"Nords, arise!
Throw off the shackles of Imperial oppression. Do not bow to the yoke of a false emperor.
Be true to your blood, to your homeland."
-Nords Arise, by Anonymous
Not far from Elinhir, the desert gives way to scrubland dotted with trees. Early the next morning, Maggie found herself perched in one of these trees, watching the invisible line that formed the border between Hammerfell and Skyrim. She didn't want to take any chances this time. There was little chance she would find another unguarded border and she wanted to observe for a while before attempting a crossing. Were there patrols in this area? If so, what were their movement patterns?
She watched for hours and saw nothing. Every time she thought she had seen all the nothing she needed to see and made to climb down, she developed a sneaking suspicion that the patrol would come along right then, and so she stayed put. Finally, sheer boredom coaxed her down.
She approached the border tentatively. For some reason, she was dreading this crossing. That didn't make any sense. She should be happy about this. She could very well be in Falkreath by nightfall. And then she could see about maybe taking a faster means of transportation the rest of the way.
Three years ago, Maggie and her family had paid host for a couple of nights to a rather unusual pair of travelers. The unusual thing wasn't the nature of the travelers—Vigilants of Stendarr traveled a fair bit. Rather it was the fact that they'd chosen a farmhouse as their lodgings for the night. One of them, Carcette, had said that she'd felt drawn there.
Maggie had never been particularly fond of the Vigilants. She had always felt that fighting daedra and their worshippers was an odd thing for priests of the god of mercy to do. On the other hand, having two of them staying in the house felt almost like having a piece history under the same roof.
The Vigilants had been founded after the Oblivion Crisis with the stated purpose of ensuring that such a thing could never happen. The Crisis had started when worshippers of Mehrunes Dagon, Daedric Prince of Destruction, had assassinated Emperor Uriel Septim VII. Before long, portals to the plane of Oblivion had been opening all over the world, with daedra and dremora coming through in droves. Dagon could have conquered all of Nirn and would have, were it not for the timely intervention of Akatosh, chief of the Nine.
As excited as Maggie had been, Lini had been more so. Stendarr had always been her preferred Divine, and she had followed Carcette around the house all evening, asking question after question.
While Maggie had initially scoffed at the notion of a fated meeting, the storm that hit the next day had certainly been awfully convenient. Or inconvenient, depending on your perspective. It had given Lini more time to think, to decide that she wanted to go with them when they left. And she had.
Maggie hadn't exactly been supportive at the time. She'd found the notion of her soft-spoken, kind-hearted younger sister fighting daedra and cultists rather absurd. Now she deeply regretted that.
A year later, Maggie and her dad had gotten a letter from Lini, announcing that she'd taken the oath and was now a Vigilant in full. She was living in Skyrim, as part of the order's chapter there, and she seemed happy.
Maggie had written back then, saying that she would visit as soon as she could. It had taken two years to reach the point where taking a trip of this scale was feasible, and it still hadn't been particularly convenient.
Maggie remembered the soon-to-be harvested fields back home. There was a chance that she could get home before the crops absolutely had to be gathered, although knowing her father's stubbornness, he would simply handle the harvest himself.
She looked to the sky, as she tended to do when making a promise, and silently vowed to be home by the end of the next month, Hearthfire.
Then she stepped across the border.
The next city on Maggie's route was Falkreath. Despite being the largest settlement in the area, it wasn't very big. From reading books written by visitors to Skyrim, Maggie knew that the town's main claim to fame was its graveyard, which was something of a running joke among the people who lived there. That was all Maggie remembered about it. Not much memorable happened in Falkreath.
Although today that didn't seem to be the case. As Maggie got closer, she started hearing shouts and the clang of weapons hitting one another.
And then all of a sudden she found herself looking through a gap between two trees and staring straight at the source of the noise.
In the clearing just beyond, two groups of soldiers clashed. One group wore the familiar uniforms and dragon insignia of Imperial legionaries. The other wore uniforms she'd never seen before: chain mail shirts, accented with blue and bearing an insignia of a bear's head.
It didn't take long for Maggie to realize that the men and women in blue had to be Stormcloaks, soldiers of the rebellion.
The desire to help them was overwhelming. These were, after all, the people who were fighting to bring back Talos. She should be out there fighting too. How many times had she lay awake at night, fantasizing about running off to Skyrim and joining them? Plenty was the answer.
