A Room of Shocking Discussion

“God damn it, John, it won’t stop bleeding! Hurry up and fix it!”

“Talia, I’m trying my hardest, but you’re gonna have to hold still. I don’t think the rune will work!”

“Damn it, John, look at the wound! How the hell am I supposed to stand still?!”

“Talia, calm down.” John looked up at Talia’s face, his hands wrapped around her calf. “You just scraped your knee. Stop being such a drama queen.”

Talia scoffed playfully. “And after I put my hand on the line for you. Guess my gesture was not well received.”

John almost stumbled while writing the Ankh on Talia’s knee. What Talia had said was the exact opposite of the truth. In fact, her gesture meant a lot to John. He realized how foolish he had been this entire time, thinking he couldn’t trust her. He had to remember, she was the one who told him the rebellion members were terrorists, and she clearly seemed to trust him. Hell, she put her hand - and quite possibly, her life - on the line for him. If anything, she’d been supportive of John ever since he first came to Alfheim, and if he continued to distrust her, he’d be nothing more than a paranoid fool.

John looked over to Frida, who was currently chasing away the last of the rats with one of her fire spells. While John was more inclined to trust Talia, Frida was another story. He was still unsure of how much she was hiding, how involved she was in all of this, and overall, how much of what she was saying was truthful. While he was starting to doubt his initial theories about her secretly plotting his demise, he was smart enough to know that something was up.

However, perhaps confiding in Talia about his suspicions could be helpful. If she knew something that John didn’t about Frida’s past, which she probably did, then maybe he could explain away this whole discrepancy. And if she couldn’t, then… John supposed he’d cross that bridge if he came to it. Maybe a confrontation was needed on both sides.

If John was going to do this, he was going to need alone time with Talia. But considering the danger of the barrow and its traps, he figured he wouldn’t be able to get that alone time while they were still exploring. Then John suddenly remembered that they just solved a puzzle in which he had gotten separated from the other two women. Looked like he might get that alone time a little sooner than he thought.

The three of them stood in the main hallway, John and Frida both chugging down mana potions while Talia gave a couple of practice swings with her sword. The pulling of the final lever in Tyr’s room was rather uneventful, at least for Frida and Talia. For John, it had given him a bit of a reward, as the pulling of the lever had not only activated the statue back in the main room, but it had also caused a rune to blaze to life on the wall above the lever. John wasted no time using Runic Observe on it, and it gained him not only a new Norse Rune - which put him on the threshold to gaining another new reward - but it had also been a Divine Rune, John’s first one that didn’t belong to a trigger-happy fire giant.

Tyr, The Spear of Balance

300MP to cast

“There is also an Aesir called Tyr. He is the bravest and most valiant, and he has great power over victory in battles.” Causes you to fire an ethereal spear composed of the power of Tyr. Upon reaching its target, the spear will cause the target’s health to become equal to your own.

It was a cool rune, but much like the Surtr rune, it was completely unusable to John at the moment. But the unlocking of the rune did remind him that he had skill trees to go through, a new reward for unlocking two Norse Runes, and was another step closer to completing Lifthrasir’s quest. Easiest on the chopping block was the new reward from unlocking two new Nordic Runes.

Quest Complete!

Nordic Runes II

Find Nordic Runes (6/6)

Rewards:

Nordic Casting I

Quest Unlocked: Nordic Runes III

Nordic Casting I

Decreases initial casting cost of Nordic Runes (excluding Divine Runes) by 10%.

The plus side of this reward was that it gave John a little bit of extra mana to cast more spells, which was always useful. The downside was that it meant all of his Divine Runes were still weapons in his arsenal that he had no chance of using in the foreseeable future. Maybe if he kept collecting them, at some point he would get a bonus specifically for the Divine Runes, but for now he had two points to spend on the Runic Casting skill tree.

After a few moments of deliberation, John decided to drop both points into the Coins upgrade. While, sure, Swords would have given him more damage with his Runes, he figured that if he wanted to have more chances at enchanting his weapons, he would need more loot from monsters to be able to create those enchantments. And now with a total of five points in Coins, there was always a lingering 10% chance that any enemy killed with a Rune would drop double loot.

