Daughter to Dragons- a Skyrim inspired fantasy

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty

Before my mother and father met, they each led drastically different lives. My father's story is well-known throughout Skyrim, even throughout most of the empire by now. My mother's story, however, was unknown. And that was just as she wanted it.

Ellya Trevalion was the half-Breton, half-Redguard bastard daughter of a powerful nobleman in High Rock. Despite being illegitimate, she was still very much a part of her lord father's stately affairs. She was expected to sit it on meetings and learn the courtly arts. This was a part of her day mask, the one where everyone could see her. In the shadows, however, she was taught the darker side of dealing with the court.

To call my mother a spy to her face would have resulted in a knife, which you never even knew was there, buried in your back with nary a drop of blood on her.

Trained in the deadly arts found in every recess of the noble court, my mother excelled. No secret was outside her grasp and nothing was safe from her reach. Through her help, her lord father elevated his rank through delicate political maneuvering.

But when you reach the top, the only place you have left to go is down. And the higher you are, the farther you fall.

When her father had been outmaneuvered and named a traitor, he lost everything. He was killed for high treason and my mother was forced to flee. She thought to find a safe haven among her mother's people in Hammerfell, but found life in the harsh deserts unsuitable, and thus she fled to Skyrim. It was here that she met my father, only shortly after the Dragon Crisis had ended.

She had heard of the Dragonborn, of course, but knew next to nothing about him. After having infiltrated into the court of the Blue Palace in Solitude, the former capital of Skyrim, claiming to be an ambassador from High Rock, she discovered that the Game extended far beyond the reaches of Breton court, deeply intertwined everywhere the notion of politics touched.

She discovered a plot to assassinate Ulfric Stormcloak and perform a coup to place the Imperials back in power, bringing Skyrim back into the fold. Her skills as a spy, or a bard as she liked to call it, came of use when Owain Dragontooth made an appearance in court, having heard rumors of such a coup.

As the tale goes, together they discovered a cousin of Jarl Elisif had been involved and was working toward smuggling in imperial legions to ensure Skyrim wasn't dragged into yet another civil war.

But according to my father, the truth was that my mother was the brains behind the whole operation. It was her skills that allowed her to nestle into the affairs of the nobles and whisper secrets into her ear, sharing the latest gossip. She sorted through the secrets and told my father which of them held weight and where to look. He always said that he fell in love with her that night and he never truly loved another woman like her. I believed it.

I come from two separate but equally important worlds. One is the world of my father: the adventurer, assassin, hero. He put a blade in my hand and taught me to fight. The other world is that of my mother's. She taught me the art of intrigue. Words, she told me, were my weapons in this world, and she taught me to wield them like a warrior.

Walking through the great hall of the Palace of Kings reoriented me into this second world of mine. One where a fight is done with words, but the cuts are just as bloody.

To an untrained ear, the prattle was just that, prattle. But to my ear, I heard the fears of a Thalmor invasion as one had been sighted in the Rift.

As my eyes scanned the hall, I spotted a trio of Redguards huddled against a wall, trying to not draw attention to themselves. If you look like you belong, no one will even notice you, my father's words rang clear in my mind. Still, it begged the question of what they were even doing here. Perhaps the question of an alliance between our nations was finally being answered.