Chapter 3: Into the Keep


Walking into the keep, the first thing Shinji noticed was Ralof kneeling over someone's corpse.

The Nord closed his fallen comrade's eyes. "We'll meet again in Sovngarde, brother." He stood up and turned to look at Shinji. "Looks like we're the only ones who made it. That thing outside was a dragon, no doubt. Just like the children's stories and the legends. The harbingers of the end times."

"Hmph. What clued it in for you? Was it the fact that it was big, flying and breathing fire?" Shinji said sarcastically. What else could it have been other than a dragon? Any kid from his old world would've been able to recognize it if they saw it.

Something flickered in the other man's eyes at Shinji's tone, before he glanced back towards the door they'd gone through, nervously. Anyone would've been nervous, knowing there was a living, breathing dragon on the other side of it. "We better get moving. Come here, let me see if I can get those bindings off."

It took less than a few seconds for him to get the ropes binding the blue-haired Russian's hands off. "Finally! You couldn't have done that earlier at the tower? I had to jump out of there with my hands bound!" He said, rubbing his chafed wrists.

Ralof rubbed the back of his head sheepishly. "Well, to be honest, I kind of forgot about it. Plus we had that dragon break into that tower and breathe down fire, so we didn't have a lot of time. Besides," He said, clapping Shinji on the shoulder. "Now you'll have a story to tell your kids one day. Show'em you're not some milk drinker." The Stormcloak laughed uproariously.

It didn't last long. They were in a dark, moldy keep with a dragon that might break down the walls at any time and eat them.

The laughter died fast.

"You might as well take Gunjar's gear." Ralof nodded to the dead body. "He won't be needing it anymore."

It wasn't Shinji's first time looting a corpse. At this point, he was so used to it that he was able to make a quick survey of what he could possibly take from the body: an Iron War Axe, a Stormcloak Cuirass, and some Fur Boots.

He took them all. He'd need it all.

Even though it all came easy to him now, it didn't used to be that way. As he quickly stripped the corpse and equipped everything, Shinji snorted at the memory of his first time doing this. He'd almost thrown up, and had to pretend that he was in some video game just to get on with it.

Press X to loot the body.

...It'd helped.

"Give that axe a few swings," Ralof said, snapping Shinji out of his reverie. "I'm going to go see if I can find some way out of here."

"I know how to swing an axe." Shinji snapped back indignantly.

The older man didn't bother saying anything back. Seeing this, the former 20th-century kid took a few swings anyway.

It couldn't hurt to get used to an axe again, and it's not like he was actually following the man's orders or anything like that.

Ralof rattled the nearby gate and cursed. "This one's locked. Let's see about the other one." Striding over to the one directly across from where he was, the rebel quickly realized it was no use. "This one's no good either. No way to open this from our side."

The sounds of boots suddenly filled the room, coming from behind the locked gate. "Come on, keep moving!" A woman's voice called out.

"It's the Imperials. Take cover!" The Stormcloak Rebel hissed.

He and Ralof took to the left and right of the gate, just out of sight of the Imperials that were heading their way.

"Get this gate open!" The voice from the other side commanded. The gate quickly withdrew into the ground.

As soon as the first person tried to enter the room, Ralof attacked. "Freedom or Sovngarde!"

Following his lead, Shinji leaped into the fray, only to be confronted with a familiar face…. The Imperial captain that had sentenced him to die.

He grinned. "I'm gonna enjoy this." Ignoring Ralof's own battle, but making sure to keep an eye on it just in case it looked like the Blondie was losing, Shinji swung his axe down onto the Imperial woman in heavy armour.

...It was too bad that he'd been so distracted by the fact that he was about to get revenge, that he didn't notice the other Imperial Army soldier coming in from the side.

The man bashed him with the shield, the metal from it bruising Shinji's face, punishing him for even daring to try a power strike against his captain.

Oddly enough though, that blow was enough to clear the Russian's head. As another bash came towards him, he moved to the side, chopping down hard onto his opponent's outstretched arm. LIke a hot knife through butter, the axe cut cleanly through flesh, muscle and bone, disarming the man.

The soldier didn't even have time to scream as Shinji whirled and sent his axe slicing through his neck.

The blood spurting like a fountain drenched the Imperial Captain that the soldier had been protecting, her heavy armor bathed in its red. Slowly looking down at the headless corpse, her eyes came back up, blazing. "You're gonna pay for that!"