After obtaining the new rune, John did the most instinctive action that any true Gamer would have upon seeing the corpses of dead enemies: he began to loot the shit out of them. Frida had not managed to kill the Alpha Rat, but she had killed one Dire Rat and a few of the smaller rats. The loot system seemed to imply that John could not only harvest the tails and fur of the rats, but whatever they had eaten, as he had managed to loot three patches of black rat fur, two large rat tails, three gold coins, and one Dire Rat tooth. And while the only thing that gave him any sort of immediate benefit were the gold coins, John was not going to knock the other items, as they could probably be crafted into potions, or perhaps be used for enchanting at a later date. Hell, if his life was like a video game now, who knows? Maybe some shopkeeper would pay big money to have some rat fur and tails. The Skyrim merchants never seemed to question him when he sold them 37 Skeever tails and a lone Eye of a Sabre Cat.

With that task done, they officially labeled the Tyr room as completed and moved back into the main hall, to find that the pulling of the lever caused the large statue of Tyr to raise its sword. It had reached about halfway across the room, giving evidence to the theory that once both rooms were completed, the weapons would meet in the middle and cause… something to happen. They were wary, though, that the next room, being Thor’s, would include some test of strength, so they figured now was the best time to heal up and make sure their mana was full. After the draining of two mana potions, and a small pep talk from Frida, all three of them slowly walked into the room of Thor, Norse God of Thunder.

Unlike Tyr’s room, this one seemed to be a bit more straightforward. The room had a statue of Thor in the back, his arms lowered and his palms open, as if he was waiting for something to fall through the ceiling and be sifted through them. On the left and right walls at about the midpoint of the room lay two large hammers, the ends of their handles connected to their respective walls. And finally, next to the door they had just entered from, sat a single lever.

John looked to Frida and Talia before giving a small shrug. “I went in blind last time and tried to instantly pull a lever. One of you two can get this one.”

Talia gave John an eye roll before walking over and giving the lever a quick pull. The moment she did so, all three of them could hear the loud sound of ancient gears rotating and the vague buzzing of electricity in the air. Then, after a moment or two, lightning shot forth from the hammers, blasting into the wall behind Thor, leaving only scorch marks. Before any of them could make another move, a loud crack echoed through the chamber, causing the sound of the gears to stop and the electricity to switch off. No one spoke, and after a few moments John decided to break the silence. He turned to Talia and said sarcastically, “Congratulations. I think you broke it.”

“I didn’t break it! It… broke itself. Uh… any ideas on how to fix it?”

John chuckled. “Have you tried turning it off and back on again? Perhaps we need to go unplug the hammers and plug them back in. Maybe that would do it.”

“Ha, ha, John. Do you have any serious ideas?”

Before John could give his input, Frida stepped forward, carefully looking between the two hammers, the statue of Thor, and the lever. “Based on the sounds, I’m going to guess that something with gears broke in the mechanisms behind these walls. So here’s what I’m going to do.” She pointed over to a large hole in the wall that John had not noticed. “I’m going to go through there and see if I can find… whatever it is that broke back there. I’m willing to guess that the solution to this puzzle - and like I said, this is a guess - is that once the electricity comes back on, you two will have to point the lightning toward Thor’s hands.”

John cocked an eyebrow at this. Frida seemed to guess this puzzle’s solution rather quickly, adding to the idea that she knew much more than she was letting on. Frida, not noticing this, continued, “If I can fix whatever broke, we should be able to continue and solve this puzzle. If not, well… maybe I can jerry rig something up that will cause the electricity to flow again. If need be, I could probably charge the hammers up with my own lightning spell.”

Talia spoke up. “Why don’t you just use your lightning spell now?”

John was quick to interrupt. “No no, let her see if she can fix it first. We don’t want her to drain her mana too much, and besides, there could be some unknown element to this. Maybe the lightning only works if it comes from the hammers or something.”

Frida gave John a nod. “Fair point. You two stay here, I’ll be back.” And with that, Frida ducked into the hole in the wall, and was soon both out of sight and out of earshot.

