The sound of creaking wood and a shaky, uncomfortable bed woke Jules up. A night of heavy drinking left him with a killer hangover, and his surroundings weren’t doing him any favors. Jules tried to settle back down to sleep, he’d wake up when his headache lessens. That sentiment lasted for about ten seconds until a particularly large bump of the carriage he was riding on made him hit his head against the wooden seat.
“Ah, dammit!” cursed Jules. The blow forced him to open his eyes and take in his surroundings. He was sitting in a wooden, horse-drawn carriage riding through a dirt trail in a forest. His hands were bound with rope and next to him sat several men in stylish, blue-colored armor. Their arms were also bound, one of them was even gagged.
“You there, so you’re finally awake?” asked one of the men. “You were trying to cross the border, got caught in that imperial ambush. Same as the rest of us.”
No, this couldn’t be real. This could NOT be real! A night of drinking with his friends was supposed to be a “simple” celebration. They’d all graduated college, class of 2018, and were finally able to relax a bit before the responsibilities of adulthood set in. How did it manage to turn into a literal joke?
“Dammit Todd!” shouted Jules, with all of the frustration he could muster. The cart immediately hit a bump, sending Jules and the others onboard a few inches into the air before they slammed down hard onto their splintering seats.
“Keep it down back there!” replied one of the men driving their carriage. In contrast with the blue armor with Jules’ fellow captives, his armor was a flat maroon and less flashy in design. He put his hand on the sword sheathed at his waist while delivering a glare, before turning back.
“Todd? Was that the name of one of your companions?” asked the same soldier. He had blond hair and a grave, yet resolute expression on his face. If Jules’ worst fears were regrettably true, then he could correctly assume that the man’s name was Ralof, a man from the town of Riverwood, located in the country of Skyrim, of the Empire of Tamriel. The setting of a very popular video game. Somehow, Jules was inside of it, just like the multitude of jokes he’s laughed at. The company behind it has been re-releasing the game on new platforms for almost a decade, and the common joke was that they would continue to do so, going so far as to inserting it into completely different games, or even physically dragging people into the game, all in an attempt to keep everyone playing. Todd Howard, the charismatic company president, was an easy target to place the supposed blame of this phenomenon on for the sake of the joke. And now, Jules was the punchline.
“There was a black haired fellow and brown haired lass with you. Did one of them drag you into this?” continued Ralof.
Jules held his breath. The friends who we went drinking with matched that description. There’s no way they could be here too, right? Silence rolled on.
“What, cat got your tongue?” asked another on the carriage, this one not in the blue soldier’s garb, but instead wearing rough and simple clothes. “I get that guy over there, but you?” he finished, while pointing to the gagged man.
“Watch your tongue thief! That’s Ulfric Stormcloak, the true High King!” snapped Ralof.
“Ulfric Stormcloak? Leader of the rebellion? If they have you, then that must mean… oh Divines!”
The scene before Jules was burned into his memory, but not from this moment. Everything going on, from the setting to the dialogue, was playing out exactly as it had in the introductory scene of the game, albeit for his own little outburst at the start. Beyond that, the dialogue went back to what it was in the game. The other odd man out in the group of prisoners, a horse thief, would begin praying for relief from the inevitable. The country they were in and the namesake of the game, Skyrim, was in the middle of a bloody civil war between the Empire who controlled it and the Stormcloaks, a separatist movement led by the gagged man Ulfric Stormcloak himself. With him prisoner, there was only one place the Empire would be taking him and his followers: to the chopping block. And the horse thief would be dragged along for the execution as well, of course along with the playable character whose shoes Jules had the misfortune of filling.
Of course, there would be no point in killing the main character of the story within the first chapter, so the player would miraculously survive. But this was no video game, no fanciful tale. Jules could smell the crisp forest air, feel the grain of the wood on his seat, taste the traces of bile in his mouth. This was real, plain and simple. At the same time, Jules was just himself, a mildly fit college graduate who would get killed the moment he tried anything funny against trained soldiers. Either the story played out as it should and he took full advantage of that, or he was already dead.
