I only wanted to go home. It seemed like centuries since the last time I had been in Skyrim… Okay, it HAD been centuries since I was last in Skyrim, but that had nothing to do with it. However, it seemed that I had some kind of curse. First, I joined a war against a group of elves called the Thalmor. Then, I ran to Blackmarsh… Who then started a fight with Morrowind. Then I ran to Cyrodiil… Which soon became the host of a civil war. After that, I finally came home to Skyrim, and lo and behold, I get stuck in the middle of a battlefield. In the middle of a BATTLEFIELD.
So there I was, twitching and fidgeting on a wagon bound for death, led by a bunch of imperial soldiers. There were five of us in the wagon, but three were "rebels". The other 'innocent' one was a thief, a horse thief to be exact, and he was not shy about complaining.
"You looked worried, friend." One of the rebels muttered calmly. He was looking at me, but the thief answered in my place.
"Of course I'm worried! I didn't do anything!" He shrieked, "I had no part in this." Across from him there sat a young, female anthropomorphic cat, called a Kajiit. She kicked him. Her grey tabby-like fur blew silently in the cold morning air as she glared at him.
"Not you, thief. HER." She growled.
"You chose the wrong time to come home to Skyrim," The first rebel continued. He was young too, a Nordic man with shoulder length blonde hair. He was probably showing concern over the fact that I was wiggling and writhing in my wooden seat with my nails tearing impatiently into the seat.
"Of course she's concerned! We're all going to DIE, and she didn't even DO anything!" The thief answered for me again. I turned my red eyes to him. He seemed to shiver under my gaze.
"I'm not afraid of death… My only fear in the world is this… this… this… Contraption! This foolish insolent contraption!" I shouted.
"You're… scared of carriages?" The Kajiit snickered. I glared at her.
"I won't judge you, friend." The Nord muttered, "However, that is an odd fear…"
"I pleaded that they chain me to the side. PLEASE! I WANT TO WALK!" I shouted at one of the soldier guards. He ignored me. The Kajiit and the thief snickered. It became silent.
Skyrim hadn't changed much. Snow dusted some areas of the ground, and proud evergreens lined the road. The road's terrain caused the wagon to sway, and on some occasions, made the occupants of it fly up several inches. Mountains could be seen in the distance, leading to the clouds, seeming to extend to the heavens above.
"These will be our last moments… We may as well learn each other's names and pass into Sov'ngarde as friends…" The calm Nord eventually said.
"I'm KatKlaw!" The kajiit eagerly introduced herself.
"That doesn't sound very Kajiiti…" I muttered.
"SHUT UP!"
"My name is Ralof." The Nord introduced himself. Then he nodded towards the final man in the carriage, "That is Jarl Ulfric Stormcloak." This man had a formal outfit on. I recognized the name from the war. He was one of the best Nord warriors on the battlefield, and put his heart into each clash. Now, however, this former war hero sat bound and gagged.
"And… how about you?" I asked, turning to the thief. He quickly turned away.
"I want no affiliation with any of you." He hissed. I shrugged.
"As for my name…" I contributed, "I don't really have one. I'm an orphan. However, most people just call me Mahfaeraak."
"And you made fun of MY name." The kajiit snickered.
"Bad luck has been your friend for many years." Ralof noted.
"Heheh, more than you know." I chuckled. Then the cart rolled into a town. As we entered the walls, Ralof spoke again.
"I used to pursue a woman's heart in this town. She made the best berry ale… Back then, these stone walls made me feel so safe…" He muttered disheartened. Citizens gawked at us from their porches. Young children were pulled away by their parents like we had some sort of disease. Soon, we came to a stop.
We were quickly pulled off of the wagon into a group of about ten people. The names of the other prisoners were being recorded, and they were pulled away.
"Jarl Ulfric Stormcloak of Windhelm." Our specific recorder called out. The Jarl walked to join the others. "Ralof of Riverwood." Ralof walked off as well. "KatKlaw from Kynesgrove." The Kajiit held her head high and also joined the others. Then, it was just me and the thief. "Lokir of Rorikstead."
"No!" The thief objected, "No! I'm not with them! I'm not going to die!" He took off running.
"Arrows!" The commanding officer shouted. I heard the vague twang of bowstrings. "Fire!" Lokir dropped down to the ground.
"Foolish human…" I muttered. "Mahfaeraak." I told the man before he could ask. He quickly started to look over his list. He looked at the officer.
"She's not on the list." He muttered.
"Look again!" She ordered. He searched the list three more times.
