Summary: An Oblivion self-insert. What started as a normal school day somehow instead became a nightmarish reality. 17-year old Kimberlyn Harris must now learn to adjust to life as an elf and gain control of her incredibly wild magicka if she's going to survive and, ultimately, save Nirn.

Warning: Will contain graphic violence, cussing (in Farscape terminology or otherwise), bandits, marauders, papercuts, hangnails, Azura prophecy-messages. Will also include threats, verbal fencing matches, wild magic that's incredibly out of control, the Tribunal, tarot, and all sorts of havoc dedicated to the Prince of Madness.

Spoiler Warning: Spoilers for the Main Quest and the Mage's Guild quest/storyline.

Disclaimer: I own nothing that is Elder Scrolls related – only Kimberlyn Harris, the events of Act 0 and any event of the main two storylines gone horribly out of control, any and all sorts of havoc that comes from it, the specifically-created-for-this-fanfic prophecies, the names of characters that ironically weren't named in the plug-ins, and new characters created specifically for this fanfiction. JR owns himself and the events of his fanfic series that's unlikely to be posted on this site. I also don't own anything that is Diablo II- or Diablo III-related and is specifically referenced as such (you'll see why later).


Edgedancer
Act 0 - "10 Years"
Chapter 0-1 - 3E423 - "Disorientation"


Friday, May 28, 2010. It was a particularly warm May afternoon, as I recalled - then again, with June and the end of the school year coming up, I wasn't surprised; it was a much better change from the constant wind at the beginning of the month, too - but it was rare for me to even be outdoors at this hour. As usual, I was sitting in the same room as my math class two hours before, only on the opposite side of the room, second desk from the front in the farthest column of desks and as far from most other individuals as possible.

Note the word "most."

"So, you doing anything tomorrow?"

I looked up from my history homework (I hated history sometimes) to the speaker, who I had also been talking with while doing said homework. At first glance, one couldn't necessarily tell that this person was not someone you wanted to try and jump in a dark alley. If he weren't sitting down in the desk in front of me, he would've stood almost six feet tall (I estimated his height to be somewhere between 5'9" and 5'11"), a thin and lanky 18-year old with a thin face and curly brown hair. As usual, he was wearing a light jacket over a random T-shirt, along with faded blue jeans and a pair of somewhat worn sneakers. JR was a senior this year, although he lived with a friend's family after moving back from Tennessee.

The response I gave was that of a shrug as I closed my notebook; thank heaven for small miracles - I actually got it done. "Just playing Oblivion. Started a new game."

'Again,' I added mentally as an afterthought, zipping my black and dark blue backpack closed. Peering into the largest pouch of my backpack would've revealed even more items - a black binder, designated for Pre-IB Chemistry to counter my blue IB American History binder; a bunch of loose-leaf paper of miscellaneous assignments ranging from chemistry to English; and a clipboard with a humongous amount of blank computer paper...well, mostly blank. Looking in the back of the group would've revealed a number of half-anime, half-realistic drawings of mine. A good number of them were incomplete constructions - and likely to stay that way - but choice few others were fully colored figures with unusually complex designs on their clothing, and one page being nothing but eyes.

JR raised an eyebrow. "Again?"

Odd. I either was telepathically projecting again or he was reading my mind - he said it the exact same time I thought the word.

The older teen moved the sleeve of his left arm out of the way, checking his watch. He sighed, slightly annoyed, but mostly tired. "We'd better get going; there's only two minutes left for lunch."

Blink. Glance at the clock. 12:10. Annoyance crossed my face as I gave a small mock-pout. JR shrugged, getting up from his seat before swinging his own mostly-gray backpack over a single shoulder. "So, if it's alright, I'll see you tomorrow."

