Shadows of the Past
Chapter 1
Waking or sleeping, he couldn't escape the nightmare. In his plague-ridden dreams, the Thalmor caught him, over and over again, every time he lapsed into unconsciousness. Each time demanding to know where he got his sword, who were his compatriots, where were they, and what gods did he follow?
And his answers brought no relief; only more pain. He felt a few of his ribs crack when they kicked him. His head throbbed from the blows he'd taken, and he felt himself slip deeper into that darkness. And that was just the nightmares. The reality was far worse, because the dreams were only remembered pain. Awakening was worse, because it all returned.
Shackled to a rough stone wall that tore at the wounds on his back every time he shifted to find relief, his arms quivering and going numb as the blood drained from them. He hung there, barely hanging onto life, and wondering why he bothered to. He had long since given up on any chance to retaliate. They had taken his sword and armor when they first captured him, and he cursed himself for being too drunk to fight back, for not remaining alert enough to his surroundings. Brynjar would have been disgusted with him.
Moaning with pain, he never heard the commotion at the far end of the chamber, up the stairs that led to the guard's room. He never heard the soft scuff of boots approaching, or the door to his cell unlock. Belatedly, he smelled the scent of sweat and leather, and raised his head. His eyes refused to focus at first on the figure in front of him.
"When I get out of here, I'll kill you all myself!" he snarled with more force than conviction. He knew he was in no condition to do much of anything to anyone.
"Easy now, young man," a woman's voice soothed. "I'm here to help."
He blinked, and shook his head slightly to whip the hair out of his face. "You…you're not one of them?" he asked, as if unable to believe it.
"I should think not!" she snorted. "As if I'd have anything to do with Thalmor!"
"Who are you?" he asked weakly, hissing in pain.
"I'm Sergeant Edna Valerius," she replied. "And you are…?"
"Kaidan," the man said heavily. "I'm Kaidan."
"How did you end up here?" Sergeant Edna asked, as she moved closer to the shackles that bound him to the wall.
"The Thalmor invited me to high tea. What do you think?" Kaidan sneered.
The woman stopped, and her voice sharpened. "There's no need to be snide," she reprimanded him. "In case you hadn't noticed, I'm trying to help you."
She was right, Kaidan realized, and he apologized. "Oh, I dunno…some Justicars ambushed me outside of Falkreath."
"Alright," Sergeant Edna soothed again. "Let me get you out of those things."
She had apparently found a key, and with that in hand, it didn't take long to release him, and Kaidan slumped to the floor. His arms barely refused to hold his body off its filth. There was a soft hiss as the Sergeant saw his back for the first time. In moments she was holding a bottle to his lips.
"Drink this," she told him gently, assisting him as he drank it down. While the newer lacerations healed as the medicine took effect, there were still older scars that would probably never fade. Kaidan didn't care. For the first time in he didn't know how long, the pain was gone, and he felt better than he had in a long time. He got to his feet.
"Ah…a bottled miracle this stuff is," he smiled sardonically.
In the light of the few torches in the area, he got his first real look at his savior. She was older than he expected, perhaps twice his age, and she was wearing the light armor typical of a Legion soldier. Her gray hair was pulled straight back from her face and tied in a neat bun at the back of her neck. Clear brown eyes were accented with crow's feet, and while there were other lines on her face, the one close to her left eye was not a natural one. She'd seen combat. She was lean and hard, but there was a solid frame underneath it all. Sergeant Edna looked completely capable of handling herself in a fight. That she'd made it this far in life as a warrior brought her up in his estimation.
"Can you walk?" the sergeant asked now, turning to go back the way she'd come. "We need to get out of here."
"Wait," Kaidan said, stopping her. "Hold on a minute. One of the Thalmor got his hands on my sword. I know I've got no right to ask, but I could use your help in getting it back."
"Your sword?" Sergeant Edna frowned. "What's so special about the sword? Can't you just get another one?"
"This isn't me being sentimental," Kaidan insisted impatiently. "That sword belonged to my mother, yes, though I never knew her. But when the Thalmor captured me they were very interested in my sword. And anything they're interested in should be something they shouldn't have."
