Chapter 1
Cidhna Mines
Cell Number 3
Date: Middas, 23rd of Frostfall, E 19
The air was damp with eroding rock and silver ores. Just another laborious day in the Cidhna Mines. Another day to suffer for a crime you never committed.
"Leafeliä, get over here and mine, more you mine, day are taken off your sentence," Mandile yelled at her.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Leafeliä was a mage from the Winterhold College. She was studying the secrets of the dragons, the old folk tales of long ago in her room. She was sent to Markarth to pick up a spell tome for her professor for next month's lesson plans when she was surrounded by the city guards.
"You have been made wrong in the eyes of the Jarl of Markarth, come along with us." They ferociously pulled her to the Jarl's quarters to be sentenced for a local man's death.
She was only on a journey to pick a tome up for her professor, when she was accused of murder.
And this is now her life, unraveling before your eyes.
XXXXXXXXXXXXX
Leafeliä was one of many citizens of Skyrim who were wrongly accused. Many prisoners were in the Cidhna Mines for over ten years. Most of them started making the place their home. All of them were family.
Leafeliä was the only woman there, but gender did not matter. Unless you were the guard of sector four.
Mandile was the defiler of women, so Leafeliä always was cautious when he was around. She knew when he came and went. His so-called visits at seven in the morning, high noon, seven at night, and midnight.
She would wake up five minutes before he shoved the keys into her cell door to unlock it.
She did however bonded with two men that watched over her. Their names were Colden and Zacharias. They both made and supplied shivs to the other prisoners in exchange for silver ores.
Colden rolled over in his bed roll to look at Leafeliä leaning against the wall, waiting.
"Are you coming to bed love," he whispered, carefully not to wake Zacharias out of his drunken sleep.
"Yes please," she said as she looked over at him. She was particularly fond of him, and had grown close to him in these last few years.
She dragged her bed roll over to his and closed her bloodshot eyes.
XXXXXXXXXXXXX
As she awoke she noticed that Colden had already had started mining ores in the corridor next to their cell.
She stretched her sore back and put on her foot wraps carefully, as to not scrape against a cut that ran down the sole of her foot.
She had gained that by not gathering enough ores, so Mandile had punished her by slitting her foot. It made no sense at all in what he was trying to achieve. Injuries meant less ores, less ores meant more punishment, more punishment equals death.
She grabbed her pickaxe up and walked pass sleeping Zacharius. He wasn't going to get breakfast if he wasn't awake.
That's how things worked around here.