Ulf sat by the central hearth of Jorvaskr, the rhythmic shhhk-shhhk of his whetstone against the small bone in his hand a familiar comfort. The firelight danced across his weathered features, highlighting the stubborn streaks of red in his white beard.
His gaze, however, was warm and fixed on his daughter. Aela sat at a rough-hewn table in a corner of the great mead hall, her small hands carefully breaking apart a large sweet roll on a wooden plate before her.
The sight was a simple one, but it filled him with a profound sense of peace.
He had lived most of his life in the wilds, and so had his wife before her passing.
They had both agreed that Aela was to follow in their footsteps, to be raised under the open sky so she would grow to be as fierce and strong as her ancestor, Hrottir Blackblade, who was said to have fought alongside Ysgramor himself.
Yet, a small, secret part of him had always feared the wilds would claim her soul entirely, that she would become more beast than woman. Seeing her now, able to live and find simple joy even within the stone-and-wood walls of the city, assured him greatly.
She was adaptable. She was strong, but she was still his little girl.
He was just about to resume sharpening the bone into a fine arrowhead when a flicker of movement caught his eye. Not far from Aela, a small figure was hiding behind one of the great wooden pillars that supported the hall's ceiling, watching her with an unnerving intensity.
Ulf couldn't help but shake his head, a low chuckle rumbling in his chest.
It had been two years since they had found the brat in that blood-soaked clearing, and the boy was already as tall as Aela, who was three years his elder.
The speed at which Torin grew was nothing short of astonishing. It wasn't just his size, either; it was the frightening speed of his mind. He was already running around on sturdy legs and asking questions that would give even the Jarl's steward a headache by the time he was a year and a half old.
Though Ulf and Aela didn't spend much time in Jorvaskr after the promised two months had passed, he'd had plenty of opportunity to observe the boy whenever they came to visit.
Not to mention, Kodlak just refused to shut up about the whelp, talking about his latest feat or baffling query constantly whenever they shared a drink.
The baby-blue color had already faded from the boy's eyes, replaced by a sharper, more observant grey. His features were beginning to take shape. His body was undoubtedly that of a Nord, one possibly blessed by Shor himself given his prodigious size for a two-year-old.
His face, however, lacked the rugged harshness forged in Skyrim's winters. It was a face of finer lines and a thoughtful brow—the face of a scholar, maybe even a merchant.
The boy's parents weren't both Nords, that much was clear. One of them was most likely a Colovian Imperial, and the boy's face had taken after that side.
Beyond his appearance, his voracious interest in learning to read and write was just as telling. He was already pestering the priests to teach him the letters of common Tamrielic tongue despite his young age.
He was a mystery, growing like a weed, and sometimes, Ulf thought, it felt like he was observing the world with the eyes of an old soul, not a child's.
Just as Ulf was about to shake away these wandering thoughts, the boy suddenly made his move. He tiptoed with surprising stealth toward Aela, who was blissfully preparing to enjoy her treat.
Once he was directly behind her, Torin stopped and took a deep, dramatic breath. Then, with audible shock, he exclaimed in a clear, high-pitched voice, "Look! A dragon!"
Aela instantly flinched, her head snapping up, her eyes wide as she scanned the rafters of the mead hall, searching for this mythical threat.
It was a full three seconds of frantic searching before her young mind processed the impossibility and the silence. By the time she realized there was no dragon, it was already too late.
She spun back around on the bench just in time to see Torin, her sweet roll clutched triumphantly in one hand, already having taken a massive bite. He was stuffing the rest of it into his mouth with single-minded determination, gnawing on the pastry like a starved bear, crumbs spraying everywhere.
His grey eyes, peeking over the pilfered treat, met hers with a glint of pure, unadulterated triumph.
Seeing his smug, cream-smeared expression, Aela's face shook with righteous rage. She pointed a trembling finger at him. "Why, you—!"
Her sentence was interrupted as Torin, with lightning speed, reached out a hand still sticky with leftover frosting and wiped it directly into her brilliant red hair.
Aela instantly exploded. She shot to her feet, snatched the nearest object—a heavy, unlit iron candlestick from a nearby table—and brandished it like a mace. "YOU LITTLE MILK-DRINKER! YOU'RE DEAD!"
Torin just grinned at her, a flash of pure, unrepentant victory, then spun on his heel and began to run for his life. Ulf, watching the entire exchange, simply shook his head in amusement and resumed working on the bone arrowhead.
The sound of pounding little feet and Aela's shrieked death threats—"I'LL TURN YOUR GUTS INTO BOWSTRINGS!"—became the new background noise as the two children proceeded to tear around the mead hall, weaving between tables and upsetting a bench or two.
This chaotic pursuit continued for several minutes until the great doors of Jorvaskr swung open, letting in a blast of cool, outside air. In strode two boys, perhaps ten or eleven years old, their faces flushed with triumph and their leather armor stained with fresh blood and dirt.
They looked nearly identical, with the same long, straight black hair and strong Nordic features. Behind them, moving with a more measured pace, was Kodlak, his expression one of deep satisfaction as he held a lump of tarnished, golden metal.
Ulf greeted them, his voice cutting easily through the children's racket. "Welcome back. Did Vilkas and Farkas do well on their first contract?"
Kodlak nodded, a proud glint in his eye as he looked at the two boys. "The bandits never stood a chance. These two have the makings of true Shields."
He walked up to Ulf and tossed the metallic lump onto the ground between them with a heavy clank. "We even brought back a trophy."
Ulf leaned forward, peering at the strange object with its intricate, interlocking parts and too many spindly limbs. "It's one of those... what do you call them? Elf spiders?"
Kodlak sat down on the bench opposite Ulf with a weary grunt.