The horse thief continued wailing at his fate as he always would in this moment. The same words, the same tone, no difference at all. Beyond that however, reality and the human condition applied their influence this time. Grief strained his face, tears leaked from his eyes, and his body language conveyed nothing but despair. Having heard these exact lines countless of times before, Jules felt like he was watching the performance of a lifetime. But he knew that for the sake of conveying the stakes of the resulting escape, the thief would die first. This was a game after all, real life be damned.
“Hey thief, Ralof. Follow my lead, we have a chance of making it out of here” Jules whispered to the two, before facing the other prisoners. “We only die the moment they kill us, so-”
“Really? I never would’ve guessed. But I don’t want to die! I don’t think any of us do” interrupted the horse thief.
“How about if you let him finish?” snapped back Ralof. “You were saying?”
“Uh, thanks. Anyway, we only die when they kill us, so the more time we have to live, the better chance we have of coming up with a way out” finished Jules.
The other prisoners gave Jules wary looks, but nodded slightly at his impromptu speech.
“It’s not much, but it does give us hope. Thank you, uh,” said Ralof.
“You can call me Jules.”
“Thank you Jules. That isn’t an Imperial name I’ve heard before, but I’ve not met many. You are Imperial, right?”
The world of the game had many sapient races. Humans, elves, orcs, the usual fantasy fare. Humans, oddly, were split between nords, imperials, and redguards. Nords were the equivalent of vikings, redguards occupied the position of fantasy desert dwellers, and imperials were simply the south-faring cosmopolitans. Skyrim was mainly filled with nords, with a good smattering of the other races, especially imperials. Jules’ slightly tanned skin and mixed ancestry probably made him look closer to an imperial than a member of any of Skyrim’s other races.
“Uh, yeah. I’m imperial. I came to Skyrim looking for new opportunities, but this isn’t what I had in mind” replied Jules.
“Being bound and dragged to an execution isn’t what I’d consider a new opportunity either,” said Ralof, with a small chuckle. “Though I have to ask, how did you know my name? I don’t remember hearing anyone calling me that after you got up.”
Busted. Time to think of something to get out of this.
“Well, you see, uh… I asked around for information on this part of the country, especially near Riverwood, before I left for here. That’s the place I was hoping to move to. Uh, the person I asked used to live there, and he talked a lot about you, enough that I could recognize you on the spot!”
“Oh, really?” asked Ralof. “I can think of a few ex-neighbors who would say such things about me. Who was it you talked to?”
Double busted. At least everyone here was probably going to die in a few moments, that should ease Jules’ embarrassment somewhat.
“Open the gates!” someone shouted from the front of the procession.
“We’re here,” concluded Ralof, thankfully ending his previous line of questioning and going back to the game’s script. “This is Helgen. I used to be sweet on a girl from here. Wonder if Vilod is still making that mead with juniper berries mixed in. Funny… when I was a boy, Imperial walls and towers used to make me feel so safe.”
The cart rolled past the gate and into a small town. Despite the location being miniscule in the game, the town of Helgen was the size of an actual small town. Just like the game, the buildings were a combination of wood and cobblestone, the floor mostly dirt except for a few key paths, and the number of people out and about was sparse. However, everything else was scaled up tremendously. Instead of taking up the equivalent of a quarter of a square mile, Helgen stretched to cover over four times as much area. It took them over a minute to reach the town square, giving Jules to contemplate this change.
If this was real life, then of course the world would have to be different. The developers only had time to make so many towns, and if they had to make over a hundred, each the size of a real city, they’d never finish. Of course, they can just hand-wave smaller settlements with a few square yards of farmland saying it’s just a game, but that doesn’t work in real life. Towns will invariably be bigger and the farms needed to maintain their populations will have to scale exponentially to meet demand. Luckily the site of the execution still looked the same, so hopefully the scripted escape will go similarly.
“Oh right, execution,” Jules said to himself as he was led off the carriage.
