A classic case of Mage meets Merchant.

[Clark]

Clark felt bruised, but confident. Sword-fighting was tough, but Clark had some basics to try. He walked down the steps from Jorrvaskr, turned left at the big tree called...the Gildergreen? Clark would ask later. Down more stairs into the market square, and Clark was nearly to the Bannered Mare when the College mage's ear overheard part of a conversation.

"Once I've made enough money trading with the Khajit caravans, I'm going to buy the Bannered Mare from Hulda."

Clark turned and gasped in spite of himself. A young, red-haired Nord woman in a blue dress stood talking to the woman at the produce stand while she closed down for the day. His face suddenly turned hot--all the way to the tips of his ears! Glad his Novice's Hood covered them, Clark suddenly found himself self-conscious about the rest of his appearance. Fidgety, nervous, but intently focused on this woman, the young Breton suddenly found himself approaching her.

"Yes?"

"Pardon me," he said. "Um, you mentioned Khajit?" The novice wizard asked. "I had an experience working with a Khajit rather recently, though he didn't seem meet most people's expectations. I haven't really dealt with Khajit before. My parents didn't really let me leave my room when they had to deal with them." Feeling his explanation had started to edge into a ramble, Clark brought the conversation on point. "What do you know about the Khajit?"

"About the same as everyone else. They're the cat-folk of Elsweyr Great warriors, good traders. Way I hear it, Elsweyr ain't nothing like Skyrim. It's got tropical forests and dusty badlands. It sounds awful!"

Clark smiled. "You said you were trading with them?"

"Yeah, these Khajit make a living traveling the roads and selling their wares. It's got to be tough. Skyrim's a hard enough land when you've got a roof over your head. Worst thing is, nobody wants them in the cities. Nobody trusts them."

Clark nodded. "I did notice that. Why do you think that is?"

"Reputation, mostly. A lot of Khajit turn to smuggling and thievery to get by. A few bad apples spoil the bunch. You know how it is."

"Do you trust them?"

"Matter of fact, I do. They've been fair enough with me, as far as I can tell. And a Nord knows a liar when she sees one."

The young woman's polite, friendly tone, and willingness to discuss the Khajit helped Clark feel more at ease. "So, why do you want to learn the merchant's trade?"

"Before my ma and da passed, I told them that one day, I'd become the best trader in Skyrim. I met one of the caravan leaders, Ma'dran. He said he'd help get me started if I could bring him a mammoth's tusk. Easier said than done."

Before he even knew what he was saying, Clark said, "I'll get you a mammoth's tusk."

"You'd do that? If you find one, I could teach you a think or two about trading. Help you get a fair bargain in the future."

Clark nodded. "Deal!" He started to wave good-bye, but stopped short when he realized he was missing some key information. "I'm sorry! What's your name?"

"Ysolda. Nice to meet you...?"

"Clark! Yes, it was very nice to meet you! I'll set out to get your tusk first thing in the morning!"

His carriage fare paid for, Clark spent his last ten septims on a bed at the Bannered Mare. He fell into the straw mattress with a thud. His head hit the pillow with only one thought in it: Ysolda was amazing.

Early that morning, before the sun even really started to crest the horizon, Clark stepped out of the gates of White run and started towards the open plains. He had seen some mammoths grazing off in the distance from the back of the carriage. Now that he was approaching the giant, wooly beasts, Clark's mind finally managed to grasp what it actually was he had promised.

"Oh dear."

Clark shook out his hands, bringing to bear his Conjure Familiar and Oakflesh spells. With a loud BANG! and CLANG! The spells were made manifest. Drawing upon the rest of his magicka reserves, Clark felt the magical fire of the Flames spell ignite in his palms. He stretched forth his hands and scorched the closest mammoth across the flank.

The giant lumbering beast cried out in pain. Faster than Clark expected, the great beast turned its head and walloped the College Novice across the back of the head. Seeing stars, Clark heard his familiar yelp and fizzle out. His vision returned in time to show him a wall of brown. The brown moved, and Clark felt the sharp end of the mammoth's tusk pierce his side.

Not even three minutes into the errand, and already the Breton was mortally wounded. Clark clutched his side, swallowed hard, and ran for his life. Over the gentle slopes he sprinted pell-mell for someplace--any place--to hide! A small stone bridge appeared as Clark crested a small hill. Clark prayed a silent, grateful prayer to the Divines and dashed under the nearest archway in the bridge.

The mammoth's thick skull hit the stone bridge with a mighty impact, but the bridge held.

"Praise Zenithar for Nord architecture!"

