A/N: Reviews with constructive criticism are always helpful, but please bear in mind that updates WILL be slow due to cursed time constraints.

Update (29/01/12): I've become increasingly aware of and embarrassed by the low quality of many of my early chapters. Thus, I will be attempting to re-edit them to bring them up to my current standards of quality as soon as possible. If you're a new reader, please excuse the shoddy first several chapters; I've got a lot better since I started this fic a year and a half ago. If you stay with it, you'll get to the better writing soon enough. And reviews pointing out where I've gone wrong in these early chapters (and there are a LOT of mistakes) will be much appreciated.

Update: (11/09/12): I'll correct myself; given how long I take to write new chapters normally, the re-editing of my earlier chapters will have to wait for a while.

Chapter One: Broken

Gorgoth gro-Kharz awoke. He was immediately aware of several things, pain being the most prominent, a poker of fire down his ribs. The cold stone floor beneath him meant that he wasn't at home in his bed in the Wrothgarians. The air was warmer than in the mountains near Orsinium. He was south, very far to the south. Light was streaming down onto his face, though from a very specific area, and interrupted as though the window was... barred.

The Orc's yellow eyes shot open. Pain hammered his head, and he narrowed them to slits to protect against the sudden light streaming into his eyes through the window, which was indeed barred. That meant he was inevitably in a prison of some sort. The lack of weight on his body meant that his armour was gone. Gorgoth felt a pang of regret. The best armourers in Orsinium had forged it, from the finest steel from the ores of the mountains. His ragged shirt and trousers were all that remained on him, his green feet bare.

Gorgoth gritted his teeth as he dragged himself back to lean against the wall in a sitting position. Two of his ribs had been shattered, probably by a mace blow. Dried blood cracked as he contorted his facial muscles, initiating a trickle running down his jaw. A quick, powerful healing spell would take care of that. Gorgoth raised his arm to cast the basic spell he had known long before he became a powerful, respected shaman. Nothing happened. Gorgoth frowned as he tried a more powerful spell. Again, nothing.

This was odd. The warrior-shaman could feel his deep reserves of magicka lying dormant, untapped. His fingers found the small hole in his head and dug inside, ignoring the excruciating pain. He found thick unbroken skull. No brain damage. Gorgoth tried to think of what might have happened, but his mind was only just engaging from its period of dormancy, so he gave up. He wiped his bloody fingers on his torn tunic and turned his mind to remembering.

Slowly, the events of the last few days came back to him. He had been part of a group of warriors given a covert task by King Gortwog. A mine in the Wrothgarians had been commandeered by a corrupt Imperial official, who was now working the Orc miners murderously while skimming profits off the top for himself and his lieutenants. The King couldn't take action officially, so he sent Gorgoth and other warriors to take care of the problem, as deniable assets. The Imperial had been tipped off and had Imperial Legionmen ready. Gorgoth remembered using his considerable magic powers to keep most of the legionnaires at bay, before he was Silenced by the battlemages. He had fought on for a long time with just his mace, before eventually being beaten down and thrown into a prison carriage with the rest of his broken party that were still alive. His mind had eventually gone to sleep, whether from poison, exhaustion, or beatings, he knew not.

A Silence spell. It had to be. Not one of the short-term ones, where the victim couldn't cast any spells, but a long-term one that wore off gradually. Gorgoth tried one of his weaker spells, and felt a trickle of magicka flow into his battered body, giving off a faint blue light. The hole in his head shrank. The massive Orc sighed and prepared to wait for the spell to wear off sufficiently enough that he could heal himself fully. He raised his huge head and ran his eyes over his cell.

Bleak, grey stone walls. Not much to stimulate the eye. The window was several feet above his head, with firm bars blocking the way out even if he could have fit through the opening. There were several irons hanging down from chains, obviously used for punishment or shackling of some sort. Near them, the door. Steel bars set in stone were a barrier to his freedom. He didn't even try testing the strength. These prison doors were often magically enhanced. His unlocking spells wouldn't work even if he was at full magical strength.

Gorgoth's vision wasn't restricted to just his cell. There was another, identical, if slightly darker cell exactly opposite his, across the narrow corridor. From his position slumped beneath the window, Gorgoth couldn't see much of it, but he could see the red eyes of a Dunmer watching him without blinking. A harsh voice reached his ears.

