musebox.

Gideon huffed out his nose, blowing dust from it after opening a door he didn't think had been touched for centuries. How someone's family heirloom was hidden away inside this crypt was anyone's guess, but he wasn't here to ask those kinds of questions. He was here to get a job done, get paid, and get back home to Jorrvaskr.

He'd already dispatched some draugr, and anticipated many more rooms full of them before he got to his goal. It always seemed to work that way. He sometimes wanted to go back in time just to tell the ancient Nords to stop mummifying themselves so he wouldn't have so many damned undead to wade through to get half his jobs done, but again, he wasn't here to complain. He enjoyed fighting, even if fighting undead was near the bottom of his list of enjoyable encounters. They unnerved him, with their stench of death and lack of a heartbeat, only the sounds of their creaking bones alerting him. He was so used to using his lycan hearing to track his prey that the draugr always threw him off, no matter how many times he fought them.

So, if this crypt was full of undead, why could he hear the faint, but unmistakable sound of a heartbeat in the next room?

Preparing himself for the worst - likely some kind of necromancer or cultist, he assumed - Gideon lifted his skyforge steel greatsword into position and kicked the next door open, ready to swiftly cut down whatever horror awaited him.