What, did he just take a quick break from being king so he could go slay a giant?”

John looked around at the paintings as his brows furrowed in confusion. Talia was right; the paintings were out of order. Any way he read them, they simply were wrong. “Maybe that’s… the puzzle here,” he said, scratching his chin in thought. “We may have to put the paintings in order.”

“Okay, but… where do we start? Left to right, right to left, are we going back to front or front to back? Are we watching his progression left and right as we walk forward through the room - that sort of thing?”

“I think I can answer this one,” Frida interjected from across the room. She gestured underneath one of the paintings, pointing at a small button that sat on the bottom of its frame. “There’s one of these on each painting. I would guess you’d have to maybe press them in the order they happened.”

Talia smirked and turned to look at John. “Alright, Mr. Beowulf Expert, tell us the life story of Beowulf.”

“Well…” John leaned back against the wall, drumming his fingers on his thigh as he tried to recall the teachings from Mr. Enkleman’s class. “Beowulf… starts with this one guy who builds a big old mead house to party in. This angers the giant, Grendel, who lives nearby, so he shows up and slaughters a bunch of the partygoers. This continues for a few nights until Beowulf is finally called in. He decides he’ll just wrestle Grendel, since Grendel doesn’t use any weapons, and that night when Grendel shows up, he wrestles him and rips his arm off.”

Talia reached for him and pulled his glasses off before slipping them onto her face. She then said mockingly, “Poor sentence structure, Mr. Newman! I’m sorry to say, but your essay does not impress me.”

John laughed and took his glasses back. “Oh gimme those, I need them. Besides, I wasn’t done. Let’s see… after that, Grendel’s mother shows up, takes Grendel’s arm back, Beowulf chases after her to the Sea of Monsters where she lives, jumps into the sea and fights Grendel’s mother, uses a magical sword to kill her, and after a few more shenanigans, gets crowned king.”

Frida spoke up this time. “Didn’t he fight a dragon at some point? I’m pretty sure he fought a dragon.”

“Geez, you too? I was getting there! Hold on a second, it’s an epic poem. They take forever to summarize.” Talia and Frida both giggled a little before motioning for John to continue. “Right. So, one day a dragon shows up because… I guess a Hobbit stole his ring or something? I honestly don’t remember that part. Anyway, Beowulf decides to fight the dragon, takes the thief and his twelve Geats, and they go to fight the dragon. Sadly, Beowulf’s sword breaks and the Geats run off.. Uhhh… Then Beowulf kills the dragon, but he also dies because it was a DRAGON, and he didn’t know the Dragonrend shout quite yet. And… yeah.”

Talia walked over to one of the paintings and leaned in to get a closer look. “Well, this one shows Beowulf getting crowned king, right? So that would be before the dragon.”

John nodded. “Right. So the first one we should look for would be… him fighting off Grendel. What do we have in terms of paintings, by the way?”

Frida walked to the center of the room and took a look around, getting a nice view of all the paintings. “Let’s see… we have Beowulf getting crowned, Beowulf fighting a dragon, Beowulf ripping a giant’s arm off, Beowulf killing a giant with a sword, Beowulf killing a bunch of sea monsters, and a giant killing people.”

John started to pace back and forth as he thought through the paintings. “Well… I’m gonna say that the giant killing people would be Grendel, so that would have to be first. It’s the inciting incident. Then after that would be… Grendel getting his arm ripped off, and then Beowulf killing Grendel’s mom, which should be the other giant.”

“What about the sea monsters one?” Frida interjected, walking over towards John. Talia, meanwhile, stayed silent, looking back and forth between a few of the paintings. “Does that go in between there somewhere? You said she lives in the Sea of Monsters, after all.”

John rubbed his chin in thought until he suddenly remembered an important detail. “Hold on. Beowulf kills the sea monsters first… yeah, I remember! After Beowulf gets summoned in and comes up with the idea of how to kill Grendel, one of the people there makes fun of him and is like, ‘Oh, you lost a swimming contest! How can we expect you to win the fight?’ And Beowulf has this great comeback of ‘Yeah, I lost the swimming contest, but I was slowed down by the NINE SEA MONSTERS I killed along the way! OOOHHHHH!’” John coughed awkwardly and stopped pretending to flex, slightly embarrassed as he noticed Frida hiding a laugh behind her hand. He rubbed the back of his neck and gave a nervous smile. “But, yeah. So the sea monsters thing actually happened before Grendel kills anyone. So the order should be sea monsters, Grendel, Beowulf ripping off the arm, Beowulf killing the mom, getting crowned king, and then fighting the dragon.”

