No longer a simple game.
"W-What the Hell" I groan as I regain consciousness. "Where am I?" Looking around I notice I'm in a rickety old cart with a guard at the reins of a horse. 'The fuck? Who uses horse drawn carriages anymore?' My thoughts were interrupted as the guard looks back and sneers at me.
"Finally awake huh? just in time for your execution." He says while laughing at me.
"Wait WHAT? The hell am i going to be executed for? I didn't do shit!" Struggling at my bonds seems to be doing nothing so i give up and look at my feet, which happen to be chained to the bench im sitting on. 'Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit!'
"How am I supposed to know what you're being brought in for? I don't ask questions I just do my job. Gives me money and safety." The smug smile on his face tells me that he enjoys his job for other reasons as well.
"I don't give a shit about your job! I'm going to die for something i didn't do!" But my yells fell on deaf ears as the guard just began to ignore me completely. 'How did I even get here? I'm just the average guy right? 5" 9 brown hair blue/green eyes my grades aren't even that good!' My panicked thoughts came to an end as the cart jolted to a stop.
"End of the line prisoner. Get off" Looking around I noticed that there was another cart with another group of people on it, all of them large burly men except for one pale skinned women. taking a second look one of them actually seemed to look like a royal figure! Another two that resembled soldiers and a man dressed in old rags akin to my own, albeit they were more red in color. But immediately after finding out his name was Lokir He ran away screaming and was shot dead in the street. As people were screaming in the background about bastards or something my mid was working in hyper drive. 'No way, no fucking way. that shouldn't be possible. Lokir of rorikstead shot dead in the street as the others were unloaded and listed off, a headman's block and no shortage of snow and soldiers. This should NOT be possible and yet here I am in goddamn skyrim!'
My thoughts were broken once again as Hadvar walked over and started speaking to me. "Another one not on the list, what should we do with him?" He asked his superior, to which she replied, rather harshly i might add.
"what did I just tell you to do with the other one? Just send him to the block with the others." Looking at me he actually seemed a bit remorseful, two innocents sent to their deaths just because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time.
"Alright prisoner over with the others, hurry it up." Slowly shuffling over to the group I looked on as general tullius berated ulfric about murdering the high king and the executioner readied his axe.
"Step up to the block prisoner." A priest looking women started praying for him until he interrupted her and, quite bravely, exclaimed that he didn't have all day. Then with one practiced chop his head was in the box.
"As fearless in life as he was in death." Ralof praised sadly. But as soon as he had spoken everyone looked up to the sky to try and find the source of a rather intimidating roar.
"I said next prisoner!" That same rude captain was shouting again and I was starting to get pissed off that she thought she could just command people to their deaths.
'Who the hell does she think she is? No one here is exactly excited to be a prisoner being sent to their death.' Looking up again I noticed that the women was stepping up to the block and leaning down. 'So shes going to be the dragonborn? Alright then i guess i should try to stick near her, not like some random bandit has the power to ruin the plot or kill the main character anyway, I'll end up being safest with her.'
"What in Oblivion is that?" A sudden shout dragged me back form my thoughts one more time and, looking up, I saw that alduin himself had landed on top of the tower right in front of us.
"Oh shit! RUN!" None of the people in the courtyard were arguing with me there, at least none of the ones that could still move were. So everyone took off, the imperials were running around in a panic trying to get general tullius out of the place and shoot at alduin at the same time. 'How the hell does he even get out of here anyway? I've never even thought about how he got away from ground zero in the few seconds that it took for you to stop staring at the ground and run in the game.'
"could the legends be true? A dragon?" Ralof was looking to ulfric in disbelief.
"legends don't burn down villages." with that the women from the cart ran through the door with the back of her shirt of fire.
"Someone put me out!" Reacting as quickly as I could i ran over to her and started to smack the flames out. When the stubborn force of nature was finally gone out she looked over at me "Thanks for that, stupid hands are bound and i cant do anything."
"Yeah sure thing. Did you get burned at all? The fire was hot enough to burn through the ropes on my hands and they never even caught." Honestly worried for her rather than the fact that all of us could die any second now.
"Some small burns but nothing i cant deal with, I've been through worse."
"Come on up the stairs! Hurry!" Ralof seemed to be the only one still here that was both conscious and still in his right mind, after all he still wanted to escape this hell-hole. But an explosion from upstairs sent him tumbling back down as fire licked at his feet. "Theres a hole up there in the wall were going to have to jump to the next building! I was honestly impressed with how fast he recovered from that, adrenaline and all, he was back up and on his feet as soon as he hit the floor. Luckily for us the jump actually wasn't that far down.