He and the other prisoners were corralled into an open space a few feet away from the procession of carriages. In front of them was a large cutting block with a basket next to it, and above it towered a bulky man dressed in black clothing and mask. He held an oversized halberd covered in rust the same shade as his clothes. Yup, that’s an executioner. Beside him stood a lady dressed in yellow-orange robes, with a much less dour expression. She was a priestess here to deliver their last rites. Everything was following the script so far, next up was…
“Step towards the block when we call your name. One at a time!” shouted a woman at the side with a group of soldiers. She was dressed in similar colors to the other soldiers, but her armor was covered in solid metal. An officer’s gear. Next to her stood another rank-and-file soldier holding a book and quill, ready to confirm the presence of each prisoner.
The man with the book began calling names, first Ulfric Stormcloak. Ulfric stepped forward towards the area in front of the execution platform. Next was Ralof, who followed close behind. Third was a man named Lorkir, the horse thief.
“No, I’m not a rebel, you can’t do this!” he shouted in response.
Jules remembered what would happen next. Lorkir would run and get shot by the nearby archers, and wouldn’t get up. Game or not, what kind of justice is getting your head chopped off for stealing a horse? When Jules still played the game this world seemed to be built around, he would always fiddle with the debug console at this scene, left in by developers to create drastic changes to test their effects on the world. Jules never really used it to cheat, that would be no fun. Instead, he always tried to bring characters like Lorkir back to life, ones who he believed didn’t deserve their unjust, scripted destiny. Before he had the chance to consign his fate, Jules lifted his bound hands and placed them on Lorkir’s shoulder.
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“Please Lorkir, there’s always a chance. Just wait and we’re bound to find it, just have faith,” Jules pleaded with Lorkir. Faith was what was keeping almost every prisoner calm at that moment. Faith in the promised warrior afterlife of Sovngarde for the soldiers, and faith in some higher power that he’d make it out of this alive for Jules. Regrettably, Lorkir lacked such faith.
“Sorry Jules, but this is my chance,” said Lorkir.
His previous slump belied his desperation. Along with his wide eyes, it was the posture of a cornered animal. With a darting gaze, he took in the armed soldiers around him as he shoved off Jules’ hands and made a mad dash out of the town square past the imperial officer and the soldier with the book.
“They’re not going to take me!”
“Archers!” shouted the imperial officer.
Immediately, the surrounding soldiers who were armed with bows came to attention, bringing up their weapons and each nocking an arrow. After half a second, they all pulled and fired, most of them striking Lorkir in the back, one even through the neck. The sound that escaped from Lorkir was meek and pathetic, just like his end, but it reached Jules’ ears. A lump formed in Jules’ throat. He knew there was hope, it was literally right around the corner! This shouldn’t have happened! And yet, he knew it was exactly what should have happened. Lorkir was scared, desperate, and he might’ve run no matter what Jules had said. But maybe he could’ve done better?
“Anyone else feel like running?” asked the imperial officer in a mocking tone?
“Wait, you there,” began the soldier with the book and quill. “Step forward. Who are you?”
Jules hesitated for a moment before speaking. It was hard to do so after seeing someone die in front of him for the first time, but he was just able to croak out his first name.
“Jules, not a name I’ve heard before,” noted the soldier. “From where do you hail?”
This was a tricky question. Jules doubted the man would easily accept “United States of America” or any other country from Earth. If he insisted on it, the officer might get frustrated at the “obvious” lies and stalling, and have him put to the block first before the supposed rescue could arrive. It’s not like convincing anyone here that he was from another world and that they all existed as characters in what was essentially an interactive story would do him any favors. Of the little research into the lore of the world he did, the closest thing to that would be someone who achieved a state called Chim, something that has to do with realizing that existence is a dream and rising above it to attain godlike powers. Well, no godlike powers here, and Jules didn’t think he had the time to perform whatever meditations or rituals needed to achieve such a magical epiphany. Instead, he simply lied.
“I’m from Cyrodiil, I lived in the imperial city.” It was as basic of a lie as it went. The country of Cyrodiil down south of Skyrim acted as the seat of the empire these soldiers served under, and the imperial city was its capital. Besides, the other prisoners were already under that impression of his origin, no point in making them distrust him. He’d need their trust if he wanted a chance at changing the next victim’s fate.
