24th of Last Seed 4E201
We decided to head to the barrow today, to get the dragon stone. After breakfast, we headed towards Riverwood. Farengar had said that someone there could point us in the right direction, and  I wanted to visit Alvor and Sigrid, and see how they were doing. And say hello to Hadvar, if he was still there. I remembered him saying something about needing to go to Solitude, I just hoped that he hadn't left yet.

Everyone was happy to see me, and Sigrid packed us some food to take to the barrow. Hadvar tried warning us against it, and said it was likely full of draugr. I asked about them, and he said they were the remains of people who died long ago, that came back to life to defend their tombs. That scared me a bit, but Jenassa just assured me that she would make sure that they stayed dead for good this time. We said our goodbyes, and Alvor thanked me again for getting the jarl to sent soldiers to protect Riverwood.

More bandits, some on the path there and others inside the barrow. We overheard two of them saying something about someone named Arvel taking a claw and running with it. We stopped in a room, where a bandit pulled lever only to be killed by poisoned arrows. I tried to just walk past the bandits on the way here, but they ran after us and attacked. We decided to rest for a moment, and try to get this gate open. It may have something to do with the pillars along the wall...

We worked together, and managed to move the pillars to where the symbols on the wall on the carvings matched the symbols facing out on the pillars. I pulled the lever, and the gate opened! I felt bad for the bandit who had been killed by the arrows, but I kept telling myself that he had likely killed innocent people and probably deserved a horrible death.

We found Arvel, he had managed to be captured by a giant spider. After we killed the spider, he asked to be cut down, and promised to share the treasure in return. I cut him down, and he ran off further into the barrow, mocking me. I would have sent an atronach after him, but he was a fellow Dunmer like Jenassa and I. Granted, that didn't make him any better of a person, since he was still a bandit. I wondered if there were worse things than spiders here.

Arvel met his end at the hand of a few draugr. They weren't very happy to see us either, but Jenassa kept to her word and dispatched them.They smelled worse than the dead mammoth in Halted Stream Camp. Arvel had the claw, and a journal talking about a hall of stories and a puzzle, and something about a solution being in your hand. It was hard to read, since the pages were stained with who knows what. Most likely it was mead or grease from food. I put the journal and claw in my bag and kept going. Jenassa stayed at my back, and watched for danger.

We stopped again, to rest and have our meal. We managed to find a hallway like room with no draugr in it, so it didn't smell so bad. The walls had carvings on them, and at the end of the hall there was a door with rings in it. I thought about all of the draugr we had just gone through to get here, not to mention the dangerous traps that nearly killed me. What was in this place that needed to be guarded that much? I finished my food and flipped through Arvel's journal while Jenassa finished hers. Then it dawned on me, the room we were in was the hall of stories he had mentioned. I walked over to the door and looked at the rings. They had pictures on them like the pillars before, only smaller. Then, I remembered Arvel's journal saying something about the claw and the solution being in your hand. I held the claw next to the door, then noticed that the holes in the middle of the door matched the nails on the claw. I tried it, but the door didn't do anything. I sighed and held the claw, then noticed that the bottom of it felt strange, so I flipped it over. There were the symbols again! I called Jenassa over, and we moved the rings after much struggling and cursing, and managed to get them to match up with the symbols on the claw. Then I tried the claw again. The lock moved and the rings went around and the door slid down, then vanished into the floor. We had done it! Hopefully the dragon stone was close, I already missed breathing fresh air and feeling the wind in my hair.

We got the dragon stone, at last. The room it was in was rather large, and strange. There was a large wall with carvings all over it, and as I got closer, it started chanting at me, and the room became dark. Then, some of the carvings on the wall  began to glow, and light came out of the wall and surrounded me. Then, it stopped, and everything got normal again. Jenassa worriedly asked me if I was alright, and I assured her that I was fine. We started looking around for the dragon stone, and I opened a chest, which made a coffin nearby pop open, and a very mad draugr came out and yelled at Jenassa, knocking her off balance. I summoned an atronach, and the three of us fought him off after Jenassa gained her footing again. The dragon stone was in his coffin. I picked up, then we headed for what I hoped was the exit. I had no idea what time it was, I only knew that I was tired and needed sleep.

It was dark by the time we crawled out of the barrow. The exit was on the side of a mountain, so we had to climb down, then head to Riverwood from there. I tried getting a room at the inn, but the cook said that someone named Delphine rented rooms to people, and she wasn't home. Thankfully, Alvor and Sigrid were still awake, so we asked if we could stay at their house for the night. I offered to pay them, but they turned down my coin and said that we could stay as long as we needed to. Only the smaller bed was available, so we both squeezed in as best we could. Tomorrow I decided to have a nice bath in the river, no matter how cold the water was. Hopefully they would forgive us for making their house smell like draugr.