"She's not on the list." He repeated. She grabbed the list and looked over it. She frowned and glared at me.
"To the block." She snapped.
"I'm sorry…" He muttered, truly apologetic, "You picked a bad time to come home to Skyrim."
"I'm fine, as long as I die here at home." I smiled at him. He smiled weakly back. I walked over to join the rest. One of the Legion commanders was talking to Jarl Ulfric. Ulfric took it well. I'm sure Ulfric was being spat on with how the commander shouted. When he finished, a young priestess started to speak. The tension in the air made it hard for me to focus on what was being said, and before I knew it, a man was hanging his own head over the stone "block".
"Let's get this over with!" He shouted angrily.
"As you wish." The legate growled. She rested her foot on his back. The executioner lifted his axe. He dropped it, and blood spurted everywhere. I felt my heartbeat quicken, and I could feel myself drooling. As usual, the scent awakened something inside of me. The legate began to look for the next rebel to lose the game of life. Her finger landed on me. "You."
I nonchalantly walked over to the stone. I kneeled beside the block and placed my head over the bucket. The man's head was still in there, with the same smug expression it had before his untimely end. The ground echoed the call of approaching winter, cold and hard. The Stormcloaks became silent as they watched, knowing that I was innocent.
I felt her heel dig into my back. The scent of fresh blood, fresh death, filled my nostrils. Then, in the distance, I smelled something else. Smoke. Fire. In the distance, I heard the echo of a fierce roar. As the executioner raised his blade I felt a rush of heat. Someone screamed. Something burned. One word rested on my tongue. "Alduin."
"Come on, you idiot! Do you want to die?!" Katklaw's voice shouted. She grabbed my collar and dragged me into a nearby tower.
"This can't be happening?! I thought that dragons were just… were just Legends!" Someone gasped.
"Legends don't burn down villages…" Ulfric answered calmly.
"'And the Scrolls have foretold, of black wings in the cold, that when brothers wage war come unfurled. Alduin, Bane of Kings, ancient shadow unbound, with a hunger to swallow the world." I muttered airily.
"A-are you saying that was Alduin?!" Somebody gasped.
"It doesn't matter which dragon it is. All that matters is that it was a dragon. It is a danger to everyone, and chances are against our survival." I muttered. I quickly started up the tower's stone stairs. I heard a loud noise from my right, from beyond the wall, that caused me to freeze in spot. Suddenly, the wall split apart, revealing the dragon's large head. The force pushed me over, and several stones fell on top of me. Fire burst from the monster's mouth. When it finally flew away, I wiggled back out. Everyone had disappeared.
The hole in the wall revealed a hole in the roof of the next building over. I took a deep breath and jumped inside. The floor creaked below me, even threatening to break. I quickly made it out of the burning building and hit the hard ground.
"… Get away from there!" A call echoed. A child ran away from a spot just as the dragon landed. It killed the man who had beckoned the child away. Then the man who had asked my name noticed me.
"You still alive, prisoner?" He asked surprised. I ran up to him. "Stay close to me if you want to live." I followed quickly after him. As we passed through a narrow burning passage, I pulled him close against the wall. The dragon landed on the wall. Had the soldier actually taken off as he had planned, the dragon would have seen him and he would be dead. He thanked me, and we continued on. Soon, we came to a clearing, where Ralof and KatKlaw were waiting.
"Ralof, you traitor!" The soldier shouted.
"We're escaping!" Ralof snapped back, "We are going to get out of here alive, and you're not going to stop us!" They started to argue very loudly. I kept my eye on the dragon as it swiped a man from the top of the great wall. It flew him high up into the air, and dropped him.
"Hey!" I shouted, pointing at the huge creature as it started to come back for more, "How about we become friends for a few minutes so we don't end up as a chewy little snack for that overgrown Argonian?!"
"Fine," The imperial snarled before grabbing my arm, "but I want you to stick with me."
"Here's an idea," I muttered, "How about we stick together until we are safe. Let's work as a team to survive and worry about hating each other after we know that we're not going to be eaten by a BIG, FAT, UGLY, SON OF A BITCH DRAGON!" The dragon roared loudly as I spoke. The others looked at me in shock. "LET'S GO!"
We soon ran off into the nearby building, the fort's keep. "Come here," both Ralof and the soldier stated suddenly, "I'll free your hands." KatKlaw, who was still bound, took Ralof, who was unbound, up on his offer. The imperial soldier came to me. To be free was a sort of security.