"Are you serious?" Oh boy. "I cant jump that far!" of all the things she could have been afraid of, the Dragonborn of all people was afraid of heights. "Theres no way i can make that especially not with my hands bound!"
"Well its either this or being burned alive and eaten by something shouldn't even exist! Now go I'll find another way around!" And with that ralof just left the two of us at the hole in the wall yelling that he needed to get ulfric out if he wants to see anything but the insides of a prison for the rest of his life.
"I cant jump that far! I'm going to end up falling or missing the hole or something! I cant do this!" Wow this fear of heights was serious we were only about fifteen feet up and she was sweating bullets.
"I'll jump down first and catch you if anything goes wrong, but we need to go now!" I finished mid-leap and she was looking down at me as if i was completely crazy, jumping from the tower to a burning house. Wait... "Look I'm stronger than I look you'll be fine!"
"Well alright but if you don't catch me I swear i will come back from sovngarde just to hunt you down!" And with that little death threat she jumped. I could see that even though she was scared witless at least she was able to jump into the house fine, the real problem was when she landed. Teetering on the edge of the platform we were on directly over a fire I reached over and grabbed the back of her shirt, pulling her back to safety.
"You don't want to go to sovngarde yet do you? We haven't even been properly introduced!" Yup first half an hour in a world that should be a video game and i was already a thousand times less shy then I had been, maybe it was the life or death situation? Who knew?
"Crazy bastard. She murmured
"Sorry what was that?" I asked looking as innocent as I could concerning the circumstances. Unfortunately she didn't have the time to reply to my obvious attempt to provoke he because alduin had just burned the street outside, as well as several civilians unfortunate enough to be in the way, to ashes.
"OK time to go RIGHT NOW!" I was not going to argue with her on that one. So as quickly as we could we raced out into the streets past Hadvar who yelled at us to stay next to him if he wanted to live, through burning houses and under an archway only to meet with Ralof and have Hadvar run up behind us and call us idiots before noticing ralof standing there with an axe.
"Ralof you damned traitor!" Looking over at the dragonborn I noticed she was already inching towards the door Hadvar would use and when they finally stopped arguing and ran to their respective doors she bolted inside and sat down on one of the beds.
"You ok?" It was just a simple question and for that i got a simple answer.
"Yeah just give me a minute to catch my breath, I didn't exactly expect to be attacked by a dragon of all things." While she rested i decide to go look through the chests that the guards had scattered around and found myself some armor and an iron sword.
'Hey wait a second, If this is skyrim that must mean there's magic! Oh fuck yes!' No longer worried about anything simply because I was acting like a child on Christmas that magic was actually possible in this place, I almost missed that the two of them were leaving without me!
"Hey hurry up! we cant stay here long or the dragon will bring the roof down on all of us!" Hadvar seemed like he was going to pass out any second now, which to be completely honest was exactly what should be expecting of the current situation most people just think I'm insane when it comes to these situations. so hurrying along I decided that I would try to get to know the "savior of skyrim" after all if i could help it i was going to stay with her for as long as I could.
"Hey what is everyone's names anyway? If we do end up dead I at least want to know who I'm fighting with."
"Ralof of Riverwood"
"Nelanna of Falkreath. Though i no longer call that place my home. What about you?" Great I really should have thought this through now I have to make something up on the spot.
"Tyler, but i come from across the sea. As soon as I got here I was knocked out so I'm guessing that when the empire picked me up." 'Nelanna certainly seems nice, but I haven't actually seen her outside of a war-zone yet so i cant be sure.'
"Quiet! I think i hear some stormcloaks on the other side of the door." Sure enough we had made it to the first gate of helgen keep where we would end up fighting the first enemies of the game, two stormcloak soldiers. 'Wait what the hell am i going to do!? I've never been in a fight in my life! i cant take on a trained warrior! Hell I don't think I would fair very well against a single wolf!' Luckily for me I didn't have to worry about it as both Ralof and Nelanna took charge of the fight without needing me at all.
"Thanks for that, I don't really know how to fight very well. In fact i have never been in a real fight before myself only held a blade and did some test swings." Hadvar looked back at me like I was crazy for even being here but at least Nelanna didn't seem to mind much.
