Silence-Before-Dawn, Skyrim Fanfiction

Helgen

Oww... My head...

I struggle to open my eyes. Everything is swaying and my vision is blurry at first, but slowly it clears. A wagon. I'm on a blooming wagon in the middle of Sithis knows where. A man sits across from me, with blond hair and a strange uniform. He speaks to me, but I can't hear most of it. Something about storm cloaks? I think I've heard of a spell like that, but I haven't learnt it yet.

I look around. Another man is diagonal to me, dressed in rags. A third, wearing much nobler attire sits next to me, gagged. The blond mentions something about him being Ulfric Stormcloak, so I assume he must be some sort of destruction mage.

The cart brings us in to some strange town, in the country I presume must be Skyrim. The blond said something about my being captured trying to cross the border, which I vaguely remember, and I believe it was Skyrim I was trying to sneak into. I really should spend some time improving my stealth.

The man dressed in rags gets more and more antsy as we move deeper into the town. Seems to think we're all here to be killed. This makes me smile, the first I've managed in a while. It would be quite entertaining to see them try. I might not be as easy to kill as they would expect.

I get lost in my own thoughts for a bit, and when I come back to reality, I'm standing in front of several guards near the idle of the town. I can see the man in rags dead in the distance. Pathetic. I feel regret only in that I missed the opportunity to watch the life leave his body. Such a worthless person had no value to me outside of what I might have learned about death from his sacrifice. Poor bloke had failed to even serve that purpose.

The guards call me forward, examine me, and ask for my name. I give it readily, with a sneer.

Silence-Before-Dawn.

They confirm that not only am I NOT wanted for my supposed crimes, but also that in spite of this, they will attempt to kill me anyways. Fools.

Some sort of prayer is being spoken for our souls, and the Ulfric fellow stares intensely at me. He isn't my type, but I suppose he's not terribly hard on the eyes, accounting for his lack of tail or scales. The first of the poor bastards has his head cleaved cleanly off with one swing of the executioner's axe. Then they call me forwards.

I doubt they'll be able to do much to me with so feeble a weapon, but I don't particularly fancy the possibility of the dead man's blood mingling with my own. Luckily for them, and for the cleanliness of my neck, their ill-fated attempt to end my life is unapologetically interrupted by a large dragon landing heavily on one of the towers near the centre of the town.

I am immediately forgotten in the rush as every being in the area rushes to save his own skin. All except for one, the blond from the wagon. He stays behind, calling out to me, telling me to follow him to a safe place. How interesting. If he keeps acting out of accordance to my expectations, he just might be more interesting to me alive than dead...

That being said, I absolutely despise being told what to do. I have never meshed well with those who try to instruct me in anything, and those who try to force me to obey the law just make me want to break it more. I don't want to follow him, so I immediately turn away and head in the opposite direction of where he is trying to take me. I wander around for a bit, but rocks keep falling from the sky, and my hands are bound so there's not much I can do at the moment without some help. I reluctantly return to where he was trying to lead me, passing many dead and injured soldiers and prisoners along the way.

I brush past them and hurry up the stairs, only to be bet with a face full of bricks and dragon fire as the beast smashes open the side of the building and shouts his Thu'um in my face. Rude. "I'll remember this transgression", I mutter, as I turn and launch myself out of the newly formed door and into the burning house below.