Chapter I: The Blade

Drip. Drip. Drip.

The castaway woke with a gasp.

The effort to breathe was agonizing. Every breath burnt, every heave of the chest felt as though something pressed a point against his side, trying to run him through. It was a long time before he could still himself. His breaths were short. Anything more than a gasp was unbearable. His chest grew tighter as his breath came more and more shallow, hiding from that intense, unbearable pain.

Then he coughed, despite all his effort, and the point was thrust between his ribs. It was everything he could do to stop himself crying out as his lungs overcame him, forcing out the seawater he’d been unintentionally fighting to keep down. His stomach followed suit, washing the blackness beside him in vomitus as he rolled frantically to his side.

When at last his breath was his own again, he stared into the darkness. On all sides, it closed in. There was no light in this place. Blinking, he willed his eyes to open, believing they might be closed. When still he could see nothing, his fingers, shaking, traced the edges of his eye.

Have I gone blind?

Without his sight, this journey would have been made for nought. How long would it be before anyone knew he’d failed? His contact wouldn’t wait for him long, and already he began to wonder how long he’d been unconscious.

With a sudden shudder, he realized how cold the air had grown. How did he arrive in this place? The darkness suggested a cave, or worse, some tenebrous realm of Oblivion—which would mean he was already dead.

Waving his hand in front of his eyes, he tested his vision once more. Nothing. He pressed his hand to his chest, where the pain was most intense. Something hung loose there, the bone shifting under his touch, biting back at him with fresh pain as though he’d cornered a wild dog. There should have been a warm wash of blood over his hand that followed. He should have felt the cold wetness of his skin, he realized. He had nearly drowned, after all.

Instead, there was nothing. His fingers were like wood, the linens he wore clinging to his freezing body like the hands of the grave. He shivered, rubbing his hands together, trying desperately to bring feeling back. The sound echoed in the darkness.

Drip. Drip. Drip.

He lay there for a long time, holding his hands together, willing his breath to warm them. Memory drifted back to him in pieces. There had been a storm.

The shouting of the crew was what woke him. Sailors hurled rope and commands alike, fighting to preserve their sails against a typhoon that had risen up out of the sea like magic. And magic it might have been, he realized. The Iliac Bay was no stranger to sorcery. It was why they’d sent him, after all. His purpose here came flooding back. The orders had come from the Emperor himself, delivered to him at that inn in Haven. The courier said little, letting the wax seal of the Septims do the speaking for him.

- J.

His orders had been clear, even if his purpose for coming here wasn’t. That was the way of the Empire—there were always those who would stand to gain from knowing the movements of the Emperor’s agents. Though his superiors remained secretive, he knew they would not have summoned him if there wasn't dire need. Where a witchhunter goes, there are evil things to slay, the saying went. His time in the southern provinces had only proven this to him. Nearly six years since last he saw the city isle, his home, and every day was spent tracking those deemed too dangerous for the mundane to pursue. The swamps of Black Marsh. The hawkfire fields of Anequina. He’d spent the six months prior to receiving his new orders carrying out the old: to track and bring to justice a rogue mage, hiding in the jungles of Valenwood. Those days had been hard, the trails old, and his resources few. Even now the memories of warm inns and warmer arms drifted back to him as he lay on the damp cave floor, while it sapped the warmth from his bones.

You've survived worse. You will not die in this place.

He steeled himself, bracing against the ground as the pain in his chest answered every motion with vengeance.

You are a Blade of the Emperor.

Get. Up.

With a grunt that echoed in the dark, he forced himself to his feet. With some relief, he realized his legs were unbroken. That at least was a boon in an otherwise terrible situation. But then the world was swimming, spinning about inside his head like a bowl of cold soup. The ground turned traitor beneath his feet, turning opposite the sloshing in his skull. He could see nothing. No walls. No floor. Nothing to tell him which way was up.

Drip. Drip. Splash.

Before he could fall again, he lurched, doubling over, emptying a stomach full of seawater—along with that morning’s breakfast.

”Fetcher…” The castaway wiped the corner of his mouth. The smell of salt and iron and sick drifted up at him from the cave floor.

”This place will be the death of me if I cannot find a way out,” he said aloud. The words echoed, and he became sensible enough to realize he might alert anyone nearby. He waited in the dark, ears straining for the sound of footsteps approaching. The silence of the cave answered, along with the ever-present sound of water falling.

Drip. Drip. Drip.

He took a shambling step forward, then another, and another. Step by step warmth returned to him, though the air was still cold. Intolerably cold. There was no wind in that place. No sound of life or living things. The cold air passed through him as though he was a ghost, an eidolon in his own body. The pounding in his skull was the only evidence to the contrary. He hated the cold.

He took another step, kicking something metal with his bare foot. What followed was a familiar sound: the resounding ring of steel. The castaway bent as far as he could tolerate, wooden fingers searching for the hilt of his sword. He kicked something hard again, though the noise was noticeably more dull—the scabbard, he realized. He picked it up. The remains of the weapon inside fell to the ground, broken into a thousand invisible fragments. The sound they made, a storm of echoes in what had once been silence, made him wince.

I’m going to be the death of me. I need light.

The revelation struck him as though he hadn’t realized until that very moment. He was a mage, after all. Who better else to hunt wizards than one of their own? His fingers remembered the shape of the spell before his clouded mind could fully comprehend it. Fire, dazzling and minuscule, leapt into his hand from somewhere in his chest. He eyed the flames for a time, not just savoring the fact that he wasn’t blind, but also willing the spell as small as he could manage, so as to not burn through his reserves too quickly. He needed to be cautious, despite his desire to drink in the fire’s warmth.

