Hi! This is my first story so please review so I know what to improve on.
Disclaimer: I do not own any of the elder scrolls characters. Only my own characters
As Thorn approached the gates of Whiterun, he thought about Joslyn. She was the dragonborn and his closest friend. "I can't believe that it has been four years since the two of us faced down Alduin and three since I last saw her. What adventures we had, Joslyn's fighting style certainly had improved from when we first met. Which I don't understand was why Mjoll sent for me. I mean, she was never really fond of me, but it sounded urgent." he nodded towards the guards as he walked past "Ah, we haven't seen you in a while, what brings you here now?" one of the guards asked him "I got a letter from a friend a couple of days ago, I was just going to stop by to see how things were going." "If you're talking about the dragonborn, you may want to watch yourself. I hear she spends almost all of her time at the Bannered Mare drinking until she can't stand." "What!? T-that couldn't possibly be true!" Thorn exclaimed, the Joslyn he knew barely drank, much less got drunk. "I'm afraid it is," the other guard joined in "I've seen it with my own eyes. It started about two months ago." "Yeah," said the first guard "that sounds about right about the time I heard a rumor that she was traveling with some boy, just on his first adventure, and when they exited a tomb, a dragon attacked and managed to kill the poor lad while she was fighting it." "Well, I'd best hurry up then." Thorn said "Thank you, at least now it won't be quite as shocking" he said as he continued walking towards the gates.
As soon as Thorn walked through the gates to Whiterun, Aerin was there to great him. "There you are! I heard you were on your way here and waited for you so I could tell you what to expext." Aerin said, "Firstly, Mjoll has been worried sick, she wasn't sure if you were coming." "Of course I would come. Her letter said it was urgent, and if the rumors that I've heard are true, you should have sent for me earlier." "I know, and I said as much when the, um, 'incidents' first started, but Mjoll said it was just a faze and everything would be okay in a couple of weeks. But even as we speak, Joslyn is passed out in the Bannered Mare. I'll tell you Thorn, I'm worried that there may be more than just Erik's death that sent her into this." "Wait," Thorn interrupted, "Erik, the boy who Joslyn helped out last year when he told her he wanted to become an adventurer?" "Yes, he started calling himself 'Erik the Slayer', but probably never slew anything bigger than a rabbit before Joslyn helped him out. As I was saying, I think there may be more than just his death bothering her. I think she may have been depressed before all this and his death under her watch may have been the final straw." "It may have been when-" Thorn suddenly stopped as he heard a commotion in the market. "What was that?" Aerin asked. "I don't know but it didn't sound good." Thorn answered as he started running towards the commotion.
As they approached Belethor's shop they saw a guard yelling at a man. His race and age were impossible to tell because his entire head, except his eyes, was wrapped in bandages. The man was waring dark leather armor that cut off at the shoulders revealing even more bandages that wrapped around his arms and had a dangerous looking sword on his back. Thorn had only seen swords that looked like that at the temple of the blades, but this was somehow different, longer maybe. The guard kept yelling at the man who was now making gestures of some kind while backing up some. "Answer me!" the guard yelled at the man "What are you doing here and why have you just been standing around for past hour?! Are you with the Thieve's guild, or are you just a common criminal?" The man kept backing up when he realized his back was against the well in the center of the town. The guard kept yelling at the man and started to push him it was fairly obvious to everyone watching that the guard was about to strike the man. Out of the corner of his eye, Thorn noticed two figures running towards the sene. One was a Brenton girl who couldn't have been much older than he was, barely twenty five, with a large scar and an eye patch over her left eye. She had hair so black it was almost blue, and was wearing the same kind of armor as the man only with sleeves. Seeing this, Thorn realized that it was the armor of a Thieve's guild initiate. The other was an Imperial man who must have been in his fifties with greying hair and wearing steel plate amor. When the guard reared back to hit him, the man with the bandages slid his foot behind the guard's ankle and kicked him in the side of the knee. A loud crack echoed through the market place and the guard collapsed and howled with pain. Thorn had seen enough injuries to know just by looking at the way the guard's leg was turned that he would almost certainly never walk the same way again. He would be lucky to be able to continue guard duty. As the other guards came running, the girl with the eye patch went up to the guard leading the others, "Hey back off, your man threw the first punch, my friend was just defending