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(A/N: Don't forget to give those power stones to Skyrim everyone!)
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Balgruuf let out a sigh of relief. "Good. You knew that my court wizard, Farengar, has been obsessively researching the ancient dragon cults and their lore for months. He has been searching for answers regarding their possible return. Perhaps, if you speak with him, the two of you can find a way to handle this madness before the beast turns its eyes upon our walls."
Aerion maintained his flawless, aristocratic posture as he stood before the throne of Whiterun, processing the Jarl's request. His golden eyes reflected the dancing flames of the central fire trench, projecting an image of absolute, unwavering loyalty to the hold.
"You need only ask, Jarl Balgruuf," Aerion replied, his melodic voice ringing with solemn conviction. He placed a hand respectfully over his heart. "I will seek out Master Farengar immediately and inquire about his draconic research. You have my absolute word that I will do everything within my power to assist in resolving this crisis."
Aerion allowed a note of deep, patriotic gravity to enter his tone, perfectly cementing his political alignment.
"If there is truly more than one dragon returning to the skies... it is not merely Skyrim that is threatened. The entirety of Tamriel will eventually burn," Aerion declared smoothly. "And I have absolutely no intention of allowing that to happen. I have invested heavily in this land. I consider Whiterun to be my home now, my Jarl. I will defend it with the same ferocity as any true son of Skyrim."
Balgruuf the Greater leaned back heavily against the carved wood of his throne, a look of profound, genuine relief washing over his exhausted features. In a political landscape dominated by self serving nobles and treacherous spies, the High Elf's unwavering, pragmatic loyalty was an incredibly rare comfort.
"Your words do this hold great honor, Aerion," Balgruuf nodded deeply, his booming voice softening with gratitude. "Whiterun is incredibly fortunate to count you among its citizens. You have my thanks."
The Jarl then shifted his sharp, calculating gaze away from the mage, focusing his attention on the soot stained stained, fiercely built Nordic woman standing quietly behind the High Elf.
"As for you, Aeloria Frostveil," Balgruuf addressed her directly, his tone shifting into the absolute, unquestionable authority of a reigning monarch.
Aeloria immediately stood at attention, her posture straightening in the stolen Imperial Light Armor.
"You have suffered a grave injustice at the hands of Imperial bureaucracy, and you have survived the fires of a myth," Balgruuf stated, his voice echoing over the silent hall. "Aerion has vouched for your innocence, and a soldier of the Legion has apparently pardoned you. I will not have an innocent woman living in fear within my borders."
Balgruuf raised a calloused hand, issuing a formal, localized decree.
"By my authority as Jarl, I officially extend to you my full protection," Balgruuf proclaimed. "The crimes falsely placed upon your head are officially pardoned within the borders of the Whiterun Hold. You and your companions are permitted to stay within my city, or upon Aerion's estate, entirely freely. No Imperial patrol, nor any wandering Stormcloak regiment, will be allowed to lay a hand upon you so long as you reside within my domain. Here, you are a free woman."
Aeloria's breath hitched slightly. The heavy, suffocating anxiety of being a wanted fugitive, a fear that had been silently gnawing at the back of her mind since they escaped the tunnels, instantly evaporated.
She stepped forward, dropping to one knee upon the stone floor, bowing her head in a display of profound, genuine respect.
"Thank you, my Jarl," Aeloria spoke, her voice thick with emotion. "Your mercy and your justice are a beacon in these dark times. Your words allow me to finally rest easy. I shall not forget this kindness."
"Rise, Aeloria," Balgruuf waved his hand dismissively, offering a grim, practical smile. "Do not thank me too profusely. You, like Aerion, are one of the very few mortals alive who possesses actual, firsthand combat experience surviving a dragon. If this beast turns its eyes upon my walls, I will gladly accept all the talented blades I can muster to face this grave danger."
With the political pardons officially secured and his reputation at an all time high, Aerion offered a final bow.
"We shall take our leave to consult with your wizard, my Jarl," Aerion announced.
