The constant dripping of the water onto the mossy stones of the prison cell were enough to make him want to rip out his hair. He had only been in there for a day and a half, but it had stretched into an eternity. An eternity measurable only by the incessant drip, drip of that damnable leak in the walls.
The food was awful; Leif knew that from firsthand experience. He had been given a wooden bowl full of something grey in color and decaying in odor, and the guard hadn't taken kindly to having the stuff thrown in his face. Leif winced as he shifted his back against his prison cot; the kick to the ribs he had received had left a spectacular bruise across his stomach, and breathing had become laborious. His hunger wasn't helping the situation, either.
He supposed he could use his restoration ability to ease the pain, but something held him back. It could have been his mother's warning, or the fact that his older sister had burned herself to death when a spell casting had went horribly wrong, but in his experience, magic was not to be trifled with. And, he reasoned, he had asked for it.
But if he had to fall asleep one more night to the depressing, bleak stones of the interior of the cell, Leif decided he would slit his own throat and be done with it. He couldn't stand the lack of sunlight, and he was already dying a more agonizing death by boredom. How had he allowed himself to be arrested? It had been careless. And it had in all likelihood cost him his life.
Another drip brought him back to his senses, and without further ado he rose from his cot and removed his shirt, stuffing it in between the stones on the ground and muting the sound of the leak. Now he was only wearing the cheap sack pants the guards had given him, but his newfound silence made it worth the cost. All his other clothes had already been shed. The shoes had been holey and clearly had had multiple previous owners, which explained why they smelled like dog shit. And the manacles were just plain kinky. They had gone first.
"Oh, pale skin and a snobbish expression. That means you're a Breton," came a voice too raspy to actually be used in daily conversation.
Not him again, Leif groaned inwardly. That damned dark elf had been alternating between threatening and attempting to befriend him for his entire stay. Leif had determined that the elf suffered from short-term memory loss, since after every hour or so the elf would relapse into the same dialogue all over again. After several hours of this, he had come to conclude that the best technique was to avoid being noticed.
"I'm actually quite tan, thank you," he responded for the umpteenth time. "And I would prefer to think of my expression as thoughtful. 'Snobbish' is a bit crude, don't you think?"
"You're going to die here, you know!" the dark elf hissed gleefully. "If they don't rip out your entrails, you'll rot in your cell!"
He could be right, Leif sighed to himself. He had tried taking the law into his own hands when it appeared nobody else would do it, and look where it had landed him. There truly was no justice in the world.
And on top of that, his patience was wearing dreadfully thin. If he got lice from the mattress he would torch the whole place, consequences be damned.
"What, are you scared?" the elf whispered, his red eyes glinting in the dark. "Hear those footsteps? They're coming for you, Breton."
Leif did indeed hear the footsteps. Strange, since the guards only came three times a day to deliver food, and it was far too late for the dinner meal. On top of that, there were multiple sets of footsteps. They weren't coming for him, he knew that. His sentence wouldn't be up until he was dead, whether that be by execution or time. The dark elf, then? No, he had a life sentence. But the jail was currently empty save for the two of them, so he was unsure why they would come.
"What's a prisoner doing in here?" an owner of one of the sets of footsteps demanded. Leif squinted at the man over the brightness of the man's torch. He wasn't one of the prison guards, but he was armed and armored better than any of them. Two more guards appeared behind him, both equally well equipped.
"Must have been a mix-up. We can always kill him if it becomes more practical," another guard, a woman, said nonchalantly.
"Stand back!" the first guard bellowed at him. Leif shrugged and did as he was bid.
The three guards entered the cell warily, their eyes scanning ever contour of the cramped room. Their hands hovered by the hilts of their blades, as if they expected an attack at any moment.
To Leif's surprise, a fourth figure entered the room. He was dressed not in armor, but in blue velvet robes with lush fur lining. A red amulet on a gold chain glinted from the man's chest. The man himself was very old, his hair a white mane controlled by a golden crown encircling his head. The man's facial characteristics labeled him as an Imperial. His eyes, unlike the loose skin of his face, were like chips of blue diamond; they were hard, sharp, and seemed to see everything at once.
Leif shifted with discomfort when those eyes fell on him; either he had consumed some sort of hallucinogen, or Uriel Septim VII, the Emperor of Cyrodil, was actually standing in his prison cell.
"Your Majesty, we will dispose of the prisoner for you," one of the guards, a Redguard with battle-scarred hands and skin, said in a no-nonsense voice.
Leif felt the anger blossoming in his chest, and he took a step forward to tell the man exactly where he could put that sword of his, but to his surprise the emperor intervened.
"It is alright, Baurus," the emperor said, and although his voice was low and calm, it carried the undeniable ring of authority. The guards, whom Leif realized must be Blades, the secret sect of warriors sworn to protect the ruling family, backed down.
"You," the Emperor said. "I recognize you from my dreams." His shoulders seemed to sag, but they straightened again so quickly Leif wasn't sure if he had been imagining it.
"So it really is time," the Emperor said softly.
"Yeah," Leif said. "This is kind of… uh…"
"Sudden?" Septim finished for him. "The shifting winds of fate seem sudden to us all, even if the events set before us have been a long time in coming."
"Why am I here?" Leif asked himself.
"I do not know, but neither I nor the gods care. Whatever crimes you have committed, you are being absconded from them here and now by the Nine. You have a great destiny before you, if you are willing to accept it."
"It… was a rhetorical question," Leif muttered under his breath.
"Tell me," Septim continued as if he hadn't heard, "do you believe in the Nine?"
"I'm not on good terms with them," Leif allowed, watching the Blades pat down the far wall of his cell with expectant fingers. What were they looking for? A passage?
"The Nine have guided me my entire life," the Emperor continued sonorously, as if his audience had a grand total of more than one person. "And whether or not my rule was as divine as my forefathers, my time of death is nigh upon me."
Leif nodded his head up and down to show that he was listening, although really he was still asking some large, unseen force how exactly this situation had happened.
"-Which is why I am here, now," the Emperor finished grandly, going so far as to allow himself a small flourish of his robes.
"Sir!" cried the female Blade. "We uncovered the passage!"
"It's your lucky day, prisoner," said the Redguard, scowling. "Just stay out of our way."
Uriel Septim leaned towards the Breton and mouthed the words "Follow us." Then he turned and with a regal sweep of his robes, entered the passageway after his guards.
Leif watched the Emperor's receding back for several long seconds, wondering at the bizarre twist of fate that had brought the most powerful man on the continent into his life.
Then he came back to himself when the dark elf across the hall started flinging curses at him.
"Damn you! Lucky bastard! But don't worry; you'll die in those sewers. If those Blades don't slit your throat, the assassins will slip a dagger between your ribs… Die, Breton!"
Assassins… What? Then Leif looked back at the passage and realized that the light from the guards' torches was fading. Without further hesitation, he padded after the Emperor's entourage into the darkness of the underground.