His head was throbbing and his whole body ached. As he peeked out through slitted eyelids, Liam saw dust particles swirling in the air above him where a few rays of overly bright sunlight shone through the bars of his cell. Wait, his cell? This wasn't where he had landed the night before. He had a vague memory of someone's fist hammering repeatedly into his skull after a brawl broke out in an Inn and left him in a stupor on the wooden ale soaked floorboards of… where was that? Liam felt the side of his head where a massive lump had risen. He licked a swollen lip and could taste where the blood had dried and crusted as he pushed myself up into a sitting position. Derisive laughter met his ears as a dark elf in the cell across from his took notice of his state.
"My, my," he sneered, "you're a big one."
Liam stood and staggered over to the cell door in an attempt to discover where he was. The dark elf pressed on in his verbal attack and Liam considered what he'd like to do to his emaciated frame if he were ever in a position to get his hands on him. Liam staggered slightly as a wave of dizziness caused the cell to swirl about. It must have been quite the evening, he thought, if only he could remember.
The footsteps and voices of the guards came drifting down the stairs. "Do you hear that?" the impish little excuse for an elf was saying. "They're coming for you!" He laughed again but Liam pushed the thought of squeezing his scrawny little neck out of his mind, he had much more important things to think about right now, like how was he going to get out of there? The longer he stood the less the room spun. Slowly Liam worked his way back to small table where a pitcher of dirty water stood next to a thick crusty piece of stale bread.
"Get this gate open!" a woman's voice snapped behind him as he gulped water straight from the pitcher. The cell door squealed on its hinges and Liam turned to see three elite guards and an older man in very fine robes step through into the bleakness of his prison. "What's this prisoner doing in here?" the woman snapped again.
"Planning a surprise party for the Emperor," Liam answered without thinking only to have his head feel like it was going to crack wide open as he was slammed pitilessly against the wall. The pitcher smashed spraying water all over his sackcloth pants and sandaled feet. "I hope you don't expect me to pay for that," he choked through his constricted airway due to the big Redguard leaning heavily on his throat. That was when he noticed the old man in purple's royal crest and realized he WAS the emperor; it turned out the surprise was Liam's. Gasping, Liam slid down the wall as the Redguard released him. The woman guard pushed one of the stones in the wall opposite of where he now sat in a heap rubbing his throat. A huge section of the wall shifted and, with a deafening grinding roar, slid out of the way to reveal a secret passage. Liam rubbed his throat considering how good it would have been to know about that before the emperor and his court jesters had arrived.
"Wait! It's you!" The emperor's face went ghostly pale as he paused to examine Liam's face
"I didn't do it!" Liam exclaimed compulsively, he was after all a Nord in an Imperial prison.
The emperor babbled on about something he wasn't interested in at the time; Liam was more concerned with his stomach. He supposed, as the old guy came to the end of his speech, that it might have been a good idea to have actually listened but it was too late now and with the emperor's guard dogs so on edge Liam wasn't about to ask him to repeat it. The four of them stepped into the passageway as Liam picked himself up from the floor again. The dark elf across the way was standing with his hands grasped tightly around the bars of his locked cell, his mouth hanging open in dumbfounded astonishment. Liam smiled, waved good-bye, and followed his new found friends down and out of the stinking hole he had woken up in.