Aerion, Jenassa, Aeloria, and the ever faithful Lupin turned away from the throne, walking back down the central aisle of the Great Hall. They left Froki and Haming resting quietly on a wooden bench near the massive main doors, ensuring the exhausted civilians did not have to endure another bureaucratic conversation.
Aerion led his heavily armed entourage toward the eastern wing of Dragonsreach, pushing through the heavy wooden doors that led into the Jarl's dedicated arcane quarters.
The environment shifted instantly. The smell of roasting meat and woodsmoke was entirely replaced by the sharp, pungent odors of crushed alchemy ingredients, ozone, and old parchment. The room was a chaotic, sprawling mess of arcane academia.
Massive bookshelves groaned under the weight of ancient tomes, soul gems glowed faintly in iron brackets on the walls, and a large arcane enchanter hummed with latent magical energy in the corner.
Situated directly in the center of the room was a massive, cluttered wooden table.
Standing over the table, deeply engrossed in a complex, glowing star chart and a stack of crumbling, dust covered scrolls, was Farengar Secret-Fire. The Court Wizard wore simple, functional blue robes, his face set in a permanent scowl of academic irritation.
"Farengar," Aerion called out smoothly, stepping into the room.
The Court Wizard did not even bother looking up from his scrolls. He merely waved a dismissive, highly annoyed hand in the air.
"I have explicitly told the guards I am not to be disturbed!" Farengar snapped, his tone dripping with characteristic arrogance. "I am in the middle of a highly delicate translation of First Era text. Go away. Whatever petty magical malady or unenchanted iron sword you bring me can wait until tomorrow."
Aerion's transmigrator mind flared with a brief, intense flash of annoyance at the man's absolute lack of social grace, but he maintained his flawless composure.
"It is Aerion, Farengar," the High Elf stated, stepping directly up to the edge of the cluttered table. He didn't bother with pleasantries. He dropped the intelligence bomb perfectly. "And I have not come to request an enchantment. I have come to inform you that a dragon has returned from the ancient myths, and it has just finished burning Helgen to ashes."
The reaction was instantaneous.
Farengar froze. The heavy quill pen slipped from his fingers, clattering loudly against the wooden table and spilling black ink across the star chart.
The Court Wizard snapped his head up, his eyes wide behind his spectacles, staring at the towering Altmer as if he had just sprouted a second head. All traces of his previous arrogance completely vanished.
"What... what did you just say?" Farengar demanded, his voice a breathless, frantic whisper.
"I said," Aerion repeated slowly, enunciating every syllable with absolute, chilling clarity, "that an ancient dragon has returned. It attacked Helgen this morning. It leveled the fortress."
Farengar didn't simply stand there. The scholarly detachment he usually projected completely shattered. He practically sprinted around the edge of the massive wooden table, rushing right up to Aerion. To Jenassa's profound alarm, the Court Wizard actually reached out, grabbing the High Elf by both of his shoulders in a vice like grip.
"Impossible! That is completely impossible!" Farengar sputtered excitedly, entirely forgetting his personal boundaries. "The dragons are extinct! They have been dead since the Dragon War of the First Era! Are you absolutely certain of what you saw? It wasn't a massive drake? Or an illusion cast by rogue mages?"
Aerion looked down at the hands gripping his robes, projecting a mild, highly unimpressed aura that forced Farengar to quickly step back and clear his throat awkwardly.
"I am a master of the arcane, Farengar. I do not confuse parlor tricks with reality," Aerion replied coldly, dusting his shoulders. "It was a dragon. Scales of black obsidian, a wingspan that blotted out the sun, and a Thu'um that melted solid stone. It slaughtered an entire Imperial garrison. Jenassa and Aeloria were with me, we witnessed the annihilation firsthand."
Instead of displaying horror, empathy for the dead, or fear for the safety of the realm, Farengar's face lit up with a brilliant, manic, absolutely unadulterated academic joy.