But those weren't Thalmor soldiers. They were Imperial ones, like the troops stationed in various forts around High Rock who'd always made her feel safe. She'd also traded with a few legionaries. They'd always been nice, unlike the rebels, who supposedly had a nasty racist streak.
And as she looked again, she realized that the rebels were losing. Badly. As many as a dozen lay dead already, and those who remained fought with the ferocity of those who knew death was coming and were determined to defy it for as long as possible.
Getting involved would only end badly, she realized. The smartest way to respond to this was to bypass Falkreath entirely and start heading to Whiterun.
They're only losing because they don't have an archer, nagged a voice in the back of her head.
It was true that the rebel force didn't have any archers. Whether or not the addition of one would make a difference remained to be seen.
But it never would be. This was not something she needed to be part of. At least, not yet.
She heard the sound of a sword coming out of a sheath. And it was coming from right behind her.
"Don't move, rebel," said a voice with a slight Cyrodiilic accent.
Maggie's reaction was not a conscious one. She pulled out her bow and spun around, whacking the unlucky Imperial in the side of the head with it. He fell to the ground.
"Are you blind?" she berated him. "Do I look like…"
She broke off when she realized that the soldier she'd hit was unconscious and that three more were staring at her, weapons drawn.
"Oh, crap," she said. Then she ran.
Maggie ran for all she was worth, darting between trees, leaping over roots, and trying to ignore how hard it was to breathe. Even in the south of Skyrim, it was noticeably colder than in High Rock, and trying to run in these temperatures made her chest burn. The heavy pack weighing her down didn't help.
She could hear shouting behind her and tried not to focus on it. She caught snippets of the back-and-forth shouting between the pursuing soldiers, enough to figure out that these had the sense to realize that she wasn't a rebel. On the other hand, she had just knocked out one of their comrades-in arms.
A small cliff came into view just to the right. Maggie made for it, hurdling a fallen tree and leaping for the top. She just barely caught the edge and hurriedly pulled herself up.
Once at the top, she rolled onto her back and forced herself to breathe evenly.
"I…hate…Skyrim," she whispered between breaths.
Once she'd more or less caught her breath, she stood up and looked around. She saw a lot of trees, and that was it. No soldiers.
"I lost them?" she asked herself.
As soon as the words were out of her mouth, she heard a rustling in the bushes. She reacted instantly, spinning around and notching an arrow in her bow.
She waited for a long moment, and when nothing appeared and she heard no further rustling, she started to walk forward.
She pushed between two bushes and stopped. This was where she thought the rustling had been coming from, but nothing was here but a couple of rocks. One of them looked like it had skidded at some point recently, judging from the marks in the dirt near it.
Maggie realized too late that she'd been tricked. That rustling had been someone throwing a rock into those bushes. One of the oldest tricks in the book, and she'd fallen for it.
She turned around, about to run back to the cliff edge, where it was more open. But then something struck her in the head, and she slumped to the ground.
The last thing she heard before darkness claimed her was a voice saying, "Tell the legate we have one more for the carts."
Maggie swam slowly back to consciousness, as though her body didn't want to wake up. As such, she was aware of the irregular bumping beneath her before she was able to make out her surroundings.
Once her vision cleared, she understood why her body had wanted to stay asleep. She was in the back of a cart driven by an Imperial soldier. All her gear was gone, and her hands were tightly bound with strips of leather.
"You're finally awake," said the man sitting across from her. He looked like a typical Nord, with shoulder-length blond hair, pale skin, and blue eyes.
"Took a sword-hilt to the head. How long was I out?" she asked. It couldn't have been very long, since he was still in his armor.
"About a day." When she didn't say anything, he went on. "You were trying to cross the border, right? Walked right into that Imperial ambush, same as us, and that thief over there." He nodded to the man next to him. The thief was also a Nord, but he had dark hair. He was wearing rags and looked like he hadn't eaten a decent meal in days.
"Well," Maggie said. "My luck has never been great."
"Damn you Stormcloaks," interjected the thief. "Skyrim was fine until you came along. Empire was nice and lazy. If they hadn't been looking for you, I could have stolen that horse and been halfway to Hammerfell."
