Chapter VIII

The swirls of light danced before his eyes, breathing in he winced in anticipation as the colours and shapes formed objects, places and memories. He was in Skyrim, he saw the Throat of the World on its distant peak. The shapes of lights moved again, snapping around in the air. He kept his eyes closed, determined to press deeper. Rugged, snowy mountains formed yet again. The Throat of the World faded out of view this time and the colours sent him hurtling towards the ground. Now he stood, surrounded by trees, no path, no escape. The colours vanished. Jiub opened his eyes.

Closer, Jiub thought. He found himself surprisingly content considering his surroundings and the company. He stretched his arms and stood from his crossed legged position on the cold, hard ground.

"Awake now prisoner?" asked the Imperial man standing watch.

"Yes, thank you," replied Jiub politely.

"I told you not to do that... awake dreaming stuff," the Imperial grunted.

"Meditation," corrected Jiub, not missing a beat.

"Yeah, right. Well whatever it is you're doing, don't think I'm not watching you," snarled the Imperial.

Jiub didn't reply, instead he stood up and paced his makeshift cell. He had been arrested in Cyrodiil, taken on charges of blackmail and burglary. Completely fabricated of course. Nevertheless he had found himself thrown into a dank cabin of an Imperial Ship with another prisoner, then taken to Morrowind, his homeland. Jiub never knew what was happening at any step of the way, he had watched his fellow prisoner be released in Seyda Neen, he didn't know whether to expect the same, or whether he was being taken to an Imperial Prison. Instead, he heard a commotion above deck one night. From what he could make out from the corner of his cramped room, there had been a mutiny. The Captain and some other sailors had been killed, then the rest of the crew had commandeered the ship for themselves. A week later and they landed ashore off a forsaken rock in the Eastern and battered reaches of Vvardenfell.

"You won't be around here much longer anyway, Dark Elf," the Imperial again piped up.

"Oh?" Jiub said, turning his head in vague curiosity.

"Nope, boss reckons we've got a buyer interested in you. You're fetching a good deal of coin as well, the gods know why."

"So your slavers?" Jiub asked.

The Imperial laughed,

"We don't keep slaves back in Cyrodiil, unlike you savages," he replied curtly.

"So you're not slavers, nor are you Imperial Legionnaires, not anymore anyway," pondered Jiub.

The Imperial guard grunted,

"Eh, I guess not. The coin was too much to pass up, forget the Empire. Besides, you saw what happened to the Captain and the other men for not going along with this plan, I plan on living a little longer than that," he said.

Jiub sat back down and reclined against the cage. Slowly, he was piecing together his captors plans, through snippets of information revealed by absent minded guards with loose tongues and his own cunning of course.

"So your boss... he must know something big to abandon his position in the Legion and sell me for gold."

The Guard laughed.

"Maybe he does, either way he got some information, told a few of us about the plan and here we are."

With that the Guard walked off, leaving Jiub once again alone in his cell. He was beginning to get used to his life of imprisonment, but knowing that he was so closed to walking free in his native lands of Morrowind once more... the thought of that was too much to bear. Before all of this, he had lived in Cyrodiil. But there was a fire inside him, and it yearned for the dusty lands of the Dunmer once more.