I do not own The Elder Scrolls, so please don't sue me.

Clunk. My head hit the floor of the carriage, awakening me. I opened my eyes to a headache far worse than any hangover, and a bunch of voices above me, talking. This was definitely not my day. Then again, walking across the border of Skyrim at the precise time to be smacked in the head with a giant warhammer (which, by the way, is an excellent cure for not being able to sleep) for being…somewhere at the wrong time, or something (I really had no idea) might have implied that fact. As my vision cleared, I realized that one of the others in the cart was staring at me, and, in fact, addressing me.

"Good, you're finally awake."

Despite my bound hands (again, why? What did I do?) I managed to climb onto one of the rough benches on each side of the carriage, and responded "Right now, I wish I wasn't. What happened?"

"You must have walked into that Imperial ambush, same as us, and that thief over there." I turned, and saw a pair of Nords, one dressed in similar rags to my own, and one dressed like the man talking to me now, except with a gag over his mouth. I felt bad for him; I knew all too well what it was like to be gagged. I turned back to him

"Who are you, anyway?" I asked him.

"Ralof. And you?"

"Ravel. Dalamus Ravel."

The man in rags spat on the floor of the carriage, and said (rather loudly too, not pleasant with a headache like mine) "Damn you Stormcloaks! Everything was fine until you came along! Empire was nice and lazy." He turned to me" You and me-we shouldn't be here! It's these Stormcloaks the empire wants." It really comforted me, knowing that I was only here due to someone else being an idiot. NOT!

Ralof turned to him, and said, in an exasperated tone, "We're all brothers in binds now, thief." The thief grimaced, as if he didn't believe a word of it, and turned back to the gagged man, who had, obviously, remained silent throughout this conversation.

"Shut up back there!" one our captors shouted back towards us. I attempted to reply with a rude finger gesture, but failed due to being tied up.

"What's wrong with him, huh?"The thief said, ignoring the guard. Ralof glared at him, this seemed to have upset him for some reason.

"Watch your tongue. You're speaking to Ulfric Stormcloak, the true High King."

The thief's eyes widened "the Jarl" (note: Nord word for "King". I used to think it meant "Venison", but that made no sense.) "of Windhelm? You're the leader of the rebellion." His eyes widened in horror "But...if they've captured you…oh, gods. Where are they taking us?"

Ralof replied grimly "I don't know where we're going, but Sovngarde awaits"

OH CRAP
Sovngarde was the Nord afterlife. If it was waiting, that meant death. I didn't want to die (I still don't actually) and now I was being executed for something I didn't do. Or hadn't done. Or was going to do…I had no idea what was going on! I began to wonder if I had been manipulated by one of the Daedra again, and they had made me forget, or something. Or maybe my captors were just bloody idiots. The thief (at this point, my not knowing his name was beginning to get on my nerves a little bit) began to freak out. "No! This can't be happening. It isn't happening!" I sympathized, and was about to say so, but Ralof interjected.

"Face your death with some courage, thief." He said, glaring at the person whose name I did not know, which pretty much ended any chance of me adding my opinion, I had no desire to be yelled at by him. He turned back to Name Unknown. "Hey, what village are you from, horse thief?"

Sullenly, he snapped back "Why do you care?"

Ralof replied, grimly "A Nord's last thoughts should be of home."

He sounded far more terrified than before with his response "Rorikstead. I'm from Rorikstead." Ralof did not reply, merely sitting in silence, which I thought was rather rude.

A guard spoke up next as a town came into view, and we headed towards the main gate, confirming my worst fears "General Tullius, sir! The headsman is waiting!" Once again, for the last time, WHAT DID I DO!A battle-hardened voice answered back from within the walls "Good, let's get this over with" in a bored tone of voice. The thief next to me began begging the gods for aid.
"Shor, Mara, Kynareth, Akatosh, Divines, Please help me!" I looked around excitedly for a meteor or something, sent by the rest of the Divines to crush the man who had forgotten to ask the rest of them individually for help, but nothing happened. (The thought of something actually going right at this point and them helping us was not even considered.) Ralof, meanwhile, was glaring back at the Imperials with hatred.

