Disclaimer: I do not own Legend of Korra or the Elder Scrolls, but can you imagine how wealthy I'd be if I did? Please read and review at your leisure.
Ivarstead, Skyrim.
Atteli Ponius was having one of his better mornings, in fact it was one of the best mornings he had ever had since arriving in Skyrim. His armor, a mixture of furs that he had stitched together himself, was a brown color that helped to blend in with the woods that he spent so much time in. Across his back was a sleek ebony bow, blacker then a moonless night with a quiver of arrows to match. His face was mostly covered by a hood that had been pulled up to keep the morning sun out of his eyes.
For the past three days, Atteli had wandered back and forth in the woods of the western portion of The Rift, hunting deer and elk. Upon this particular morning, he had downed a bear outside of a cave between the village and his place of residence, an abandoned alchemist's shack to the south.
The Imperial had an arrangement with the owner of the Inn in Ivarstead, a man by the name of Wilhelm. He would bring meat and hide harvested from his prey to the Inn Keeper in exchange for coin, or a dry place to sleep if the weather got too bad for his shack to withstand. The bear pelt, however, was going to Temba Wide-Arm, a woman who ran the lumber mill in Ivarstead.
Atteli had an agreement with Temba, one that had stood since the first day he had arrived in the small village. When Temba had discovered him chopping wood in front of her mill, she had grown angry that he was doing the work that her assistant was suppose to be doing. Atteli had in fact been filling in for her assistant in exchange for some gold. Upon learning that he was a hunter freshly arrived in Skyrim, Temba had offered to pay for any bear pelt that he brought her.
As he neared the bridge into the village, Atteli paused for a moment. He often hesitated before he entered a village, town, city, or any other large gathering of people. As a young archer who had grown up in the woods of Cyrodiil, he had never visited a town for any other reason then to trade for supplies. After what had happened at Helgen, he was even more wary.
But that had been on the 17th of Last Seed, almost two months ago. The waters of the Darkwater River gurgled lazily beneath the bridge, as if inviting the young hunter for one last swim before the cold of winter set in. But Atteli wasn't so easily fooled by lazy waters on a warm morning. The river was deep all along its course, and this was about the only place it was lazy. About a hundred yards down river from the bridge, it suddenly turned through Ivarstead and entered nothing but waterfalls and rapids until it met the White River further to the north.
Strong currents and deep waters wasn't the only danger that plagued Skyrim's waterways. Lake Geir, which gleamed in the morning sunlight off to his right, was full of slaughterfish, a fish that liked to attack unsuspecting swimmers. Atteli had found out about slaughterfish the hard way, and still had a scar on his left leg to prove it.
After a moment of admiring the view, the hunter tightened his grip on the strap of his pack and began the walk across the stone arch bridge. Locals and the village guard went about their morning routine as if he wasn't even there. Atteli came to the village at least once a week, so the sight of the hooded hunter emerging from the woods to the south was not an uncommon one.
As he reached the stairs leading onto the porch of the Vilemyr Inn, he paused and looked upward toward the massive mountain the loomed over the village. The Throat of the World as it was known was the largest mountain in Skyrim, and the largest on the continent. Ivarstead rested at the base of the mountain, with much of it's sheer cliff side stopping just on the other side of the river from the main village.
Something about the mountain called to the hunter, but he ignored it this morning like he had every other morning and entered the Inn. The inside of the building was well lit by both candles and a massive roaring fire that rested in the center of the room. Aside from this, the rest of the inn was made up by a few bedrooms that shot off from the main one. Benches and tables lined the walls on both sides on the hearth, and at the end to his left stood a small bar where Wilhelm waited.
As the simple wooden door slammed closed behind him, Atteli used his spare hand to reach up and pull down his hood. His face was a tan color, a clear give away that he was not from Skyrim. His black hair was cropped close, indicating that he may have had a problem with lice. However the scar that ran down his left cheek just below his eye suggested that it may have been instead because he had been in the Imperial Legion.
