Day Seven: A tomb almost my own

This could be called a successful day of exploration, or a severe setback to mark my first week in Morrowind. Either way, I am glad to be in my rough little shack to write about it. This afternoon it seemed doubtful that I would survive. I found not one but two ancestral tombs along the coast to the west, but learned that finding them might turn out to be the easy part.

I was having a good day; gigged a few crabs and a number of slaughterfish, swam to a shoal close ashore and found a pearl in a kollop, felt pretty confident in my growing ability with the halberd. Then I found the first tomb, a rounded arch of greenish stone sheltering a wooden door. I entered cautiously and quietly and began creeping down a long narrow stair. There appeared to be a chamber of some sort at the bottom, and in the chamber I could see a skeleton of a man. It seemed to be some sort of display, intended to frighten interlopers who entered the tomb, and in its bony hand was affixed a longbow. As I neared the bottom step a hazy figure came hurtling out of the darkness with an eerie wail and magical energies crackled around me in some sort of curse. I took a swipe at the specter with my halberd, but to my dismay the blade passed right through without any effect! My good day was falling rapidly into a black abyss.

Backing rapidly up the stair as I slung my halberd, I readied a fireball spell. The spirit was right on top of me, and the chill of it's spectral claws seared my flesh, even though I felt no contact. But wait, I did feel contact! A shocking impact on my iron breastplate that sent me stumbling backwards on the stairs. In my distraction I had not noticed the skeleton springing into animation, but could see him now trying to aim a second shot around the howling guardian that descended clawing at my chest. Without rising I completed the necessary gestures and a ball of magical flame engulfed the ghost, driving it up and off of me. On heels and elbows I scrambled backwards, slipping onto the landing at the top of the stair as a fusillade of arrows clattered off the stone walls above me. There on the landing, still on my back, I battled the enraged ghost; scorching it repeatedly with magical fire as it clawed me with its icy talons. It eventually collapsed into a bubbling pool of green sludge, and staying low to avoid the alert skeleton's gaze I bolted out the door.

To my horror, hanging in the air outside the door was a winged native flyer known as a cliff racer. In my battered and beleaguered state it was all I could do to fend off the buffeting wings, spiked tail, and razor sharp beak. More than I could do actually, and my raw seared flesh was parted in several places by the time I had brought the beast low with several jabs from the halberd. I hoped that the skeleton would not leave its post in the tomb as I collapsed in a heap in the archway. It took several hours of resting and using all the restorative energies that my ring could muster before I felt sufficiently able to defend myself to undertake the walk home. I never expected to be so glad to see this run down shack.