"Look at him. General Tullius the military governor." He snarled, glaring "and it looks like the Thalmor are with him. Damn Elves. I bet they had something to do with this." At this point, I too began glaring back at the Imperials, or rather, at the Thalmor with them, wishing I had some rotten fruit to throw. Or fire. Fire would also work. As you may have guessed from my wishing to incinerate them, I am not particularly fond of the Thalmor, but, then again, no one likes the Thalmor, since they rule tyrannically over the south of Tamriel, and believe their own kind superior, having committed many nation-sanctioned murders against the Bosmer and Khajiit whose nations they rule. Ralof turned back from them, and stared at the floor as we turned a corner and approached where the cart would stop.

"This is Helgen." He murmured sadly "I used to be sweet on a girl from here. I wonder if Vilod is still making that mead with juniper berries mixed in." He looked up again. "Funny. When I was a boy, Imperial walls and towers used to make me feel so safe." The town was somber preparing for our deaths. I could hear and see children being ushered inside their houses, their parents making sure they would not see this.

The people of the town muttered softly as we pulled up to a dead-end wall (in more ways than one.) The thief sounded panicked as he spoke up "Why are we stopping?" Ralof sounded grimmer than ever with his response.

"Why do you think? End of the line." The guards shouted for us to get out of the cart, and he rose. "Let's go. Shouldn't keep the gods waiting for us" The rest of us rose, climbing up out of the cart, the thief making his final protests and efforts to be set free.

"No, wait! We're not rebels!" Which was a lie, at least for Ulfric and Ralof, who reprimanded him yet again.

"Face your death with some courage, thief." To be honest, his stereotypical "rawr, me strong Nord. Me hit smashy stuff with big hammer" act was starting to get on my nerves at this point, but I saw no point in picking a fight with him a few minutes at most before his death. (And, hopefully, not mine) The Imperial captain was an obnoxious and loud person, who shouted at us as soon as we got off of the cart.

"Step up to the block when I call your name! One at a time!"

"Empire loves their damn lists" Ralof grumbled mockingly as we got out of the cart. Her assistant, who did not look at all like he wanted to do this, began to call out names.

"Ulfric Stormcloak, Jarl of Windhelm." The gagged man walked over to where those soon to be executed waited, with the various Stormcloaks among the captives brought in on the other carts shouting in his defense, Ralof throwing in his own method of paying respect.

"It has been an honor, Jarl Ulfric!" I wasn't sure if I should say anything, seeing as I had known him for only a few minutes where I had not been asleep, but was spared the decision by the name-person resuming his list.

"Ralof of Riverwood." With that, Ralof went over to join his leader. "Lokir of Rorikstead" (Finally, I had learned his name!) Lokir stepped forward a few steps toward the others, then broke, and sprinted past the name-callers, toward the way we had entered. The captain shouted at him

"Halt!" Which I felt like I had heard somewhere before, but he ignored her, sprinting onward

"You're not gonna kill me!" He shouted back, excitedly, as he got further away from us

"Archers!" the captain, who I had taken an instant dislike towards, shouted, and a pair of Imperial archers standing further back on the road, near him, pulled out their bows and opened fire, cutting Lokir down in the blink of an eye, a pair of arrows sticking out of his spine. She turned back to me "Anyone else feel like running!" I shook my head, and the name-caller looked up.

"Wait, you there. Step forward." I did so, and he seemed confused. "Who…are you?" he asked.
"Ravel. Dalamus Ravel." I replied "Dunmer" I added afterward, rather unnecessarily considering my grey skin and red eyes made it a rather obvious fact. He grimaced, a pitying look in his eyes

"The gods must really hate your people, Dark Elf" He muttered, as much to himself as to me, as he turned to face his boss "Captain, what do we do? He's not on the list." A small spark of hope returned to me, that maybe I would be let go, since they seemed to have no record of me doing anything wrong, but her reply soon crushed my small spark of hope into a small, flat, red paste.

"Forget the list. He goes to the block." This time I managed a rude and insulting finger gesture, bound hands or no. The clerk (or whatever he was)'s face twitched into a bit of a smirk at that, you could see that he wasn't very fond of his boss. (And neither was I, come to think of it.) He turned back to me, addressing me yet again.