He turned to her and kept talking. "You and me, we shouldn't be here. It's these Stormcloaks the Empire wants."
"We're all brothers and sisters in binds now, thief," the blond man said.
"For however long that lasts," Maggie whispered.
"Quiet, back there," yelled the carriage driver.
The thief didn't listen. "What's wrong with him, huh?" he asked, looking at the cart's fourth passenger. Maggie looked too, and she wondered how she hadn't noticed the man while she was watching the battle.
He was clearly a noble of some sort, judging from his clothing. He was also quite a bit older than the other two men, his dirty-blond hair starting to go gray. He was bound the same as they were, but he was also gagged, and Maggie found herself wondering what he might have to say that the Empire would be so afraid of.
She remembered reading about an almost-extinct form of magic native to Skyrim, a power that involved turning words into weapons. If she could just remember the name of it…
"Watch your tongue," snapped the blond man. "You're speaking to Ulfric Stormcloak, the true High King."
"Ulfric," the thief repeated. "The jarl of Windhelm? You're the leader of the rebellion. But if they've captured you…oh, gods, where are they taking us?"
"I don't know where we're going, but Sovngarde awaits," the blond man said.
"Maybe for you," Maggie said. Sovngarde was the Nordic afterlife. She most definitely was not headed there.
"No. This can't be happening. This can't be happening…" The thief was panicking. Maggie forced down a rising panic of her own.
"What village are you from, horse thief?" asked the blond man.
"Why?"
"A Nord's last thoughts should be of home."
"R-rorikstead. I'm from Rorikstead."
Somewhere up ahead, a soldier called out, "General Tullius, sir. The headsman is waiting." Maggie saw the gate of a town approaching.
"Shor, Mara, Dibella, Kynareth, Akatosh. Divines, please help me." The thief was praying.
Maggie's amulet was still around her neck. She could feel its weight. If she was going to die here, it was probably a good idea to pray, to set her affairs in order with the Nine—yes, Nine—while she still could. But she'd been praying to the Divines since she was a little girl, and she'd rarely felt that she'd been heard. Maybe they didn't care.
"Look at him," the blond man said bitterly. He was looking forward, at someone up ahead who Maggie couldn't see. "General Tullius, the military governor. And it looks like the Thalmor are with him. Damn elves. I bet they had something to do with this."
Maggie gritted her teeth at the mention of the Thalmor, members of the Aldmeri Dominion's ruling faction.
The cart headed through the gate. All along the street, people were coming out of homes and stores to watch. Their faces were grim. They knew what was coming as much as the prisoners did.
"Go inside, Haming," Maggie heard a father say to his son.
"But I want to watch the soldiers."
Maggie didn't hear the father's response.
"This is Helgen," the blond man said, as though thinking back to fond memories. "I used to be sweet on a girl from here. I wonder if Vilod is still making that mead with the juniper berries mixed in." He paused. "Funny. When I was a boy, Imperial walls and towers used to make me feel so safe."
That was when Maggie realized the true gravity of her situation. Once she had felt the same way, but now she was going to die beneath those walls.
The cart stopped moving. Helgen was laid out in a rough spiral shape, and the carts had now arrived at the very center, passing houses and shops. They were now surrounded by the newly foreboding walls of Helgen keep. Out in front of the keep's main door, glistening in the sunlight stood the block, stained black with the blood of all who had died there. Next to it stood the headsman, ax sharpened and ready. And behind him, a priestess of the Nine. No, Eight.
Maggie sucked in a breath, as she realized she had just seen the place where she would die.
"Why are we stopping?" asked the thief.
"Why do you think?" the blond man replied. "End of the line."
They were ushered out of the carts by several soldiers.
"Let's not keep the gods waiting for us," muttered the blond man.
"I'm not a rebel. You can't do this," the thief cried.
"Face your death with some courage, thief," the blond man admonished at the same time as Maggie said: "Oh, grow a backbone."
"You have to tell them I'm not with you," the thief pleaded. The other man ignored him.
"Step toward the block when we call your name," called a captain.
"Empire loves their damned lists," the blond man muttered.
"Ulfric Stormcloak, Jarl of Windhelm," called the captain. Ulfric turned and walked steadily toward the block. Despite staring death in the face, he held his head up. Just seeing that gave Maggie courage.