The sergeant seemed to turn this over quickly in her mind, but whatever she was thinking, she kept to herself. "Alright," she nodded. "Which way did he go?"
"Headed deeper into the dungeon," Kaidan growled. "And with luck, he's cornered like a rat."
"Well, you're going to need something to fight with," Edna pointed out. "Wait here." She retraced her steps back the way she'd come and returned a few moments later with an Imperial sword and shield that must have been in one of the other cells. She handed them to him and asked, "Are you any good with a sword and board?"
"It's not what I'm used to," he admitted, "but I can work with it."
Edna nodded. "Good," she said. "You don't have armor, so stay behind me and let me take the lead."
Kaidan felt like he'd swallowed something bitter, but he gave a nod and Edna unlocked the door on the other side of his cell and led the way down the passageway on the other side. He didn't like having to depend on someone else protecting him. Usually, he was more than capable of looking after himself in a fight. But the sergeant had a valid point: he didn't have his armor. Hopefully, he'd find it when he found his sword.
At the top of the stairs she paused and tightened her grip on her shield, then took a deep breath and rushed around the corner, surprising the Justiciar seated at a table. He jumped up immediately and pulled a long, curved two-handed sword off the scabbard on his back and swung it straight down on her. Edna caught the sword with her shield and stabbed under it with her sword, drawing first blood. Behind her, Kaidan roared, "You fucking son of a bitch! I'm gonna kill you!" as he charged past her and moved to flank the Justiciar. Seeing this, the Thalmor swung the sword at Kaidan, who was not armored, and Kaidan fumbled the shield, clearly unused to this fighting style.
"Fall back!" Edna ordered, expecting Kaidan to obey, but he was not one of her raw recruits and saw no reason to follow orders. This filthy elf was using his mother's sword, and he wanted the bastard dead. Giving an exasperated sigh, Edna bashed with her shield, staggering the Thalmor and forcing him to turn his attention to the older woman with a blade.
He kicked at the chair, sending it in her direction as the two-handed sword swung around again, making a low sweep, and Edna stumbled over the chair, unable to get her shield up in time to block. The blade cut deep into her armor, and she cried out as blood oozed down her arm.
"Fucking motherfucker!" Kaidan growled and bashed with his shield as he had just seen Edna do, following through with the sword. The old Imperial blade had seen better days, however, and while it didn't break, it wasn't as sharp as it should have been, and Kaidan realized he wasn't doing enough damage with it. The force and fury behind his blows, however, were taking their toll on the Justiciar, who dropped the two-handed sword and with one hand cast a healing spell on himself while throwing out electricity with the other.
Edna cried out again as her muscles seized up, as though having the worst Charlie horse of her life. Her shield dropped and her sword slipped off her nerveless fingers. Seeing this, Kaidan went completely berserk. Sweeping the nodachi off the floor, he laid into the Altmer with every ounce of hatred in him. The electrical attacks stung, but he powered through them, intent on inflicting as much pain on the Justiciar as the sick bastard had done to him. The energy shields raised were crushed through by the weight of Kaidan's attack, and the Justiciar became weaker and weaker.
Edna crawled over to her sword and picked it up, staggering to her feet and drawing a small steel dagger at her waist for her off hand to launch a two-weapon style of attack against the Thalmor.
Unable to defend himself on two separate fronts, the Altmer finally succumbed, and Edna leaned against the table, gasping. Kaidan retrieved her shield and handed it to her.
"Are you alright?" he asked, and Edna gave a weak chuckle.
"I will be, young man," she gasped. "That took more out of me than I like to admit. I'm getting a bit old for this kind of shite."
Kaidan studied the woman in front of him, now that he could see better in the torchlight of this chamber. Wisps of hair had escaped during the fight and tendrils curled down either side of her weathered Imperial face. There was little about her that could be considered soft, unless it was the smile she gave him when he returned her shield to her. He righted the chair so she could rest on it, then cleaned his sword on the Justiciar's robes before returning it to its sheath. He didn't bother to put the harness back on, hoping to find his armor first. As if she could read his mind, Edna asked, "Did you have anything else with you when they caught you, Kaidan?"
