Chapter Text
"Au revoir papa, mama!" Anne waved as her carriage moved away from the stables. A few meters away, her parents waved back to her and her mother holded a wet handkerchief with her tears.
"Good bye sweetie! We're proud of you!" Her mother, Marie, yelled while her husband hugged her waist."We love you!"
Anne blowed kisses to the air, a warm feeling filling her chest. It was the most exciting moment in her life, a moment awaited since she was a child! She sat on the carriage and looked the roads guiding her outside the kingdom of Daggerfall. It was a journey of about a week so she could finally enter Skyrim and another three days to get to her goal: The College of Winterhold.
"Get comfortable, lady. We have a lot of hours before we get to Wayrest and then you can rest and climb to another carriage." The carriage driver said.
Her ears were ringing, and her vision blurry. She managed to recognize the sky, being teared apart? And a giant fireball towards her? A shadow with a shape of a dragon circling the skies?
"Anneberry!" A man screamed, to later hear his screams of agony and her body being pushed towards a bush.
She didn't know for how long she was unconscious, but when she opened her eyes and tried to get up, she witnessed her caravan being burned down, and the reek of burnt flesh from the carriage driver laying meters from her pierced her nose. She gagged.
"No..." The young mage whispered. "What just happened?"
She began to circle the caravan, everything was burned down to crisp. The boxes, supplies, the horses lied on the grass, with a panicked gaze on their lifeless eyes, sign of a harsh and scary death. She recalled, this was the caravan from Hammerfell. They didn't have any carriages traveling through the border but only that small caravan with the kind driver and the mercenary, Astius.
"Astius!" She called but no one answered. She began to fear his fate was the same as the driver. She screamed his name again between sobs. "Astius!"
She ran to the bushes, where she woke up for the first time, and she managed to recognize his body; or what was left of him. Anne could not handle it anymore and throwed up.
'What I am going to do? I am alone and lost in the middle of nowhere.' She thought. She looked up to the sky, locating the sun and managed to calculate the time. 'It has to be afternoon but I have a couple of hours before sunset. I have to go and find someone to help me.'
The young mage wandered in the woods, not daring to look back to the caravan, trying to find something that implied civilization or hunters, or human settlements! Without luck, she ended finding another mage, who unlike her kind chofer and Astius, had other intentions with the young lady. The battle was quick and short. It was the first time she had to kill a person using her magic. She always thought she would save lives, not take them. Even though she killed the necromancer for her self-defense, she felt like a murderer; all she did was to ran away from the convulsing corpse, like she was about to get caught doing a crime.
"I should find a route and fast. Maybe I can find someone to point me to a city." She rambled.
It hasn't passed like a moment and she found a vixen, crying on top of a dead man, it seemed like he was attacked by wolves. Her heart melted, appreciating the creature's loyalty.
"You having a bad day too, huh?" She whispered to the vixen, careful to not scare her away. "Come here little one, I'm not going to hurt you."
The small vixen screeched and wagged her tail, snarling at her. "No, no! It's okay." Anne whispered, lending a hand to the animal. "See? I'm not going to hurt you."
The creature got closer to Anne's hand, slowly, carefully, and sniffed her hand, to later lick it. Anneberry smiled. "You must be hungry, let me check if I have something here."
The vixen barked and pointed her snout to the man's pouch, half open. When she opened it, she found a fresh sweetroll. The vixen didn't waited for Anne to lend it to her and snapped her mouth on the treat.
"Careful!" Anne snapped, surprised on the vixen's sudden action. "Sweet Roll."
The vixen feasted on the treat, wagging her fluffy tail happily. Once she finished, she ran towards Anne and licked her cheek.
"I guess I'm not going to be alone anymore." Sweet Roll barked, and ran through the woods non-stop. "Sweet Roll! Wait for me!" The mage ran behind the fox to later find a road with some soldiers and a man wearing a majestic fur cloak, apparently they were patroling the area. The fox dashed towards the man in fur cloak and yelped at him, earning a curious look on his part.
'Thank gods for sending me a smart fox.' Anne thought as she fixed her robes and hair walking towards them.
"Good afternoon gentlemen and monsieur." Anne spoke, some of the soldiers whistled at her but the stoic man shut them up with a gesture of his hand. "My caravan got attacked and I am lost, could you please point me a direction towards the nearest city?"
"Perhaps. Who are you?" The man asked cautiously. He didn't seemed to trust her at all.
"My name is Anneberry, of Daggerfall. Please, I don't mean to be any trouble. I-" Her nervous rambling was interrupted by an arrow buzzing by her side and reaching to a soldier's eye, piercing his brain and killing instantly. Anne screamed in horror as many arrows rained on their direction and yells from other soldiers came from the woods and rocks.
"Submit your weapons!" The man in fur yelled and his soldiers put their weapons to the ground and raised their hands in defeat. Anne looked at him and she was certain that she was in the worst place, at the worst moment. She raised her hands as well and lowered herself in her knees, and saw Imperial soldiers running towards them, and arresting the remaining soldiers.
"And this one Tullius?" A soldier asked behind her, as an Imperial with different armor in a white horse galloped towards her. He looked at her with a dead eye.
No, she wasn't a soldier. Whatever was happening on this land, maybe Cyrodiil or Skyrim; she wasn't involved. By Mara, she never killed anyone in her life!
"Please sir, I'm not with them. Have pity!" She begged, tears building in her eyes.
"Silence her." He barked as he clicked his tongue to his horse. "Put them all in the carriage and tie Ulfric up. We have a long travel ahead."
Anne screamed, tried to get away from the situation, Sweet Roll barked and attempted to bite the soldier who handed Anne, but she was shoved away.
The last thing she remembered, was seeing her new pet scared and looking towards the man behind her in submission; until her head was kicked, her ears rang and everything went black once more.
Anne groaned in pain, she felt like her head was crushed like a walnut. She attempted to open her eyes, but her vision was blurry. It took her a few blinks to see a blonde man, one of the soldiers in blue cloak, smiling apologetic at her.
"...you're finally awake." He said. She didn't respond. "You aren't one of us, or them, just like that thief besides me."
Her eyebrow quirked. Thief? When did the thief got himself into this mess? Apparently he was just as scared as her, and began talking with the blonde soldier. She looked at her surroundings, until she found a pair of blue eyes looking at her. She backed off, realizing her head was resting on his shoulder.
"He's Ulfric Stormcloak, the true High King!" The blonde soldier mentioned.
"High King? Where am I?" Anne whispered.
"This is Skyrim. But I'm not sure where are they taking us."
"Shut up back there!" An Imperial soldier yelled. His yell made the young lady groan. They hitted her head harder than she thought.
Their slow and unfortunate travel seemed to end in Helgen, as Ralof informed before adding that he was sweet on a girl from there. Now speaking of sweet, she remembered her small friend who was nowhere to be seen.
Alone once more, before realizing she was just minutes away to go to the Divines. She couldn't reach the College, Sweet Roll probably was killed or lost and her parents were going to lose their only daughter. Great, her first days in Skyrim had been the worst on her life, but little was the young mage unaware of how many adventures and dangerous her life was up to be.