My response was that of a nod as I stood - my friends were always welcome at my house, so long as it wasn't a rehearsal weekend for the renaissance fair I was part of. I swung my backpack over both shoulders before the both of us left the classroom, venturing into the hallway filled with orange-colored lockers and other students traversing to their next classes. The sounds that remained constant as we made our way down the hall and took a left turn at the T intersection in front of the activities office were those of jingling chains and my headphones playing symphonic/progressive metal - "Ghost Opera" by Kamelot, specifically. Most of what little dialogue we exchanged at this point was simply about upcoming classes and our current feelings for them (I slightly envied JR here - he had computer technology whereas I had IB English) before we had to separate. JR vanished down the hall to the right as I passed through the double doors and out onto the campus of Kennewick High, heading for the building on the other side of the parking lot to my left: the annex.

Now that I was alone, I placed my headphones on my head before pulling down my aviation goggles, which doubled as a pair of sunglasses. I had a rather distinguishable appearance from the other students at Kennewick High - I was always in black Tripp pants with broken chains on the lower halves of the pants (which, fortunately, could be zipped off and converted into shorts) and a pair of black combat boots. My shirts were a matter of "find something clean that fits and throw it on" - in this case, my favorite black V-neck tank top, exposing my multiple pendants - one of a pewter dragon clutching onto a blue marble on a black cord that was adjusted to choker size, and a golden chain with a fire-opal pearl pendant. My dark-blonde hair, as usual, was pulled back into a simple ponytail behind me. Despite the fact I had pierced ears, I didn't wear earrings in them often - only during special occasions and performances or when I just wanted to scare people. As for my eyes? They were a bit large, but warm, with an unusually colored form of hazel eyes - bluish-gray primarily, with a ring of green surrounding the iris, but a bursting ring of yellow surrounded the pupil. "Starburst eyes," as one of my friends called them.

The bell rang promptly at 12:12; we had six minutes to get to class. I only needed two - I was already halfway from the middle of the school grounds to the front of the annex building, and it took me about a minute to head through the double doors, climb the stairs, turn right, and then head all the way down to the classroom on my left for fifth period. I took a deep breath before sighing - despite how I found it rather entertaining to read about an individual deteriorating into insanity, Crime and Punishment was not quite catching my attention, and I had to write a compare-and-contrast essay involving it and either Antigone or The Stranger.

Ah, well.

I placed my left hand in the (rather deep) pocket holding my MP3 player and tarot cards before passing through the doors and then climbing up the steps, grabbing onto the railways to keep myself balanced. My mind was focused on something other than a story taking place in St. Petersburg, Russia. As a 17-year old junior with attention deficit disorder and a frequent urge to write anything in her spare time (most of it coming out as fanfiction or brainstorming for a fanfiction in the works), it was going to be a bit hard for me to entirely concentrate, even with my medication.


2:25 that afternoon, I came home tired, irritated, and rather cold.

Try walking for fifteen minutes down six or seven blocks and then a giant field of grass that clearly too up a block and a half with 30 miles-per-hour winds blasting in your face.

...Okay, I was exaggerating a bit with the wind. Maybe. You never knew in the Tri-Cities - the only thing you could count on about the weather here was that it was really windy for a third of the year and some of those winds could get really fast and really annoying.

I had to pass through the garage before I entered the (rather dark) utility room that doubled as guest room and entertainment center. Near the door to the hallway of the downstairs of the house was a gray desk with a number of miscellaneous pieces of trash, crap, and dishes on it with a cordless phone, keyboard, and mouse visible in front of the flat-screen, black-colored monitor. Near that was a sort of web-cam on the left, and further to the left, a gray HP printer, also with junk on top of it. There was a walkway about six or so feet wide between the desk, the black rolling chair in front of it, and the bunk bed, the lower one currently a futon with a red sheet covering it. I threw my backpack on the futon before leaving the room and heading down the hall beyond to the room on the far end to the right - my room.

No confusing algebra. No English. No Chemistry. No boring-me-to-sleep American History. No Journalism ad-hunting, either. Just a quiet weekend ahead, and, at the current moment, a warm shower (man, I stunk), and then lots of stress-relief via clicking mouse buttons to swing a sword or to snipe with a bow and arrow.

