I don’t know how long I’ve been in Coldharbour. My memories are scattered and blurry, but I remember is the faces of my friends, or those I had thought were my friends at least, right as they betrayed me. Their betrayal cut deeper than the knife they used to sacrifice me to the God of Brutality.

Day in and day out I listen to the moans of my fellow prisoners and the snarls of our Daedra jailers. They often take me out to fight for their amusement. The Daedra don’t like it when I talk back, but I do it anyway. They can’t do shit to me. I’m already dead and they’re going to keep torturing me no matter what I say or do. I take joy in my eternal damnation by taking any opportunity to make a terrible joke at a Daedra’s expense.

Throughout it all, I’ve tried to hold onto who I am. The details of my life have become hazy, but I still remember my name: Nerevar. I was a great warrior, once, even if I no longer quite remember the details of any war I was involved in. It has all blurred together into a long string of violence and emotion. I’ve never stopped hoping for escape, or dreaming of finding Moonshadow, the realm of Azura, Lady of Dawn and Dusk, where my soul should have been destined to go upon death. At this point, though, I’d be happy to see the Shivering Isles, the Madgod’s realm, as I’m clearly mad now even if I wasn’t before. Being Azura’s favorite did nothing to spare me being imprisoned here, so I don’t know what that favor counted for in the end.

Something shakes me to full alertness, like a beacon in the fog. The sounds outside the cell I’m being held in have changed. A prison riot? An escape attempt? I don’t know what they’re trying to accomplish but none of us have anything to lose. I rush to the cell door and grip the bars, testing them to see if I can’t get something loose.

Movement. A woman comes into view, a Nord, looking strong and fresh and lively. Either a recent arrival, or having come here in the flesh.

I call out to her. “Hello! Could you do me a favor and get me out of here, please?”

“Are you alright?” she says, coming up to the door and opting for the Nord method of percussive lockpicking. “The name’s Lyris. I hope for both of our sakes that you’ve still got some fight left in you, high elf.”

“The name’s Nerevar, and I’m glad for the assistance, but… I’m not a high elf,” I tell her, emerging from the cell.

Lyris raises an eyebrow. “You look like one. What are you, then?”

“I’m a Chimer,” I say.

Lyris’ jaw drops. “You’ve been in Coldharbour that long?”

“Afraid I don’t really have a frame of reference for how long it has been,” I admit. “But why do you say that? What’s so significant about being a Chimer? What happened to my people? Did the Nords kill us off? The Nords killed us off, didn’t they? Honestly, I wouldn’t blame you. We kind of had it coming.”

“No, no, we didn’t kill you off,” Lyris assures me. “I’m no historian, but I’m pretty sure it has to have been thousands of years. The Chimer were all turned into dark elves. Dunmer.” She shakes her head. “Come on. We have to get out of here. You can find out more once you get back to Nirn, if you can.”

I nod. “That will require getting out of here in the first place, or this has all been a moot point. Let’s get moving, then!”

“That’s what I like to hear!” Lyris says. “Let’s see about getting you a weapon. Ah! Here we go.”

The other Soul Shriven have collected some weapons and are arming themselves, and the corridors are littered with dead Daedra, their bodies waiting to dissolve back into the stuff of Oblivion to reform at some later date. Not quickly enough to affect whatever might happen here this day, though. I pick out a battle axe and grin wildly, feeling more alive than I have in ages.

“I hereby name this weapon Pickles!” I declare.

“… Pickles?” Lyris wonders.

“I always name my weapons,” I say.

“But why Pickles?”

“I always name them something ridiculous.”

“Alright…” Lyris says dubiously. “Well. I’ll not comment on what being in Coldharbour so long has done for your sanity, so long as you can still manage to hit Daedra… with Pickles. Let’s see how it does in a fight, then, shall we? Come on.”

I follow along after her, and get the chance to test out my new weapon on some Daedra along the way. I have not forgotten how to fight, and have gotten a lot of practice in fighting Daedra to finally strike back at these fetchers. I’ve been waiting to spit in their eye for an eternity and a half, and even if this all fails horribly, it will have been worth the inevitable torture that will result.

An illusion of an old man appears before us briefly, urging us to hurry up and rescue him. And he refers to me as Vestige, whatever that means, unless he’s talking to Lyris. There might have been something about fate in there too but it didn’t make much sense.

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I look at Lyris in puzzlement. “Who was that? What was he talking about?”

“The Prophet!” Lyris breathes. “He’s a very wise man, and if he thinks you can help me, I’ll trust in his judgment. He’s our best chance of getting out of this horrible place.”

“As you say. Do you know where we’re going?”

“I think we might be able to get to his cell through … that way.” She points toward a door.

Trusting in her directions for lack of absolutely any better ideas, I follow after her and occasionally bisect a Daedra with my axe. At her direction, I run up and hit a giant eyeball with said axe as well, although I’m not sure what good it might do. Everything seems to be going well up until a door bursts into blue flames and Molag Bal’s booming voice taunts us about how pathetic we are and that we’ll never escape or some such blustering. Really, I’ve long since stopped actually being terrified of him, although the same can’t be said of Lyris.

“We won’t be to get through this way,” Lyris says. “Dammit. Maybe Cadwell will know another way through.”

