Causally fighting our way through the barrow, everyone was a bit deflated that everything we ran into was basically a one hit KO. Unlike the powerful monsters we were accustomed to in our world, all we had to contend with was skeever and weak undead foes. The only real problem we ran into was the Giant Spider that was hiding in the chamber where the thief was. Rushing into the room to seize him, before I could warn them, my fiancées let out horrified screams when the thing descended from the ceiling.
Immediately bombarding everything in the room with fire magic, Lucoa and Roxanne rushed to the back of the room with a fainted Olivia in tow. Stepping in to check on Olivia, I glanced over at everyone else as they screamed in sheer terror at where the spider had been. Confirming that Olivia was fine, I called out to the women to make them stop.
"All of you, calm down!", I shouted, over the roar of the fiery explosions, "Everything on that side of the room has been reduced to cinders. If you keep this up, the Golden Claw is going to become a pool of molten gold."
Snapping them out of their frenzy, the women ceased their bombardment and immediately apologized for their outburst. Understanding they were just caught by surprise, I assured them that it was fine. Leaving Olivia with Roxanne, Lucoa ran into the hot portion of the room to look for the claw. Taking advantage of her high resistance to heat, she began tossing brittle pottery around trying to find it. Finding it in the adjacent hallway, Lucoa came running out with the claw held high above her head.
"Guys, do you see this masterpiece?! This is fucking cool!!", Lucoa shouted, as Olivia began to recover from her shocked state.
"What do the animal symbols on the bottom of the claw mean?", Clarice said, as Lucoa began passing it around.
Helping Olivia back onto her feet, the three of us walked over to join the rest of the group.
"The symbols on the claw are a code used to help unlock an ancient vault door.", I answered, receiving the claw from Mylene, "With the claws on top, we would need to adjust the mechanism to be bear, moth, and owl respectively. Once the code is locked in, all we need to do is push the claw into the indentation in the door and turn it slightly clockwise. Every important treasure room has a corresponding claw with its own code to unlock it."
"I see, I assume then that each claw is somehow enchanted to their respective barrow to prevent people from finding one claw and guessing the code on the door.", Deirdre muttered, as I handed it to her, "Oof…is this thing made out of solid gold?!"
"That is correct, the claws are enchanted in a way that only one claw can unlock them. Once the doors are open, they basically turn into massive paperweights.", I remarked, "It will be worth a few thousand in gold scrap, but not much else. In my opinion, it would be better to just return it to the siblings after we unlock and loot the treasure hidden here."
Agreeing with my decision, the women felt that returning the sibling's family heirloom was the right thing to do. Having Lucoa hold onto it for us, we pressed on further into the barrow looking forward to the reward at the end of the road.
---One Hour Later---
Walking up to the vault door, all of us were taken aback by its size and intricate design, we took a moment to admire the craftsmanship that went into building it. Moving the three rings on the door around to match what the claw hat engraved on it, Lucoa took a deep breath and pressed the claw into the key slot. Slowly turning it to the right, when she heard a loud clicking noise, she leapt back expecting something gruesome to happen. Hearing a series of other clicks come after that, the door began to slowly lower itself into the floor.
"Like I said, nothing to worry about.", I teased her, "Are you doubting your poor husband to be?"
"Jeez…it was just a knee jerk reaction!", she huffed, with a smile, "I know you would never lie about something that could get one of us killed."
With the vault door open, the eight of us slowly crept up the stairs into a colossal, natural chamber in the mountain. Ducking down to avoid a swarm of bats that flew close to our heads, Roxanne was the first to notice the large chest and Word Wall on the opposite side of the room. Making our way over there in a hurry, I stopped everyone just before we reached the stairs that led up to the platform everything was on. Confused why I was stopping us from going up, Lucoa and Roxanne heard a faint breathing sound coming from the sarcophagus on the platform.
"As expected of you, Victor. You realized that the Dungeon Boss was lying in wait for us to walk up there.", Roxanne said, with a smile.
"I cannot tell how strong it is from here, should we be concerned about it?", Lucoa inquired.