Besides, now that my little brother (whose room was right across the hall from mine) had his own copy, I didn't have to worry about him constantly bugging me to play the game in question on mine, which would then lead to fights, which would lead to getting Mom involved, which would lead to grounding both of us from the game. And since I couldn't play my PS2 games on the PS3 - not to mention that was Dad's room and he used said PS3 to watch his movies - Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion was the best stress relief I could get right now after trying to bring my grades up from Fs to, at minimum, Cs.

By way of non-sequitur, I hate being absent a lot.


To be honest, I had only JR to blame for introducing me (...and my little brother, the little Bug...) to Oblivion in the first place. He brought it over sometime in January to test my computer's new graphics card, allowing me to borrow it and then just full-on letting me keep it. I had bought myself the expansion - The Shivering Isles - and then the Game of the Year edition for my little brother. I had all of the official mods installed, along with a number of user-created mods that I found greatly enhanced the gameplay. (Oh, good gosh, the menus of the non-modded version were just way too large...) However, I had only beaten the main quest of the original Oblivion storyline twice - I hated the way the developers decided to close it.

...Seriously, all that work to put Martin on the throne to stop the daedric invasion, and for what? Just to have him turn into a freakin' statue of a dragon?

Now, then. My hair was washed, I smelled like I just got back from some sort of tropical cruise, and I had changed back into my normal clothes due to certain individuals insisting I come with them for errands. (This resulted with the mantra of "I love my mother. I love my mother..." repeating over and over in my head for the first five minutes I was in the shower.) Well, we were leaving in an hour - I had enough time to work a bit more on my newly-started game. Hopefully enough time to get through the tutorial.

'Cause really, one gets bored of shooting rats and goblins with weak iron bows and arrows after a while.


For the second time that day, I came home rather tired, irritated, and cold.

Errands, my mother had said. Not window shopping. Alright, Mom didn't do that often, but when you drive all the way out to Richland just to investigate the new yarns, you tended to get very bored very quickly. I was just lucky that there was a bookstore nearby with manga I could browse for.

Sure, we got our grocery shopping done, after playing courier for most of the friends of the family who needed stuff transported to everyone else's and their brother Fred's houses. It was dark by the time we got home, and I was extremely tired. I didn't figure out why until after I had helped ferry groceries back into the house and then collapsed on my bed in my room. On the nearby shelf, in bright red LED lights, the time read 9:37. Technically it was 10 minutes fast, but I didn't care - I had a set schedule of going to bed at 10:00 P.M., and after running around the Tri-Cities all afternoon, turning in early for the night sounded like a very good idea.

I didn't bother changing out of my clothes. Or taking out my contact lenses. Or taking off my boots. Heck, I didn't even bother emptying my thigh-pockets of their huge arsenal of mechanical pencils and pens. I closed the door, turned off the lights, and climbed into bed, pulling the covers over me and closing my eyes. The week had been a tiring hell for me, and I needed all the sleep I could get...provided I didn't keep waking up in the middle of the night.

The last thing I thought of before drifting into peaceful sleep was, constantly thinking about how already-established stories could be twisted off-track, what happened should someone from the real world find themselves placed in the Elder Scrolls universe - the realm of Mundus, itself.


Dreams, for me, tended to be rather rare.

Well, when you're constantly waking up in the middle of the night, you tend to not get any hint of REM sleep, and that's the phase that actually rejuvenates a person. However, the dream I had that night was so vivid, so lucid, I would've wondered if I wasn't dreaming if I was awake. I saw a city - or, rather, the depiction of a city - in my hands, an illustration of a life of a time and place so distant that it was almost fantastical. I was floating in the midst of a sea of stars, of swirling clouds of cosmic dust and light and darkness. I could feel wind, water, heat, cold...it was as if all my senses were sharpened so much, they were superhuman.

