"Russ," I heard someone whisper softly. Already I was beginning to respond to it as if it was actually my name.

  Skadi was giving me a funny smile when I opened an eye blearily. "What?"

  "You were mumbling nonsense in your sleep."

  Right. I probably shouldn't mention I had a chat with a Daedric Prince…

  I smushed my face between my makeshift pillows again instead, sighing happily. It made everything else easier to swallow.

  "Like them that much?" She didn't sound unhappy, her fingers playing with my hair.

  "Yes."

  She chuckled softly, and after a short pause… "Want to see them?"

  I pulled back slightly to give her a look. She might as well ask if the sky was blue while she was at it.

  Shifting slightly, she pulled the cloak higher as she gave what passed for her armor a tug. Proportionally to her they weren't anything to write home about, but compared to me… yeah. God, they were soft.

  I smothered my face into the complete package this time. It was an excellent way to spend the morning.

  We all shared a quick breakfast after, some more grumpily than others, and soon we were back on the road again. It was doing wonders for my cardio.

  Skadi stuck closer to me this time, and what a pair we made, an abomination and a dragon. I was tempted to tell her what I suspected, but the Greybeards might never forgive me if I ruined their moment.

  I also wasn't trying to think too hard about whatever Anthony over there saw or what insults said Daedric Prince had thrown at me. I felt alive right now, my heart beating, my lungs taking air in and out. That was good enough.

  "We should reach Riverwood not long after the sun sets," Ralof commented, glancing at the sky.

  "Joy," Uurwaen muttered.

  Skadi poked her cheek, annoying the short and spunky bandit further.

  "It will be nice to see a bed again, I suppose." Her eyes caught mine when she said it, a mischievous sparkle in them.

  If she was trying to give me ideas… well, it was working.

  Ralof's words proved prophetic, as we did indeed reach Riverwood soon after the sun dipped below the horizon. It wasn't the tiny thing I remembered, just like Helgen hadn't been. Instead it sprawled across both sides of the river.

  The blacksmith was at least familiar, and opposite it was the Riverwood Trader, or so the sign outside said.

  "I should get these two to the guard safe and sound." The Stormcloak then pointed out one of the houses to Skadi and me. "My sister is there. We can break our fast in the morning, say our farewells. I'll be leaving for Windhelm at noon, so if you want your cut, don't be late."

  "Here." She threw the sack with a certain someone's head at him, and he caught it without much difficulty. "I think they'll understand if we left the rest of her to rot."

  Ralof smiled like a wolf might, whistling a tune as he pulled the two after him, or just Uurwaen, really. Anthony seemed only too happy to get away from me, probably counting his lucky stars that I didn't eat him.

  "We've coin enough to rent a good room for the night thanks to our bandit friends," Skadi commented, sporting a coy smile now. "But not yet, I think. All that walking… it's got me nice and warmed up. We should spar."

  I tried not to look like a deer about to meet a truck, but…

  "Don't give me that look. Look at it like this instead." Her very blue eyes smoldered as she leaned in. "How much you impress me will decide what happens in that room tonight."

  She really knew how to motivate a man. Or send them running for the hills, but potayto, potahto.

  "You're on." Her smile had brightened when I hit the proverbial brakes. "Though it's hardly fair if you're the only one in armor. Fortunately…" I pointed out the Riverwood Trader behind her.

  She gave it a glance before giving a dismissive sniff. "I could make you some."

  I tried not to hurt her feelings or stare at the hot mess her armor was. "I thought you wanted to—"

  "Fine. Have it your way." Her good cheer returned quickly as she gave me another smooch on the cheek. "I'll find us a room before all the best ones are taken."

  I watched her saunter off after. Yeah, I was going to climb that mountain even if it killed me.

  Also, I was lying through my teeth about armor. Instead I was going to raid that shop for every spell they had.

  Barging inside, I eyed up the olive-skinned man grumbling about a claw under his breath. I had bigger fish to fry than another fetch quest though, so…

  "I'm in the market for some magic."

  He nodded along slowly. "I have a number of potions and enchanted goods if that is what you mean."

  What the fuck were they called again? "I meant… spell tomes?"

  He pinched his chin thoughtfully. "I have a few books lying around somewhere."

  "I'll take them!" Wait, I should probably haggle if I didn't want to get ripped off. "Of course, I'll want a discount for taking them all off your hands."

  His dark eyes gave me a dull look. "Can't I interest you in something else? You can have them all if you spend more than a hundred septims."

  I was beginning to think that we were not in fact on the same page here. Still…

  "You mentioned potions and enchanted goods?"

  "The finest you'll find in Riverwood!" Suddenly he was much more animated. "Have a look."