Frida gave a small nod of approval before Talia interjected. “Wait a second, something’s not right about that order.” She gestured to the two paintings she’d been inspecting, those being the crowning ceremony and Beowulf ripping off Grendel’s arm. “Look at the guy getting crowned in this one. He’s got his back to us, and he’s bowing, but… if you look closely, you can see his hair color, and a bit of his chin.”

“Yeah, what about it?” John slid his hands into his pockets.

“Well, in all the other paintings, Beowulf has bright blonde hair and a thick beard. But the guy getting crowned here has short brown hair, and it doesn’t look like he even HAS a beard. So, unless Beowulf decided to invest in some sort of ancient hair dye, I really doubt that this is him getting crowned.”

Frida walked over and took a closer look at the painting, nodding in agreement. “Talia’s right. This guy can’t be Beowulf. So, the question now is who else gets crowned king in the story?”

“Um…” John thought for a moment, trying to dig as deep as he could into his knowledge of the story. “I mean, there’s a guy who gets crowned before the story even begins? Well, there’s a bunch of guys who get crowned, but that’s all backstory, and doesn’t actually happen in the book, so… WAIT! That’s it! Wiglaf!”

“We… We laugh?” Talia said in confusion.

“No no, Wiglaf.”

“Okay, so, ‘we laugh’ with a fancy accent?”

“No, gods, Talia - it’s the name of a character. He’s the only Geat who didn’t abandon Beowulf while he was fighting the dragon. After Beowulf died, he ended up getting crowned king.” Another realization hit John as he started looking around. He noticed that the first two statues were of Beowulf, glaring at the intruders who dared enter his tomb. The next two seemed to be of another ruler, probably the one who first gave Beowulf the quest to kill Grendel. But the final two matched the man who was getting crowned in the painting - so they must be Wiglaf. Wiglaf’s statues seemed to look over at the Beowulf ones, with awe and wonder frozen forever within their eyes. “Wiglaf must’ve been the one to build this part of the barrow, as a little test to see who could remember both Beowulf’s life AND his ****.”

Talia smiled and gave a nod. “Alright, then what’s our final order, Mr. Expert?”

John grinned as he walked past the paintings, hitting each button in its proper order as he called them out. “First, Beowulf kills nine sea monsters in a swimming race. Second, the giant Grendel murders several partygoers. Third, Beowulf kills Grendel by ripping off his arm in a wrestling match. Fourth, Beowulf kills Grendel’s mother by the only weapon that could - although I don’t know why she kept it in her cave. Fifth, Beowulf fights the dragon, which would become his last opponent. And finally, after Beowulf’s ****, Wiglaf is crowned king of the Geats.”

Just as John hit the final button, he could hear the sounds of gears turning, and at the other end of the hall, two giant stone doors slowly began to open, revealing a hallway that would hopefully lead them into the next room. Talia walked up to him, slinging an arm around his shoulder, with a grin just as big as his stretched across her face. “You know, at the rate plundering this tomb is going, you’re gonna have a whole essay written about Beowulf before the day is done.”

John laughed, but then his expression grew a bit somber as Frida rejoined them, her tone grim. “I don’t think so. Two of the puzzles have been about Beowulf himself, but we also have to remember that these tombs have to include blessings to the gods as well. If my guess is correct, the next few puzzles we’ll encounter will have to do with those gods - perhaps their aspects, or something similar to that.” She looked to John and Talia. “From now on, the two of you must keep your wits about you. You stay with me, and be careful where you step. We were lucky with this first room, that it was not filled with traps. But the other rooms could contain anything from pitfalls to ceilings that can crush you to even the undead Norse warriors themselves.”

John and Talia gave her a nod of acknowledgement before drawing their weapons. Frida looked at them before chuckling softly.