"Good. I'd hate to have trekked across Skyrim only to find my prey already taken care of, again." she said with genuine relief.
"To be fair the last time that werewolf didn't exactly give me much choice. I'm not exactly fond of picking fights with things best left alone after all." I said with a chuckle.
"A shame. Plenty of glory in slaying things like that." she said with a regretful tone.
"Don't much care for glory. It's nice sure but it runs dry. For me it's the thrill of discovery. I love picking apart the delicate strands of enchantment and spell craft. Or when I find a new ingredient to experiment with in my cooking. There's something deeply satisfying about creating something new." I say with a smile.
"You sound almost like old Eorlund when he gets a few drinks in him." she said with a small smile of her own.
"Man's steel is legendary so I'll take that as a compliment." I said with a chuckle.
"I meant it as one. Most would see smiths or alchemists as weaklings or unworthy. Not the companions. We know that it's thanks to them that we can focus all our attention on fighting." she said seriously.
"True enough. Speaking of I believe we've wagged our tongue long enough. Best get you on your way to killing that troll as soon as possible." I said calmly.
"You never did say why you were over here and not back at that college of yours." she pointed out.
"You didn't ask but i've ran into a bit of a bottleneck. I'm not improving fast enough anymore and need some real world experience to trudge forward." I said helplessly.
"Got anything in particular in mind?" she asked intrigued.
"Yngol's barrow. I have the claw key to the place and figured it'd make a good start to my journey." I said seeing no reason to lie.
"Ysgramor's son? Might be something worthwhile there for the companions. Mind if I tag along, I won't be a bother?" she asked interested.
I thought about it for a moment. Honestly it wouldn't be a terrible idea all things considered. Aela might be a bit younger than she was in the game but she still had years of combat and real world traveling experience, at least as far as Skyrim was concerned anyways.-
She was also a very skilled hunter so she could definitely pull her own weight. Besides it's not like having some company for a while would cause me much problems on the lonely road. Sure I had Lokjun and in a funny way my toad but Lokjun was literally soul bound to me and the toad regularly contemplated eating me. It wouldn't since it was bound by the summoning contract but that didn't mean it's wild daedric nature was gone. There was no malicious intent behind the thoughts they just happened in the same way a person might look at a pie and consider how it'd taste.-
"Alright, I see no harm in it. You want to meet up there or travel together?" I asked after agreeing.
"I still need to slay the troll so I can meet you there if you can show me it's location on the map." she said as she took out a rough sturdy leather travelers map of skyrim.
I roughly marked the location of the barrow on her map with a coal pencil. She set off after her prey once that was done and I got my toad rushing away again.-
I cursed the Thalmor under my breath nearly constantly the rest of the way to Windhelm as a blizzard hit us and my normal clothes offered basically no protection from the cold. My bear fur suit had been ruined with that ambush so I could only regularly puff out fire from my hands to keep frostbite from setting in. My feet were fine since the boots Sheogorath left for me were quite good at holding heat in. Still I managed well enough and arrived in Windhelm once again. I passed through the gate and made a beeline for that funny Argonian mage at the docks.-
"By the Hist stay away from me!" the shirtless lizard folk hissed at me as I was walking towards him.
"That's rather uncalled for isn't it?" I asked kind of offended.
"Says the person wearing two artifacts touched by the mad god. You want more fur? Fine. Leave the gold and come back tomorrow, just stay back. I don't want to risk exposure." he said with a dangerous warning glint to his eyes that said he was not messing around.
"That's fair I suppose. I'd want to avoid the attention too if that was even possible at this point." I said taking out a pouch of gold and tossing it over.
I left after that and headed for the market area to see about using the smiths smelter. I wasn't just going to leave the broken sets of elven armor sitting in my plane after all. I watched the city as I moved through it and the first thing I noticed was a distinct improvement in the tension of the place. The air still held it of course as the local Nords were still not perfectly neutral with the Dunmer. But things were much less tense as the deals Ulfric was running with Morrowwind to set up the alliance had enough money moving into the city that the locals were satisfied mostly.-
The food and supplies getting sent back to Morrowwind had many of the refugee's taking the ships back to Morrowwind so the Gray quarter was circulating people rather than stagnating. It wasn't a perfect solution and would definitely have a limit eventually but the loosening of tension, even temporarily, let the city breath easier. The increase in guards in the city was the second thing I noticed. Clearly Ulfric was preparing for battle which was a concern since last I knew everything was moving smoothly.-
Until I was inevitably summoned by the man however I wouldn't know the full extent of why he was doing this. I found a smith with an outdoor smelter running a shop called "the frozen hammer" that I managed to rent the smelters use from. I earned a look from the man that said he recognized the armor style and how I probably got them. Other than that though he said nothing about it which made sense since given the hatred for the thalmor prevalent in most of Skyrim's people.