Head felt groggy. Couldn't focus. The last thing I remember was passing out from an all week Elder Scrolls-a-thon. Me and a few of my buddies played Arena through Skyrim each of us playing a different game. It was spring break, and exams were upon us, but we weren't really that worried.
My eyes opened. Slowly at first, a dark ring keeping me from focusing. It was like I wasn't wearing my glasses. It was cold. It sounded like hooves when my senses came to. Someone was starting a new game in Skyrim? I think I was too close to the screen, for when I looked around with my eyes, I could see the cart and the blue chain outfit of Ralof. Yet, the horse theif wasn't next to him, but there was another person inbetween them. A redguard?
No, this wasn't possible. We played on the Xbox version, which was the simplest way to play unmodded.
The redguard was a woman, passed out, her head bent too far back to see her facial features. A bitter wind hit my face. God, that stung. It wasn't until then that I looked down at myself.
Now, normally, you can't see your own body in game unless you play in third person. So, when I looked down, why did I see my own body, in rags and footwraps?
His voice was different than what I was used to, but somehow the same.
"Hey you, you're finally awake. You were trying to cross the border right? Walked right into that Imperial ambush, same as us, and that thief over there."
I looked at Lokir. But I was not ready to see who sat between me and Ulfric Stormcloak. Nord by the looks of him, yet also something else. He had scruff around his chin and neck, short, almost cropped hair, pulled back into a short ponytail. Not his normal hair style, but it was him nonetheless.
We were roommates, him and I. At first, it had been awkward until we discovered that we both adored the Elder Scrolls series. He came to try his luck at becoming a professional soccer player, getting a scholarship as he worked towards his life's goal of joining the olympics. He had black hair, with blue eyes, and shaved everyday, except when our little group of three spent quality time together, like we had during this spring break.
Freaking Jonah. Hands bound, in rags of his own, if only just the trousers.
I jumped to conclusions about who our redgaurd woman was. A girl Jonah and I met in the campus' library, our freshman year. She became a fast friend, and eventually, Jonah and her became an item. Her skin color hadn't been altered, and yet somehow it had. Over the few years, she'd been included in many of Jonah and I's little Elder Scrolls weekends, and quickly grew to like the series.
She had died her hair blonde with pink stripes, but now she sat with her normal black flowing curls, tied into a simple bun, her curly bangs hanging off her face.
Kelsy. A bit more modestly dressed than Jonah or even I was.
"Shut up back there." the Imperial driver ordered. No one listened.
I moved to turn behind me. Frozen plants and a deer along side the road.
What the fuck was going on? Why were we here? I began panicking. I wasn't thinking, and kicked Jonah awake.
"What is it? We late for finals?" he said, waking up.
"Jonah, get up. We have a problem. Get Kelsy up too, I can't reach her."
His head picked up. "Why wouldn't you be able to reach her. The room's only..." When he stopped talking I knew he was taking in everything.
The gates of Helgen. Shit. This is bad, this is so bad...
Kelsy woke up, and the other two were distracted by their surroundings. The stone was real, not the pixels on the screen. Like grey bricks and hard wood. Helgen held more houses than in the game, yet the main street was still the same. A seemingly simple loop.
This is so bad...Fucking Morrowind would've been better than this place. How the hell did we even get here in the first place?
A nudge from Jonah. "Aaron, calm down bro. It'll be fine."
"Let's go. Shouldn't keep the gods waiting for us."
I just kept muttering the word shit under my breath. Stand up, hop down. Jonah stood next to the cart to help Kelsy down. Wait. Why was she taller than me? Why was everyone taller than me?
"Ulfric Stormcloak, the Jarl of Windhelm..."
"It has been an honor, Jarl Ulfric."
Fucking Hadvar. Just no, please no. Don't do the rollcall. Shut up please. This is not the place I wanted to be in. Not Alduin's return. I would've loved any other period in Skyrim's history. Though I still don't know how we came to be here, and how it could be like this.
"Lokir of Rorikstead..."
"No, I'm not a rebel, you can't do this!"
The archers. Two shots in the back, one in the lung, one in the heart. He stopped, knelt down, coughed up blood, and died. More than just a simple ragdoll.
"Wait, you three. What are you doing on the cart? Who are you all?"
I imagined the character customization screen pop up in my head. There wouldn't be anytime for this though. None of us spoke however.
"Alright, let's start with names. Breton, you first."
Jonah looked like a nord, Kelsy would be called redguard due to her skin color, which meant that he was referring to...
...I hate bretons. Yet of course, whatever sick power put us in the game would make me my least favorite race. Great. I'm a walking magik sponge that's only about five feet tall in real life. Wonderful.
"Aaron." is what I wanted to say. It came out differently though.
"Aerune." Um. Okay. Did I stutter? As soon as I said it my mouth felt weird, like I spoke french. But I didn't know french. I took latin in high school.
"You there, kinsman. What's your name?"