"By the Nine Divines, you're an ugly one. But then, all Orcs are ugly." Even in the darkness, Gorgoth could see a twisted smile creep across the Dark Elf's face. He was revelling in his torment.

Gorgoth hauled himself to his feet, suppressing the urge to wince at the savage pain assaulting his side. He walked slowly over to the cell gate. The Dunmer's eyes grew slightly wider as he saw how big his fellow prisoner was. Gorgoth stood seven feet at full height, yet his huge, heavily-muscled body meant he had the bulk of nearly two Nords. When in full battle armour, he was an almost unstoppable force on the battlefield. The Elf's cruel smile swiftly returned, however, as he remembered that Gorgoth could neither reach nor harm him.

"Must be nice to just rip someone apart like some kind of monster," the Dunmer continued. "But, look at you. Caged by Imperials. You must be the one Orc weakling..." The annoying mer descended into cackling that sounded half mad.

Gorgoth bared his large canines. While he'd never use them for actual fighting – he had far better tools to use for battle – they were sometimes good for intimidation. The Dark Elf didn't seem so cowed, but at least he did stop laughing. "Where am I?" growled the Orcish warrior-shaman. His voice was as deep as he was massive.

The Dunmer burst into yet more peals of laughter. They seemed to bore into the hole in Gorgoth's head. "Oh, you really are as dumb as you look, Orc filth," sneered the Dark Elf. "You're in the Imperial prison. It's going to be your home for the rest of your life. Which won't be long. You're the last one left..." with this last comment, the Dunmer went into paroxysms of glee, clutching his sides as he howled with laughter.

Gorgoth looked along the corridor. As far as he could see, the other cells were mostly empty... apart from some pools of blood on the floor. His good eyesight meant he could recognise them. Orc blood. So all his comrades had died, on the battlefield or on the gallows. He turned back to the annoying Dunmer, who was still raving.

"You're going to die, in here, Orc! You're going to die! Like an animal in a cage!" The Dark Elf doubled over in laughter. His grey hair was lank and his body wasted away from long years in jail.

"Obviously, I'm not going to die in here," retorted Gorgoth. "Unless you've never heard of an execution ground? A gallows? I doubt they would execute a prisoner in his own cell." It made perfect sense to kill him elsewhere; a skilled, determined or crazy prisoner might well ambush his executioners. Besides, public executions could entertain the masses, or appease witnesses. The other prisoner didn't seem too fazed by Gorgoth's logic, breaking into yet more mad rhetoric. Gorgoth ignored him and moved back into his cell. The pounding in his head had grown into a full-blown headache, and the Dunmer wasn't helping. Normally, such an ailment would be easy to cure, but... he tried healing himself again. His magicka was still reduced to a trickle by the damned spell.

The Orc's amber eyes searched for a way out. The window and door were out of the question. There was a small, but wide indentation to the wall on the left of his cell, but the bricks looked the same as they did everywhere. The warrior-shaman ran his hands over the walls, but they were firmly cemented in place and possibly magically reinforced. There was no way out. The Imperial prison was renowned for the impossibility of escape from within its walls. Maybe he was going to die. But Gorgoth was known for his determination. He would never give up while he still had life in him. And if a necromancer came across his corpse, he would find material for a very determined, very large zombie. The Orc shook his head and snorted at such ridiculous thoughts. The Imperials probably incinerated executed prisoners to save space. Gorgoth ended this pessimistic line of thought and started wondering how long it would take for him to get his magicka back.

Realising that he needed rest to try and clear his head, Gorgoth sighed as he slowly lowered himself onto his ragged bedroll. Most of his body was fine, but that didn't stop him feeling like he'd been beaten by Malacath himself. The Orc was no stranger to pain, and could endure and ignore all but the most severe, but that didn't mean he found it easy to sleep with two shattered ribs. Eventually he fell into a light doze, disturbed by dreams of his fallen compatriots and their dead dream of justice.

A/N: I appreciate reviews. If I'm able, I'll reply to every non-anonymous review I get (and anonymous reviews for the latest chapters get replies in the next chapter's Author's Notes). They definitely help, so try to leave some; it need only take a few minutes (or even less), and that's not much to ask, given that I've spent a year and a half on this already...