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He’d spent so long to get here.
Days spent studying the few tales that remained.
Olaf and the Dragon.
The bits of King Olaf’s verse the bards of Solitude remembered, though the book was gone.
And the careful planning to get here.
To be standing silently in the great hall of Dragonsreach and looking up at this dragon of myth. Though that myth be one of subjugation and display. And a death unexplained.
Whispers-in-Shadow stepped past guards slumped over in drug-induced dreams and up to the throne that he’d always thought looked small under the dragon’s skull.
Years of practice made climbing the rough stone wall easier than he’d expected.
And the drugs he’d aquired let the guards sleep through the noise of ancient mounts coming loose and clawed feet meeting wooden floors.
He clutched the skull close as he chugged an invisibility potion and darted out the front door, disappearing into the night.
It took longer than he would have liked to get to the mountain, even on a stolen horse. Hist curse these frozen lands and jagged stone.
But if this worked… If he got what he was promised…
He sighed as he finally climbed to the top of Mount Anthor, precious cargo wrapped and slung over his back, fire salts in his hands doing little to help in this cold.
The mountain of legend and the head of the dragon taken from it.
He smiled sharply as he came into view of the carved stone wall.
Words only few knew the meaning of.
And he was not one of them.
He slowly stepped over and carefully set the unwrapped skull before it, pausing as he looked from his prize to the looming wall that seemed to be watching him.
Why did he feel condemned by words he did not know? This was hardly an atrocity, was it? Was the desire for knowledge so wrong?
He looked away, pulling out the scroll he’d been given.
Answers.
Here, in this frozen mountain waste, he could ask the soul of the one who had been there. He could learn the truth. Something any bard or wizard might kill for and here he was!
And all he had to do was speak these words, right?
There he stood, before a wall he could not read, atop a mountain he could barely climb, he spoke words he did not know.
“Dovah vomindok, vodahmin.
Hin Vahrukt aan Dey kiin do krent vaat.
Bo nu wah daar joor kopraan.
Kos gro wah ni hin.
Rovaan golt ahrk kahmaan stin.
Aan laas fah aan laas.”
And the cold air was cut through with the sound of a dying scream.