the elder scrolls
Chapter 2Imperial City Prison, Cyrodiil, 2 Last Seed 3E433
When Carmiene woke the first time, she did so in a cold sweat to an ache encompassing her entire body, throbbing in cadence with her rapid heartbeat. She could not remember where she was nor how she came to be there; her head smarted with each attempt to recall the journey. She knew she had come many miles to rest in this awful place, but did not know why she had been taken at all, except that she was born under the sign of the Mage.
Eventually, when she overheard guards talking, she realized she was imprisoned somewhere in the Imperial City. The cells were underground, which was what made them so fearfully dark and damp. Her wrists had been bound in the iron cuffs for long enough that she developed callouses where the restraints met her skin. She had lost what little padding her figure held months before; her rations were cloudy water and moldy bread upon sight of which made her wretch. The guards had long since stopped delivering it. The sand in the bottom of her cell was matted to her hair and ground into her face.
Thus she spent the span of her indefinite sentence, contemplating why she was there, because no one offered any sort of explanation. The guards did not speak to prisoners unless they were being beaten, and those words had more to do with the superiority of that guard's anatomy to that of the person they were striking. The closest she could come to any viable conclusion was that she, for some reason, should not exist, and that her presence on Nirn was not to be tolerated or even snuffed out for fear of some reincarnation. She was past making sense, and she no longer truly cared.
And what profit would it be if she knew, anyway? She didn't think for even an instant that they would let her go. She had no hope of escape, for she didn't have the strength to even cry when the Imperials beat her. They had stopped that, too, since she no longer screamed from the slash of the whip or the bludgeoning of their clubs. She had started hearing whispers when they walked by her cell. Would she die soon? She clung to that wish with every bit of energy she had left. She thought that if she willed her life to leave her body, it might.
The familiar echo of metal clanking against the rugged stone floor of the hallway soothed Carmiene's troubled consciousness. She felt herself tip to the edge of the void as the footfalls drew closer and seemed to stop before her. A shadow was cast over her limp body, though she could not so much as open her eyes to see who was before her. She thought maybe it was Death coming to carry her away, that her Maker had finally answered her pleas. She realized she truly was being carried away to somewhere, but she felt nothing but the gradual warming of the air blowing against her thawing skin.
The light and favor of the living God, she mused, the sensation wonderful to her deprived senses. The metal she was pressed against began to radiate her body heat, warming her further. Doors opened and shut, voices rumbled vaguely as they moved, but the footfalls never varied in frequency or in length of stride. Carmiene rocked to and fro, giving herself to its cadence.
Her peaceful reverie was broken by the creaking of hinges and an accompanying burst of impossibly bright, pleasantly warm light.
I must have died, Carmiene thought happily, and strained to open her eyes. She squinted in the overwhelming rays, trying desperately to get a good look at her whereabouts. Ver vision began to clear, and her eyes fixed on a single white stone spire, the sun at its apex, rising far above the rounded walls. Deciduous trees were scattered about, and the grass was a mat under her carrier's plated feet. She turned her gaze to his face, which was classically Imperial, shrouded in a strange black metal helmet, and well-aged, but when his eyes met hers, she sensed an otherworldly presence in his ocean-blue irises that unsettled her.
"You're awake," he observed, smiling gently.
"I am," Carmiene croaked, her voice tight and strange after not having spoken intelligibly for months. "Who are you?" she queried to the golden dragon on his dark metallic breastplate.
"I am your friend," said the man with the kind eyes. "That is all that is important now. I am sorry for what has happened to you. It was not under my direction that you were treated so, but I can only hope that it will somehow benefit you or someone you encounter in your travels." He had a kind voice, too, though to her weary ears, it sounded sad. He attempted to pull her matted locks away from her dirty face, to no avail.
"Why did you lock me up? What did I do?" Her words were punctuated by the whinny of a horse she must have missed in her quick survey of her surroundings.