John turned back to Talia, who had her arms crossed, which John noticed caused her breasts to perk up a little. She gave John a bit of a seductive smile. “I see. Eager to get my mom out of the room, huh? Got any specific reasons why?”

“I do - did, um - reason I do have,” John stuttered. “Look, Talia… I do have something serious to discuss with you real quick.”

Talia’s seductive look was replaced with a concerned one as she reached out to take his hand. “Oh, yeah, sure, what’s the matter?”

John let out a small sigh. “Do you remember when I told you about my Observe skill?”

“Uh, yeah. You mentioned it allows you to see some information about whatever you use the skill on.”

“Right.” John nodded. “And it varies from object to object. For example, when I used it on you, back when I first met you, I could see your name, your age, your level, and your mood at the time, along with your health and mana. When I use it on a rune, I can learn what the rune’s effects are and also learn it.”

“Okay, so what’s your point, John?”

“Well… back when we were in the rebel’s camp, I found in one of the tents… a knife. And when I used Observe on it, I found out that it was made by your father.” John hesitated. “It was made… and used by your father.”

With that said, John began to go into detail about what his thoughts had been over the past few hours - how he was nervous about the rebels being terrorists, and the odd notes in Frida’s behavior; how she seemed to always lead them in the direction of the puzzle’s solutions, or in the case of this room, straight up said it. When Talia tried to point out that it was impossible for her mom to know anything about Beowulf’s tomb, John questioned how she could be so certain. To that, Talia had no response. He asked her how much she knew about her parents’ life before they had her, or even before her brother, and she admitted she didn’t know much. She knew a few things, such as the fact that they liked to explore tombs and that her father had a prominent smithing business, and she even knew the story of how they met - but aside from that, they never really talked much about the time before Talia was born. After a moment or two of thought, she came to the realization that her mother was also intentionally quiet about the time around Talia’s being born.

“Do they maybe have any pictures of before you were born?” John asked.

Talia shook her head. “They have one of them at their wedding and a couple with my brother being born, but aside from that, nothing.” She was silent for a few moments before saying, “I think my father has a few pictures stashed away in their room, but I’ve never inquired to see what they were. I just figured they were pictures from when Mom and Dad dated, or something.”

John gave a sigh and rubbed the back of his neck. “Talia, I need you to give me everything you know for _certain _about the rebellion. If your mom is a part of them - or was, I guess - we need to know as much as we can.”

“There’s not really much that I can say for certain,” Talia explained slowly. “Once again, in school we don’t really talk about them that much. It’s mostly at the discrepancy of the leading government. All that’s really known for certain is that the leader Arvida was originally pushing for more modern ideals to be taken up within Elven society. At some point, the rebels became violent, and it ended with Arvida being captured and eventually executed. The biggest problem with this, though, is that the rest of the rebels could not be found, as they had gone into hiding a short time before Arvida’s capture. The entire incident with the rebellion was a disaster for the council. It showed that they were weak, being initially unable to stop the rebels, and that there was enough dissent about the Elven society to let a rebellion even form in the first place. And I mean, in the end, Arvida still won. In order to combat her, the council had to make more modern changes, sparking what some Elves refer to as the Elven Industrial Revolution.” Talia gave John a small smile. “Hell, the only reason I know what Skyrim is and can reference it with you is technically because of Arvida.”

John returned her smile, but was lost deep in thought. After a few quiet seconds passed between them, he looked over to her. “Can you say for certain that they really were terrorists?”

Now it was Talia’s time to rub the back of her neck. “Honestly… no. I wasn’t alive during the civil war, and the only information I have to go on about this comes from the government. They say history’s written by the victors, so for all I know, the rebels were actually honest freedom fighters and the government was in the wrong the whole time.”

Just as they were about to continue their discussion, they could feel the hum of electricity return to the air as the two hammers sparked to life, shooting off their arcs of lightning. John gestured over to the hammers. “Come on. Let’s finish this puzzle, and after that… I think we both know what needs to be done.”

Talia nodded, rolling up her sleeves and cracking her knuckles.