Dear Journal -
Steve here. Sorry for ending on such an abrupt note last time. I had to chase a firefly and then clean myself before continuing.
So, when I told the guard with the clipboard that my name was Steve. Rather than be awed by the awesomeness of my name, he asked me if I was with a caravan, which is an unfair stereotype, I feel I should point out. We don’t all travel in caravans. Everything else about us might be true, but that one is not.
And then he had the nerve to add, “Your kind always seems to find trouble.” My kind? MY KIND? I mean, yes, it’s true that we often seem to find trouble, but not always. I don’t think he’s around Khajiit enough to make such an observation. But being tied up and about to be murdered to death, I didn’t feel up to correcting him.
Then he turned to the captain (I only know this because he called her captain) and said “What should we do? He’s not on the list.” What? I’m not even on the list! So they should let me go, yes? But no. The captain said, “Forget the list, he goes to the block.” I’ll remember that, Captain Blockhappy. If I come back as a ghost, I will be sure to hack up some ghostly fur clots into your mead. Which won’t matter because they’ll be ghostly, but it’s the thought that counts.
For his part, the clipboard guy seemed apologetic, and offered to return my remains to Elswyr. Which, I suppose is a noble gesture, but Elswyr is a really big place. Were they going to just throw my corpse over the border and let anyone call dibs? Or did they have some means of tracking down my family? I hoped it was the former, because I didn’t want my parents to know that I’d died for no apparent reason. (Even though some of my memory had returned, I still didn’t know why I’d been arrested. They probably just assumed I was guilty of something. Typical Khajiit profiling.)
I followed the captain over to the Chopping Block Area, where one of the guards was lecturing Ulfric on proper hero etiquette, i.e., don’t use “The Voice” (whatever that is) to usurp the throne. I didn’t know what The Voice was, but if you could get a throne with it, more power to ya, in my opinion.
The guard (I keep calling him a guard, but for all I know he might have been the Chief Second Lieutenant Commander-In-Charge or however their rankings work), he talked about restoring peace to Skyrim via executions, but all I could think about was what was that freaky screeching noise echoing in the mountains? But nobody else seemed to notice. Well, one guy noticed, but the maybe-lieutenant said it was nothing. That really irked me, especially in light of what happened next, but I’m getting ahead of myself.
A priestess started giving last rites to the lot of us, but the first guy for the block was impatient to get things moving, saying, “I haven’t got all morning.” Now there’s a guy who won’t be late to his own funeral. He started mouthing off, saying that his ancestors were smiling upon him for getting killed, as if they had literally nothing better to do in Sovengaard. I couldn’t bear to watch what was coming, so I focused on the distant mountains instead.
Even so, when the axe finally came down, I gasped along with the dozens of other voices, that apparently came from people hiding in their houses, as there was only about seven people nearby, that I could see. I was not looking forward to my turn. (But I’m just going to give you a spoiler alert right now and say that I did not get my head chopped off. I’m assuming you already figured that out.)
Braelof The Incessantly Chatty Nord honored(?) the guy’s sacrifice by saying, “As fearless in death as he was in life.” So, let that be a lesson to you, kids: don’t be as fearless in death as you are in life, or someone will chop your head off. Unless some totally unforeseen event occurs that prevents it from happening, which I’ll be getting to in just a second.
A second later, they said “Next the cat!” I was about to correct them with “Steve the cat,” before realizing I was Khajiit, not cat (though evolved from cats long ago), but then the distant sky screeching happened again, and Clipboard McSorry said “There it is again, did you hear that?” I did hear it, but I didn’t say anything, because I was still sulking over being called a “cat.”
Rather than ponder the odd noises, however, the execution went forward. Or rather, I went forward, to the block, “Nice and easy,” to use their words, though looking back on it, it was neither nice nor easy. In fact, I was about to complain about them not rinsing off the block for me to lay my head down on it, when I saw a huge dark shape flapping in the sky behind the executioner’s head.
Suddenly, a huge dragon landed on the tower next to the chopping block.
Now, at the time you’re reading this, you may or may not be alarmed or amazed by this turn of events, so let me just point out that, at the time it happened? This was unprecedented. As far as I knew – and I think as far as anyone else knew – there were no such thing as dragons, any more. They’d all died, or something. I wasn’t sure about the details, I just knew they were never seen. However, much like art and lewd wood carvings, I knew a dragon when I saw one. And this one was looking right at me. I mean, seriously right at me. It was the most unsettling thing I’d felt up to that point in my life.
I was frozen in place, as the dragon let out a… shout, I guess? And the sky became stormy behind it, and everything became a bit blurry. And then it fired a blast of some sort, and I collapsed to the ground, and all Oblivion broke loose. (Not literally, mind you. That hadn’t happened in quite some time. Just figuratively. Hopefully I’m using those terms correctly.)
I got up from the chopping block area, and was face-to-face with my old “buddy” Braelof, who said, “C’mon, the gods won’t give us another chance!” Which I assumed was his way of saying, “Let’s get out of here.”
So we ran to the nearest dragon-free tower and slammed the door behind us. Ulfric was already inside, his gag conveniently missing, as Braelof asked stupidly, “What was that thing? Could the legends be true?”
To which Ulfric replied, “Legends don’t burn down villages.”
Were I less afraid for my life, I might have asked him what sort of jackass response that was supposed to be. Legends don’t burn down villages? Since when? I mean, if anyone can burn down villages, I would think legends-come-true could. Unless there’s some Legend Code of Conduct I’m unaware of, and one of the rules is “No burning down villages.” But maybe they’re more of guidelines than rules.
You might think that I was safe once inside the tower, but no. It couldn’t be that simple, could it? Of course not. I will tell you what happened next, next time. For now I must cat nap. I mean Khajiit nap.
Sincerely,
Steve
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