Lying amidst a pile of burlap sacks and barrels, a young dunmer prisoner was having a fitful dream that he would not remember, save for clutches of colors and noises and ideas. The color red, like blood, and the sounds of chanting, and chewing. The conceptual smell of decay, and trama root tea - the conceptual feel of being touched on the face. The sound of tortured breathing in a quiet, stone room. The feeling of being watched.
He woke up with a start, flailing both arms out for a handhold and not finding one. His breath held in his chest and he gasped for air as if he was under water, and swallowed his pent-up spit down the wrong pipe in panic. He was drowning in his own spit. He wheezed and coughed painfully and pounded his chest, forcing the foreign liquid out from his lungs and into his inflating cheeks. He swallowed again, correctly, but kept coughing. His eyes were watering - everything around him was a sea of the color brown, with a blurry spot of greyish blue right in front of his face - the blurry spot looked menacing.
"Are you going to live?" a coarse, rusty voice said. Even without seeing him, the coughing youth could taste the coppery bite of dry humor. That, or he had started to cough up blood. He licked the inside of his cheek and decided that that wasn't the case, and let out another staggered, punching cough. It took a long time to get something out of your lungs. He wiped his eyes on the filthy sleeve of his ragged shirt, and looked up at the scarred, scrappy-looking dunmer standing in front of him. The grizzled mer had leaned up against the paneled wooden wall of the small storage room, and it held his weight with a disgruntled groan.
"Finished with your wheezing?" the Dunmer asked. He stared down at the young mer between the burlap sacks, blinking with his one good eye while the other scarred socket sat unmoving. The mer on the ground coughed again but was trying to hold it in, and he nodded and swallowed. He thought that he saw a smirk from the one-eyed mer, but he was probably just imagining it to make him seem less scary and intimidating. The fact that the grey skin of his shirtless chest was laced with callouses and scars didn't help. His eyes fell on the old manacles around the prisoner's wrists. It seemed as if he noticed the sudden interest, because the prisoner brought his hand to one of the bands and fidgeted with the iron pin. It squeaked in its hole.
"You had a rough night," the mer said, the gaunt skin of his cheeks straining and clenching as he yawned, and then pursed his thin lips into a grimace. He continued, at the blank look from the youth, "Must have had a bad dream or some such thing. Not even last night's storm could wake you." The mer offered out a grizzled hand, that was missing the ring finger past the third knuckle. He watched as the lad hesitated, and then grabbed the hand and let the prisoner pull him off the floor.
"What's your name?" he asked, watching as the mer dusted himself off.
"Baltis," he said, and he coughed again slightly. The matted plume of his mohawked hair was smushed down by the burlap sacks, and it looked more like a wonky row of dark orange wickwheat running the length of his head than a hairstyle. He reached up to his head and felt it, and let out a sigh of disappointment. It was a very popular hairstyle back in the city that he just ruined. He'd been able to keep it up for so long. "What's your name?" he asked back. He had only seen this prisoner around the ship a handful of times. For such a long journey, almost a month, it was unusual.
"Anon." the mer lied.
"Anon? I've never heard that name before."
"It's a last name."
"Oh, I see. What's your first name?"
The dunmer called Anon pushed off from where he was leaning and ducked around the doorframe to look into the main cargo hold of the ship, which was lined on either side with long wooden tables, held up by ropes attached to the ceiling. There were a few tired looking prisoners eating slop, all seated far apart from each other. Otherwise, the room was empty, but the way the water sounded, and the muffled activity from the above decks, told him they had reached shore.
"I don't have a first name," the dunmer said, still looking into the cargo hold. This statement was also not true. "Just call me Anon."
"Okay Anon." Baltis said, and saw as the mer's scarred back huffed with what could have been any range of emotions. It looked like he had been lashed. "Why are you in prison?" Baltis asked.
Anon pulled his head back out of the doorframe and turned around.
"Murder." he lied, quickly. "Stabbed a man."
"Is that so?" Baltis asked, and he sounded skeptical, so Anon turned around and looked into the cargo hold again. The dirty lanterns were gently swaying, and the shadows of the tables and benches shifted on the grimy wooden floor. The sound of footsteps came from the level above, moving over their heads with the metal thunk thunk of a spearman's boots.
"Yes." he said flatly.
"So what-" Baltis began, and Anon hushed him with a raised hand. The other hand was splayed out over the doorframe, and the missing finger stood out like a sore thumb against the dark, worn wood.
"Quiet," he said, still observing the cargo hold, "here comes the guard." He pulled his gaze away and retreated back into their small room, and climbed up and crouched on top of a crate, tucked into a corner.
Baltis watched as the soldier's legs appeared on the stairs, and his studded leather tunic, and finally his close-shaved head. He was a man of reasonable girth, and his studded shirt looked strained around his belly. His face was gruff and ruddy. From the corner, Anon gave Baltis a nervous, warning look, and put his finger up to his terse lips. Quiet. He looked back to the guard and felt a lump in his stomach.
The portly soldier walked up to the doorframe and eyed it skeptically, and then looked Baltis in the face. He looked mildly annoyed, like he didn't enjoy his job.
"Come on, we're on a tight schedule. This is your stop. Let's get you off this boat," the soldier said, already turning the other direction. Baltis nodded and followed, and as he left the small storage room he heard the hiding dunmer's raspy voice say in a quiet whisper "You had better do what they say."
As he walked away, following the bulky soldier in his ascension up the wooden stairs, that groaned and creaked with his booted footsteps, Baltis tried to remember ever seeing the dunmer Anon at any of the roll calls during their journey from Blacklight. He couldn't recall a time. He couldn't even remember seeing the scarred prisoner any time one of the imperial guardsmen was present. It was like he disappeared into thin air. Baltis almost considered asking the soldier about this mysterious prisoner, but something (and he was unclear about what exactly it was) kept him from doing so. Baltis tucked the memory of Anon into the back of his mind as he arrived with the soldier at another set of stairs, leading up to the top deck. The soldier sat down on a wooden navy cot along the hull.
"Head on up," he said, lazily waving towards the hatch.
And Baltis Verano did - he pushed up on the hatch door and met a humid blast of air and wetness, like he had stepped through a ceiling made out of water. The sun was at his back and nestled behind the soppy marsh trees, flickering red behind the swaying tendrils of algae hanging from the branches. Insects buzzed around his eyes and nostrils as he turned to look at its light. He thought, what an awful place.
But this was the first sun he had seen in weeks, and for that he was grateful.
Feel free to give me lots of critique on this. I'm really trying to get a solid writing technique down that people like to read, so let me know what you think! Thanks for reading =)
Also, I'm generally trying to approach this from a different angle than just reciting what happens in the game. I know there was a lot of dialogue that was drawn from that opening chargen scene, but I'm going to be straying from that starting in the next couple of chapters. I really want to flesh out the main story with character development. So hope you all enjoy!