"In that case its probably best if you stay behind us until we get out of here." 'Gee thanks a lot Hadvar I can really feel the love.' as we walked on we heard some shouting and what sounded like an electrical cable had been cut. "Torture rooms, I wish we didn't need these." once we had made it into the room we saw the torturer and his assistant finish off the last stormcloak that had made their way into the room. While Hadvar was trying to warn the stubborn old man that the keep was going to burn to the ground I headed over to the cage with a dead mage lying inside.
"Don't bother with that, lost the key ages ago, poor man screamed for days." The expression the old man wore was one of malice and amusement, so exactly what you would expect from a torturer. Turning back to the cage I reached my arm in as far as i could and managed to grab the spell book and few septims lying at the dead mans side. 'Never know This might be simple.'
"Alright lets get going." Man Hadvar was impatient, I didn't really want to stay here long either but he was just running through the place like a madman. Moving through the keep some more we came across another group of stormcloaks but this time the two of them had bows. Both Hadvar and Nelanna charged right into the guys and started to fight them while i hid next to some barrels. Unfortunately for me there was another stormcloak behind me and as I turned around the first thing I saw was an axe heading for my face.
"Holy Shit!" I yelled as I dived out of my hiding spot with the hulking brute of a man following close behind. Another swing of his axe had the edge brushing my chest as I leaped backwards again to try and get away from him. "A little help over hear please!" Unfortunately for me the two of them were rather preoccupied with the two archers at the moment, apparently they were pretty good with daggers because neither duo seemed to have made much progress. Running away from the Axe-wielding maniac behind me dodging his axe every few steps I remembered that i had a sword, of course i wasn't very good with it but by the looks of it I was going to tire out before him. so turning around and facing him i drew my sword and he stopped.
"Finally going to fight me now are you, coward?"
"Oh screw you I'm the one that has never fought with a sword before!" Obviously this was the wrong thing to say because as soon as I had he charged me thinking that I wouldn't be able to do anything. Well luckily for me the universe decided to give me a break because he swung his axe over his head and into the ground where i had been standing. I had seen that his swing was not going to him me if i moved so I had, and in the moment of confusion I had managed to get Right next to him and kick him in his stomach. He only stumbled backward for a moment due to him probably being three hundred pounds of pure muscle. After that I guess he got a bit more cautious because he started waiting for me to make the next move, well he got what he wanted. I turned around and swung a chair through the air and hit him right in the face, of course he still didn't go down but one of his eyes were closed and he was stunned for a few seconds so I threw another at him. This one he smacked aside with his axe but out of nowhere an arrow went right through his temple.
"Maybe next time we should be a bit more careful huh?" There was Nelanna standing with a bow in her hand and a dead soldier at her feet. I looked over at her about to thank her but she stopped me. "Now were even, you helped me not burned to death I helped you not get chopped apart by an axe."
"Uh thanks, I thought i was going to end up dead." she just nodded and turned around to follow Hadvar who had, surprise surprise, went ahead without us. For him that turned out to be a bit of a mistake because the next thing he knew he was fighting off a horde of frostbite spiders and trying not to get impaled by the biggest ones fangs.
"Oh thank the gods your here! Help me with these things!" Nelanna just drew her bow and fired off taking the biggest spider right in the forehead and killing it. This trend continued for a while as it turns out Nelanna was quite the archer.
"Geez nice job I never knew you were that good of a shot" Turning to me she smiles and says "oh its nothing I've just had a lot of practice."
"Alright we should be just about out of here by now." Well Hadvar was fine, continuing on through the cave though he seemed to be a bit jerky with his movements, like he was stiff from cold or something.
"You ok Hadvar? you seem a bit slower than earlier.
"It's nothing, one of the little bastards got me, it'll wear off soon enough." Nothing else seemed to be wrong with him so we continued even deeper into the cave and came across the sleeping bear that stays just outside of the exit. "Hold up, there a bear over there and I'd rather not tangle with her right now but if you feel up for it you can take a shot, might catch her by surprise." No one mad any move to go after it so we all just decided to sneak by and we finally got to the end of the cave.
"Hey I think that's the exit over there!" My enthusiastic shouts were not over looked as both Hadvar and Nelanna Started to run towards the exit. A strong gust of wind hit us in the face as Alduin passed over head but we didn't care we were just glad to finally be out of there.
Well hope you liked my attempted return to making stories about video games for strangers!
I took down my previous story due to it not being finished (and I had no intentions of finishing it) and because I just felt like it didn't fit what I was going to focus on from now on.
Please review with anything you think might help, blatant flames will be ignored, fancy or not, but constructive criticism is highly appreciated!
Until next time!