himself!" she yelled at the man "From what I saw he was refusing to answer when a guard asked him for his name and continued to stay silent through all of the questions." the guard told her. "First of all, he's mute!" yelled the girl. "And secondly, he was trying to answer your man, that's what he was doing with his hands!". "I'm sorry about that, but he seriously injured a guard and you must ether pay his bounty, or he must spend at least a week in the dungeon." "Alright," said the older man "What's the bounty?" "40 gold for assault, 100 gold to help pay for medical expenses, and another 20 for lollygagging", the guard said slightly patronizing. "That's not right," Thorn muttered to Aerin, "40 for assault, okay. But 100 for medical expenses? That never happens, not even for near murders. This is something I would expect in Riften, but not Whiterun." "What can we do though?" Aerin asked naively. "These are the town guards, it's not like we can go up and just demand that they drop the bounty, that guy did cripple a guard pretty much for the rest of his life." "No, I can't just go up and make them drop the bounty. But, I can do this." Thorn said as he started walking towards the guard. "160 septims?! I can't afford that!" The girl was yelling at the guard as Thorn approached "Hi," Thorn said to the guard. "Is there anyway I could pay the bounty?" "Why should I care who pays it? As long as it gets paid." "Well then," Thorn said handing the guard a small leather pouch containing the bounty amount "Here you go." "Hey!" the girl said "we don't need charity!" "Then consider it a gift," Thorn said "You can repay me by buying me a few drinks inside the inn" he said as he walked towards the Bannered Mare. "Wait!" Aerin said as he grabbed Thorn's arm, "What about Joslyn?" he whispered so the three travelers couldn't here him. "Well," Thorn said as he removed Aerin's clenched hand from his arm, "You said she's passed out right? So I am just going to have a couple of meads and wait for her to wake up." "Mjoll is not going to be happy if you get drunk Thorn." Aerin stated firmly. "I'm not going to get drunk, don't worry. Come get me as soon as Joslyn wakes up." Thorn replied, obviously getting frustrated with Aerin.
"So, what's your name?" he asked the girl with the eyepatch as they entered the inn. "Evelyn" she replied curtly, "And your friends?" he asked "My name is Maximus, please forgive me for not offering my thanks for your help earlier." The old man replied. "I assure you, I was more than happy to help Maximus, were you in the legion?" Thorn asked the older man as they moved towards their table "No, I was just a simple miner until about ten years ago." "What happened ten years ago? If you don't mind my asking" "Oh not at all." Maximus replied as they sat down. "You see Evelyn and both hale from a small mining camp on the border of Skyrim and Cyrodill. Ten years ago, a man stumbled into our camp and collapsed. His whole head and both of his arms were wrapped in bandages. The only possessions he had with him were a kind of leather armor so badly damaged that there was no way to repair it. He also had a very unusual sword and two daggers, the likes I have never seen again. He had no visible wounds so we assumed he collapsed from exhaustion. As he lay there he tried to tell us something but could not speak. He tried to write it out but it was using some symbols that I had never seen before. We carried him to a nearby tent and let him sleep as it was obvious that he had traveled an extremely long way. Later that night I woke up to the sound of screams, we were being attacked. It was then I realized what our guest had been trying to tell us, vampire. Leading the creatures was some kind of horrible creature with long claws and skin that was a pale blue. It was a massacre. We were just miners, not warriors. We didn't even have guards. For some reason they let me and Evelyn live but not without giving her a little reminder." "Like I could ever forget." Evelyn interrupted gesturing to her eye. "That creature leading the vampires, he did this to me. I was fourteen when it happened." "I am so sorry for bringing those terrible memories." Thorn said "I'm going to guess the man who tried to warn you was your friend here though." "Yes, it was. After the attack we found him pinned under a pile of ore that one of the vampires had started throwing around. After that, we decided to stick together. After all, we only had each other now. It took some time, but after a few months we learned his sign language. He told us his name, Tobias."
Maximus was suddenly interrupted by the appearance of Aerin and Mjoll. "Thorn, Joslyn is awake. If you are going to talk to her, it might be best to do it now, before she finds some more mead or wine." Mjoll said, not bothering to hide her hostility towards Thorn. "Well, I guess I had better go. It was nice meeting you all. If you're ever in Markarth, don't hesitate to ask a guard where I am. My door is always open." Thorn told the group as he got up and walked up stairs, dreading having to meet with Joslyn if things had really gotten as bad as he had heard. "Well," he thought, as he opened the door "Here goes nothing.