Under the shadowy branches of Skyrim's tallest evergreen trees, my carriage trudged along the path from Cyrodiil, carrying on its back four bound men. Three of these men were traitors. One of them was innocent. Two of them were rewriting history.
One of them was me.
I wasn't at fault. I was caught in an ambush on the Cyrodiil side. One of these people, the man sitting next to me, was Ulfric Stormcloak. I couldn't even pretend to not know who he was. He used an ancient Nord power to destroy the High King, news that the son of an Imperial officer can't easily miss. I sat in silent judgement. Want to know what I was thinking?
I'm going to die by accident next to a traitorous asshole.
My thoughts aren't poetic. Thankfully, I'm not naturally blunt unless I'm upset. The fact that I got myself caught in a rather significant situation also factored into this.
"I don't remember any cats tagging along."
I was jolted from my deep thought and hadn't noticed that the Stormcloak follower across from me had said that."Excuse me?", I asked, raising my blue eyes to attention.
"You heard me," he jabbed.
"Actually, no, I didn't," I answered honestly.
"I don't remember any cats following us."
I dealt with this crap often enough that I just sighed in response.
"Whose side are you on?" he questioned.
"It's none of your disgusting business. I was mistaken for the likes of you."
His face went red as he leaned back and looked out towards the carriage's destination; The fort town of Helgen, where I was destined to be executed. The citizens gazed in near-silence, and only broke it to shout obscenity. I was almost fooled into believing I did do something wrong. The carriages stopped, jolting me from my thoughts again. Curse my small attention span.
"Everybody up!" an Imperial questioner shouted. I complied. I wasn't about to disobey, but a rebel had another idea, and ran about twenty feet before dying in a less... dignified fashion.
Because the dirt was somehow fascinating, I hadn't realized when it was my turn to speak. "What is your name?" the questioner asked.
"My name is Karal'e," I choked, the wind chilling the skin beneath my sand-colored fur.
"Well, my? Unusual of a Khajiit," she remarked.
"It was my upbringing."
"Good for you. Head over to the block."
The atmosphere was ominous. Ominous enough that it took me a few moments to register what her order was. I turned my head, and saw the executioner with his blade, hungry for another man's neck. I stood and waited for my name to be called, and surely enough, I was next. No emotion was felt as I laid my head down, waiting for the silence of death. Instead of silence, however, a large roar echoed from the mountains.
"What was that?" an Imperial exclaimed.
The sudden sound of shifting wind passed through my ears. People began to scream, and some unnatural screeching sound stood out over the audible desctruction. Although I could see nothing, I heard everything, and after finding that the executioner was gone, I looked up at a dragon as it launched itself from the top of a now-crumbling watch tower. I was caught in confusion, and ran without a thought of how to escape, when I heard a familiar voice call from a nearby tower. It was the asshole from the carriage ride.
Oh, fuck me.
I ran inside, realizing he was half-heartedly trying to help me.
"Normally, I wouldn't do this, but we need strength in numbers to escape," he said with a gesture towards Ulfric. "And you don't want to die like this, do you?"
I glanced back as the door closed, watching as the town was set ablaze. "I guess not," I replied. It didn't take a scholar to tell that Ulfric was attempting to escape, but I was more concerned about my immediate future.
"Smart choice. My name's Ralof. Head upstairs, we need help on the roof!"
He ran up the tower with a hunting bow. I wasn't sure what he had in mind for it, but I wasn't about to question them about it when their intent was to spare me. As I bolted upstairs, the dragon's head burst through the wall, sending me tumbling back to the floor. Ralof tried to help me up, but I rose nimbly to my feet, finding the stairway blocked. I quickly turned away as the dragon sent fire spewing out of it's mouth, filling the room, roasting the furniture and the wounded Stormcloaks among it. The beast then left for new prey.
Ralof called towards me. "Damn it, we need to get out of here!" The sound of an explosion interrupted him. "There's no other way out, jump through the wall!"
"Do you want me to die?", I shouted. He left without an answer, so I ran up to the hole in the wall. Sparing no time, I jumped out, and fell into the second floor of a nearby house.
As soon as I gathered my thoughts, I dashed through the house, and dropped through another hole to the first floor. I ran outside, finding a child being rushed from his father's dead body. I tried to shake off my feeling of grief and ran to cover when a soldier joined me.
"Are you a Stormcloak?", he asked breathlessly.
"No. Do you have armor? I'd like to avoid burning to death."
"Yeah, I'd be worried about that, too," he said, inspecting me. "Follow me if you want to live."
"Glad to know I have a choice."
I was rushed into the barracks, where numerous dead or wounded Imperial soldiers lay. The soldier, who introduced himself as Hadvar, cut my bindings and handed me armor and weapons. He and I continued through a secret passage to escape the mayhem in town. It was then that I realized that this was not just a battle between man and dragon, but Imperial and Stormcloak, as two rebel soldiers threatened us.
