Which on the one hand means that he doesn't have to be the one to do all the looking, but on the other means that the place is very very likely to be defended. Not, you know, a huge issue. Mages cheat but he cheats harder, by being awesome. Still, good to keep in mind.

He looks around the entrance for traps, sprung or otherwise, as well as any sign that he's being watched. Finding none, he grabs his bow and an arrow, nocks it, and slowly pulls the door open and walks inside.

The tomb is silent. But the hollows in the walls for the bodies of the dead are opened and emptied, so he must be onto something, even if there aren't yet any traps.

... There's an awful lot of dust in here, though. In little tidy piles, actually. Uh, is that one person shaped? That pile of dust definitely looks person shaped.

Well, of course the person that's come here to defile a grave is a necromancer, but the mysterious part is that the dead seem to... be dead. Not that he's complaining, he was not looking forward to fighting reanimated corpses, but... something's gotta have killed them a second time, right?

He's starting to think he's not the first one to come here after the necromancer.

He is not sure that's an altogether good thing.

Onwards.

There are traps, but they've been disarmed, or otherwise made safe. A wall of spikes that had been built to swing and hit anyone in the passageway has been... partially eaten by the wall itself. Like tree bark that has grown around a fencepost, but how could stone do that?

From up ahead, he hears the magically enhanced echoing of a voice, and what sounds like the clash of steel on steel.

"Who are you to disrupt my work? Begone, or I will add you to my army of the dead!"

It... doesn't seem very directed at him, though.

Someone did come here after the necromancer. He lets go of some of his caution, since it seems like the dangers he might otherwise have faced have been disabled, and speeds up to more of a quick march in the direction of the voice.

He goes fast enough that he can just catch the edge of what sounds like a shouted reply:

"so shut it with your damn scare tactics!"

Then he turns the corner and enters a large chamber where there is clearly some kind of battle going on. Or, well, is mostly over, actually, judging by the piles of dust in this room. And by how this armored and red haired woman stabs a draugr through the chest, and it turns to dust.

Her head turns at the sound of his footsteps, and she raises her sword to defend herself, then stops.

"Ah? You're not a dead man."

That is, of course, when a hidden undead archer from above nails her in the shoulder with an arrow.

...she is probably on his side. He can always kill her later if he's wrong.

Regardless, the undead archer has one arrow through its heart and one through its left eyesocket before you can say "draugr", and now he starts quickly scanning the room for any signs of the necromancer and any other threats. Helping the lady with the shoulder arrow comes after they're safe.

There is no sign of the necromancer, but from the other side of that walkway above them, there is a second undead archer, peeking out from its hiding spot.

But it is then fried and dusted by a bolt of lightning from the very pissed off lady with the shoulder arrow.

"Sneaky bitch," she mutters, and then she reaches up to rip the arrow out like some kind of lunatic who hasn't heard of bleeding out.

...a mage. Upping the probability that she might not be on his side.

Any more threats or can he offer her a potion of some kind, or will she just heal herself because: mage.

She will totally just heal herself, because: mage. It barely takes any time at all, actually, she just kind of rolls her shoulder and it's clearly all better.

"Aaaand they're retreating," she pronounces, from absolutely no visible sign whatsoever. She sheathes her sword. "Damn. Probably to fortify someplace further in. You sticking around for our wayward necromancer's last stand, or does the hint of magic on your side scare you off?"

"Did you pick that phrasing specifically to try to prickle a Nord's pride?" he asks in return.

Probably an ally.

"Absolutely! What faster way is there to drive one to battle?" she says with a wink. "This way, c'mon."

And deeper she goes into the crypt.

Well, what's he gonna do, not follow her into the crypt? That's the whole reason he came here! He keeps in mind the possibility that this is some kind of play by the necromancer to make him trust someone who is actually going to turn on him, or other ways in which this could be less straightforward than it looks, but otherwise, once more: onwards.

There's another trap, and a locked door between them and their next stopping destination, but they go by so quickly it's honestly hard to even tell they were there. His probably-an-ally handles those without him. The tripwire was there one second and gone the next, and as for the lock... well, it bursts. There's a loud crack, and then the door swings open easily enough to let them through.

Beyond is another large room, this time filled with large metal sarcophagi.