"Marvelous," Farengar breathed, his eyes shining with pure obsession. "Oh, by the Divines, it is simply marvelous! To think that these mythical creatures, entities we have only ever known from crumbling stone carvings and dusty legends, would actually return during our lifetime! It is the greatest arcane discovery of the era!"
Aeloria crossed her arms, her blue eyes narrowing in profound disgust at the wizard's reaction. "People burned to death, mage. Children lost their parents. There is nothing 'marvelous' about it."
Farengar waved a hand dismissively, completely lacking basic human empathy. "Yes, yes, the destruction of Helgen is a tragedy, of course. But the academic implications! The sheer volume of raw, ancient magic returning to the world!"
He turned his manic focus back to Aerion.
"Jarl Balgruuf informed me that you have been obsessively researching the ancient dragon cults," Aerion interjected, steering the conversation back to the tactical objective. "He believes you may possess a clue, or at least some actionable intelligence, regarding why they are suddenly reviving, and how we might combat them."
Farengar nodded frantically, practically vibrating with excitement. He rushed back behind his table, sifting aggressively through his scattered scrolls.
"Ah! Yes! Of course, my research!" Farengar exclaimed, pulling a specific, heavily annotated map of the Whiterun Hold from the bottom of a stack. "I have been tracking down a specific, highly potent artifact related to the ancient dragons. It is an ancient stone tablet. It is said to contain vital, localized mapping information concerning the ancient burial mounds of the dragons across Skyrim."
Farengar tapped a specific, heavily circled location on the map.
"I have managed to trace its current resting place to a massive ancient Nordic ruin located in the mountains to the south," Farengar explained eagerly. "Bleak Falls Barrow."
Behind Aerion's right shoulder, Jenassa's posture violently stiffened.
The Dark Elf assassin's crimson eyes widened significantly. Her hand twitched toward the hilt of her dagger in pure shock.
'Bleak Falls Barrow?' Jenassa thought, her mind racing. 'The Dragonstone? We already cleared that entire ruin! We killed the giant spider, we butchered the bandits, and the Patron stripped the tablet from the dead hands of the Draugr Overlord! It is sitting in his magical void right now!'
Jenassa slowly turned her head, looking directly at the back of Aerion's skull. She waited for him to simply reach into his robes, produce the heavy stone tablet, and drop it onto the wizard's desk to instantly conclude the matter.
Aerion felt her gaze burning a hole in the back of his neck.
Utilizing his absolute, flawless physical control, Aerion did not turn his head. He merely offered a microscopic, barely perceptible tilt of his chin, combined with a subtle lowering of his mental aura, a silent, absolute command for Jenassa to remain entirely mute.
His Gamer mind was operating ten steps ahead of the Court Wizard.
'If I simply produce the Dragonstone right now, in the exact moment he asks for it, it ruins the narrative pacing,' Aerion calculated with cold, economic ruthlessness. 'Farengar will be highly suspicious of how I perfectly anticipated his request. Furthermore, the perceived value of the artifact will diminish if it requires zero effort to acquire. I need to establish the illusion of labor to maximize the financial and political reward from the Jarl.'
Aerion turned his attention back to the frantic wizard, his face a perfect mask of determined, scholarly resolve.
"A stone tablet in Bleak Falls Barrow," Aerion repeated, nodding his head slowly as if committing the location to memory. "I understand perfectly, Farengar. This is a matter of absolute, hold threatening urgency. I will not allow the Jarl to wait. I will gather my equipment, ascend the mountain to this ancient ruin, and secure the tablet for your research."
Farengar let out a massive sigh of relief, leaning heavily on the table.
"Excellent! Truly excellent, Aerion!" Farengar praised, his arrogance entirely replaced by desperate gratitude. "I was actually planning on submitting a formal request to the Jarl to hire a group of brutish, uneducated mercenaries to delve into the barrow for me. But having a master of the arcane handle the retrieval... I trust your competence vastly more than some wandering sellswords. You understand the delicate nature of historical artifacts."
"I shall treat the relic with the utmost care," Aerion promised smoothly.