“Good idea,” I say. “I’m pretty sure Cadwell must know everything there is to know about Coldharbour. However long I’ve been here, he’d already been here a long time when I first arrived.”

We find the old madman down by the river, strumming at an out-of-tune lute, his usual tin pot perched atop of his head.

“Nerevar!” he says. “Jolly good to see you, and I see you’ve become acquainted with fair Lyris as well, splendid!”

“Always a pleasure, Sir Cadwell,” I say with a grin. “Say, we’re trying to get to the Prophet’s cell, but the way in has been sealed. Do you know of another way?”

“Oh, now that’s mighty inconvenient,” Cadwell says. “But yes, I know a back way in. It’s full of traps and plenty of things to hit with an axe—and that’s a fine axe you’ve gotten yourself, Nerevar. You’ll love this place. Lots of fun.”

“Excellent! I love traps and things to hit!”

“I thought you might,” Cadwell says with a grin. “Do give him my regards when you see him. He and Lyris are quite mad, of course, seem to think they’re going to save us all from eternal torment or some such nonsense, but a good uprising now and then is always a pleasant diversion.”

After getting directions from Cadwell, Lyris and I head through the Undercroft. As I dance past traps spewing cold fire and hack apart skeletons, she keeps giving me looks as if thinking I’m just as mad as Cadwell—which I am, but never mind that—and that she’s possibly reconsidering having me as the one helping her. Well, beggars can’t be choosers, and most people give up hope after they’ve been in Coldharbour as long as me.

We come to a cell in which an old, robed human is hovering in a globe of darkness. Lyris stares at it with grim determination for a long moment before telling me that the only way to release him from that sort of confinement is for her to trade places with him. That sounds like a terrible idea, and also seems like an impractical way to imprison someone. Unless Molag Bal did this deliberately. Yes, that sounds like just the sort of thing he’d get his jollies off on, forcing someone to make that sort of hard choice. I chuckle at the thought.

“What’s so funny?” Lyris asks, looking at me accusingly.

I shake my head. “I’m just thinking how the God of Schemes must have set this up intentionally to feed on your fleeting hope and agonized decisions here. He didn’t have to allow the possibility of escape at all if he didn’t want to.”

Lyris makes a face. “You may be right about that, but we have to try.”

So, I operate the Daedric equipment and exchange one lovely Nord warrior for one blind old man. I’m not sure that it’s all that great of an exchange, but whatever, that’s what she wanted and maybe he actually can get me back to Nirn somehow. Might as well see where this road goes, right? It’s not like I was doing anything better with my eternity.

“Freedom!” the old man proclaims, holding his arms aloft for a moment before steadying himself on a staff. For some reason, Molag Bal decided to let the blind man keep his staff. More teasing torment, no doubt.

“Hi, Prophet,” I say. “Nice to meet you.”

“A brief pleasure it will be if we do not make haste to escape this place, Vestige.”

“Why do you call me ‘Vestige’?” I ask.

“Because you are but a remnant of your former self,” the Prophet says. “Thus the Elder Scrolls foretold—”

“Okay, great, whatever,” I say, cutting off whatever talk of prophecy he was going to go into. I really do not care. “I do hope you’ve foreseen which way we need to go to get out of here, though.”

“The Anchor,” the Prophet says. “The Lord of Brutality is using Dark Anchors to invade Tamriel. I can use one of these to return us there.”

“Sounds like a plan,” I say.

I manage to find the Anchor Mooring, which turns out to be not particularly difficult and why in Oblivion did Molag Bal imprison this guy right next to a place that could get him out of here? More taunting? I don’t presume to guess why the God of Schemes does anything, but it almost feels like he intended the Prophet to escape. This is way too easy.

And then a huge, shadowy figure with fiery blue eyes emerges from the pit in front of us and taunts us in a booming voice something about the futility of defiance and his intent to dominate the world, and a giant bone creature attacks us. I take that back.

Once I’ve defeated the bone colossus, I go back to the Prophet. “Okay, now that that’s out of the way. Just how are we going to use this thing to get out of here? The portal is above us. Do you have a levitate spell?”

“Yes,” the Prophet says. “But first, you will need to use a Skyshard to attune yourself to Nirn again, since you are dead.”

“And… is there one of whatever those are that just happens to be lying around here?” I ask.

The Prophet gives a completely unnecessary cosmological speech about Aetherial energy or something, and I kind of tune him out a bit but the relevant part is that he can summon one, somehow. After yelling at the sky, a glowing blue crystal appears in a column of shimmering light. I look at him a bit dubiously, but shrug and touch it. A flood of energy rushes into me, tingling from my toes to my fingertips and suffusing my entire being. I feel alive in a way that I have not for as long as I can remember.

I take in a deep breath. “Coool.”

The Prophet begins some sort of spell, starting up some long-winded chant calling upon Akatosh, Dragon God of Time. I have no idea why that all is needed for a levitation spell, but I let him do that, and wander off to poke through some containers in the room.

“Hey, I found Molag Bal’s secret borscht recipe!” I announce.

“Hurry!” the Prophet yells to me. “We must go now!”

“Right, yeah, coming!”

I run toward the Prophet as I feel some sort of spell starting to grip me. I leap into the air over the pit and rise into the air toward the swirling portal, laughing and spinning about with my arms outstretched, and yelling, “WHEEEEEE!”