We shared the room with the corpse of a dead Stormcloak. Ralof kneeled beside him and checked his pulse. "May we meet again in Sov'ngarde." I heard him mutter. He turned to KatKlaw. "Take Gunjar's gear. He won't be needing it where he's going." He ordered solemnly. The Imperial opened a nearby gate.
"There's armor and weapons in here too. We're probably going to need them." He stated. I followed him into the barracks. He dug out some light Imperial armor and a heavy Imperial sword. Having gathered everything we could use, we continued onward. Neither KatKlaw nor Ralof had waited for us to return.
"Well, isn't that nice… Here I was thinking, 'Wow, these rebels are surprisingly nice to me, even though I'm not one of them'. Good to know they'll leave me to burn like anyone else." I mumbled with a laugh.
"You wouldn't happen to know anything about surviving dragon attacks, would you?" My companion was trying to add humor to the situation. I chuckled.
"Enough to know we shouldn't stay in one spot. Let's keep moving, maybe we can find a way out. My name is Mahfaeraak, by the way."
"Hadvar." He introduced himself quickly before we continued though the keep. The silence made it possible to hear the chaos outside. The muffled sound of screams and the dragon's roar…
It wasn't long before we came to another barracks area. KatKlaw and Ralof had both already been there. The proof for this was with the two corpses that littered the ground. Both of them were young imperial soldiers, stripped down to their loincloths, without a weapon. Other than that, the room was almost completely empty, though some tipped over tin mugs and hastily closed barrels proved more so that our Stormcloak companions had been there, and raided this area generously. I grabbed the only possibly useful items I could find; a rabbit haunch, a pheasant thigh, a few potatoes, tomatoes, and apples… Not much, but it would serve us well if things became too much worse.
The next room that we came across wasn't too different. Rather than a barrack, it was a torture room. The two corpses that littered the ground were obviously the commander of all things torture and his young assistant. Again, both were dead and nearly naked. In the room, there were three cages. One had a skeleton, another had a mage's corpse, and the last was entirely empty. In front of the mage's cage was a large pile of snapped and broken lockpicks. Hadvar muttered something behind me before putting something in my hand.
"See if you can open it. We might find something useful." He muttered. I quickly went to work on the lock, and seconds later the door snapped open.
"Nothing to it." I snickered.
"Th-that's quite a talent…" He muttered in a kind of shock.
"I grew up as a street rat. You either learn to pick a lock, or die trying." I chuckled. "Or… you learn to pick it in the jail where you were placed for picking a lock. That was fun… Chaos…"
The next noteworthy room was almost cave-like. There was a silent, pond-like body of water, along with approximately 5 dead Imperial soldiers… and an angry living Stormcloak. "You Imperial Bastards!" She shouted angrily as she ran at us with her axe drawn. I struck her down before either of us could be injured. Ralof and KatKlaw were nowhere to be found. I took the Stormcloak's bow and her arrows before we continued through the now cave-like structure.
"Crap… The bridge is out…" Hadvar cursed. There in front of us was a large gap where it seemed obvious that bridge would go.
"They're thorough, aren't they? It seems they don't want anyone else to make it out alive…" I muttered. I looked down at the remains of the bridge before jumping to join them.
"Where are you going?" Hadvar demanded.
"Look, there's water flowing through here, see? It originates from there, that little gap in the wall. Then it flows through this huge hole in the wall. There's an old saying that all waters flow to the sea. We might as well try to follow this one out. It would give us a better chance than just standing here." I answered impatiently. I ran into the darkness, following the water. I heard a splash behind me as Hadvar jumped down.
Splash!
Each step I took kicked up a small amount of water. Each step I took, I noticed the water flow growing wider and wider until… Hadvar's arm jutted out to stop me. I looked up at what he had made me stop for. There, about 17 feet in front of us, was a large sleeping bear. It was, as much as I could see, waking up.
"I think the cat and the traitor snuck passed it…" He muttered. I nodded. I hid behind a nearby cart and prepared my bow. "You sure you can-"
Twang!
Before he could even finish his sentence, I shot my arrow at the creature. It practically jumped up, quickly found me, and started to dash at me. I pulled my arrow again and shot through its skull. It collapsed to the ground. I sighed calmly, and went to retrieve my arrows. Other than the last twitch of its body, it didn't move anymore.
"Nice shooting. Another street trick?" Hadvar chuckled.
"I suppose…" I answered calmly. I looked onward. At the end of the tunnel, a light shown. Sunlight. As we reached the mouth of the cave, I held my companion back. One last roar filled the air as the dragon flew overhead. Soon, everything was quiet. It was all over. For now.