I hadn't used a sword since my father had trained me, but I managed to do some damage. Thankfully, I had a far more experienced fighter by my side. We pressed onward, running through a hall when the ceiling collapsed in front of us. We took a detour through a kitchen, and I took whatever supplies I could find. I scraped up food and a healing potion.
We later reached a torture chamber. There were sights there that I would prefer to forget. Hadvar handed me some lockpicks and suggested I loot the cages for supplies. I had only been so close to an actual dead body once before. The lifeless presence I felt as I searched their pockets was unsettling, bringing back a part of my past that I had been running from when I stumbled upon the Stormcloak ambush. I knew that I would soon be well-acquainted with rummaging through corpses. After a few minutes of forced searching, I found more potions and a bit of gold. We fought on, facing Stormcloaks with hunting bows, which I took for myself when they were finished off. One of them got me in the ear. By the Eight, that fucking hurt.
"Do you need some help?"
I shook my head to say "no".
"Suit yourself," he said.
After ten minutes that felt like hours, we reached a cave, and a bear lay in slumber.
"Stay completely silent," Hadvar asserted. "Or wake it up, your call."
Knowing full well how horribly a bear attack could turn out, I followed him through the shadows to the cave exit. We finally left the dark and deadly cavern. The light was nearly blinding. Just as my eyesight caught up with my surroundings, I heard a roar and the dragon flew away overhead, casting its shadow briefly over a distant town.
"That's Riverwood. I need to get to the Legion," Hadvar said, gravely. "I think you can fend for yourself, right?"
Exasperated, I could only nod in response.
"On second thought, you should follow me there. I know some people who can take care of you, for now."
After a few minutes on a winding dirt path, we reached an ancient relic that I vaguely recognized. It was something my mother taught me about back home. Three tall stones, each glowing a distinct color, inked delicately onto finely-cut pages.
"The Guardian Stones," Hadvar said with nostalgia. "Take your pick."
He seemed to expect me to know what they were, and what they did. I only vaguely remembered them. The monument evoked a memory of my mother's lessons in magic, about the many standing stones of Skyrim. It was the subject of one of my mother's many books. Books that she made me read before I went to bed at night. I can almost remember her say...
"The three stones of power. Choose one path to guide your abilities. The Mage, Warrior and Thief stones," Hadvar interjected.
Well, it felt like an interjection. I was somewhere else entirely.
After I woke myself from thought, I found myself standing in front of the mage stone. A blue pool of light shimmered in the hole at head-height. I knew I had to reach up and ease my hand through, but... the Nords were kind of tall back then, let's put it that way. My hand shook as it passed through the blue light. When it reached wrist-deep, I felt the power of the standing stone slither through my veins, and my arm was suddenly ensnared, my vessels tugged at like the ropes holding back a wild boar. When I was released, I fell back on the ancient stone, and spoke my first words in hours.
"I'm gonna fucking puke!"
"You're one of the lucky ones, believe me," Hadvar said as he began to turn. "Come on, let's keep going."
"How is this helping me?"
"I'm walking you to a place where you can spill your lunch to your heart's content."
"I didn't have lunch!"
"Oh." He slowed for a moment. "Well, you can get some when you get there. You must be starved."
I hadn't expected this level of compassion, given the "warm" welcome I received from his fellow soldiers. Perhaps he figured it was a misunderstanding, since I didn't fit in well at all with the Stormcloaks. I think the fur was the first clue.
"So," Hadvar continued. "The Mage stone, eh?"
"Yeah. Sort of-" I stumbled as I walked. "...a family thing, I guess. Following parental guidance."
"I see. Where are you from?"
He could've made a good guess. An incorrect one, but a predictable one, although I could tell he wasn't the assumptive type.
"Cyrodiil. My father was an Imperial legate." I paused. "Is a legate."
"Really, now? Did he speak like... You know?"
"With 'this one' and 'Khajiit do this-and-that' instead of 'I'? Of course. My mother didn't. Her name was Merah'e, if you recognize her as an author by some slim chance."
"Any name for your father?"
"Khel'ja. He was well-liked, internally." I absorbed the sound of birds above us. "I don't think he deserved it."
"Although I take it you're still with the Imperials?" It seemed like Hadvar was side-stepping the topic of my father.
"Yeah. How did you figure that? You should've assumed I was with Ulfric."
"I did, at first. But I knew they wouldn't hire Khajiit unless they were desperate."
"They are desperate," I emphasized. "Just not enough to transcend racism."
"Aye, they're blind in more ways than one." He stopped and looked off into the distance. I tried to follow his gaze, and he pointed toward a gash in the terrain with giant arches. "See those ruins? That's Bleak Falls Barrow. A Nord tomb."
I looked out at the foreign architecture. I had heard plenty from my mother and father, but never had a good idea of what the tombs looked like. I heard that they were impressive, but even from this distance, the towers were belittling. The Barrow was only one of them. The rustle of branches added base to the song of the birds, with the wind as the chorus which echoes the tune. All of it played together perfectly, and all perfectly by chance. At that moment, I took in just how beautiful Skyrim was.