The Last Dragonborn

Chapter 1

Awakening

AN: The first important piece of information to note before reading this is that after having played the other Elder Scrolls games, Skyrim began to look like something of a disappointment. I still love the game, its just that it doesn't fit into the lore of the other games. So what I'm going to do is use Zaric Zhakaron's youtube videos What If Skyrim Was Good Parts 1-4. Go watch those videos if you have the time, they're pretty good... but a bit lengthy. The first one is 31:50, the second one is 45:37, the third one is 15:44, and the last one is 23:13.

Darkness, that was all he knew, it was all he remembered. It encompassed all, any sights or sounds there might have been were shrouded by the all encompassing dark. There was nothing else, no memory or sense of time.

'Am I... dead' came the thoughts that resounded in the void, 'no, I don't think so... but how would I be able to tell the difference?'

But then came confusion, a sensation he couldn't ever remember feeling before, but he couldn't remember anything else either so perhaps that was a moot point.

'But then, who am I?' were the thought that came next, 'do I have a name? A family? Am I a hero, a law abiding citizen or a criminal?' All these questions and more regarding his own identity, where he was, and how he got there.

But wait... was that sound? It was a light tinkling of metal to the side of himself, accompanied by a quiet murmuring "I've almost got them off."

A thought occurred, he wanted to see what was making the sounds, and with a bit of effort he opened his eyes, only to see a grimy stone floor through dizzy eyes. He shut them again and groaned in discomfort at the piercing pain in his skull before opening his eyes more slowly.

At first he couldn't see anything through the haze, but after his vision had cleared he looked up to see a blond... human, a Nord (though he didn't quite know how he knew that) looking at him in concern, and upon looking around he saw a frightened, dirty looking man, also a Nord, and several other Nords.

All of them were dressed in rags with their hands bound in iron manacles behind their backs with the sole exceptions being the blond and the dirty one.

Looking around further, he could see that they were all in a jail cell.

The blond stood and walked over to stand before him, to allow another Nord, a woman this time, to have her manacles tended by the dirty man, who by now he guessed was some form of thief.

"Hey," he said, drawing his attention away from the scene and onto himself "I'm Ralof" he introduced himself, extending an arm before remembering that the Elf's hands were still bound and rubbed his neck. "You were unlucky to be caught up in this mess, friend" the man said, .

"Where are you from?" Ralof asked when he didn't reply. He lowered his head and thought... but after a moment, could only shake his head as nothing came to him. He knew a few things, such as the fact that his fellow prisoners were all Nords, and that his grey-black skin identified him as a Dunmer.

"I don't know," he looked up at the blond man "I can't remember(1)." He said after a moment of silence, trying to think up a suitable lie before relenting and excepting his lack of memories as his lot in life.

Ralof hummed thought as he leaned back, not sure whether he believed the Dark Elf before him.

The Dunmer before him was fairly tall, standing only an inch or two lower than the average High Elf. His eyes were fairly standard for his race, bloody red orbs surrounded by pools of deep black. His skin was a dark grey, almost black in color, though though it seemed to lack any form of body or facial hair. His hair was long and slightly wavy, the ends falling to his mid-back and just below his collarbones, and was a snowy white, same with his aristocratically arched eyebrows and long, feminine eyelashes. Lastly, his ears were swept back in an even line with his eyes, long and tapered to a fine point, very different to the higher and shorter ears common among his kind(2).

He looked to Ralof like some pretty-boy bard or noble, though he did bear a decent musculature on his thin body and some scars on his arms and face that looked like he had gotten them on some form of battlefield. Was he an adventurer of some kind, or if he was a noble then maybe he earned a title in the Great War... it was difficult to determine an Elf's age by looking at them.

"Wait!" they heard the thief say in a hushed voice, "the guards are coming." He, Ralof and the woman he had been working on earlier put their hands behind their back and pretended they were still bound.

Rounding the corner behind the bars were three men, two in leather armor with red cloth underneath, but the one trailing behind them caught his attention the most.

He was shirtless, revealing his fair pale skin and well muscled, if heavily scarred, torso. His face was covered by an eyeless iron helmet that looked to have been locked shut from behind, and was also welded to a pole that ran the length of his shoulder that his arms were chained to.

"What's with the mask?" the thief asked, having never seen nor heard of a single prisoner handled with this much caution before.

The woman whose hands he had just freed apparently thought his remark was born out of disrespect or sarcasm, because she reprimanded him, but in low tones to avoid a reprimand from their guards "that's Ulfric Stormcloak your talking about, show some respect!"

"Jarl Ulfric, leader of the Stormcloak rebellion?"

Ralof chose this time to speak, and proudly declared "the True High King of Skyrim, and heir to the Empire of Tamriel!"

He reconsidered the man in the iron mask. The amount of caution they were handling him with may have been a political move, or perhaps the man represented a serious threat and was being handled with deserved caution.

The thief had a blank look on his face as he considered his words. "But he's not an Imperial..." he stated awkwardly.

"Not that empire" Ralof started before another prisoner spoke up "they say that Jarl Ulfric's got the dragon blood running through his veins!"