"Stay," she informs him, holding up a finger and walking purposefully to the middle of the room. And the sarcophagi. There... is definitely some magic that's going on here, making the hairs on his arms stand up, but it's hard to tell who it's from. Probably both, actually. There's a rush of magical energy in a crescendo, and the sound of the moaning dead from the coffins around his companion, and then...

... The tops of them do not come off. There's an impotent sort of bashing from inside.

His mage companion lets out a smug little laugh. "Okay, now you're fine."

"...kinda hot, not going to lie."

"Well thank you! But save the flirting for after we're done. You'll get to do more than just look pretty soon enough."

"Good, looking pretty is nice but I didn't spend all those years practising more practical skills for nothing."

"You do seem to have excellent aim!" she agrees, and onward they go. It's not much further until they reach a large set of doors. These doors are also locked, but the red haired mage doesn't burst its lock open and charge in immediately. She furrows her brow, touches the door with her hands, then raises her voice to shout through it.

"Don't suppose there's enough of you left in there to listen to reason? You have to know by now that you're not going to win this. Even if you did, you're not going to bring him back!"

"What do you know of me, witch hunter? If I cannot raise him, I will raise an army to avenge his defilement!"

"Yeah, no, that's just absolutely off the deep end," she sighs. She looks to her companion. "I'll focus on defense, you on offense?"

"Sure. You seem to know rather a lot about this person's motivations."

"Why would I ever walk into a necromancer's tomb without knowing why she's there in the first place? My mind is the best weapon I have."

Then she draws her sword, and raises her voice to call through the door again.

"Defilement? You're too good of a necromancer to have botched the job. So what went wrong?"

With her left hand, she begins counting down from five on her fingers.

"They burned his body before I could raise him... it should have been returned to me...!"

And then the count of five is up, and the door is slammed open to reveal the main burial chamber beyond.

There is, as promised, a necromancer. Along with half a dozen undead archers.

He hates archers, with a lot of fondness what with how he's one.

It doesn't take another second for him to be through the door and letting arrows fly, one after another in a fluid spiral motion from the arrows in his quiver to getting nocked then pulled back again then released then the next arrow goes. He doesn't stop the motions even when he himself has to move or dodge, it's second-nature by now.

His mage companion is beside him, and if there was still any lingering doubt that she's on his side, there isn't any now. He doesn't need to dodge. Several arrows are knocked off course with a breeze that leaves all of his untouched. His arrows strike true, before the necromancer even really knows what's hit her. Gasping for air, she has enough focus to form and throw a deadly looking spear of ice at her killer. But that's stopped, too, by his mage defender. Their attacker doesn't last much longer than that. The magic on the dead starts to come apart as their master dies, and all archers but the living one disintegrate into dust.

Three corpses remain, though. Two still in their graves, glowing faintly with magic, and one cooling on the floor in front of them.

Well that's ominous. "So, her boyfriend dies, she comes to Fjori and Holgeir's tomb to, what, how does that help, it seems like it's important that Fjori and Holgeir were also a couple?"

"Husband," corrects Ivethene, absently, as she steps towards the glowing corpses. "... Anchor points for their souls, looks like. To live again together, in their bodies. Their... very extremely mummified bodies." She makes a face as she gets closer, and her tone turns darker. "And use Fjori and Holgeir's souls as power to do it."

She reaches out to grasp something invisible and intangible between the dead couple, and crushes it in her fist. Something not quite there cracks between her fingers, and the glow on the corpses fades.

"Thank you for freeing us from her spell," whispers a voice, from behind them both.

He blinks at the ghosts and purses his lips. "You're welcome."

And ghosts they are, spectral and intangible, but there all the same.

        "Now we can rest in peace once again. Come, Fjori, my love..."

Fjori nods, then says, "Take this, with our gratitude."

The ghosts return to Oblivion, and both of their bodies disintegrate into dust, leaving... some kind of spectral sword behind. Fjori's, it looks like. It's the same pale color of blue the ghosts were, and just as transparent.

"... The ghosts I was expecting, but the sword? How..."

And then his mage companion is immediately inspecting the spirit sword with clear scholarly fascination.

He whistles low and long and approaches cautiously. "Well that looks fancy. If a bit macabre."

"It's sort of like something conjured, but it's... more physical and stable than that, and it's... attached to me? My... soul. Oh."

If he'd had concerns about the strange mage woman not understanding the gravity of the gift... well, those are as gone as his lingering doubts about her allegiance. Clearly, she understands. She has been given some portion of the spirit's soul, willingly and knowingly. To assist her for the rest of her life. She swallows heavily, and looks moved to near tears.