"Dwarven," he corrected. "The bandits we were hired to deal with were hiding in an old ruin. They had their own hidden entrance away from these things... we cut through them all the same."
He then turned his head, his voice taking on a tone of gentle command. "Vilkas, Farkas. Go and wash up. Get some rest. You've earned it."
As the two boys left to clean up, Ulf was about to ask for more details about the job, when Torin quite literally crawled into view.
He was struggling to drag his body across the stone floor, with Aela sitting triumphantly on his back, furiously pinching his cheek and pulling at his hair in retaliation for the stolen sweet roll.
Both Ulf and Kodlak watched, unblinking, as Torin, ignoring his tormentor entirely, stubbornly made his way toward the lifeless Dwarven construct.
With a final heave, he reached it and began prodding the metal carcass with his small fingers, his eyes wide and fixated on it as if it were the strangest thing he had ever seen.
Aela, frustrated by his lack of reaction, gave up and stomped away, muttering about "stupid milk-drinker."
Kodlak raised an eyebrow, a faint smile touching his lips. "Are you interested in it, little one?"
Torin replied without even turning around, his voice muffled as he peered into a cracked opening in the metal shell. "No... I'm interested in how it works."
Kodlak shared a perplexed glance with Ulf before turning back to the boy. "It's magic, boy. What else?"
Torin let out a scoff that sounded far too old for his two-year-old frame. "I figured as much. But what kind of magic, and how?" He pointed a sticky finger at a complex gear train poking out of the spider's broken shell.
"That I get. Put a group of those together, you can move all of them by just moving one..." His expression turned deeply thoughtful, his brow furrowing. "But how does the first one move? Where's the power source? And how does it last so long without anyone winding it up?"
Kodlak opened his mouth to answer, a standard explanation about what little he knew of enchantments and soul gems on the tip of his tongue, but no words came out.
The boy's questions cut past centuries of accepted "how" and went straight to a "why" that he had never considered.
He turned his gaze to Ulf, hoping the hunter's practical mind might have a simpler analogy.
However, the old hunter's expression was even worse than his own. Ulf was staring at the child as if he'd just declared he was the High King of Alinor, his bushy red-and-white eyebrows drawn together in a look of profound, constipated confusion.
The mechanics of a Dwarven spider were far beyond the simple, brutal logic of the wild.
Eventually, Kodlak cleared his throat, the sound like grinding stones in the silent hall. "And why do you want to know?"
Torin stiffened at the question, as if the answer were the most obvious thing in the world.
He slowly turned to look at Kodlak, his grey eyes unnervingly direct. "Why wouldn't I want to know?" he countered. "Wouldn't you?"
Kodlak felt the beginnings of a headache forming behind his eyes, but he maintained his composure. "Seeking knowledge is a noble pursuit, boy, but you should pick your trials wisely," he replied, his tone measured.
He pointed a calloused finger at the Dwarven spider. "Such knowledge, for example, isn't easily attained by asking questions. It is earned through a lifetime of study, and often by delving into obscure subjects better left untouched."
Ulf finally seemed to snap out of his constipated confusion and interjected, his voice a gruff echo of Kodlak's warning.
"Aye. And for all the effort those mad scholars pour into such things, they usually end up hurting themselves and everyone around them." He crossed his arms, the picture of pragmatic finality. "Chasing the certainty of steel is much better than such uncertainties."
Torin just stared at them blankly, his expression making it clear he wasn't buying a single word of it. He had only managed to form coherent sentences and start running recently, leaving him little time for anything but trying to absorb the common knowledge of this strange new world.
But seeing this thing now—a machine that defied almost everything he understood about physics and engineering—stirred something fundamental inside him, an itch in his mind he wasn't about to let go.
He slowly stood up, brushing the dust from his knees, a look of exaggerated solemnity washing over his young face. "You're absolutely right," he said, his voice dripping with a newfound, false wisdom.
"This thing is dangerous. So dangerous that it's better to dispose of it, else it would tempt, erm... Aela! Yes, Aela and the twins, into an uncertain path." He gripped one of the spider's broken metal limbs with both hands, straining to drag it. "I'll seal it away in my room for safekeeping. To protect everyone."
Then, without even waiting for an answer or approval, Torin began to drag the heavy, dismembered Dwarven spider toward the living quarters as quickly as his small, sturdy legs could manage, the screech of metal on stone echoing in his wake.
Once he was gone, Ulf let out a heavy sigh, the sound filled with a deep-seated unease. "That boy isn't normal, Kodlak. Too clever for his own good."
Kodlak bitterly shook his head, his gaze still fixed on the empty space where the child had been. "No," he agreed, his voice low. "He isn't."
He looked down at his hands, weathered and scarred from a lifetime of wielding steel, and was silent for a long moment. "But perhaps he doesn't need to be. It is the Divine that choose our paths for us. All I can do is teach him how to walk it with honor. The rest... the rest is up to him."
Ulf grunted, unconvinced. "Well, it isn't the honorable path of a Companion that he'll walk if you let things be. His eyes are set on things we break with our hammers, not things we build with our hands."
Kodlak slowly stood up, his joints protesting with a quiet creak. "That remains to be seen. Either way," he said, his voice weary, "I need to rest. And... think."
With that, Kodlak turned and headed toward the living quarters, his broad shoulders seeming to carry a new weight.
Ulf remained seated by the fire, watching him leave. After a moment, he called out, his tone a mix of jest and genuine concern, "Old age is starting to catch up with you, old friend."
Kodlak's expression darkened, his steps faltering for just a second. But he didn't turn around as he replied, his voice barely a murmur yet carrying clearly in the hall's quiet.
"It's not just old age."
...
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