A voice in the wind, prompting me to turn. I stood before a solitary tower, built as if from coral and marble, or as if one of those stylized Chinese calligraphy scenes (for lack of a better description) with a small bansai-esque tree visible from an outcropping, all silhouetted against not one, but two crescent moons, one much larger than the other and a reddish color, while the other appeared a sort of pale blue. I took a few steps forward and suddenly found myself flying through blurred hallways and past mere glimpses of rooms that would remain a mystery to me.

I flew out of the top of the tower to land on an outcropping at the top, where a giant arch, sparking with bright light and a thin veil of glowing blue substance rippled in the space between the ground and its edges. Before it stood a figure a few inches taller than I - a woman in black and dark blue robes with a hood covering her head. I took a few steps forward in awe - the arch appeared as if it were a cross between an Oblivion Gate and a town portal spell from Diablo II, and this figure stood calmly before it. She turned towards me, her face mostly shadowed. All I could see was a smooth, slender jaw, fair-sized red lips with a slight overbite, and a rather pointed chin.

She smiled, then beckoned me to come closer. Though hesitant, I did as she silently asked, approaching her side. She gave a small nod before turning back to the giant...gate. With a sweeping motion of her small, smooth, but strong hand, she commanded me to gaze further into the depths of the bright blue, glowing rift. I had to squint in order to see what she referred to.

There, in the middle of the rift where the glow was brightest, I could see a rather complex, ornate key of some sort. My eyes widened as I blinked once, then turned to the woman. She nodded once, slowly but deliberately. She knew what I would ask. My lips thinned as I turned back to the strange rift, taking slow, deliberate steps towards the fantastical vision before I was directly in front of it. Cautiously, I lifted my hand towards the key, taking it into hand. The glowing blue suddenly vanished, and once more I stood within an abyss of stars, even if it felt as if I stood upon a solid floor. I blinked once, surprised at the change of my surroundings as I looked around at the change of scenery before lowering my hand and turning my attention back to the key.

...or, what had been a key.

Instead of a key, I realized that I held something else - an amulet. And not just any amulet. The jewel was a giant crimson diamond with the strangest cut I had ever seen, set in a casing of gold with eight other multi-colored stones - one per corner, and at the midpoint of each segment. This unusually light item was attached to a golden chain, and as I gazed into the jewel's depths, I saw, very faintly, the image of a man in his mid-thirties, dressed in gray-colored robes with a mess of mahogany-brown hair and pale blue eyes that held a sort of sealed greater insight.

Danger. Be careful. The enemy comes closer.

My figure turned around to the image of a burning city of marble, the man in the amulet now standing before a ruined temple and the hooded woman from before standing before him. The man had now donned a different set of robes, now - a royal purple overcoat with fur cuffs and collar over a red set of robes with gold-thread embroidery in complicated designs. Held in his right hand was a silver shortsword with an ornate hilt, and a look of determination upon his face as he gazed past me at an unseen enemy standing above me.

The hooded woman from before had also donned another outfit – one strikingly similar to that of the female Wizard of Diablo III. She wore dark armor with a blue attachment on her upper chest that looked incredibly like a somewhat stiff and sleeveless Chinese blouse. On her right shoulder was a silver shoulder-guard that protected the entire shoulder in three segments, but there was something about the gauntlet in her right hand that seemed odd and incredibly familiar, as it appeared Dwermer in design. She wore a black overskirt attached to the armor, closed around her waist by a dark blue sash and black leather belt, along with another blue overskirt that looped around behind her. In her hands was a long staff with a strange curved blade at the end pointing to the ground - a glaive, I recognized, of a dark golden color and about six cylindrical-like "beads" attaching the blade to its large (and rather heavy) shaft, and another similar one connecting the shaft to the pointed tip of an end-point. Her head was down, her hood - a black and blue one matching her overcoat and bodice - kept up, and her face remained shadowed, but it was still the same woman from before.

Her head lifted. A gust of wind blew past me, sending my hair whipping around me and the duo's robe and coat(s) flapping behind them. The woman's hood was blown down to reveal her full face.