"I-I mean, thank you, I just, you didn't need to, um." Sniffle. "Shit, I really can't turn it down now, can I. Don't you backtalk my pretty ghost sword, I can and will stab you with it," she snorts, through another sniffle.

"Hey, you got Fjori's sword, that's badass. I suppose it was too much to hope for that I'd be the one to take the crazy necromancer out and get all the loot but that's life." He starts walking around the main tomb area to look for anything of interest. He should probably search the necromancer but he can do that at the end. "So what's your story?"

"I bet I can make you some fancy arrows to make up for the loss. Oh, I haven't introduced myself, have I, hold on." She carefully wraps her new sword with a cloth from her bag, stows it, and then turns towards him to bow extravagantly.

"Ivethene Velanand, of the College of Winterhold, a pleasure to make your acquaintance."

He is very good at not showing emotion so he doesn't even hesitate when he responds with, "Sverre Swiftsteel, at your service," despite his misgivings about... the College.

"... High King Torygg's son? From Solitude?"

"The very same."

"And to think, I thought I'd never meet Skyrim's elite running around in tombs chasing after necromancers. Well. I assume you got pointed this way on account of.... my questioning of the locals, probably?"

"Yup. Although to be perfectly honest I, uh, thought you were the mage I would be having to fight; seems like I stumbled upon something rather a lot bigger than I'd expected to. How'd you hear of this person?"

"She was a former member of my College, and quit after her husband's death, in a very... implicating way. We'd thought she'd returned to Hammerfell, but I'd wanted to check on that, maybe talk her out of doing anything stupid. Down the winding trail of investigation I ended up here."

"And from what she said, her husband was killed?"

"In the Great War. He was a legionnaire." She gives a sad shrug. "So you could say I was a bit late to the tragedy, but. There's been rather a lot of those to clean up."

"...that was before I was born, she's been trying to avenge her husband for that long?"

"Yes and no. It hadn't started as avenging, I think, but then she kept delving into darker magics without any peers to keep her in check, and... Well. That can lead to focusing on one goal above all others, and mages tend to live long lives and have long memories." Her mouth twitches. "If we make it that long, anyway."

Yeahhhhhh.

"I see. Well, uh. I'm... sorry she's been through all of that." Mages mages maaaaaages.

"She really should have known better. But yes, you see why I make a habit of checking up on anyone that leaves the College to see that they're not, you know." She waves a hand towards the dust.

"That was a pretty long time ago, though, have you been archive trawling for everyone who's left the College over the past decades?"

"Archive...? Darling, I'm forty-three. No, this is my work backlog, I knew her personally, if not very closely. This is just how behind I am."

"what"

"Mages live long lives! What did you think that looked like?"

She's old enough to be his mother.

What the fuck.

"Definitely not 'hot readheads who can solo hordes of draugr', is what."

She cackles. "Oh, fast recovery, well done! Let this be a lesson to you, though, I'm not even a particularly egregious example."

"Yes, ma'am, duly noted."

As all proper dungeons and tombs, this one has Treasure^TM, and as such he goes about finding it and collecting it into his bag.

Ivethene seems less concerned about raiding the tomb for its treasure, and more concerned about going through the necromancer's things. This does admittedly begin with (respectfully) looting her body.

"Are you familiar with black soul gems?" she wonders softly, apparently finding something that turns her expression dark.

"...I am not familiar with any kind of soul gems but the name spoken next to a necromancer's corpse does not fill me with joy and hope."

"A wise assessment. Okay, magic lesson. Mystic energy comes from living beings with souls. It's not quite accurate to say that all magic is soul based, but most of it is. Mages use their souls while still inside them, worshipers unknowingly give some of the power of their souls to daedra when they worship them, and enchantments are powered from the souls of various animals that are captured in soul gems. ... I might have just ruined any enchanted items you were attached to, if you have any, but honestly it's important to know how they are powered regardless."

"...so that's why Mother'd..."