"Gjorna." Was he having the same problem that I was having? It sounded like Jonah, but pronounced differently. Jonah scowled at nothing, and I knew something was up.
"What about you, redguard?"
"Kalesi." Same reaction from her. Yet, each of us could say the other two's names perfectly fine. Yet when asked our own names, they twisted into the morphed versions we gave to Hadvar.
"None of you seem to actually belong to Skyrim, not even you kinsman. What brought you here."
We hadn't the slightest idea. So none of us spoke.
"Captain, what should we do. They're not on the list."
"Forget the list. They go to the block."
"By your orders, captain." He turned to me. "I'm sorry, we'll make sure your remains are returned to your families. Follow the Captain, prisoners."
We all set up where we thought we should be. Jonah whispered something to me.
"Stormcloaks..." He was reffering to which side we should take after Alduin ruins the place. He knew that this was a debate topic that neither of us decided on. When this was a game, going with Ralof was the easier choice, as you got more starting gold, as the prices on Imperial gear were higher versus the weight ratio than with the stormcloak gear.
However, I always went with the Imperials because without the Empire united, Tamriel would fall the the Aldmeri Dominion. It was a debate that stretched throughout chatrooms and message boards and rather was amusing to see what kinds of points different people brought up.
"Imperials..." I whispered back. He smiled, which I saw out of the corner of my eye. General Tullius was adressing Ulfric now.
Then, that goddam roar. Alduin was making his approach. I took a step back, only to bump into an Imperial soilder who pushed me back into my original position.
"We need to get out of the courtyard." I said aloud.
Jonah whispered something in rebuttle, however. "I want to see who the dragonborn is, Aaron. Who is she going to call up next?"
"No. We're not staying. For all we know, Alduin couldn't come for minutes, and all three of us could be dead before then." Kelsy whispered to him. His voice of reason.
"Bleak Falls Barrow. We can test it there. I'm not dying in Helgen." I said.
Something unexpected happened. Hadvar and the Captain started getting into an argument. She wanted to send Kelsy to the block first, and Hadvar was against it. He argued that we three should've been taken to Solitude for questioning and a trial. Perhaps we'd just simply been caught up in the ambush, and weren't actually criminals.
This threw me off completely. I was expecting scripted dialogue, like in the game. A soilder questioning orders, made it seem more like real life than anything.
The Captain eventually won, and Kelsy slowly walked towards the block. She hesitated, taking that final step. The Captain grabbed her by the arm and forced her down on the block. They hadn't even moved the other stormcloak's body, and Hadvar just kicked it aside.
Kelsy was going to be beheaded. The second roar never came. Alduin was running late.
"Wait!" I yelled. Everyone turned towards me. The Captain ordered a gag for me. The Imperial soilder was more than happy to obey.
It was a strange feeling, what happened next. My hands got really cold, and as I was being gagged, I was forced back a bit, and then the cold sensation was gone. A burly, hardy gasp of pain came from infront of everyone.
I fell to the ground. When I sat up, I heard a loud slam, and worried about Kelsy. Had she been beheaded? What I saw was pretty foul.
The Headsman, was walking forward, away from his dropped axe, which probably made the loud slam. He was grasping his heart, his body looking cold. One step, blood started spittling from his blue lips. Another step, he stumbled, kneeling. Then he fell over, dead, revealing to everyone what had killed him.
A single long Ice Spike had pierced his heart, tearing through his chain armor and leather undergarments. Someone in the town called out 'Murderer!'
"Seize the mage!" General Tullius ordered.
What did I just get myself into? Every Imperial soildier surrounded me now, swords drawn as I lay on the street, still bound and now gagged.
There was no second roar. Alduin descended on Helgen at that very instant, summoning his meteors and destroying the town.
"Stormcloak traitor!" Hadvar yelled at Ralof. The two were at each other's throats. We had escaped Helgen, the five of us, after Hadvar and I took to the baracks and the other two followed Ralof into the Keep. They were charging at each other, weapons drawn. Their truce had ended, and they had left Helgen in one piece.
I threw an Ice Spike inbetween them before they could meet.
"Enough!" Jonah yelled. "We have bigger issues to worry about than your idiotic civil war!" The three of us were still in our prisoner outfits, though each of us now had a means to defend ourselves. Jonah had taken an iron waraxe and a shield, Kelsy had her longbow and a few dozen arrows, and I learned how adept at magik I was.
"Outsiders should be wary of their tongues, even if you are kinsman." Ralof said.
"You must see reason." Kelsy began. "A dragon has attacked Helgen. Surely you must be worried about the neighboring towns." She meant Riverwood.
The two looked at each other. They knew what needed to be done, I think.
"We'll go on ahead then." Ralof said. "A final truce, eh, Hadvar."
"Fine." They both exended their hands. "But if I ever see you outside of Riverwood, your a dead man, Ralof." Off they went. No threat needed this time. Jonah came up with the clever idea of threatening to kill them if they didn't cooperate in the Keep. Then, he'd have his wizard raise their corpses to fight anyway.