  He slid a piece of parchment over like it was a menu. Hmm…

  "I'll take a few potions." I pointed out which ones. "And these bracelets." Three in total. They were inexpensive, and the enchantments, while minor, seemed useful.

  One of them was supposed to help protect against the elements, while another was supposed to speed up the healing of smaller cuts and bruises. The last one supposedly helped with stamina.

  It all would have sounded like snake oil back home, but when in Rome…

  He tallied it all up quickly with what looked like an abacus. "That will be two hundred and thirty-three septims."

  I also found out something interesting after he panicked at my suddenly dropping hundreds of septims on his counter. Apparently you could fuse them into groupings of ten or a hundred. Neat.

  He also handed over the books like he promised he would, but, yeah, I had no idea what was what. The best I could do was go by the convoluted titles and symbolism, which left me with three on destruction, one on restoration, two on conjuration, two on alteration and one on illusion. There were also two more that I gave up on trying to figure out.

  "Two potions short," I heard someone mutter. "If you're not in a hurry, I can speak to Brenna and see if I can get part of this month's shipment early."

  I looked up from my hoard of books. "That's fine." He gave me another funny look before skedaddling.

  Anyway, seeing as my odds of being stabbed or worse were very high in this death world…

  There was only a small blossom of pain in my head as I cracked open the one and only book on restoration. Shifting my cloak aside after, my hand seemed to fill with light, and I pressed it to the burns that had been a pain in the ass all this time.

  I was hollower for it, but it gave me so much relief that I didn't care.

  Next was alteration. I still wasn't quite sure what a meridian lattice was or how it worked, but…

  Blegh. I hoped I could get away with a repeat, but no, it was a pounding headache that followed. A bad one.

  I could at least turn my flesh to wood or stone now. Even metal, though I couldn't be sure as to how much magicka that would take. It would be useless if it hollowed me out completely.

  I stared at the rest of the books with conflicted eyes. In the end, masochism prevailed.

  Cracking open the more straightforward of the three books on destruction, my pounding headache worsened, though only slightly. In return, I figured out how to… hm, it was something like manipulating thermodynamics, maybe? Honestly, I wasn't a physicist, and this wasn't physics. I already knew how to produce and manipulate energy in a destructive way, and this was just a more combust-y way of doing it.

  Ah, and I could also take it away now. Zap. Roast. Freeze.

  There were eight left. I couldn't resist one more, the chance to see a Flame Atronach in the flesh (kind of) too tempting. I—

  My mind had blanked with how much that sucked, leaving me hunched over the counter. Like my brain had swelled too much for my skull.

  And for what? No Flame Atronach, only how to conjure a familiar. Lame.

  A more feminine voice interrupted my pity party. "Are you alright?"

  I hesitantly opened my eyes, finding a dusky-skinned beauty with black curls that fell to her shoulders. Camilla, probably. "Peachy."

  I could see why she had a whole love triangle around her.

  "If you're waiting on Lucan…" She stalked closer, looking me over. "You look like you could use a change of clothes. Something more suited to Skyrim."

  Well, she wasn't wrong. If not for the cloak Skadi made me, the only thing I was dressed for was a pillow fight. She did also say I'd still need to get it cured, whatever that meant.

  I told Camilla as much, a glint in her dark eyes now that reminded me of her brother.

  "I can have that done overnight for ten septims. Thirty-five for the clothes, seventy-five if you want my best materials."

  I still had a good three hundred or so left over, so… "How about eighty for both?"

  "Done." Bah. With how easily she agreed, maybe I should have haggled her down lower. "Come upstairs. I'll take your measurements there."

  Following her, I let her get to work without too much fuss, leaving the cloak where she asked me to.

  "I always tell Lucan that we should expand our business, but he always finds some reason to turn me down." Her fingers trailed along my arms. Was I imagining it or were they more impressive? "Maybe I should threaten to leave for Solitude. That would show him."

  I nodded along blandly, my head still pounding unpleasantly. Not like she needed life advice from me.

  If I closed my eyes, I could even pretend I was back home, getting my measurements taken for a wedding. Would have been a bad look to go in shorts and sandals.

  Though seeing as they broke up not even two years later, maybe I should have.

  "I just need to make some adjustments," I heard.

  After waiting and then changing behind a colorful sheet she put up, I looked myself over. When she said best materials, she meant furs. Lots of them. I looked like I stepped out of a Conan the Barbarian comicbook.

  "Like it?"

  "I do." It felt surprisingly soft as well.

  Handing over eight fused coins, she smiled and reminded me to return in the morning for my cloak.

  I still found myself waiting for her brother to return, but eventually I left the Riverwood Trader a new man. Stashing all seven of my potions into new pockets, I soon made the mistake of trying to put one of the heavy copper bracelets on.