The sharp pain in his side brought him back to his predicament. Clark lay on the ground under the bridge on the far side from the mammoth, which seemed to be trying to root out the pesky Breton with one long, wicked tusk. He raised his hand with the light of Healing and spent his remaining magicka bringing himself back from the edge of death.

His reserves spent, no weapons, and no willingness to go toe-to-toe with the behemoth trying to kill him, Clark waited until he could feel his magicka return to him.

[Clark]

It took only minutes for Clark to regain his magicka, but it felt like hours. The sound of running water could barely be heard over the mammoth's enraged trumpeting. The mage crouched in his hiding area. He was not ready for this. He edged up to the hairy thing, wary of the tusk trying relentlessly to impale him. The creature snuffled and blew hot air from its trunk. It was during that quieter moment that Clark heard something. A strange, droning, chime-like sound.

"Nirnroot!"

Clark backed out of the hole, away from the mammoth. A quick glance to the right showed the trickling stream and a faint glow coming out of the middle archway. The mage, overcome with curiosity despite his dire situation, stepped under the bridge. "Wow!" he whispered to himself. Slowly, reverently, Clark grabbed the miraculous herb close to the root and plucked it up sharply. Almost immediately the glow died and the chiming stopped. Satisfied that he had found something so rare, the Novice placed his prize in his pouch.

The mammoth's bellow brought him back to the task at hand.

"Right!"

Clark poked his head out of the middle archway to look at his quarry. The creature's rage seemed to make it blind to the fact that Clark was now just a few feet to its left. He rekindled his Flames, stepped within range, and loosed all his destructive might at the creature. The mammoth backed its tusk out of the archway, but when it turned, Clark was already back under the middle arch. The mage stepped out from his shelter, shot a quick blast of fire at it, and ducked back inside. The mammoth moved towards the new hole and resumed its blind poking and scraping about.

"Well!" Clark muttered sarcastically to himself, "This won't take long at all!"

[Clark]

The sun began its climb into the Nordic sky, bearing witness to Clark's guerilla-style efforts to bring down his quarry. Popping out of the archways, spraying fire, retreating again when the mammoth began to extricate itself from the archway it thought the mage had fled under. Clark felt grateful that the wooly beast never seemed to learn.

The hours went by. Clark remained patient, focused, and determined. When his magicka ran low, he would simply wait it out. The edges of the stone archway scraped across the mammoth's tusk. Time wore on. Clark continued scorching the mammoth. The bridge continued to score the behemoth's tusk. Clark's stomach gurgled: he was hungry. He couldn't eat without food, but wasn't willing to risk abandoning his position and risking getting run down and gored.

"Sure would be nice to have some help!" He thought during the umpteenth time waiting for his magicka to recharge.

[Akasha]

Akasha hummed to herself, slightly off-key, as she ambled down the dusty track that ran down the sloping, grassy steppe from Rorikstead to Whiterun, one paw balanced on the jostling hilt of her curved ebony sword in its Alik'r scabbard. She'd hummed her way into the second chorus before she realized the tune wasn't one of her mother's prayer mantras, or one of the lilting chants she'd heard her Redguard companions sing after a hard day's work in the fields or in the arena. It was a Nordic ballad, one about ancient battles and legendary weapons, and warriors who fought in the name of Ysgramor. Akasha couldn't remember the words, but she could remember the effect they'd had on her when she'd heard Vilkas singing them in his high, clear voice. She was feeling more and more like a daughter of Skyrim every day - she! Akasha ja Khanai, a farm girl from Hammerfell, now a blooded shield-sister of the Companions of Jorrvaskr!

Well, blooded might be a little generous. The scabs on her knuckles proved she'd been bloodied, but only against a deadbeat drunkard who owed money to Hulda of the Bannered Mare. Now her coinpurse was heavier, her belly was full, and an old soldier with fond memories of Jorrvaskr had bought her a pint of Honningbrew mead to keep her warm on the journey back to Whiterun. The young Khajiit warrioress lifted her eyes to the horizon where Masser and Secunda had begun to climb the early evening sky, and she felt settled and content.

Certainly more content than that fool mammoth banging its head against the bridge. Akasha hissed between her teeth and changed course so she wouldn't have to cross it - better to get her feet damp fording a shallow brook than to risk provoking the wrath of an already-angry mammoth what in Alkosh's mane was THAT!

A burst of flame lit up the underside of the bridge and bloomed around the mammoth's head, drawing a trumpeting shriek of pain and rage from the beast. Akasha ducked her head and skittered off the path to get a better look: there, huddled under the archway of the bridge, was a slender, pale man in blue college robes with a hand pressed to a dark, spreading stain in his side.

