4E, Morndas, 18th of Last Seed
Food.
That’s all I had wanted to get, a little extra food. My family needed it… I needed it… we couldn’t survive off of that shit the guards give us to ration every other night. It was barely enough to feed 1 person, let alone 4. I hated the slums. I hated the guards. But what could I do? Nothing. So I decided to learn how to hunt from a wood elf friend of mine. He taught me everything, from how to make a bow, to how to skin the animal after it’s dead.. That’s what I’d been doing.
Hunting.
I stalked that deer for miles, only for something to startle it and have it take off… well, I wasn’t going to let it get away so easily was I? So I chased it.. further and further, then through some mountains, and then it cut around a corner… straight into an imperial soldier. He appeared to be laying in wait for somebody or something, and when I crashed into him he was quite startled. He threw me off and hit me with the hilt of his sword, and I passed out, unconscious. That’s all I remember up until I woke up on that cart. I didn’t know where we were going, but the man across from me seemed pretty sure it was to death. There were four of us in that cart - me, the man across from me, the horse thief, and one man sitting next to me who had a gag in his mouth. I wondered why, until I was informed that it was Ulfric Stormcloak, the leader of the rebellion in Skyrim.
We arrived in Helgen in the early morning. The Stormcloak across from me told me it was here we would die… We got down from the carts and were asked our names. When they got to me, and I told them mine, the imperial who was checking the list told his captain that I wasn’t on the list. I was saved! Or was I… The captain didn’t seem to care. She looked at me with those cold dark eyes, and told me to follow her.. I did. I prayed to the divines to keep my family from starving and to keep them safe from harm. Then I saw the headsman. We were getting executed. The priestess started giving us our last rights, but one of the Stormcloaks got fed up with her not mentioning Talos, and walked up to the block to get it started. That man may well have saved my life. I’ll never forget the look of defiance in his face, or the deep sadness in his eyes when he was forced down on the block… I’d seen executions before, but only from afar, never this close.. it was gruesome. The next thing I knew, that damned imperial captain trained her gaze on me and called me up.. As I kneeled down against the block, with the Stormcloak’s head still in the crate right below my face, I prayed to the divines one last time..
The headsman was raising his axe… it was coming down.. then I heard a screech of a creature like none other, and a DRAGON landed on the tower behind him. I couldn’t believe my eyes at first. He was knocked down, and I was knocked unconscious again for a few seconds from the dragons attacks… I’ve never been so scared in my life. Then I followed the Stormcloak I later came to know as Ralof, who was in the cart with me to another tower and we made our escape. He told me to take the gear of a fallen comrade, but I couldn’t bring myself to put on the dead man’s armor. The imperials tried to kill us in the keep, but Ralof and I fought hard and I personally killed the captain… I remember seeing the life drain from her eyes.. her body go slack.. I had never killed before, and I was struck with a horrible feeling in my gut. I followed Ralof through the keep and on to a little town called Riverwood. On the way there he pointed out some very interesting standing stones, and I felt myself drawn to one… as I approached it, a beacon of light went up into the sky and Ralof told me that stone was The Thief Stone… When we got to Riverwood, his nice sister and her husband agreed to let us rest up for a while. They asked me a favor, to tell the Jarl of Whiterun that there was a dragon on the loose. I tried to tell them that I didn’t know the first thing about Skyrim, but I could see they were really counting on me, so I let them believe that I would… eventually.
I stayed at their house that night, and finally changed from the rags I was wearing to some real clothes. I ate the most food I’d ever had for a whole day for supper, and they provided me with more for the journey to Whiterun. They even offered me gold, but I couldn’t bring myself to take more from these nice people. When I went to bed on a full stomach, I wondered what was in store for me tomorrow in this strange land… I woke up gasping several times during the night and groping for an enemy that wasn’t there… The nightmares that night were horrible, the worst I’d ever had. I kept seeing the dragon, and that captain’s dead face, and the headsman bringing his axe down.. except in the dream it didn’t stop. This morning I went to the trader to sell what few thing I had that I didn’t need. I overheard the shopkeeper and his sister arguing about thieves, and I inquired what had happened. Apparently they’d had a break in recently and the thief had only taken one thing - an ornament made of solid gold, in the shape of a dragon’s claw. He asked if I could help him out, but I had to tell him that I couldn’t at the moment. Maybe sometime in the future. For now, I had to get myself settled back into a normal life here in this new town. Maybe I’d go hunting in a while…
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