Chapter 1.

The human consciousness is quite an interesting thing. Normally one’s perception of the world would provide sufficient stimulation for the mind to ignore such matters and focus on more vivid things. In my case though, the only things I could feel at the moment was my simple sense of self. Slowly I became more aware. First came the sensation of movement, after that I could once again feel the presence of my hands and feet, numb as they were.

Then came the ravaging feeling of bone deep coldness.

My eyes snapped open, bashing my mind against the sudden light. My hands instinctively wrapped around myself. A strange out of place feeling came when they did, like the proportions of my body were kinda...different?.

“Well, it doesn’t matter right now” I thought. My mind was dull and my memory was drawing a blank. Where was I? What am I doing? What was happening.

“My name is Aron Chester”.That’s good, I know my name. I nudged my brain to start working again. Hard and slow like forcing rusted gears to spin once again, I began recalling my most recent memory.

I was at a some kind of party, my 28th birthday if I’m not mistaken. I kept recalling bits and pieces of what happened that night. Some of the people and some of the conversations. The last thing I could remember was getting drunk out of my mind when playing beer pong, loosing my balance and then everything is blank, like I was hitting some wall in my mind.

“I feel like I hit a wall in my body too...”

My vision began stabilizing allowing me to get a better look around. I was in some kind of… carriage perhaps? Well from what I could see, it was more akin to a covered cart. The wooden planks were a rat gray color, old and some of them actually rotten. The “roof”, if you were generous enough to call it that, was a dirty wrap of cloth hung and held across the cart with small sticks. With every bump in the road and every groaning of wood my apprehension began building up.

My eyes went from the roof to my fellow passengers. Across me was a blond man, big fellow, easily 6ft tall with broad shoulders and meaty arms. He was lazily swinging a quarter filled bottle in his hand. The liquid sloshing lively inside. The man had a blank look, seemingly fascinated by his action.

To my left was a woman, maybe in her thirties? With auburn hair that reached her shoulders. Part of it was braided and tied at the back of the head giving a clear view of her face. She was scowling. Her hand were in a position similar to mine, wrapped around herself to save as much heat as possible.

“Damn this weather! And damn this place as well! Only people touched in the head would choose to live here.” she said bitterly and giving a helpless look to the big man who didn’t seem to mind the frigid air at all.

He turned his head to the woman and gave a small smile. Taking a sip out of the bottle before giving a sigh.

“Come dear, is that anyway to talk about your dear husband’s homeland?”

The woman scowl lessened but didn’t fully disappear. She rubbed her hands a bit before talking.

“You’ll have to forgive me beloved, but I was born and raised in the capital. Being so far up north is very unnatural for me.” said the man’s wife.

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The two began talking about their family matters, mostly about some cousin they were visiting now. I listened a bit, but soon lost interest. The other person besides us three not even bothering to open his eyes.

He was sitting opposite to the woman, at the man’s right. His face was wrapped in dark red cloth and had a fur blanket over him.

The couple were wearing strange clothes. The man wore a blue tunic that reached halfway to his thighs, with brown leather vest and simple white pants. The woman also wore blue, but in the form of a lightly adorned dress that covered her ankles together with a hooded cape that was wrapped around her.

Were we going to some kind of medieval fare I wondered. That thought pattern was quickly cast away though. There was something in the back of my mind that said this situation was much more complicated than it seemed. Terrific.

Speaking about clothes, I turned my eyes to check what I was wearing. There was nothing like a hood or hat on my head, as shown by my frozen ears. Going down was a simple white tunic that had probably seen better days. Similar to the man across me, it reached halfway to my thighs. The material it was made off was coarse and not very comfortable. It felt like I was wearing something more akin to a grain sack than a proper shirt. The pants were giving off a similar feel. Dark brown and ragged with a few loose ends nearing the ankles. The strangest part of my attire had to be the shoes though. They were a just bags of leather wrapped around my feet with a few straps to hold them tight.

No wonder my feet were freezing.

This is weird. This is very weird. Where on God’s green Earth was I? Who were these people? Why were we dressed this way? Where were we heading?

The carriage kept going at a steady pace, ignoring my distressed mind. From the little light that came through the cloth “door” at my right, it was currently daytime. Good thing too. At night it would probably be pitch black in here and that really would not have helped my, already rocky, emotional state.

I was awake and aware now. The couple were still speaking, something about a relative of theirs, Dagny or whatever. I turned my head towards the man in front of me. It was high time I started asking questions instead of just rolling them inside my head.

Just as I opened my mouth the carriage suddenly stopped with a loud neigh from the horse. The couple stopped speaking and the other man slightly opened his eyes.

“We just had a break not even half an hour ago. Maybe we already reached the city?” said the woman with a confused tone.

The man raised an eyebrow and shook his head. “That can’t be right, we just passed the border and barley entered the Hold. We should be at least a few days off of Falkreath”

The man stood up at the end of his sentence and reached for the exit after seeing the urging look in his wife’s eyes.

“Wait a second. Did he just say Flakreath!? As in the… oh, oh no”

I needed answers and I needed them now!

“Excuse m-” *woosh *

A… a frickin arrow just ripped through the wall! I felt the woman jump out of her seat while her husband threw the cloth covering the exit open revealing a snow covered forest and a gravel road.

The sound of feet hitting snow and shouts were becoming more and more clear, just like my panic and confusion.

Then I heard it...

"Skyrim belongs to the Nords!"

If that didn’t tell me where I was, then I didn’t know what would. So right now I was in...bloody Skyrim and was currently attacked by bandits.

“Crap baskets!”

I shook off my dazed state and made to stand up. Action now, thinking later seemed like an appropriate attitude to have right now. The same moment I got to my feet I heard a rustling sound to the back where the woman and the covered man were. Suddenly a figure dressed in a form fitting black and red attire flew past me.

For a split second something in the figure’s hand reflected light. It was a dagger. The blond man didn’t have time to even turn his head when he was stabbed in the back.

Along side the man’s painful scream, the woman’s horrified gasp and my eyes threatening to bulge out of my skull, the figure shouted:

“Hail Sithis!”