“Captain, what should we do? He’s not on the list,” asked the soldier with the book and quill.
“Forget the list. He goes to the block,” was her curtly cruel reply.
“By your orders, captain. I’m sorry Jules, we’ll make sure your remains are returned back home. Follow the Captain, Jules.”
Jules did so with just a nod. Despite what was said in front of him, he knew that this wasn’t how he was supposed to escape. The only difference was the fact that the soldier was using his name, rather than addressing him as simply “imperial.” It could be just because this was no longer a game with a limited pool of pre-recorded voice lines, but Jules held onto his faith in this world being more than just a scripted story.
Jules was led to a space even closer to the chopping block. Nobody had moved away from their spots at the front since he last looked. General Tullius stepped forward and began a speech.
“Ulfric Stormcloak. Some here in Helgen call you a hero, but a hero doesn't use a power like the Voice to murder his king and usurp his throne.” Ulfric could only angrily grunt in response, no thanks to the gag in his mouth. “You started this war, plunged Skyrim into chaos and now the Empire is going to put you down, and restore the peace!”
That’s how he supposed it would go. General Tullius, the imperial general from Cyrodiil, was sent over to skyrim to end the rebellion that Ulfric had started. This execution would end the war and bring about peace, but of course, the story writers had other plans. As for “The Voice”, Ulfric was trained in an ancient art of projecting magic through your words, and he used it to kill the previous high king who ruled over Skyrim in a duel, which was the spark that kickstarted the whole civil war.
A rumbling sound reverberated in the distance. Everyone paused for a moment and the soldier with the book and quill asked what it was. General Tullius dismissed his concern and motioned for the execution to continue. The priestess stepped forwards next and began to say a prayer before the execution.
“As we commend your souls to Aetherius, blessings of the Eight Divines upon you, for you are the salt and earth of Nirn, our beloved… ”
“For the love of Talos, shut up and let's get this over with!” interrupted one of the prisoners in a fit of anger. One of the main reasons for the civil war was the outlawing of the worship of Talos, a major deity in this world’s pantheon. As the ninth Divine to join the pantheon, the priestess only blessing the prisoners with eight was an insult, one that he wouldn’t stand. If Jules wanted him to live, he would have to.
“Wait, please finish,” said Jules, with a hint of desperation in his voice. He turned to the offended prisoner and continued. “There’s always hope, please just trust me and wait it out. I’m sure Talos will reward you for a silent fight against that insult.”
“You’re right, Talos will reward me for one more fight in his name,” he began. “So let’s get this execution over with. I haven’t got all morning.”
No, no! Jules looked at the brave fool as he made his way to the block. Jules let out a whimper, trying to get them to stall the execution for a while longer. At this point, it would take less than a minute for the escape to begin, and the man laying his head on the cutting block could make it out with him and the others.
A whimpering “please” was all Jules could get out before the executioner’s axe fell. Jules averted his eyes at the last second. He didn’t dare look back.
After a second, Ralof touched his shoulder to Jules’ to comfort him.
“I take it you aren’t one who has ever seen much death? You are fortunate for that. Shame you have to be surrounded by it now. As fearless in death as he was in life, there’s nothing you could have said to change his mind.”
Jules could only reply with a small, yet shaky nod. His entire body was trembling and tears rolled down his eyes. He never knew the man whose head was now lying in a basket, either here or in the context of the game, but he was still a living, thinking person. One who was brutally killed a mere few feet from him. Jules didn’t have time to process his feelings, as the Captain called out the next victim; him.
He slowly began making his way towards the cutting block, not even able to process the fear of his own supposed impending doom. Jules arrived and was pushed into a crouch, with his head on the cutting block. It smelled of blood. The headsman in front of him lifted his axe, ready to end its next life. Jules could’ve pleaded for the priest to finish saying his last rites, but what was the point? No matter what Jules did with his outsider knowledge, nothing had gone as it was supposed to, yet everything did. Was this truly “real life,” or just a facsimile of it bound by the fate decreed by a mortal pen? Whether the same writers’ imposed destiny would continue, Jules didn’t feel like it much mattered anymore. Either the narrative continued and he would be saved, or he would die now with the knowledge that this world was something more.