"Ah Atteli, making your weekly stop I see," the Innkeeper greeted. Atteli nodded as he crossed the Inn to the bar, unslinging his pack in the process.
"I've got the usual deer and elk, plus a little bear this week," the hunter reported as he began to produce the various meats and furs.
"Bear eh? You've been stepping it up," Wilhelm said as he set a coin purse next to the meat. Atteli said nothing in reply as he picked up the purse and gave it a single toss into the air. Satisfied with it's weight, he said farewell to the Innkeeper before he strode back outside. Pausing on the porch to raise his hood, Atteli set off to deliver the bear pelt to Temba. He was eager to get back to the woods and spend a fine day like this hunting.
As he set off, a strange sound began to fill the air, rising of the noise of the river. The hunter paused, along with everyone else in the village. It wasn't a dragon, as the Imperial would have recognized that. No, this was something else. Something new. Above the river, a light appeared. It glowed a bright green and shimmered like ice in the sunlight.
Atteli slowly made his way to the water's edge, starring in awe at the strange phenomenon. He had never seen anything quite like this in his entire life.
Suddenly a figure appeared from the light, tumbling from the anomaly like a rag doll. It was a female, possibly human, and wearing blue. That was all Atteli could see before the figure plunged into the river and was swept away by the rapid current. In an instant, he had snapped himself out of the trance and was sprinting after the figure.
He bounded off of a small incline and onto the log pile by the lumber mill before skillfully leaping into the actual mill itself, trying to keep her in sight. By sheer luck, whether good or bad, she avoided all the rocks in the river as well as the mill's water wheel before the current swept her under a stone bridge and over the first waterfall. Atteli followed to the best of his ability, jumping over the lumber mill's wicker fence, dodging the bridge, and coming to halt on a stone ledge overlooking the next waterfall.
He was just in time to watch the young woman be swept out of sight over the second waterfall. With the agility of a cat, he lept from the ledge and continued his pursuit.
Korra didn't know what was happening, only that she was cold, wet, and apparently falling. She would have bent some water or air to slow or even stop her fall, but at the moment she was so disoriented that she didn't even know which way was up. The roar that filled her ears and the sensation of falling both quickly came to an end as she reached the bottom of the waterfall.
For a moment, she floated. She was so tired and battered that she was content just to let the current to what it wanted to her. But then, her lungs screamed for air, and the Avatar kicked toward the surface with renewed energy. Her head broke free, and she inhaled with everything she had. With her oxygen problem taken care of, she began to look around, and spotted a nearby log dipped into the river.
Using the current, Korra lazily paddled and caught the edge of the log and draped her pain filled body over it. If she was dead, this afterlife thing was off to a bad start. After she had taken her time and recovered a small amount of strength, she raised her head and looked around her. She wasn't dead, or in the spirit world, that much was clear.
Maybe she had landed somewhere in the mountains near Republic City when the Spirit Cannon had detonated. That would explain the mountains and the trees around her. But if she had landed here, where did that put Kuvira?
Korra was pulled from her thoughts by a grunting sound. Looking up, she saw something that she never had before. The beast was a large, man ape like thing with brown fur, three eyes, and was dragging a body in blue armor by the leg while picking it's teeth with a bone. She could only stare in shocked horror. She had seen some ugly spirits and creatures in her time, but this one took the cake over all others.
The creature stopped on it's trek and threw the body into a shallow cave in the cliff face before it before sniffing the air. Korra's blood turned cold as the beast turned, looked her in the eye, and grinned. Dropping it's toothpick, the creature began to hobble it's way toward her, but came to a sudden stop. Both it and the young woman blinked in surprise at the midnight black and silver arrow that had appeared in the creature's shoulder.
The beast looked up and roared at the newcomer, and Korra followed it's line of sight. A figure wearing a hood and carrying a bow to match the arrow bounded off of a nearby rock and let another fly. This one logged itself in the creature's middle eye, killing the beast instantly. The last thing she before she blacked out as the creature fell spread eagle into the dirt was the figure's hood turning toward her.