Satin blonde hair pulled back into a high braid, her bangs in a middle part and curving down to the base of her chin. Two long, pointed ears, slender and almost reaching the top of her head, poked out from behind them. Strange tribal-like markings were visible on the woman's brow, vaguely reminding me of a bird in flight. Her eyes were narrowed, a serious expression on her face.

My eyes.

I wasn't sure what I was seeing. I must've been playing Oblivion too much - the man looked too much like Martin Septim, and this woman, she seemed so much like me and yet not...

A swift movement of her right hand, exposing her palm. A city in the hand.

The winds began to grow violent, and I found myself surrounded by cold flame. I had to shield my eyes from the brightness of the fire, from the ferocity of the gale-strength whirlwind that surrounded me.

And then all fell silent once again.

The light vanished.

I felt like I was floating...falling? I wasn't sure. My eyes opened. Stars. Rivers of stardust. Two moons, one larger and red compared to the normal-sized pale blue one. A sense of peace. Safety. I could rest.

My eyes closed, letting myself meld into the silent melody that only my ears could hear in this strange darkness - the calming lullaby of a life to begin anew.

Darkness and sleep were the last two sensations I felt.


Let me see your hand.

I see the City in the Hand, and the Hand in the stars.
The Tower guards the Gate, but the Gate holds the Key.
The King is the Key, and the Hand guards the King.


Cold. Very cold. I curled up into a ball, trying to pull the covers over my head, only to find there were none. There was no bed.

I sat up, my eyes snapping open as terror crashed down on me like a wave from a tropical storm.

Trees. A pile of leaves. Too many trees to be any park in Kennewick. And it was the dead of night.

I leapt to my feet, looking around in panicked fear. This had to be some sort of nightmare; I could only hope it was some sort of nightmare...

"Over there! I heard something!"

Color drained from my face as these words reached my ears from a fair distance to my right. I didn't like the sound of it at all. Hastily zipping off the lower halves of my pants and stuffing them into my pockets, I began to slowly move away from the source of the voices before fully turning around and breaking out into a run.

The foreboding feeling in the back of my head never left.

Couldn't think. Couldn't look back. Couldn't stop running, had to keep running, hope for a miracle or wake up from this incredibly lucid nightmare. I didn't remember how I got there, but I knew that staying would've gotten me killed. Now, I might as well be near dead.

You try dodging arrows being fired at you from behind and maneuvering through unfamiliar and frelling dark territory where you're liable to run into lions and wolves and bears (oh my!) and boulders and trees. Especially trees. Last thing I needed while running from these crazies was to -

"AHHH! Oomph!"

...trip over roots.

I scrambled to my feet, shaking my head and ignoring the scrapes on my arms and legs, trying to find someplace to hide, or at least catch my breath. I could only run for so long - I was a long distance walker, sure, but I tended to sprint when I ran. Had to hide now, though; had to stay hidden...

"Hello? Who's there?"

Oh, dren.

"She was here just a second ago..."

I dove to the ground, commando-crawling to the small crevice made by a few boulders nearby and pressed my back to the rocks, trying to make myself as small and inconspicuous as possible. I squeezed my eyes shut as I curled up into a ball, seeing faint light and hearing two sets of footsteps in the distance. Two voices spoke, both irritated. But the remark from the first really made me wonder what was going on.

"Damn! Clearly a slippery one, that s'wit..."

The other man said something. For a while, there was some arguing and footsteps around the area. With one last curse, the two decided to leave the grotto. Through my eyelids, I saw the light fade. As soon as I was certain they were gone, my eyes opened and I crawled out from my hiding spot, pale as a ghost and shaking.

The term "s'wit" was used by the Dunmer in the Elder Scrolls series. And the light was too dim to have been flashlights; they were closer to actual fire-lit torches, especially from how I noticed flickering. I glanced about in terror. I wasn't sure if I was dreaming anymore. My head lifted skywards towards the heavens above.

None of the stars were in constellations I recognized. And last I checked, Earth had only one pale-white moon, not two different-colored ones of different sizes.