"It is by no means a threat to us, but it does wield Dragon Magic. Be prepared to get knocked around a bit before taking it down.", I warned everyone.
Understanding the potential risk, everyone ran up the stairs prepared to engage the boss in a fight. Watching the sarcophagus closely, as we stepped closer to it, Mylene poked it with her sword when we were right up on it. Not reacting to our prodding, I remembered that it would only pop out once one or more of us obtained the power from the Word Wall. Having everyone watch the sarcophagus while Lucoa and I looked at the wall, they took up a position around it waiting for something to happen.
"Alright Lucoa, you are probably going to feel a bit uncomfortable during the process. Our vision will blur for a few minutes as we absorb the dragonic knowledge.", I stated, "Are you ready?"
"Yes, I am!", Lucoa acknowledged, "Let us get this over with!"
Turning our full attention to the Word Wall, an unfamiliar power began flowing into our minds from the text. Just as I had warned her, our vision began to blur for a moment before quickly recovering. Unlike me though, Lucoa's body began to rapidly heat up sending alarms to my HUD that she was approaching dangerously high temperatures.
"Lucoa, tell me what you are feeling right now!", I said, as I began administering Healing Magic to her, "If something is hurting, tell me immediately!"
"My…my whole body feels like its on fire!", Lucoa groaned, as her mana pool doubled in size, "FUCK!!"
As I tried contained her rampaging mana, the lid of the sarcophagus flew off as the Draugr Overlord began rising out of its tomb. Attacking it immediately, while it was still getting up, the Draugr Overlord hit them with a Fus Ro Dah. Knocking them all away with ease, my fiancées crashed into the Word Wall and quickly got back to their feet.
"What the hell was that?!", Clarice asked.
"That was Dragon Magic. Unlike normal magic, you only need to utter a few words to cast it.", I answered, "Only dragons can use Dragon Magic repeatedly, for everyone else, there is a cooldown time. We have about ten seconds before he can use it again!"
(AN: This applies to the people of Nirn, not Otherworlders.)
"Got it, leave this to us!", Angelica replied, understanding things better now, "Get him!"
Rushing forward to attack him once again, when he went to cast the spell again, the women used the thrusters in their suits to quickly get out of the way. Pouncing on him after he used it, they quickly brought him to his knees before decapitating it. Celebrating their victory, they quickly realized that Lucoa was still in trouble.
"Victor…I…I have to let out some mana now!!", she screamed, her body nearly at the breaking point.
"Everyone get out of the way!", I ordered, as I spun her around.
Diving out of her way, Lucoa unleashed a powerful torrent of fire into the chamber. Quickly engulfing two thirds of the room in her fire, the ceiling and walls began to glow from the heat she was outputting. Continuing like this for a good minute, her fire finally went out as her body temperature quickly began to return to normal. Letting out a sigh of relief, I asked her if she was feeling better now.
"Yeah…that was rather unpleasant. It felt like the dragon blood inside of me was about to boil over.", she remarked, as I helped her up to her feet, "I am sorry about that everyone."
"It is fine, we are just glad that you are okay.", Olivia replied, with a smile.
"Just to clarify, the text on this wall did that to her?", Mylene asked, not wanting to look at it.
"She probably had a strong reaction to it because she is part dragon. The rest of you, if it affects you, should have a similar reaction to me which is momentary blurry vision.", I assured them.
Cautiously looking at the Word Wall, none of them had any reaction to the text. Asking me if I knew what it said, I nodded my head and answered the question.
"It says…Here lies the guardian, Keeper of Dragonstone, and a force of unending rage and darkness.", I told them, "The reactive part was the old word for Force, Fus. It is the first part of the phrase it used to send all of you flying."
Walking over to the corpse, I retrieved the Dragonstone and the Ancient Nordic Sword of Ice in its possession. Opening the treasure chest to see what we had earned, a mountain of gold, gems, and magic tomes greeted us with all their splendor. Quickly stuffing everything into my storage, we headed out the backdoor and returned to our ship to review the tomes we had thus far collected and decrypt the Dragonstone.