"I did," he nodded. "My armor, my tent, some other supplies."
"Maybe they're in that chest over there," she suggested, pointing.
Indeed, his gear was in the chest, and while Kaidan was pleased to get his armor back, he seemed even more delighted about his tent.
"What's so special about that?" Edna asked as she cast a healing spell on herself. It helped, and she was able to stand without feeling stiff. "Even if they'd tossed it, you could just get another one."
"Oh, no," Kaidan grinned – his first real smile in a long time. "This is a special tent. I had it specially made. You'll see when we have to make camp."
"Speaking of which," Edna said briskly, "we should get out of here."
"I can't thank you enough, Sergeant," Kaidan said. "I know you didn't have to help me."
"Oh, you can just call me Edna," she said, waving a dismissive hand. "I'm no longer with the Legion." At the raising of one curious eyebrow, she continued quickly, "What's the story with this sword?"
"The question on everyone's mind," Kaidan frowned, "even mine. This sword belonged to my mother. I never knew her, but it's my only real clue to finding out who she was. Listen," he hesitated, almost embarrassed. "I owe you my life, and I'm not a man who's comfortable being in debt. If you ever have need of me, I'd be glad to fight alongside you till that debt is repaid."
Again, Edna seemed to mull this over in her mind, but all she said was, "I'd be glad to have you travel with me." And she smiled a smile that lit up her weathered face.
Kaidan nodded solemnly, as he vowed, "I am your sword and shield."
Edna's eyes widened in wonder. They had left the abandoned prison and headed towards a clear, level place in the woods that Kaidan knew of, about a mile away. There, they made camp, and Kaidan pitched his tent. When she stepped inside, however, she gasped. It was larger than it should have been, and there were structures and furnishings already equipped inside.
"All the comforts of home in an itty-bitty living space," Kaidan chuckled.
"How is this possible?" Edna marveled.
"I made it myself," Kaidan boasted proudly.
Edna looked at him shrewdly. "Pull the other leg," she frowned.
"Maybe I'll tell you some other time," the younger man said, grinning. "For now, let's eat, rest and get comfortable."
Edna wandered over to a very comfortable-looking sofa in one corner. "Well, it's certainly nicer than any camp I've ever been bivouacked in," she commented. "Kaidan, may I ask you a question?"
"I suppose," he shrugged, coming around the campfire in the middle of the tent to sit on a cut slice of log.
"Will you tell me, what happened with the Thalmor?"
"Aye," he sighed. "I guess I owe you that. I'd been trying to find a way to cross the border into Pale Pass. In the meantime, I'd been picking up bounty contracts to keep some coin in my pocket. I must have drawn too much attention to myself. I'd been camping by the lake when they ambushed me. Seems the Thalmor don't ever need much evidence to bring in a suspect. They took one look at that sword, decided I'd be a good target for interrogation, and dragged me off to that abandoned prison."
"My goodness," Edna blinked. "Weren't you scared?
Kaidan laughed. "Brynjar used to say 'If you're not a little afraid, you're not understanding the situation,'" he answered. "Fear, I can deal with easily enough…but there was a moment or two when I started to think it really would be the end for me. The Thalmor would never have let me go, no matter what I told them. You've faced down mortality, too. Perhaps you know the feeling?"
"Oh, more than you know," Edna said pensively. She didn't say anything, but the horrors of war that she must have experienced must have shown on her face, because Kaidan quickly said, "I'm sorry to have reminded you of anything unpleasant. Just know that you're stronger because of it, because you're still here."
"You're right, of course," Edna replied, making an effort to shake off the shadows of the past. "The Thalmor will come after you again, you know. They aren't going to take this lying down."
"Probably," Kaidan shrugged, "and I'll be ready for them. Live and learn, right?"
He noticed her studying him, and knew what she probably saw, what she was probably thinking. She looked very much like someone who wanted to ask a thousand questions, but hesitated to pry. Kaidan knew very well that he was an enigma. His facial features didn't resemble any of the known races; his eyes were red, unusual enough that only the boldest dared to point it out to him; and he was a giant of a man, standing well over six and a half feet tall, and extremely well-muscled – though clearly he knew he was a bit malnourished from having spent time in that shithole of a prison.