"We're sorry. We'll make sure your remains are returned to Morrowind."

"That's excellent." I replied to him "You can bury me in the volcano-blasted crater where my home town used to be!" The next thing I knew, I was sitting on the ground, my head ringing, with a certain less-than-pleasant Imperial Captain standing over me.

"You ever speak like that to one of us again, It'll be the last thing you ever do." she snarled at me "Now get up!" I looked blankly at my bound hands for a second, back at her, raised an eyebrow, and spat in her face. It flew right between the pieces of her helmet, and lodged directly in her eye. She glared at me, looking more furious than ever as she dragged me to my feet.

Grudgingly, I got to my feet, in my head swearing an oath to destroy her should I survive this somehow. Which I doubted, scanning the skies for a well timed…something to save me. There was nothing there, and I walked over, sadly, to the place where all the prisoners awaited execution. From here, I could hear the one the Imperials had called general addressing Ulfric.

"Ulfric Stormcloak. Some here in Helgen call you a hero. But a hero doesn't use a power like the Voice to murder his king and usurp his throne." I was really going to have to read up on current events more the next time I fled my homeland as one of many refugees from the destruction of our civilization, first by meteor, then by volcano, then finally, by lizard-people. The general continued in his little you-are-at-my-mercy villain monologue, his voice full of anger. "You started this war, plunged Skyrim into chaos, and now the Empire is going to put you down, and restore the peace." As he walked away, the evil captain spoke up.

"Priestess, give them their last rites!" A priestess in...well…priestess robes standing next to the execution block complied.

"As we commend your souls to Aetherius, blessings of the Eight Divines upon you…" She was interrupted almost immediately afterward by one of the Stormcloaks.

"For the love of Talos, shut up and let's get this over with." To no one's real surprise, the priestess's reply sounded more than a little annoyed.

"As you wish." The prisoner who had spoke up walked up to the execution block, and placed his head on the execution block. "My ancestors are smiling on me, Imperials. Can you say the same?" After a brief pause, he spoke up again. "Hurry up! I don't have all morning!" None of them responded, except the executioner, who answered by swinging his giant axe of death downward, cutting through his neck and severing his head entirely. It rolled into a basket underneath the block, and the executioner kicked his body off the block.

"As fearless in death, as he was in life." Ralof commented, sounding resigned. The Captain's head turned to me, snarling (at least as much as I could tell through the helmet), and grinned.

"Next, the Dark Elf!" So this was her revenge, I quickly looked around, hoping there was another Dunmer among the prisoners that she was talking about, but there wasn't, there was just me. The clerk looked at me sadly.

"To the block, prisoner, nice and easy." I stepped up to the block, feeling sad, and a little nauseous. I knelt with my head over the block, and noticed, to my disgust, that they hadn't even bothered replacing the box with the Stormcloak's head, meaning mine would end up in the same spot.

This was it. I was going to die.

I wondered if my life would flash between my eyes, like some philosophers said it would. I wondered if I could get a few slow motion replays of spitting in the Imperial Captain's eye.
But that was not what fate had planned for me that day. (Apparently), For, as the executioner raised his axe to end my life, a huge roaring echoed throughout the mountains, and a giant flying lizard, which I could only assume was a dragon (which was a major surprise, since they were all thought to have died out long ago) flew across the valley at a speed which should not have been possible, and landed on the tower behind the executioner. He, however, was apparently an oblivious idiot, since he did not react to the dragon perched on the tower right behind him. As he prepared to swing the axe, the dragon roared again, and the force of the roar stunned even the fool of an executioner, and threw the whole area into chaos. The block itself was ripped from the earth, and I was hurled flying to the ground a short distance away, as was the dead Stormcloak, who, much to my dismay, landed right on top of me. (Well, not his head) As you can probably guess, it was not pleasant. I rolled out from under the corpse, which had the unfortunate effect of more or less burying some of my face in the dirt. It was difficult to breathe, but only for a few seconds, since I was soon hauled to my feet by Ralof, who had managed to cut himself free somehow during the chaos.