  The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

  Why? Because my arm decided to fucking chow down on it.

  I stared at it incredulously, but it just… you know, looked like my arm. Although how cozy I felt after I put it on hadn't gone away…

  I slowly digested that while flexing my hand. So I could eat enchantments now; it wasn't anything stranger than opening my mouth wide and tasting the rainbow, so to say.

  I let the same happen to the other two bracelets, and by then the pounding headache had reduced to something more manageable. If anything… I felt fucking good.

  Though where was she? If I was going to get my ass beat by a dragon, she had to actually be around. It didn't take that long to rent a room for the night, yeah?

  Wandering around for a time, I found the Sleeping Giant Inn. The smells inside had my stomach grumbling, a heady mix of smoke and meat and roasted potatoes. Also alcohol. I thought about grabbing a bite to eat, but it would probably be smarter to do this on an empty stomach.

  Instead I asked Delphine about my missing giantess. The older woman with braided ash blonde hair and piercing green eyes like an angry cat stared at me, but eventually she pointed out a room.

  I wasn't her biggest fan, but I wasn't going to pick a fight. A certain someone might get annoyed if someone else beat her to the punch.

  I knocked on the door so as not to get intimate with an axe for barging in unannounced. "It's me." Hearing her tell me to come inside, I was suddenly (and not unhappily) greeted with Skadi in her birthday suit, a bowl of something blue in her hand.

  Noticing my eyes, she only smiled and stretched out, flexible as a cat. Actually, what was with me and cat metaphors today?

  I also couldn't help noticing that she was soft in all the right places either. Also the very blonde bush.

  "Close the door. I don't want everyone seeing."

  Right. The door. I knew how to operate a door…

  I turned back around to find her looking me over appreciatively. "You almost have the look of a proper Nord now."

  I tried to play it cool. "Not shy, are you?"

  Her smile turned more coy. "Should I be? I think I like it when you look at me like that."

  I watched as she went back to painting her statuesque body with the paste. The faded blue lines I'd previously noticed crisscrossing across her… I'd assumed they were just old tattoos.

  "Never seen woad, Russ?" she teased.

  I vaguely remembered Braveheart, maybe. But this was just a friendly spar… right?

  I watched as she suddenly stirred herself into action, standing and turning around, her long blonde hair almost reaching her waist. "Mind lending a helping hand? Quicker that way."

  My eyes struggled to look away from the sight before me, but I managed, taking the bowl.

  "You can follow the lines already there," she added.

  Yeah, I'd already figured out that much…

  Dipping my fingers in the paste or paint, I got to work. I didn't want to give her any reason to complain, but it wasn't easy with that almost staring me in the face.

  I remembered thinking she had an impressive backside when she was carrying me like a sack of potatoes, but seeing it in the flesh was something else. With how tall she already was and her long legs, it went well above my own waist.

  "And done." Somehow I had kept to the lines, but now I couldn't resist. I gave one of her cheeks a satisfying swat, producing a sound that broke the quiet of the room.

  If I would die, it would be with a dumb smile on my face as I watched it shake slightly.

  Instead she just looked back down at me with a smirk on her lips. "Just keep what I said in mind, Russ." I watched her turn around and take the bowl from my hands. "It's rare I get to fight a mage. I don't want it to be over in the span of a few breaths."

  "Who said you'll even win?" I shot back, and she loved it going by how big her smile got.

  She leaned in closer to me, the action doing wonderful things to her… assets. "Hold that fighting spirit close." Then she pressed a kiss to my lips before carefully placing her armor back on.

  There was something about a girl like that being all loveydovey that hit me right in the feels, even if she was about to hit me everywhere else as well.

  We soon slipped back outside the inn and then out of town, heading into the forest. With the skip in her step you'd think we were going for a picnic. Meanwhile I was desperately brainstorming some kind of strategy that wouldn't get me rolled over like everyone else I'd seen go up against her.

  She eventually stopped in the middle of a clearing, this world's twin moons illuminating it.

  "There's enough potions to not hold back," she commented, playfully spinning the massive axe I gifted her.

  I thumped a fist into my chest, my flesh hardening into something like wood. It should at least help.

  "On three?" I asked, and she agreed. I had seen how fast she could move, so the advantage of distance wasn't going to matter past maybe the first few seconds.

  Her steps were like thunder as she moved immediately after the count was complete. First, make her duck, and to do that…

  Well, shit. I honestly wasn't expecting her to just barrel right through it, the false lightning sliding harmlessly around her. The woad or whatever was also shimmering faintly.

  Suddenly her walking around with fuck-all for armor made a lot more sense.