The cave was only just illuminated enough for him to see the ground. Something wet and red, smeared where he’d struggled with standing only a moment ago, covered everywhere the light shone. Yellow-pale fluid mixed with the stuff on the ground, intermingled with a meal he could almost still recognize.

Rolling silently in a pool of his blood lay his sword, or at least, what remained of it. He bent to pick it up, spell dying as he was forced to brace a hand against his furious ribs. The weight was wrong once he finally held it. Too heavy in the hilt. He ran his thumb along its edge, his touch light as air as he followed its blade through the darkness. It ended suddenly—too suddenly—in a jagged, broken point.

A sword of Akaviri make ought to outlast its wielder. This one had not.

He sheathed the weapon, sliding the scabbard into what remained of his belt. He would not leave it behind. He’d carried it and the oath it symbolized for nearly a decade now. There was no honor in leaving it. And besides, a jagged shard of steel was still just that. A weapon.

Drip. Drip. Drip.

The ceiling of the cave was as black as the world around him. He never made the choice to look to the stars, but so often had his eyes drifted there that now the gesture was as instinctual as casting. But the stars that marked his birth lay above the earth, and he below. The Atronach could not guide him here. Even so, he could feel the magicka in his palms waning. The stars would exact their price all the same.

Even if the stars and the Empire had abandoned him, even if he was to die alone in the dark, standing brought the clear, salty air of the cave to his lungs. With a cough, he drew in a deep breath, fighting to quiet a heart that he’d only just realized would not stop beating. He could remember more clearly now.

The mainmast was shattered beneath the storm's wrath. It had risen from the deep, like an angry sea-beast woken from a fragile slumber. Imperial marines were thrown overboard. Some were crushed as the ship capsized and split in two. He'd been thrown clear by then. At that point, there was nothing left to remember beyond the rush of cold seawater and the taste of salt and iron. He'd only had time enough to grab his sword. The tides had carried him half-drowned to this cave. He could remember crawling ashore, every muscle aching, exhaustion threatening to pull him back beneath the waves as his hands slipped over jagged rocks. By some cruel trick of fate, the cave roared, collapsing only just as he made it inside. He remembered stumbling to his feet as the rocks began to fall. Then darkness.

Drip. Drip. Drip.

He brought a shaking hand to his face. He knew it was there, though still he could not see it. He flexed his fingers. Still numb.

Need to get warm. Need to see—if I still can.

The flow of magicka began in his chest once more, flowing more freely now through his temples, circulating in invisible, internal wisps that he could feel pooling in the palm of his hand. Once it had come to him in a raging torrent. Now, there was little more than a dying stream. Even so he knew that even in the deepest darkness, it took only the smallest fire to bring light. When the flame flickered to life in his hand once more, he could almost feel the darkness melt away; drawn from his lungs like venom from a wound, the oppressive weight on his chest lifted as he coaxed life into the brittle flame. He breathed deeply, willing the flame to grow now. Walking was difficult. He needed to know his heading and make for it—if there was anywhere left to go now. Soon he could see beyond the world at his feet. He chuckled in disbelief, though there was no humor in it, as only a few feet away lay an old tree, dragged into the cave by someone long ago, its trunk resting before a firepit encircled with stones. The effort of laughing only renewed the sharp pain in his side. Beyond the long-forgotten camp, there was a wooden door, worn by weather and worm and set inside a rotting frame, leading deeper into what must have been the rest of the cave.

He turned back. The sea and sky were gone, hidden behind an avalanche of rubble sealed by mud and sand. There was only one way out now.

Limping, he made his way to the log, setting himself against it. There was no way of knowing if he was alone in this place, only that if he did not get warm, or cauterize his wounds, he would die long before anyone—or anything else—could claim his life.

He slung the flame into the firepit, sliding to sit against the log. His head fell back, resting against a knot worn smooth by time. The log was immense. Large enough to offer protection. Ancient enough that even the sea had not yet worn it to nothing. He would be safe here, for a time.

When he waved a hand over the fire, offering magicka to fuel it, he felt the all-too-familiar sensation of the flow in his chest begin to stem. He’d expected to run out soon, but not this soon. His hands closed into fists as he aborted his efforts, trying to hold onto the last vestige of his magical energies.

Drip. Drip. Drip.

The fire grew all the same. He could feel the feeling return to his hands as he warmed them. Soon, sensation returned to his face as well. Something ran down his cheek, warm and carrying the scent of iron. He raised a hand to his brow, pressing against the pounding in his skull. The warmth coated it, running between his fingers with every pulse of his heart.

He was no healer. The only magic he knew well was Destruction. His only arcana fire.

But the wound was great. Something he must have endured when the cave collapsed. He'd lost a lot of blood by now—is that why he still felt so faint? How much magicka remained to him? Not enough to risk a healing spell—he was never truly well versed in that school. He cursed himself for not trying to learn before.

There was only one method left to him, he realized. He steeled himself, drawing his sword and setting it aside. He took the wooden scabbard and placed it between his teeth. Biting down, he pressed his hand to the gash in his head, before once more calling on his magicka.

Just enough for one final burst of fire.

Drip. Dr—

He cried out as the flesh was seared shut and the dripping stopped.