Author's Note: This chapter is very short for pacing/structural reasons. The next chapter will be very long and very important to the story.
The stone was rough against my skin. It was cold, chilling my soul through my spine. My wrists laid limp in the shackles that hung from the ceiling. I strained the muscles in my arms, tugging at the chains. Doing no damage. Making no difference.
This cell was stoic at sight and brutal at touch. A small square, with a tall door, firmly bolted and iron-clad. No level of human strength could break through. There was no escape for me in that state. I was a powerless soldier.
We had raided the camp –Lydia and I – just as we had planned. We did not plan, however, for the bandits to be as powerful as they were. They had a leader, a man, who channeled his soldiers cleanly and carefully with precise calculation. There was no way to expect him.
Karal'e was surely looking for us. I was sure he was suspicious. I knew, however, that Ri'saad would not be with him, and that they would need a great amount of power to get through that militia. Lydia and I are two of his best assets, and Ri'saad's power is second to his own. They don't like to admit it. They humble themselves. When I put it that way, perhaps he was enough to take them down.
However hard it is to admit it, I cannot compare to him. Not normally. He is the Dragonborn, and destined to be powerful. It is his fate to be able to destroy whoever he pleases. I am just a servant in comparison. A rock at the base of a towering mountain. A shrubbery by the trunk of a great oak tree.
For this reason, I had no hope of surviving that bandit raid at first. I was too weak to handle something like that. Now, here I am. Sitting alone in a cell, because they had a trump card waiting beneath the surface. However, looking up at the Twin Moons through a small crack of a window, a grin spread across my stubbled face, for I had a trump card of my own.
As the bandits gambled and guzzled their mead in jovial celebration, the room froze with a ghastly, deafening howl.