She could just slink on by through the creek and leave the poor fool to his fate. But surely it was unbecoming of a companion to abandon a traveler in peril? Akasha wasn't certain. She wished Aela were here, if only because she'd much rather face an enraged, five-ton behemoth with a bow than with a sword and shield.

Curling her lip and cursing her rotten luck, Akasha crept along the bank of the creek on the opposite side of the bridge from the rampaging mammoth until she was under the archway. The mage, still focused on the probing tusks that rattled back and forth across the masonry, hadn't seen her yet. She coughed lightly, not wanting to spook the beast any further.

"What in Azurah's name are you doing?"

[Clark]

"Trying to get a mammoth's tusk for someone I like," he answered tersely. "Clearly I didn't think this through."

Clark looked over at the voice. Another Khajit! "Oh!" The mage's face broke into a broad grin. "This is taking some time, but I have things pretty well in hand. I couldn't ask you to help: this beast is really quite dangerous!"

He pointed at the tear in his robes and the fresh, pink, newly healed flesh underneath. "I got impaled pretty badly a short time ago, but I'm much better now."

[Akasha]

"Well, of course, it's dangerous, it's a sodding mammoth," Akasha replied. The beast punctuated her point by smashing the archway again, peppering both of them with bits of loose gravel and mortar.

The Khajiit sighed and stepped back away from the ridiculous scene, conscious that she was only a few steps away from being gored herself. She had heard that mammoths didn't like to cross flowing water, but she wouldn't bet her life on it. Rescuing an unfortunate traveler pinned by a rampaging monster was one thing, but rescuing the most incompetent poacher in the world?

"This one is certain you can buy mammoth's tusks somewhere," she said. "There are several of them in a stack in Jorrvaskr hall. Once this one annoyed an Alik'r trader until he told her to go bring him a blood scorpion's tail. She almost died in the attempt, and ended up empty-pawed."

[Clark]

"I don't have any money!" Clark said rather defensively. "Besides, there's no going back now! I've been keeping the thing guessing by emerging out of the different archways here and letting the mammoth have it. It's working, but it's also taking longer than I'd like. If you mean to help me, then that's great. If you just want to laugh, well, I won't say I don't deserve it. Just have your guffaw and clear out. Or if you'd like to do both, that's also fine."

The young mage could feel his power had fully returned to him. "Ok, so we're in the middle archway. I'm going to go left. If you want to help, go right. If the mammoth turns towards you, just run back under the bridge."

Clark suited action to words. He ducked out of the archway and rounded the corner and into the other.

[Akasha]

Akasha's mouth fell open with a protest on her tongue, but it died there. This mage was clearly insane, and after her brief experience with Ursula, Akasha was beginning to believe that insanity was a fundamental prerequisite for mage's robes. She fully considered just leaving the foolish Breton to his fate - after all, he had provoked the poor beast. But she didn't fancy returning to Jorrvaskr only to tell Aela that she'd run away from a hunt.

Akasha bit down on a caustic oath as Clark darted out from his cover and sprayed the mammoth with an arc of flame. Well, nothing else for it now. As the great beast bellowed and charged through the flames to grind its tormentor into paste, Akasha leapt around through the other archway with a feral snarl. What she saw was not so much an animal but a mobile mountain made of smoldering wool and trumpeting rage. Her ears pinned back against her skull, and she lunged forward to worry its flanks with her sword.

But the mammoth wheeled faster than should have been possible for anything that big. The curved edge of a tusk caught her in the steel plate that covered her stomach and sent her caterwauling through the air.

Akasha landed in a tumbling heap in the muddy riverbank, dazed and breathless. Her awareness of the world around her returned to her in pieces, then suddenly congealed into the form of a bellowing mammoth that was charging directly toward her. With a choking gasp, Akasha rolled aside as a pair of tree-sized forelegs crashed down into the spot she'd just vacated.

[Clark]

Clark did not like what was happening. By his reckoning, the creature must have been near death. Its burns were were well-developed. Where the beast's hair had burned away, the skin and muscle was blackened and blistered. The long gashes Akasha gave it wept rivers of blood. The beast was well and truly desperate. The college mage chased the beast, harrying it with fire.

He felt his magicka drain: his mind could craft the concept of fire, but lacked the force to bring it into being. The flames started to die out. As the novice mage watched the magical fire lick the mammoth's side, in his tired mind something clicked in his understanding of the Destruction school that he hadn't considered before. How the flames always seemed to linger just a little longer after the spell died out.

The realization awakened in him an excitement and desire to try something new. Invigorated by the testing of his limits, Clark felt magicka well up into his being. With both hands outstretched a gout of fire erupted and encased the beast. The creature staggered back from the flames. Unsure how much longer he could maintain the blast, he shouted to Akasha, "NOW! While it's stunned!"