He just smirked. "Try and make me, woman." Cockiness aside, Shinji was more on guard with her than he'd been with the soldier. She was wearing a full set of Imperial-Standard heavy metal armor. There was no way that he'd be chopping parts off of her any time soon.

He doubted that his Stormcloak cuirass would hold off any heavy hits that she made with her sword.

"Hiyah!" The captain slashed, forcing Shinji to retreat. She was relentless though, keeping up a barrage of strikes which kept him on his backfoot.

'Would've been better if I'd could've gotten that shield off of the corpse."

There was nothing he could do about it now, though.

Raising her sword high, Shinji saw that she was going for an overhead power strike.

'Only got one shot at this' He thought to himself as his back hit the wall.

As the blade came down, he raised his axe with both hands and blocked.

It wasn't easy. The axe's blade was curved and the weapon was only meant to be wielded one-handed.

Sparks flew as the weapons grinded against each other, Shinji having to readjust his grip every couple seconds to make sure that the sword wouldn't just slide off the axe's blade and chop off his fingers.

'Right… NOW!'

On Earth, there was only ever one thing that Shinji had ever strived to become. No matter how much he struggled, no matter how hard it worked, everything always ended up in smoke, reminding him of how pathetic he was.

Now, on Tamriel, as he pushed the Imperial Captain's blade back and left her off-balance, everything went up in smoke.

And Shinji grinned.

Fire burst from his left hand in a stream, his Flames spell splashing the captain with raging fire.

It wasn't normally an attack spell. It was a spell that most people used to start campfires or slowly cook food with, mainly because it never did much damage. Something about the natural aura that almost all things produced mitigated the damage that the supernatural flames would deal.

The captain's screams echoed hauntingly as she furiously took blind swipes in his direction. Having moved away from being between her and the wall, Shinji was able to back away and keep enough space between them as his flames spell slowly heated her up. Shinji knew from personal experience that even if humans were hardier in the Age of the Gods and could easily survive being set on fire, you'd still die eventually if it wasn't put out.

And Shinji wasn't about to let up, either.

His smile wouldn't leave his face. Even if it was just the most basic spell that everyone who left the city knew, he'd done magic!

'Even though Grandpa would probably call it Magecraft instead.' Shinji thought to himself. He also didn't care. Just being able to do anything magic-related always brought a smile to his face.

As the screams died down and the captain dropped dead, he looked over to Ralof, who was staring at him uneasily.

"Ehm." The Nord cleared his throat. "One of them probably had the key." He leaned down to check the body of the nearest of the three slain. 'The boy's a mage, and he's damn insane!' Ralof came to a decision as he found the key in one of the pockets that he was searching. He definitely wasn't going to stick around the boy any longer than he had to. First chance he got, he'd split. "Here we are, found a key. Let's see if it'll open that door."

Ralof strode over to the first gate he'd tried to get open earlier. The key fit in the lock and turned easily. For a moment, he was tempted to quickly shut the gate behind him and trap the mage.

Only for a moment though, as he realized that there might be more Imperials ahead of them. That, and he doubted something like a lock would stop a furious mage.

The door swung open.

"Come on! Let's get out of here before that dragon brings the whole tower down on our heads." Ralof rushed through, leaving Shinji behind with the corpses.

Pausing, the blue-haired magus looked around, quickly eyeballing and counting up everything he'd be able to loot from the bodies.

There was obviously the leather armor from the soldiers and the iron armor from the captain, but that was a no-go. It wouldn't be a good idea to look like an Imperial if they met up with more of Ralof's friends, he mused. Although… maybe just grabbing the helmet would be fine.

That left the swords and the shield. He could dual-wield, but magic had already saved his life once. The shield on the other hand…

It came with him, strapped to his back. If he needed it, it'd be there. If he didn't need it, he'd still have a hand free to use the Flames spell again.

He headed through the gate that Ralof had opened, casting a glance back at where the Imperials had come from. There was a small part of Shinji that wanted to go back and see if there was anything of value there to loot, but he quashed that idea quickly.

Ralof had been right. There was no telling when the whole place would come crashing down on them all.


Author's Note:

No excuses, I actually had this done for awhile. I originally wanted to make this chapter a bit longer, but this'll have to do for now. With any luck, I'll have the next chapter posted some time this week.

No Omake this time, but I might do it for the next chapter.

Hope all of you are finding ways to survive the Coronavirus pandemic. Stay healthy and take precautions everyone!