"When you return with the tablet, you will be heavily compensated," Farengar assured him quickly. "The Jarl has authorized a significant reward from the hold's treasury for the acquisition of this specific intelligence. We must unlock its secrets."
"Consider it done," Aerion stated, turning on his heel. "I shall return when the barrow is conquered."
Aerion led Jenassa and Aeloria out of the arcane quarters, completely avoiding Jenassa's highly confused, demanding glare. They walked back through the Great Hall, retrieving Froki and Haming from the wooden bench near the doors.
They pushed through the massive double doors of Dragonsreach, stepping out into the bright, late afternoon sun.
As they began the long descent down the sprawling stone steps, moving from the Cloud District back toward the lower tiers of the city, Aerion turned his attention to the old hunter walking slowly beside him.
"Froki," Aerion began, his tone gentle but businesslike. "Jarl Balgruuf has explicitly permitted you and your grandson to remain within the walls of Whiterun, free of harassment. However, you must decide your immediate future. If you wish to stay in the city, secure a room at the Bannered Mare, and rest for the next several days while you look for suitable work, you need only say the word. I will personally cover the entirety of your lodgings and food expenses until you are back on your feet. Do not worry about the coin."
Froki stopped walking. He leaned heavily on his walking stick, looking at the bustling, noisy city around him, and then up at the towering High Elf.
The old Nord's face was etched with a mixture of profound exhaustion, grief, and a fierce, unyielding pride.
"You have a good heart, Elf," Froki rasped, his voice rough. "You saved my boy. You carried him off the mountain. You bought us a warm bed in Riverwood. But I will not take another septims piece of your charity."
Froki straightened his back, his pride refusing to allow him to become a beggar in a strange city.
"We have taken advantage of your kindness more than enough," Froki declared firmly. "I am old, but I am not useless. I know how to work leather. I know how to track, and I know how to manage a camp. If you truly wish to help us... do not pay for an inn. Take us to this estate you mentioned. Let me work for you. Let me earn my keep, and the boy's keep, with my own two hands."
Aerion's golden eyes gleamed with absolute, unadulterated satisfaction. The psychological manipulation had worked flawlessly. He had intentionally offered charity knowing the proud Nord would reject it, thereby creating a willing, deeply indebted employee.
"You do not need to feel bad, Froki. I offered the coin freely," Aerion replied, maintaining his benevolent facade. "But if you genuinely desire honest work over charity... then I gratefully and formally accept your service. We march for the homestead."
The group continued their descent through the city. They bypassed the bustling market square, walked down through the Plains District, and exited the main gates of Whiterun.
They walked down the winding stone ramp, passing Skulvar at the stables, and turned left onto the main cobblestone trade road.
The sun was beginning its slow descent toward the western mountains, casting a rich, golden light across the tundra, by the time the Tundra Homestead finally came into view.
As they walked off the main road and approached the sprawling compound, Froki and Haming stopped dead in their tracks.
The old hunter's jaw dropped. He had expected the "estate" to be a simple, perhaps slightly oversized Nordic farmhouse with a nice garden.
Instead, he was looking at a heavily fortified, sprawling military and industrial compound. Massive wooden storehouses loomed in the distance. The loud, rhythmic clanging of hammers echoed from the newly built barracks. Heavily armored mercenaries patrolled the perimeter with disciplined precision.
But it was the eastern flank of the property that completely shattered the old man's comprehension.
Sprawling across acres of the plains was a massive, terrifyingly thick wooden palisade. And standing casually near the reinforced timber gaps, lazily tearing massive chunks of hay from a wooden trough, were six towering, actual mammoths.
"By the blood of Kyne," Froki whispered, his eyes wide as saucers as the alpha bull let out a low, rumbling trumpet that shook the ground. "You... you have actual behemoths penned up. I thought the guards in the city were exaggerating."
Aerion smiled, a look of profound, aristocratic pride washing over his face. He gestured grandly toward the massive enclosure.