His snowy eyebrows crinkled as the corners of his puffy, wrinkled lips turned ever-so-slightly upward into another sad, sweet smile. "Your purpose will be known in due time, my child. You will do well. For now, rest. Eat. Grow. Regain your strength. You will surely need it. The strength and glory of the Empire is with you. Go in peace, and conquer your enemies."
"Enemies…?" she asked as she was passed into the hands of another and laid on a pallet in a closed carriage. He said nothing more, and she found she could not pull her eyes away from the ones colored the same as the waves surely breaking over the shores of Balineri that very moment. He nodded toward her, turned on his heel, and marched away, his ebony and gold armor glinting in the afternoon rays.
She looked at her bruised skin, her protruding bones, the filth smeared into her sack-cloth tunic, and back at the men in shining armor, standing about the carriage as it pulled away, who were talking, laughing, and shoving one another in jest.
The strength and glory of these Imperials and their wretched Empire is nothing more than the keening cry of the people they hate and oppress to better themselves, Carmiene thought blasphemously, her mouth twisting into a mad contortion comparable only to that of a predator's snarl. What victory treats the common man as expendable when it is he who truly builds such an Empire? Her ire rose, and she beat upon the sliding glass window between her and her captors. The driver's companion, an officer of the Imperial Watch, nudged the portal open.
"Oi! Where are you devils taking me?" she demanded.
"You're bound for Vvardenfell. That's Morrowind, sweetheart. I hope you like ash in your kwama eggs, my friend, for that's your life now!" the Watchman howled, his laughter echoing through the glen like booming, mocking thunder. "I did four years on the island. Seyda Neen, the port you're headed to. Swamps and wastelands and wild men who live in giant bug shells! Not quite the civilized, cultured folk you're used to, stranger!"
"Vvardenfell…" she whispered to herself, turning to face the back of the carriage once more. Her freedom lay in the shadow of the fires of Red Mountain.
County Cheydinhal, Cyrodiil, 3 Last Seed 433
Carmiene stretched her aching body. She had ridden all day in that blasted carriage and slept on the unforgiving ground that night. She had risen early, partly from the need to relieve herself, and partly from the desire to rid her clothes and body of the filth she lived in in prison. She spotted the creek near the campsite, and longed to feel the fresh, clear water on her skin.
As she bathed, she gazed over the dry, gray hillside at the settlements below, Cheydinhal in the immediate distance, with the White-Gold Tower, as she now knew it was called, jutting into the sky from within the interlocking wheels of the City. Though Cheydinhal was closer, the Imperial capital still looked as if it could swallow three of the smaller towns.
Beating her clothes against the rocks, she sighed. Though this land was so picturesque it could have been a vivid painting, it was not her native shore, for which she desperately longed. But having no money, no titles, and no contacts, she would be shipped to a land of bogs and strange creatures the likes of which were hailed as monsters in the other Provinces. She shook her head, water droplets radiating from her golden tresses. The chink of metal plates broke into her thoughts, a hidden dam breaking in her heart that made way for the dread filling her mind.
I have an audience. Turning slowly, her suspicions were confirmed as she laid eyes on her escort, both of whom were ogling her and jeering. She hastily snatched her wet garments and clutched them to her chest as she dashed for the nearest clump of brush. She dressed to the sound of raucous laughter and the clanking of metal as one punched the other with his plated fist.
Entitlement. They think they have the right. The red blood in her veins began to seethe, her ire rising to new heights. Her skin burned with the fierceness of her anger and her fingers tingled with an almost electric quality. Her face twisted into an angry mask of hate and shame.
"How dare you," she declared in a low voice. The Watchmen laughed harder, slapping one another on the rump, mocking.
"What's that you say?'
"I'm not sure you're speaking Aldmeris!"
An inaudible snap succeeded their gestures, which increased in rudeness and vulgarity as rage changed the hues of her face from gold, to pink, to red, and finally purple.
"How dare you!" she screamed, her vision fading to black in a halo of emerald and silver flames engulfing the world.