"Ralof, of Riverwood." The blond man left Maggie's side. As he did, she made a point of committing his name to memory, not that it would matter.
"Lokir, of Rorikstead."
"You won't kill me!" the thief screamed as he took off running toward the gate.
"Archers!" called the captain.
Somewhere on the wall a soldier strung his bow and let an arrow fly. It caught Lokir in the back, and Maggie screamed in spite of herself. Contrary to popular belief, an arrow in the back was not a quick and painless way to die.
Maggie's cry caught the attention of the soldier holding the list.
"You," he called to her. She stepped forward. "What's your name?"
"Magdalyne," she said, biting off the rest of her typical introduction.
"Captain," the soldier asked, "what do we do? She's not on the list."
For just a moment, Maggie's heart leapt in her chest. They were going to let her go, and then everything would be fine. She'd just have to get out of town before the blade started falling, so the sound of it wouldn't haunt her nightmares.
"Forget the list," the captain said. "She goes to the block."
Her stomach clenched anew.
"I'm sorry about this," the other soldier said. "We'll see to it that your remains are returned to High Rock."
"That's supposed to make me feel better?" Maggie asked.
A soldier shoved her toward the blocks, and she walked over to stand near Ralof, as the clenching feeling in her stomach got progressively worse.
A man in gilded Imperial armor, who could only be General Tullius, was standing in front of Ulfric.
"Ulfric Stormcloak," the general said. "Some here in Helgen call you a hero, but a hero doesn't use a power like the Voice to murder his king and usurp his throne."
So he did have it. That explained the gag. Maggie felt a little embarrassed that she had forgotten a name as generic as "Voice," but there was another name for the power, one that was in no language she'd ever heard. Unfortunately, that name escaped her too. Her curiosity kicked in, and she wished she could ask the jarl about it. She knew she would never have the chance.
Tullius wasn't done. "You started this war and plunged Skyrim into chaos, and now the Empire is going to put you down and restore the peace."
A couple of Stormcloaks near Maggie looked like they had some particularly choice words for the general, but they kept them to themselves.
"Give them their last rites," Tullius ordered the priestess.
She lifted her hands skyward and began to speak. "As we commend your souls to Aetherius, blessings of the Eight Divines be upon you…"
"Nine," Maggie muttered. "There's nine Divines."
"Just get on with it," a Stormcloak interrupted as he rushed toward the block.
"My ancestors are smiling at me, Imperials. Can you say the same?" he asked as he laid his head on the bloodstained stone.
The headsman raised his ax. Maggie closed her eyes as the blade descended, but she still heard the horrible, wet thunk as the man's head was severed.
Something roared in the distance as the headsman kicked the body aside. Everyone was looking around, wondering what made a sound like that.
Maggie knew. It was identical to the sound she'd heard the night before crossing into Hammerfell.
"It can't be," she whispered. "Not this far from the mountains."
"Carry on," the general ordered.
"Next, the Breton," called the captain.
Maggie glanced around. "There's another Breton here, right?" she said to herself.
"I said, next prisoner," the captain snapped.
And then Maggie realized that they did, in fact, mean her.
"To the block, prisoner. Nice and easy," said the soldier from before. He did sound sorry.
Take the step, Maggie.
She did. Better to go now, before the executioner started getting tired and his blade started getting dull.
No. I can't die here.
Step.
I have to see Lini.
Step.
I have to get home for harvest.
Step.
I don't want to die.
Step.
I don't want…
Step.
I…
She was at the block now. Staring at it. Seeing the blood of the last person to die on it, and countless others before him.
Her knees buckled. A booted foot pressed against her back, shoving her forward. A rough hand pushed her hair out of the way, exposing her neck to the ax.
She was face-to-face with the head of the last man to die here, his eyes blank and staring.
A tear came to her eye. Not for herself. Once her body was returned to her father, he would send a letter to Lini, explaining what had happened. Lini would immediately pack up and come home to mourn. Her sister would never stop blaming herself, and for that, Maggie cried.
The roar sounded again. This time, it mingled with screams. Because the source of the sound had just revealed itself, swooping down and landing on the keep.
A huge, black dragon.
AN: No journal entries this chapter, for obvious reasons.
Yes, I did use the dialogue from the game, with Maggie providing a bit of input.