Edna suddenly got to her feet, as if making up her mind about something. "What do you have in the way of cooking supplies?" she asked now, briskly.
Kaidan blinked. "Oh, well, there's the cookpot," he said, pointing out the obvious.
"Anything else?" Edna demanded. "Any pots or pans? Any flour? Salt? Vegetables? Meat?"
"I usually just roast whatever I catch over the fire," Kaidan offered, but it sounded like a weak excuse to her.
"Not good enough," she snapped, coming over to stand in front of him. The top of her head just reached the level of his eyes, so she didn't have too far to look up. She was tall for an Imperial. "Young man, how do you expect to keep your strength up, or recover from the ordeal you've just been through, if all you do is eat what you catch? Any animal can do that, and you, Kaidan, are no animal. I'll not have you going hungry while I travel with you. Not on my watch!"
She marched him over to the cupboard and made him dig around, eventually finding pots and pans buried in the back behind unwashed clothing, a pile of books and old furs that needed to have been tossed years ago. She handed the furs to Kaidan, saying, "Take these outside and burn or bury them. They're no good anymore and they're stinking up the place. And take those clothes down to that stream I noticed near here and wash them."
With a look of bewilderment on his face, Kaidan did as she asked, and when he returned an hour later, she was at the cookpot, stirring something that smelled so good it made his mouth water.
"What is that?" he murmured. "What are you cooking? It smells so good!"
"Just a little horker and ash yam stew," Edna replied. "I found a few usable items left in your pantry, but we're going to have to lay in a supply of things to cook with."
Coming closer to the older woman, Kaidan dropped to his knees. "You. Are. A. Goddess," he whispered. "How did you know my favorite food is horker?"
Edna grinned and winked. "I looked in your pantry," was all she said.
They ate a companionable supper, and afterwards Kaidan helped with the clearing away and cleaning up. They sat around his campfire and Kaidan suddenly asked, "I'd like to know a bit more about you, Edna. What were you getting up to, before you found me in that prison?"
Edna sighed, and for a moment Kaidan thought she might refuse to tell him, but eventually she spoke.
"I was at Helgen, a few days ago," she said finally. "I was on my way to Riverwood to visit my niece and nephew, and I got held up in Helgen because General Tullius – whom I'd known back during the Great War – was there with one of his regiments. They had just captured Ulfric Stormcloak and were going to execute him. I thought that perhaps after the execution, I might have a little time to catch up with my old friend. We'd lost touch, because I had retired from the Legion a few years back."
She drew a shuddering breath, her eyes focused on something in the past.
"Then a dragon attacked. Something out of legend. Huge, it was, and black as night. It roared, and suddenly fiery boulders were raining down out of the sky. It was chaos. The townsfolk were running everywhere, screaming, and Tullius was yelling orders to get them to safety, so I jumped in and did my best to help. But the dragon roared again, and the percussion of that roar was so strong I was flung against a building and lay there, stunned."
Kaidan couldn't believe his ears. A dragon? After all these centuries? He'd read books about them, and heard stories, of course, but no one had ever actually seen one. "What happened then?" he asked, quietly. "How did you escape?"
"A young soldier under Tullius' command, Hadvar by name," Edna replied, still not looking at him. "He helped me up, and together we made our way through the fire and ruin and chaos. I hear Tullius call out over the dragon's thunder to 'get into the keep, we're leaving,' and I knew then that not even the Emperor's Legions could fight something as horrible as that wyrm. Hadvar helped me to get to the keep, and from there we made our way through the tunnels and came out a cave below the town. Behind us was death and destruction, and over our heads, the dragon flew, ignoring us. It was headed northwards, last I saw. Hadvar and I knew we had to try to warn someone, so we went to Riverwood, where I intended to go anyway."
She drew a deep breath. "I talked to Alvor there, Hadvar's uncle. He's the smith, and seemed to hold some prominence in the town. Alvor begged me to go to the Jarl, Balgruuf, and plead with him to send some soldiers their way, since Riverwood was completely unprotected if a dragon attacked. Though after what I'd seen at Helgen, I knew a handful of soldiers would stand no chance against it, if it wiped out almost an entire regiment of Legion soldiers."