  My plan in tatters, I went with the first thing that came to mind. Which in this case meant icing all the ground in front of me. If she tripped or stumbled, I at least wouldn't be eating her axe.

  …Instead she had surfed the ice like it was nothing, and I was about to see just how much damage I could take. It was almost anticlimactic watching her ruthlessly jamming her axe into my shoulder.

  Good news: Her axe got stuck just like if she had jammed it in a tree.

  Bad news: I had a fucking axe stuck in my shoulder. Even with me being more tree than man now, it still fucking hurt.

  It didn't seem to give her that much pause either, as one of her powerful legs quickly sent me into an actual tree, making it hard to breathe. The sheer force of it had also dislodged the axe.

  Skadi approached slowly, a disappointed pout on her lips, but when I put a shiny hand to my shoulder, my wooden flesh knitting itself back together, she was suddenly as happy as a bee.

  Still, I was fresh out of ideas. I only had so much magicka to burn, and already I was beginning to feel hollow.

  Maybe… Maybe I needed to turn this into a two-against-one? I had figured out how to conjure a familiar earlier, and a wolf might be able to do some damage.

  Distracting her with some fire, I sacrificed the magicka necessary to do it.

  The first thing I heard was a squawking laughter, a deeply unpleasant sound. After I heard it again, closer, I realized why it sounded familiar. It was a kookaburra's laughter like I heard at a zoo once.

  We both turned to look at it. It was like something out of a nightmare.

  It had two faces, though maybe it would be more correct to say it had two mouths, a grotesquely oversized beak for one, and beneath it a maw full of jagged teeth that seemed to go on forever.

  What was it Meridia had named me? Right. Abomination.

  I watched as it shambled surprisingly quickly at Skadi, its legs like a chicken's in all the worst ways, and it lashed out with claws as well as talons. She reacted quickly to her credit, but it had too many limbs, and some of them made its way past her guard.

  Her woad bullshit was still in effect, however, and it squawked as it failed to make contact.

  I shook myself out of my funk. The fight was still on.

  In a bid to help the thing, I covered the ground in frost hoping to fuck her mobility, and it seemed to work. As more ice slithered up her legs, my monster took advantage to slam its many limbs against her again and again, until finally some of them got through, raking against her flesh painfully.

  What I didn't expect was her suddenly grabbing it by one of its malformed wings and throwing it at me with enough force to make me feel like a fucking bowling pin.

  Rattled, I looked back just in time to see her hack the last bit of ice away with her axe and thunder at me again.

  She was just too much, and in the next moment she plowed her axe through my crime against nature. Except it started glitching out like something out of a video game, its squawking laughter even more disturbing as it lashed out again.

  I took advantage to create some distance, but it was getting harder to move, what scraps of magicka I had left more like embers than the bonfire it was. I iced the ground again as the thing fell apart completely under her hacking blows.

  Soon, she turned back to me, a bit of frost on her cheeks and a triumphant grin.

  As her long legs stirred her forward again, looking almost like she was gliding along the ground, I knew it was over. I didn't want her to look at me like the monstrosity I'd just thrown at her, and so I took out my axe and matched her energy.

  Yeah, I got run over, but I must have looked really fucking cool for a split second throwing myself at her.

  Straddling me now, she looked down with eyes that were almost playful. "Should I ask what that thing was?"

  I scratched the tip of my nose innocently. "A magician never reveals his secrets."

  She gave a soft snort, but stayed glued to my hips. The shimmering lines of blue that streaked across her had dimmed slightly, red blood seeping from a dozen smaller wounds.

  Not that she seemed to pay it much mind, a funny little smile on her lips now.

  "You know how to take a hit." Her nails pulled at my skin, but she couldn't find much purchase. I couldn't help but groan as she rocked her hips however, leveraging her considerable weight. "It seems you can still feel just fine," she teased.

  "I think you're just that heavy," I hit back, my fingers copping a feel of her hefty thighs.

  In revenge, she fell on top of me completely, pressing a kiss to my jaw and then my lips. To die like this would not be the worst thing, I decided.

  After one last kiss, she heaved herself off, standing. "As much fun as it would be to play in the dirt, we do have a bed waiting for us." I took her offered hand, though I pulled her back before she pulled me along back to Riverwood.

  Scarfing down one of my potions, I hummed with satisfaction as that hollowness ebbed. Who knew soap and glue could taste so good.

  I soon put my shiny hands to work on her injuries, my fingers trailing across her skin, maybe lingering over her sculpted abdomen more than strictly necessary. Still, with how she bit her lip, it didn't seem she was against it. "Does that bring my final tally up?"

  "Mmm. I'll think about it."

  We made the trek back to Riverwood holding hands.