Masser and Secunda.

Oh, I was so frelled.


I didn't know how long I had wandered through the wilderness. I didn't even remember collapsing on the inside of a cold, mostly-destroyed fort of gray-colored stone. But when I realized where I was, and that they hadn't changed from the last time I glimpsed around, I could only come to the conclusion that no - I wasn't dreaming. I was stuck in some ruined fort in what appeared to be the Blackwood County of the province of Cyrodiil on the continent of Tamriel on the planet of Nirn in the realm of Mundus. (...And that was me clearly ranting to specify my location.) I took a deep breath. If this was Blackwood, if this was Mundus, then I couldn't just stay in one place too long without adequate protection. Armor, a weapon. I needed to be able to defend myself, and I did not trust my hand-to-hand skills, even if I was trained in stage combat.

As much as I hated the idea, I would have to go in deeper to try and find such equipment.

With a gulp, I crouched low to the ground, beginning to quickly move forward. The secret to sneaking (and I really didn't want to risk it here) is not to be seen, after all. I began to venture through cold stone hallways, twisting almost every which way into areas separated from everything else - and normally I was good with my sense of direction. I avoided light sources as I best I could, as I saw plenty of torches lit throughout the halls. Most of the larger rooms I found were devoid, I noted, but there were chests...and there were weapon racks. I entered one specific room that appeared to be some sort of armory, with blades and bows made of iron and armor made of brown leather.

My lips thinned as I eyed the swords. The claymores were out of the question - they were too heavy for me and I had little knowledge of how to use them. Longswords and shortswords? I had a better chance with those, and the daggers I caught sight of. With reluctance, I grabbed one of each blade (sans claymores - two-handed weapons and I did not mix), and also snagged a bow and quiver. I grabbed one of the sets of leather armor on a nearby table before changing, ignoring the iron greaves nearby. Heavy armor made more noise and I had worn a steel plate cuirass a couple of times before...for about five minutes.

Equipping myself entirely had taken longer than I intended - about an hour and a half. Trying to effectively keep everything in place with my thin figure (I was around 110 pounds, really - my medications tended to kill my appetite) was a hassle.

...Eh? What was that over there?

I blinked, readjusting my gloves as I approached the table. For a brief moment, I stood stunned, wide-eyed, before an evil grin spread across my lips. The table had five or six long wooden poles about six to six and a half feet in length and about two inches thick. Nothing special about them, just long, straight wooden poles.

Not very intimidating, sure, but in the right hands, one of these weapons was enough to kill a normal human being when swung at full strength.

I snagged one of the poles, keeping it in my right hand as I snuck off into the fort, keeping it as level with the ground as I could.

The few rats I came across for the next few corridors were beaten to death by something clearly wooden, judging from the number of splinters in their fur.


As I continued on down the corridors, I tried to stay out of sight of the shadowed figures - some of them normal humans, others more elven in appearance - and any that came too close were promptly beaten to death first with a whack upside the head and then a few additional blows to the sides and front. I had grimaced at the sight of the first human(oid) life I had taken soon after gathering the armor and weapons I now used. I had a bad feeling I was going to need to get used to it. This wasn't Earth, after all.

This was Nirn.

And I, Kimberlyn Harris, was stuck in southern Cyrodiil with absolutely no idea how to get home.

...I was screwed.



Author's Notes: Yes - that is Dagail's little cryptic message when you talk to her about Leyawiin. You'll most likely see it later - a lot later.

I've been debating putting this up here for months. Once again, however, I go out on a whim and post it up anyway. I intend for Act 0 to last about 10 or so chapters (don't worry – most of them are a lot shorter than this one) before Act 1 starts with the official Main Quest of Oblivion. This story will contain quite a number of pop-culture references and a lot of references to the previous games in the series, most especially Morrowind.

Buckle up, ladies and gentlemen. The madwoman has taken the wheel and she's cackling in a demented but maniacal manner.

This place is heading straight for the Shivering Isles.

- Kestrel Harper