Chapter 1 – Prisoner
When I first opened my eyes, I saw weapons clanging, bodies flying, and fire burning in a small village all around me. I sat up and looked around. The scales on my head were soaked in blood.- wait, scales?
I looked at myself and saw that yes, I had scales. That's because I'm an Argonian. I thought. Then I thought, What the heck is an Argonian? "Prisoner! Over here!" A voice called out.
I looked at the man who had yelled. He had long-ish blonde hair and was wearing a blue-and-brown cuirass. I raised a brow as if to say, Me?
Suddenly, a huge, black mass swooped out of the air and crashed through a wooden hotel behind the stranger. The walls and roof exploded outwards, sending planks and flaming furniture across the square. The stranger who had yelled was flung by the impact across a road and into the wall of another building. He hit the ground and didn't move.
I stood up and saw that I had been lying down on an execution block, with my head… on top of another severed head! I jumped back, stumbling over the body and hitting the stone hard. I tried to get my breath back and looked up at the sky. Then, a massive dragon flew overhead, spewing fire out of its mouth. I scrambled to my feet and ran towards the building that had been destroyed. I spotted a sword on the ground next to the bloody corpse of a guard and picked it up, running towards the man that had hit the wall. I reached him and saw that he was waking up.
"Come on!" I said, shocked at the sound of my voice, as if it were someone else's.
He looked at me, nodded, and accepted my hand to pull him up.
"Follow me, Lizard! There's an underground river that we can use to escape!" The man said, running onto a cobblestone path leading around a large stone tower.
As we ran, I looked around and saw guards fighting with the people wearing the blue cuirasses, people shooting arrows into the sky at the dragon, and buildings being ripped apart by fire. Out of nowhere, a man tackled me and slammed me into a the wall of the building we were running around. "Help!" I yelled.
The man who tackled me was wearing a combination of metal and leather armor. He had me pinned with one hand and his knees against the stone wall. "Traitor!" He yelled as he swung his sword directly at my head-
And he flew sideways off of me, leaving a scratch on my neck where the very tip of his sword barely grazed me. I looked to my left where I saw the man who I helped out of the building with his hand offered to me. "Thanks." I said.
"No problem. Now come on!"
We rounded the corner of a building and saw a bunch of men standing in formation with swords and shields. "Imperials." My companion said with a grimace. "There they are!" The one in front yelled. "Attack!"
Right before they charged us, the dragon landed on the ground in between us with a ground-shaking THUD. "Go!" My friend hollered.
I rocketed towards the dragon one way while my friend went the other, which had landed facing the other men. Fire shot out of his mouth, and I could feel the intense heat from where I was standing as it flew towards our attackers. I was about to dart around the tip of the dragon's wing to meet up with my friend when the dragon's tail slammed into my back from behind, sending me sailing into the air, over the dragon's scaly neck, and onto the ground directly underneath the beast's colossal snout.
It raised its head and looked at me. I looked into its eyes and saw a spark of something, but before I knew what it was, the monster turned and snapped at one of the Imperials who were trying to run away. By the time it turned back around, I was on my feet, running away after my friend.
We leapt over a small wooden fence, leaving the town and reached a small cliff. About 20 feet below us was a hatch in the ground with nothing but blackness inside. "Once you get inside and through the river, the moss will light the way."
Before he could continue, the dragon shouted "WHERE…ARE…YOU?!" The noise seemed to echo and reverberate throughout the sky, thundering into the eardrums of anybody within a mile. Something awfully hard in the pit of my stomach told me he was looking for me.
"That's our cue!" I said.
The man I had just met nodded, turned around and jumped off the cliff, with me right behind him. Time seemed to slow down as we fell through the air next to the rocky cliff face. I turned as I fell and saw the dragon speeding towards the my friend and I. The man flying through the air beneath me was struck in the legs by the full force of a flying, scaled beast directly in his legs. He screamed and spun around in the air like a pinwheel. The end of the dragon's tail hit my stomach, making me roll over in the air. I managed to look down and see my friend's head slam into the wooden frame of the hatch and bounce back towards the hole just below me. Still spinning, I took a breath, slammed into his body in the air, and splashed down into pitch-black water as the dragon's roar echoed through the land above me.
The rushing water flung me around and spun me in the currents, leaving me without any sense of direction. Despite that, I still managed to grab my friend's leg when my hand brushed against it. We swirled through the black water, and even with my lizard eyes I could see nothing until, right before I let go of everything, I saw light and burst through the surface of the water, gasping for precious air.
I looked back and saw smoke and flames rising above the forest, where the town I was in was destroyed. I hauled myself onto the rocky coast, pulling my friend out of the water with me. When I realized how light he was, I looked at what my hand was actually holding. His leg.
Just his leg.
I threw the leg back in the river and threw up on the ground. When I couldn't heave out anymore I laid out flat on my back and stared up at the sky, beaten, battered, sick, tired and disgusted and asked to the world in general-
"Who am I?"