She began the long journey up the seven thousand steps. The pilgrim’s meditation as the residents of Ivarstead used to affectionately call it according to the books and journals she had read.
Many Nords will have made this journey at least in part before they become too old to do so. It was considered a part of becoming a Nord. To understand their heretic roots that reached back to Atmora and earlier beliefs where there existed a bond between nature and man. With that bond came great gifts, and with those gifts came great responsibility.
It had been written that reading the words of all ten ancient stones on the way up to High Hrothgar would grant a single blessing that would last for twenty-four hours. The blessing would become known as the “Voice of the Sky”. Its blessing would bestow the ability to have animals neither attack nor flee from you.
As she approached the first stone the emblem’s words held great power for her. She read and absorbed, “Before the birth of men, the Dragons ruled all Mundus.” She thought, “Dragons were said to the immortal children of Akatosh, the first Aedra (God). According to the writings of Archmage Shalidor, Dragons existed before the advent of sequential time in the Dawn Era. The Dawn Era, also known as the Dawn Age, Beginning Time, or Chaos Times, was a period marked by the laws of nature remaining unset, thus time was an artificial fabrication created to help bring order to the void.
The second stone read, “Men were born and spread over the face of Mundus (The plane or realm of man). The Dragons presided over the crawling masses. Men were weak then and had no Voice (The speech of the Dragons).”
She had noticed the air was getting thin, meaning less of it to breathe. It held a great cold, but the Nords, as it was written, had once held a closer relationship to the elements and thus did not feel it or its effects as other races did.
She came to the third stone, whose emblem read, “The fledgling spirits of Men were strong in Old Times (The Merethic Era, a period of narrative history). Unafraid to war with Dragons and their Voices. But the Dragons only shouted them down and broke their hearts.” This referred to the power of “The Voice”, a language whose words were etched with power and intent.
The fourth emblem read, “Kyne (the Nordic goddess of the Storm and chief deity of the Nordic pantheon.) called on Paarthunax (Second born, and lieutenant of Alduin, the World Eater.) who pitied Man. Together they taught Men to use “The Voice.” Then the Dragon War raged, Dragon against Tongue (Known as the Thu’um or Storm Voice.)”
She remembered in her reading; this was when man first learned the tongue of the Dragons and how to use it as the Dragons did. Its power could be used for a variety of purposes, sharpening blades to quickly traveling across the land, even controlling animals, or calling down great storms from the heavens.”
Her pilgrimage continued, the fifth stone and emblem read, “Man prevailed, shouting Alduin, first born, out of the world. Proving for all that their Voice too was strong. Although their sacrifices were many-fold.”
She thought, “this also meant she was halfway up the seven thousand stairs to the ancestral home of the Greybeards. The closer you get to that place, the more she read of the emblems on the stones along the path, the more she became aware, alive again. It’s as if there is a slow healing of a deep scar.”
When she arrived at the sixth emblem, it read, “With roaring Tongues, the Sky-Children (Nords consider themselves to be the children of the sky.) conquer. Founding the First Empire (Nordic lands of Skyrim) with sword and Voice. Whist the Dragons withdrew from the World.”
She was getting closer now. She sensed a great change beginning to take place on the plane of Mundus. The seventh emblem read, “The Tongues at Red Mountain (The highest mountain). Went away humbled. Jurgen Windcaller (The first Dragonborn of the first age) began his Seven Year Meditation. To understand how Strong Voices could fail.
At the eighth stone she read, “Jurgen Windcaller chose silence and returned as Jurgen the Calm. The seventeen disputants could not shout Him down. He built his home of the Throat of the World (The highest peak of Tamriel).
It took most of the day for her to climb the seven thousand steps to High Hrothgar. As she came around a cliff face, she saw it though just ahead. She felt that surge of energy from within. She thought, “This is different somehow, as if I have arrived home.”
As she made the final approach, she stopped near the entry to see a statue of Talos that had been built behind the ninth stone of knowledge as she called them.
It read, “For years all silent, the Greybeards (Monks who followed the Way of The Voice) spoke one name, Tiber Septim (Known as Talos Stormcrown), stripling then, was summoned to Hrothgar. They blessed and named him Dohvakiin (Dragonborn).”
She took the last steps to the tenth and final stone and emblem and upon reading it, “The Voice is worship. Follow the Inner path, Speak only in True Need.” With it she knelt and felt the last of her scars healed and a glow surrounded her and pulsed from within her.