"We need some new duds." Jonah suggested. We couldn't really carry that much, in actuality. I clutched a large bag of food from the keep, mostly bread, apples, leek, and tomatoes. With her arrows, Kelsy barely had room to carry anything, but managed to hold onto the keys and a few potions. Jonah held all the gold we've collected and a few leather straps and a single bottle of Alto Wine. I already miss the carry capacity from the game. And then Jonah laughed for a bit. "Mining's going to be a bitch!" He laughed some more.
"Word." I said.
"You know, there should be a bandit camp just below this ridge." Kelsy said. "Armor, supplies, a place to sleep."
"Yeah." Jonah answered her. "I want to get out of these pants."
I smirked. "Perhaps you two can do that when we find an actual bed." He set himself up for it.
"Oh, God no!" Kelsy said. They were boyfriend and girlfriend, yes, but they didn't do that. I teased 'em about it every so often. "Atleast, not here."
On the outter edge of the ridge, there they were. In the game, they were a bandit clad in iron armor, a two hander in hide or the occasional topless fur armor, and an archer in fur armor. Skill book on the sunk in desk in the third tent. Black Mage robes in the first tent. We didn't have time to grab the robes off the dead victim in the Keep, as the whole place was coming down. I barely had time to read the Shock book during all the fighting. It made my fingers numb, which I didn't like. If all lightning spells made my fingers like that, then I'd have to give up on that branch.
Fire spells gave me a burn, but it was instantly gone unless I used the confligration version, Flames. Frost spells just made my fingers feel cold, which I didn't mind. I grew up in Maine, and I actually liked the cold.
Kelsy aimed her bow through the trees. She was a regional placing archer in her highschool, and this came naturally to her.
"Whenever you're ready boys." she whispered.
"Got a steady bead on the archer?" I asked. She replied yes.
"Aaron and I will run in after you take down the archer. Aaron, take out the heavy armor. I can take out the two-hander."
"Right. On your go, Kelsy."
A few seconds passed, and I prepared spells I didn't even know about. I didn't know how I prepared them, I just did. The equivilent of Ice Spike, Healing Hands, Flames, Frostbite, Oakflesh, Conjure Familiar, though it turned into a spider, not a wolf, Sparks, and Calm, were he spells I knew. They had different names however, and the text was really rather interesting. You didn't just look at the books and know how to use the spell. It's odd, how differently you learned here versus when this was a game to us. I for one was interesting to see how the skill books read.
Kelsy released her arrow, and a blood curtling scream sounded from below. An arrow placed perectly in the neck from atleast twenty yards, down hill. Jonah rushed down the hill, screaming his battlecry. Ah, nords.
I jumped over the ridge and flailed my hands in patterns. My spider familiar warped from it's space in Oblivion to where I needed it. Jonah had taken the two-hander, as he said, knocking him over with a sheild bash. He stumbled, picking up his weapon.
The heavy armor was charging him, however. I shot Flames at him. He turned, and charged me. Ice Spike to his lower knee, a sort of modified version of the arrow in the knee meme. He fell. My spider familiar pounced on him, stabbing at his face. I thought I would be sick. I dismissed my conjured pet. I was getting rather attached to it, but I don't believe I could control it other than summoning and dismissing. It tried to attack Jonah in the Keep before he banished it.
A breton who is terrible at summoning. How ironic.
I kicked the body over and looked for the straps to unlock the iron armor from the body. Kelsy came down from the ridge. She went over to the body of the archer, exchanged bows, and proceeded to strip the dead girl of her fur armor.
We were not new to this. Killing people. To me, it felt as if they were just enemies in a video game, which I think distracted me from the blood that was real, the smell, and the cries of pain. I didn't know how the others were dealing with it, but I watched a Kelsy removed the dead girl's armor, and began to undress.
"Do you mind, Aaron?" she asked me.
I shook my head, as if trying to shake water out of my hair. "Sorry, sorry. Continue." I turned away to the first tent, where I was rather disappointed. The robes weren't there. The skillbook was there, which Jonah was reading, munching on an apple out of the sack next to him, but there were no mage robes.
We couldn't actually go back to get the other robes from the Keep. Alduin had turned Helgen into nothing but rubble. I would either have to remain in rags until we got to Whiterun, or I'd have to use the hide armor. Atleast until we got to Riverwood.
I looked at both of them. Kelsy was done changing, and iron armor sat at Jonah's feet, while he munched on an apple, closing the book. They were so calm. It just came out, and I have no idea why, but I was sorta glad it did.
"How can you two be so calm about this!?" It was a burst of fear, greif, hatred, worry, sadness, interest, and anything else to describe how I felt at that moment.
Silence. Jonah set down the book, looking at me. Kelsy met my eyes as I turned to look at her. She walked past me, handing what I assumed to be the treasure map to Jonah.
"Who says we are, Aaron." she said as she did so. "Who says we are?"