Perhaps regrettably, fate remained manifest. As the executioner positioned himself to swing, a black figure darted from beyond the mountains in the horizon, right out of the sky, headed straight towards their location. It swooped far above the execution site, and a gust of air from its flight threw the executioner off balance.
“Sentries, what do you see?” asked the Captain, unable to get a good look at the ebony-scaled figure.
“Dragon!” shouted one of the soldiers on the roof of a nearby building, as the dragon landed atop her.
Words escaped the creature’s maw, something more than mere syllables in a foreign tongue, carrying a will that bent the world around it. Immediately, the sky turned red, and the upper atmosphere spawned countless billowing clouds. From those clouds fell rocks that sized anywhere between a human head to a car, striking the ground and shattering into deadly shrapnel with no regard for those in the way. White lightning fell along with them, threatening to end anyone who dared be unlucky enough to be in its path. It was pure chaos.
“Hey Jules, get up! The gods won’t give us another chance!” shouted Ralof. “You were right about having faith, now don’t go throwing it to waste! Come on!”
Jules’ mind was a haze. Not just from his epiphany about an uncaring world, but from the sound of nearby thunder and rocky impacts. He wanted to stay sitting where he was to process his previous thoughts, or even just to dare fate to change its mind and kill him. However, there’s one emotion that is stronger than existential melancholy or petty spite, at least most of the time. Pure adrenaline-inspired fear. Jules forced himself up from the block and looked at Ralof with bleary eyes, who motioned him towards a nearby stone tower.
Jules had forgotten about the destruction that the mysterious dragon wrought on this poor town of Helgen. Running through it in the game was second nature to him, so the emotional toil of the carnage and loss of human life could easily be shrugged off. With what Jules was experiencing being mostly real life, it would be more difficult to keep the same attitude with everything to come.
He forced himself to stand, and made his way as quickly as he could towards the building Ralof was pointing to. He would’ve liked to ask Ralof to follow him, but Jules didn’t know for sure if the route to escape Helgen would be the same.
Jules entered the tower, where a now ungagged Ulfric was talking to some of his men. He knew what they were going to say, asking if this really was a dragon, as from the legends. Jules took the time to clear his head, taking deep breaths of the cool, clean air, before running up the spiral staircase. At the top was another prisoner, trying to tie a piece of cloth around his wounded arm. Here was fate’s victim number 3.
“Get down from there!” shouted Jules, as he made to grab the man. He pulled him a few feet away from the top of the steps when the man freed himself from Jules’ grasp.
“What in Oblivion are you doing, you...” before the man could finish his outcry, the wall where he was standing burst inwards, the dragon’s face peering in.
“Down!” shouted Jules as he shoved the man and himself into a sprint down the steps. As soon as he did, the dragon let loose a gout of fire into the building. As fate would have it, the fire was aimed at the central area of the second floor, and only some of it managed to follow the two down the steps. Seeing nothing living, the dragon flew away, satisfied with its work.
Adrenaline still coursing through his veins, Jules didn’t think to feel anything about being so close to the mythological terror. He turned towards the man he had grabbed earlier, half expecting him to be dead, but still hopeful that things would be different. He lay on the floor, with a red gash across his head. Not again! For all he hoped things would be different and even saved him from being burned.
“Unggh...” groaned the fallen man. One of the other prisoners rushed up the stairs towards him, before picking him up and carrying him back up to the second floor.
“You saved his life,” he said with a thankful expression. “You were right about having faith, I just didn’t expect us to be saved by something like this. Now go! Stormcloaks stick together, we can take care of ourselves.”
Perhaps Jules was wrong about fate? Maybe things could be changed, and he’d either been unlucky or too incapable of doing so. Of course, Jules never really paid attention to the people attacked by the dragon and just kept running forwards when he played the game, and didn’t remember what the man’s final fate truly was, other than being a target of dragon fire, but people don’t usually walk away from something like that. He decided to adapt that playstyle and ignore his fears in favor of moving.