"Get up!" he shouted, struggling to be heard over the chaos, panic, and death. "Come on! The gods won't give us another chance!" My vision still blurry from hitting my head (again) when I was hurled flying, I followed him, sprinting into a nearby tower as the dragon rained fire and death down around me. I kicked the door shut behind me, and Ralof slammed a table up against it as I surveyed the area. We were in a small, cramped room that now contained me, Ralof, Ulfric (who I couldn't help feel was somehow responsible for this. Well, who else would be able to summon a dragon which just so happened to show up in time to stop his execution and set a lot of things on fire?), and a pair of unnamed Stormcloaks, one of which was currently curled up on the floor, bleeding to death. Ralof turned to his leader

"Jarl Ulfric, what is that thing? Could the legends be true?"

"Legends don't burn down villages." He replied, in a tone that sounded as if you had just told him that everything that he had ever cared about had been destroyed (which made me suspect him a bit less). Another massive roar shook the tower, startling all of us still capable of movement into action of some form, even though, in the case of the uninjured Stormcloak whose name I did not know, that action was to sit down and cry like a small child. Seeing no other way out, I headed upstairs, hoping I would find something that I could at least cut my hands free with.

Another Stormcloak had been tending to some of the wounded on the second floor, but that ended as I watched, with the dragon slamming through the wall, burying them in rubble, and blasting everyone in the wreckage with a massive blast of fire, I guess to make sure they were dead. I looked out the gap in the wall, and saw a half-burnt down inn with a giant gaping hole in the roof. Ralof came charging up the staircase behind me, took one look out the window, and yelled.

"Jump!" Responding half on instinct, I did, leaping through the hole in the roof, and crashing into the floor. I heard a yell and sound which implied that Ralof had not managed the jump. I was worried about that for a minute, but an injured-sounding "I'm ok!" coming from that area ended that. I managed to roll to my feet, and crossed the upstairs of the bar which I had landed in. Fortunately, the staircase had survived, and I walked back out into the flame-blasted ruin that was all that was left of Helgen.

Once outside, I noticed the clerk (?) (I still didn't know what he really did) yelling to a small child, who was bent over a gravely wounded man.

"It's ok Haming! Come here!" The dragon landing in front of him startled the kid into obeying, and he fled behind the cover of a damaged building right before a burst of flame ended the life of whoever the wounded man had been. The kid immediately collapsed, crying, and the Soldier/Clerk turned to me.

"Still alive, prisoner? Stick close to me if you want to stay that way!" He turned to another legionnaire who had been crouched behind the building. "Take care of Haming! I have to find General Tullius and join the defense!" With that, he sprinted toward what had been an alley before the buildings near it had been destroyed, and ducked into it, shouting to me as he did.

"Keep close to the walls!" I did so, wondering why, but the dragon landed on top of the wall immediately afterward, and answered my question by not noticing us, and as, such, not lighting us on fire, instead blasting some Imperial troops who were making a final stand at the gates of Helgen, on the other side of the ruins in front of us. We sprinted through the ruins, only to see the gates blasted open by the dragon, which flew away to ravage another part of the town. A few Imperial troops sprinted out the gates, including their leader, who was shouting orders for a full retreat as he headed out of town on horseback at full gallop, but the collapse of the gates, which had been greatly weakened by the blast, ended that. The clerk sprinted left, and I followed, not knowing my way around the town, and assuming he did. (Fortunately, I was right.)

As we ran across the blasted ruins, Hadvar and Ralof crashed into each other in front of a large keep. Hadvar's eyes widened in surprise for a moment, before he snarled, half-raising his sword.

"Ralof! You damned traitor! Out of my way!" Ralof shook his head, and managed to make the two axes he had managed to obtain even more ominous and dangerous looking.

"We're escaping, Hadvar. You're not stopping us this time." A massive roar from the dragon, which had appeared overhead again, reminded them both of what was going on, and they broke off, each heading toward an entrance to the keep, and each yelling to me to follow them. I spun around to follow Ralof, as, of the two, he was the one who had not tried to kill me, but the dragon slammed into the tower, knocking it over directly at me, and I headed the other way, as I would not have been able to reach the door without getting crushed. With no other way to go, and with the dragon having spun around to fly back at me again, I decided to sprint into the tower, and hope that Hadvar did not try to kill me. I charged through the door as the dragon blasted the ground with fire, barely escaping.