"Welcome to your new employment, Froki," Aerion announced smoothly. "Given your extensive background in the wilderness and your practical experience, I am officially appointing you as the Steward of the Tundra Homestead. You will manage the logistical inventories of the storehouses, coordinate the acquisition of raw grain, and, most importantly, you will assist my mercenary company in the care and feeding of the mammoth herd."
Froki looked at the towering beasts, a healthy dose of primal fear mixing with his awe. "You want me to feed... them? Elf, those beasts crush giant camps for sport."
"You have absolutely no need to be afraid," Aerion reassured him calmly. "I have utilized a highly complex pacification magic upon the herd. They are entirely, completely docile toward anyone bearing my crest. So long as you do not approach them with aggressive intent or attempt to harm them, they will view you as a provider. They will not hurt you."
Froki swallowed hard, gripping his walking stick. It was a terrifying prospect, but he was a Nord, and he had given his word. He gave a slow, highly cautious nod of agreement.
"Aye. I will trust your magic, Patron. I accept the position."
Down by Aerion's boots, a profound shift occurred.
Haming, the traumatized young boy who had been trapped in a state of silent, hollow shock since witnessing the death of his parents at Helgen, suddenly stepped forward.
The sheer, overwhelming majesty of the massive, shaggy beasts had completely broken through his trauma. The child's eyes were wide, filled not with fear, but with the pure, unfiltered wonder of a young boy looking at living mountains.
Haming tugged gently on his grandfather's tunic, looking up with a spark of life finally returning to his face.
"Grandfather?" Haming asked, his small voice trembling slightly, but filled with genuine excitement. "Can... can I help you feed them?" Aerion looked down at the boy, a genuine, warm smile breaking across his features. The sanctuary was established. The empire was growing. And the variables of the timeline were resting perfectly in his hands.
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[Main Panel]
Name: Aerion
Race: High Elf (Altmer)
Health: 430/430 Stamina: 430/430 Magicka: 600/600
Level: 108
Skills: Animal Affinity (MAX LEVEL), Fast Skill Levelling (MAX LEVEL), Fast Magic Mastery (MAX LEVEL), Instant Shout (MAX LEVEL), Destruction (Fire(+2)/Lightning(+1)/Frost) (Level 74/41/98), Restoration (Healing/Purify(+1)) (Level 91/56), Alteration (Level 35), Alteration (Level 20), Illusion (Level 42), Conjuration (Necromancy/Summoning(+1)) (Level 37/10), Persuasion(+1) (Level 53), Smithing (Level 22), Sneak (Level 48), One Handed (Level 93), Two Handed (Level 65), Lockpicking (Level 35), Archery (Level 72), Enchanting (Level 66), Light Armor (Level 53), Block (Level 70), & Pickpocket (Level 8)
Shouts: Fus (Force), Tiid (Time), Krii (Kill), Feim (Fade), & Su (Air)
[Inventory Panel]
1x Small Sack, Poacher's Axe, Mammoth Tusk, the Golden Claw, Calm Spellbook, Arvel's Journal, Inkwell & Quill, Thief Book, Scroll Of Summoning (Wolf), Scroll Of Healing, Weak Potion of Paralysis, Dragonstone, Golden Staff of Flames, Parchment Rolls Of Mammoths Farm And Loan, Ebony Claw, Orcish Dagger, Jagged Crown, The Mirror, Glass Sword, Ring of Pure Mixtures, Grand Soul Gem (Filled), Reanimate Corpse Tome, Staff of Lightning, Deed to Tundra Homestead, Garnet, Sapphire, Ruby, & Dawnbreaker
2x Potion Of Ultimate Magicka, Common Soul Gem (Empty), Black Soul Gem (Empty), & Elven Sword
3x Glowing Mushrooms, Potions of Minor Stamina, & Common Soul Gem (Filled)
4x Potions of Minor Magicka, Spider Eggs, & Lesser Soul Gem (Filled)
5x Lesser Soul Gem (Filled)
8x Iron Arrows, Ancient Nord Arrows, & Black Soul Gems (Filled)
9x Potions Of Minor Healing
Weight: 74.92 KG / 515 KG
Septims: 77,465