"Did the Jarl send any men?" Kaidan asked.
Edna nodded. "He did. It seems like he has his peoples' best interests at heart. Better than some I've met." She poked at the fire with a long stick and watched the sparks fly upwards. Resuming her story, she said, "The Jarl handed me off to his court mage; an infuriatingly pompous man named Farengar. Farengar, it seemed, had been doing research into dragons, and needed someone to run a fetch-and-carry mission for him to find something called a 'dragonstone.'"
"A dragonstone?" Kaidan echoed. "What's that?"
"Beats the Oblivion out of me," Edna snorted. "He never told me. To be fair, I didn't ask, either. But he said it was in a place called Bleak Falls Barrow – the same Bleak Falls Barrow near Riverwood that Hadvar pointed out to me when we escaped the dragon attack on Helgen."
Kaidan nodded. "So, did you find the dragonstone?"
"I haven't been there yet," Edna admitted. "I stayed the night at the inn in Riverwood, the Sleeping Giant, after visiting with my niece and nephew. Lucan runs the general store there with his sister Camilla. They're my older brother's children, though Cassius has been dead these ten years or more. I intended to head up to Whiterun the next morning, but while I was at the inn, trying to forget about what I'd just been through, I heard one of the patrons talking about a rumor of some kind of Thalmor activity in this area. I knew had to check it out. If the Thalmor were illegally capturing and detaining people they claimed were Talos worshippers without any evidence, I might be able to convince General Tullius that they were violating the White-Gold Concordat, and have him send a message to the Emperor. So after I spoke with Farengar, I came here. I haven't been back to Riverwood yet."
"I don't think the Emperor gives a flying skeever's ass about evidence," Kaidan snorted. "You'll forgive me, Edna, but I don't think very highly of a man who bent the knee to the Dominion."
"You aren't saying anything I haven't already thought, young man," Edna countered sharply. "I gave thirty years of my life to the Legion, to my country, to my Emperor, and what did it get us? We're no better off than if Titus Mede had just accepted the terms when first presented. I had serious concerns after the Great War about whether I should stay on or not, but several people – whose opinions I valued – encouraged me to be the change I wanted to see. So I tried to do that. All it got me was a continuous line of being passed over for promotions and—"
She stopped. "I won't bore you with all that right now," she finished. "Suffice to say that while I'm not happy with the Emperor himself, I'm still loyal to the Empire and to the Legion, which is why I still wear my uniform. But right now, I'm glad to know that I was at least able to rescue one person from the clutches of the Thalmor. And I still have a mission to complete."
"You know I'll go with you," Kaidan assured her, "to this Bleak Falls Barrow. I've got your back."
Edna smiled. "Thank you, Kaidan. That's very nice of you. I'm interested to see you using that sword on your back. It's almost as big as you are."
A faint smile crossed Kaidan's face, but he kept his thoughts to himself. Edna excused herself a little while later, saying she was tired and was going to get some sleep. She climbed up the stairs to the loft to sleep on one of the bedrolls there. Kaidan stayed awake a while longer with his thoughts.
He knew a little more about his traveling companion, but there was still a lot there she wasn't saying, he was sure of it. She'd mentioned she was no longer with the Legion, and she admitted to being no stranger to death. She'd fought in the Great War, and while the results of that conflict were less than satisfying, he respected her for her service. The shadows in her eyes hinted at horrors he couldn't now imagine. She held the rank of Sergeant, yet refused to allow him to address her as such. She was a mystery, and Kaidan didn't like mysteries.
He heard a faint moaning coming from the loft; he quietly went to the steps and climbed high enough to peek over the top. Edna was frowning in her sleep, moving restlessly from side to side. She was mumbling something, but he couldn't quite make out the words, except one: 'dragon'. Understanding, Kaidan withdrew. Whatever she had witnessed at Helgen when the dragon attacked was replaying itself in her dreams. He didn't envy her that. His own nightly battles were only against the two-legged type of monster.