That's Madness (a Skyrim fanfiction)

Chapter One - Delayed Burial

A/N: Hey guys! 

I'm back with a new story, this one featuring Skylar Whitemane's eldest daughter Maryse...I think you guys can figure out roughly which storyline in Skyrim this'll follow...and I'm really looking forward to it! 

So, enjoy! This takes place about fifteen years after The Dragonborn Comes. 

***

"Come to me...I have need of you..."

The voice whispers to me in the darkness. I can't run away from it, nor can I run to it. It's not coming from any particular direction...it feels like the voice is echoing inside my brain and then inside my entire being. The voice feels like it's part of me, like it has always been part of me. There's something oddly comforting about it...

"The broken wheel and the marshlands will decide your fate," the voice says to me and then it fades away.

***

I wake up suddenly, drenched in sweat. Disgusting. I get out of my bed shakily and pull the curtains across from my window. Sunlight pours into my room and reflects off of my shiny new armour in the corner of my room that Eorlund Greymane, the best smith in all of Skyrim, made for me the other day. He's getting old but he's still going relatively strong, thank the gods. The Companions rely on him heavily to get by. The Companions without their intimidating weapons and armour would not command at least of of the respect that they do. I find it incredible that Eorland still finds it in himself to wake up everyday and work the Skyforge...he lost his brother, Vignar, a few weeks ago to Brain Rot and he hasn't quite been the same ever since. I certainly wouldn't be able to leave my bed if Blaise or Lucia died.

I walk over to my armour and I reach out a hand to touch it. It's made out of a special form of glass called malachite. It's the malachite that keeps the glass armour from shattering and gives it incredible strength. Eorlund also showed me how to craft my own glass weapons and I have two sets of daggers and a full quiver of glass arrows. They're very, very deadly. I don't like to waste them though, so I usually stick with plain steel arrows and sometimes Orcish arrows. 

"Maryse, are you up?" Lydia calls my name.

Lydia is my mother's housecarl and best friend. A housecarl is a sort of bodyguard, they're sworn to protect their employer, and everything their employer owns and hold dear, with their life. My mother is Thane of Whiterun...she's kind of like a noble in the Jarl's court, I suppose. As well as being Thane, she's also the Harbinger of the Companions and the Dragonborn. The Companions are a group of warriors that fight for honour and glory. They protect people, they kill bandits, they find lost heirlooms...they pretty much do anything they're paid to do.

My opinion? They're glorified mercenaries. Don't tell my parents I said that.

Oh, and by 'Dragonborn', I mean that my mother is a legendary hero that can use special Dragon Shouts to do...well...a lot of things. She can breathe fire, frost, call upon terrible storms, call the animals to her allegiance, become ethereal...you name it, she can probably do it. She also saved the entire world from a god-like dragon called Alduin when she was only seventeen.

You can probably imagine that me and my siblings have a lot to live up to and it isn't just my mother! My great-grandfather was also Harbinger before my mother (I have no idea what happened to my grandfather. Mother won't tell me.) and my Uncle Marco (my mother's brother) was one of the best wizards of this generation. Some people say his skill could match the monks of the Psjiic order...

But he passed away a good while ago, when I was six, because of some terrible accident inside of a Nordic tomb. 

"Yeah, I'm up," I shout back at Lydia. I push open the doors to my bedroom and Lydia is sat on a chair by the stairs leading to the downstairs part of Breezehome. She's pulling on her ebony boots. She's dressed in her ebony armour and her gauntlets and helmet lie on the end table next to her. The armour is gorgeous and it looks like crafted midnight, sleek and black.