"I though the Septim ended after Martin sacrificed himself" the thief said, but then another prisoner with some grey in his hair interjected with "that's Uriel Septim's line, boy! Old Tiber Septim used to be Talos of Atmorra, our Jarl's from that line."

The man in question must have slowed his walk to listen to their conversation, because it wasn't until this moment that he left his line of sight.

He furrowed his brow in thought as he considered this information. So these men were Stormcloaks, they and their leader Jarl Ulfric Stormcloak were rebelling against the empire of Tamriel... which he apparently had a right to the throne...

But then there already must have been an Emperor, so then Ulfric was from a branch family...

He shook his head, all this information was heavy, he'd think about it later.

His face snapped to the hallway outside the prison cell again when he heard footsteps. Four armored men came to stand in front of their cell. On your feet prisoners!" The one in front called, opening the door. One by one, they stood and followed their captors in a single file line at spearpoint by their captors.

By now, several of them were free of their manacles, himself not included, but were still wearing them to give the illusion of being bound, and their captors seemed to busy to notice.

They walked for what seemed to be several minutes until they exited the fort they were imprisoned in into a courtyard with a raised platform at one end with a chipping block, two soldiers and a hooded executioner.

The officers, one female and one male, were both wearing the standard uniform he had come to expect, with the exception of being more ornamental to denote being higher in rank. Their uniforms included steel plate armor, a dragon symbol on their belts, heavier shields, more ornamental swords, steel helmets with a bigger crest and maroon capes with fur lining.

Though the male had his helmet and shield on a table to the side of him, revealing his shoulder length chestnut hair, and had a clipboard and a quill.

As the prisoners were ushered onto the raised platform, the officer with the list pointed to him with his quill and said "you there, hold" he stopped moving forward, making a bit of distance between himself and the thief, who was just ahead of him.

The Nord walked over to the Dunmer prisoner and examined him. This was a military execution, and anyone not on the list for such would have been a problem.

Hadvar was the right hand man to General Tullius in Skyrim, and was thus overseeing this event. It was his job to smooth the relations between the Imperials and the locals, and executing an innocent would only worsen things on their end.

But even so, Morrowind no longer had any political weight now that their Great Houses were in ashes, and the Dunmer of Skyrim were siding with the rebels.

"Forget the list," the woman at Hadvar's side said "he goes to the block."

Hadvar scoffed, but having no reason to do otherwise, backed off and waved the Dark Elf forward.

"Wait, Hadvar! That Dunmer isn't a part of the Sormcloaks!" Ralof shouted, rejecting his old friends decision to execute him anyway regardless of what the list said.

"Indeed" the soldier sarcastically, not quite believing the elf, "then perhaps you are to be taken back to Solitude for questioning."

He smiled at Ralof for trying to save him, even if it didn't work out. The captain grabbed hold of his shoulder and marched him directly to the block, and putting her foot on his back, pushed him face first onto it.

He shifted his head to the side to alleviate some of the discomfort at having his face slammed into a stone block. He'd have thought that they'd want to execute Ulfric sooner rather than later if he was truly as important as the others said he was. That's what all this fanfare was about after all.

'This is it' he thought as the headsman raised his ax. 'It wasn't a long life, and I guess my only regret is the memory thing.'

His stomach made a slight gurgling sound 'I'm hungry, maybe a last meal would've been nice.'

He opened his eyes again for what he thought would be the last time, but then he felt the ground shake and the raised platform groan under the stress. He found his eyes drawn drawn toward a massive creature looking straight at him from atop the tower adjacent to his position.

It was a red-orange, two massive grey bony wings sticking out from it's side, grey bony spikes sticking out from its neck, back and tail, its head crowned by two large grey horns, and last were a pair of intense yellow eyes staring directly into his soul(5).

"What in Oblivion is that?" someone said, but he couldn't tell who it was as his heart began to race within his chest.

"Dragon!" Someone screams, and the now identified dragon opened its mouth, and with three spoken words released a torrent of energy sent directly at him, but hit the executioner who stood in between them, sending both him and his axe flying like a ragdoll.

(1) My favorite male voice actor is Robin Atkin Downes, but since he already has a role in Skyrim, I'm going with Liam O'Brian. The guy has a few different voices for his many roles, but the one I'm going with for Enakam is going to to be Caius Ballad from Final Fantasy XIII-2 and Lightning Returns.

(2) When playing Elder Scrolls Online, I got this appearance, more or less, when messing around with the sliders. I also took some artistic creativity with the hair and ears.

(3) I've decided to change the designs for the Imperial armor for my story. Take a look at the Imperial Armor concept art on the Imperial Armor wiki page.

(4) Akatosh isn't present in the Nordic pantheon, rather the northern barbarians worship his firstborn Akatosh.

(5) Yes, this is an Ancient dragon, not Alduin, he will be introduced later. Ancient dragons are the most powerful dragons in the base game, but not with the expansions. I wanted to display the difficulty normal soldiers have with dragons, but I didn't want to go too powerful or too weak.

This is the shortest chapter that I plan to write for this story.