"I knew I liked her. Yes. Well, with normal soul gems, you can't trap a sapient soul inside. They're too opinionated and strong. Black soul gems, on the other hand.... are artificially created. Made from white soul gems that have been put through a ritual to make them able to contain a sapient soul. This one was probably meant to hold her husband's, though thank the Divines it's empty." She holds the innocent looking black crystal up, and it floats between her outstretched hands... then shatters. The pieces clatter to the ground, changing from black to a dead looking purple. "Should you come across those in the future, do try to get them to a mage. Preferably a moral one. They're outlawed by the College in Winterhold and the guild in Cyrodiil and anywhere else of any real standing, they'll know how to free any souls trapped inside and dispose of them properly."

"So just breaking it with a hammer doesn't work, got it.

"...more seriously, uh, what the fuck?"

"It sort of works well enough if there's nothing in it, in essence you're making it so small that it isn't big enough to hold a sapient at all, but without knowing standard soul gem sizes, you wouldn't know where to stop. And if there's a soul in it it will have rather a bad time, and you might not be able to tell. As to what the fuck, I'm afraid you'll have to be more specific," she says wryly, as she leans down to resume (respectfully!) looting the necromancer's body.

"The thing where you can trap someone's soul in a crystal and use it to power magic. What happens to the person in there? Is it that much more powerful than—I guess using animal souls?"

"When souls are used for enchantment, the decay they'd experience in Oblivion is accelerated, until they're converted entirely to something else. The experience of the soul itself being broken down for power? I've no idea, most who study this sort of thing go mad. But yes, generally speaking, they are more powerful, and people are more plentiful than any creatures of equivalent power. So."

"—they don't even get to go somewhere????"

"Not anywhere that we mortals know of." She's finished checking the body, and steps back to begin cremating it. With fire from her hands, of course. "I don't know if that's better or worse."

"Worse!!!! You can't just, just steal Sovngarde from people!!!!"

Wow he did not expect to be this distressed at the idea but he sure is.

Mages.

She looks up from her cremation and frowns, then cuts it off because he seems to be freaking out a bit, and furthermore, completely burning a body is actually very tiring, bodies are not very combustible.

“… I’m sorry. It's shitty, and it sucks. If it helps, this is sort of... magically niche? Soul gems are expensive, a ritual to turn them black is obviously not published anywhere reputable, many can be ruined experimenting to figure it out, and anyone that does dabble in it tends to actually go insane and get bad at... scale, foresight, and planning. So anyone that figures it out is often in not any kind of condition to," she waves a hand vaguely, "go outside of their sad little necromancer tomb to menace the general population."

He covers his eyes for a moment and takes a deep breath. "Yeah. Yeah. Sorry, I didn't think it—I'd never thought of that as a possibility. I guess I should have, I know draugr exist, but... anyway."

"It's all right. I get it. You'll notice that I took the opportunity to lecture about enchanting and go, 'See this thing? It's bad! Make sure it gets destroyed properly!!'"

"Yeah, you did at that. Happy to hear there do exist mages that are good people, if you listen to the average Nord you wouldn't know it."

"Yeah," she sighs. "But we're just people. With, uh, admittedly very bad failure states, but that's mitigated by organized mage groups, not throwing them out entirely."

His emotions calmed, she goes back to incinerating the corpse. Eugh, she hates the smell so much, and this is so inefficient.

Sverre himself does not particularly seem to have issues with corpses, at least what few of them he runs into while continuing to explore the chamber that had not been the target of the necromancer's ministrations and therefore did not crumble to dust.

There are treasures to be pillaged! The necromancer seems to have had a stash of neatly labelled potions (that she never got the chance to use), and there are a number of gold coins and some jewelry remaining from the now dusted undead, along with their much less valuable weapons. Presumably any of the ones still sealed in their alcoves might have similar trinkets, but it's up to him if he'd like to properly grave rob instead of just picking through the bits the disturbed dead have left behind. In a corner, there's an old chest that looks like it got dragged out of its hiding space in the hopes of prying it open. The lock is a bit melted, but mmmmmostly intact, so clearly she was unsuccessful.

He does not want to graverob, especially not the undisturbed weapons of his ancestors, that would be intensely disrespectful, but the old chest looks promising! Is the lock intact enough for him to pick it? If so he's gonna do that.

It's a bit tricky, but the melted nature of the lock is mostly cosmetic external damage. The pins inside are fine, so with a little finagling and patience...

Click!

The chest's contents are free for the taking. Inside is a necklace with a large blocky pendant carved from bone, several gold coins that predate the Imperial Septim but are definitely true gold, a couple of books that look like they might fall apart if sneezed on too hard, and a small dagger with a blade that looks like it could be made out of ice, but for the weight and the way it's kept an edge after all this time.