With a smile and nod back to the two, he went back up to the hole the dragon created, and gauged the distance from there to the next building over. There was a much larger hole in its second storey, and he would be able to jump from one to the other. That’s what the game called for, but Jules was having trouble motivating himself to make the jump. He was never part of his university’s acrobatics team or anything like that. In fact, he wasn’t much of an athlete at all! Just the kind of stereotypical nerd who would mourn fictional characters and think about topics such as philosophy or destiny in the face of death. However, Skyrim would change him.
The building shook and the dragon’s roar could be heard from a short distance away, scaring Jules into making the jump. The jump was only five feet distance, but the fall would be two legs broken. Thankfully, Jules was able to make it, and tumbled into a roll. He was about to get up, but the smell of smoke in the air convinced him to crawl instead. He made his way across the second floor of this new building to find a ladder that led to the ground floor, and an open door right next to it. Jules made his way down the ladder slowly, careful not to trip. That fear was unfounded, and he made it down without even suffering a splinter.
Jules continued his escape, hopeful that the other soldiers would be able to make it without his help. Guilt washed over him at the thought. Maybe he should’ve stayed and helped them? If he’s supposed to make it out of this escape alive, then maybe using himself as a human shield would prevent others from being harmed? The idea sounded ridiculous, even more ridiculous than the thought that he would be able to help a group of soldiers fight a dragon? Him? Jules kept on running.
He was in an open space adjacent to the town square, originally the site of the execution. The entrance to the town square was blocked off by fallen debris from a nearby building, making the path he took the only way to get there. Of course, that roundabout detour was used as a tutorial for running and jumping in the game, but for Jules it was almost two decades too late. He’d already learned all of that as a toddler, thank you very much.
Jules dashed past several imperial soldiers facing a man on the ground, half burned and leg buried, with a child kneeling next to him. An image of what was supposed to happen flashed through Jules’ mind. Something inside of him overrode some of the fear Jules was feeling and made him put his original ridiculous theory about acting as a meat shield to practice. He charged next to the man, grabbed the wooden beam holding down his leg, and heaved.
“Pull him away! What are you waiting for?!” he shouted at the soldiers. Miraculously, one of them ran over and quickly dragged the man away. As soon as he did, Jules dropped the beam. Not because he noticed that the man was now free, but because the dragon was next to him and the force of its landing pushed him away. Without another thought, Jules jumped to the side as the dragon let loose more fire. The stone rubble of another building was able to protect him from the blast, and the soldiers nearby were able to deflect the residual flames with their leather shields. They’d probably need new shields after that, but they were easier to replace than skin. The man who he had saved was supposed to get burned alive by the dragon, but he was still gravely injured. Had he really saved him, or just delayed the inevitable? Jules pushed that thought back into his mind as adrenaline pushed him on.
Jules ran through another building to get to the next part of the town. This time, the roof was entirely gone and the wooden beams on the walls were covered in glowing embers. The heat was mild compared to his near-miss with dragon fire, but he was able to ignore it. Beyond him lay a wide dirt path leading to another large, open space and the entrance to the guards’ barracks. Jules passed several soldiers armed with bows trying to fell the fire-breathing wyrm, with little success. He made his way to the twin entrances to the barracks and paused for an instant. Depending on which one he chose, he’d be matched with either Ralof or the soldier with the book and quill, and forced to kill the other. He might be able to broker peace between them if it was just them, but going with Ralof would have the Captain join the other soldier, and convincing her as well would be incredibly difficult, to say the least.
Before he could choose which door to go through, a boulder fell right behind him, its shrapnel sending Jules flying towards the entrances and disorienting him. He slowly rose from the ground and felt a door in front of him. No time to figure out which one this was, he’d have to get inside before he was killed. His entire body hurt, with several large lacerations across his back, and a possible concussion. Despite the pain, he forced himself to his knees and pulled open the door, crawled far enough inside to be out of view of the entryway, and promptly collapsed.