!

!!!!!!!!!!!

Sverre slowly reaches inside it, reverently, a look of pure awe on his face as he gingerly takes the dagger in both hands, being very very careful of the edge. He'd normally use a thumb to do a quick test of the sharpness by scraping it perpendicularly to the actual blade but he doesn't need to, here, he can just see how fine the edge is.

He might need to stare at it for a while in mute dumbstruck contemplation.

It's heavier than ice would be, but lighter than steel. There are little chinks in the pale blue translucent surface, like it was carved from something instead of forged. If there's a matching sheath for it, it isn't in this box, but this doesn't seem to have done the strange blade any harm.

...he looks like he might cry.

Eventually, someone notices.

"... Are you okay?" she asks, looking concerned.

"Yes," he says, sounding a bit choked up. "This, this—" He stops himself then turns to look at her, lifting the dagger up in her direction so she can see. "Look at it," he says in a desperate whisper.

She steps over to inspect, and her eyebrows raise.

".... I... have no idea what that is. I mean, besides a treasure, and also a dagger, obviously, um. It's not enchanted. But what is that blade made of...?"

Ivethene's polite enough to keep some kind of lid on the obvious desire to study it, because she has literally any social awareness and he clearly is going to be keeping this dagger, but. ... It's definitely in her expression. What is it, can she figure it out, she wants to know.

"I don't know," he says, still in half a whisper. "I have never seen something so, so beautiful in my life." He turns his gaze to her, properly, now. "How long has it been here, without losing its edge to rust or, or anything? You can see the craftsmanship, and this material is just, just, what even is it, can you imagine other weapons made of this, can you imagine arrowheads made of this—" He needs to stop himself again before he makes himself cry.

"It'd be excellent indeed, I wonder why the craft fell out of favor. May I? I'll return it to you unharmed, I just want to look a bit closer."

He nods mutely and holds it by the blade to offer her the hilt, still being careful but the kind of careful who knows how to handle sharp things.

She very carefully takes it and looks it over, with more than just her eyes.

".... It's like ice, if ice were made out of diamond. It is, actually, essentially diamond, but with a better... so diamonds are brittle? And this is anything but, it's rather beautifully interwoven and self reinforcing and almost... organic, instead of crystalline. But the, ah, chips here are following the natural weak points of the material. This is fascinating, and I have no idea how anyone would even begin to make it."

Just as accustomed to handling sharp things as he is, she returns it, still looking thoughtful.

He accepts it.

"...this sounds like something I have heard of. Maybe."

“It does seem very fitting for Nordic legend, doesn’t it. What do you know?”

"Ice steel, is the name I've heard of, in legends." He brings the blade closer to his eyes to inspect it more carefully, now that he is less completely struck by awe. "A type of metal, if you can call it that, forged in cold, not in heat. It is said to be fashioned by the dead themselves; the living gift the noble dead with a lesser metal, after putting it through exquisitely complex trials, and the dead honour the living by gifting it back.

"...the legends vary a lot in the specifics and tend to be light on the details but that's the rough central thread of it."

“Huh! I suppose this place’s residents have honored us both then, hm?”

Which is to say: yes of course he gets to keep the dagger, there will be no loot infighting on her watch.

Good good. Not that he expected there to be any.

"I will need to find more accurate information on this. Perhaps Mother can commandeer a good librarian."

“You are welcome to come investigate the College’s, though I don’t think we’d have much on this. Nordic lore is often related orally, and, well. Winterhold’s College has rather fallen out of favor, and nobody really wants to talk to us anymore.”

No shit Winterhold's College's fallen out of favour, not that he's gonna say anything about that.

But despite his personal instinctive distaste for Winterhold he recognises that it's not, like, objectively reasonable. He's fine dealing with individual wizards, and the College is just a collection of individuals, is it not? "I might take you up on that, but I am likewise not very hopeful."

This individual in front of him is definitely aware of the College's reputation. She seems wry about it, if anything.

"Right. And if any mage from the College ever gives you any sort of trouble in regards to you having your ice steel dagger, like wanting to take it away from you to study it, you have my full permission to throw my name around with something like 'she said it was best in my hands.'" Her mouth twitches. "And, you know, whatever other defenses you see fit for defending your property if that doesn't work. But it should."

"Oh, you a big shot back there, then?"