[[sorry I didn't write last week, someone i loved died so i had to set many things in motion for them.]]
Waking up on a branch wasn't exactly comfortable, but after the night I'd had, it may as well have been a featherbed. My cheek was pressed against the cold bark, one leg dangling lazily off the side.
Everything ached. My arms, my legs, my back, even the muscles I didn't remember using. I groaned and stretched, arching my back until it popped. A few birds startled overhead, wings rustling through the branches. I didn't bother smoothing my cloak or fixing my hair. The mask was already back in place. I hooked it up onto my forehead again, letting it rest like a headband.
I slid down from the branch, landing with a soft crunch on a blanket of frost. The air kissed my skin like chilled breath. I stood barefoot again, the grass crackling under my feet. I had stored the boots last night away.
Though it seemed the clothes had an auto-clean on them. which was perfect. I moved quietly through the trees, brushing aside ferns and needles, scanning the underbrush for food. My stomach wasn't growling yet, but the silence in there was suspicious. I let my mind drift, let instincts take over.
I blinked, and for a moment my vision sharpened unnaturally. The colors popped. Blues got deeper, greens more vivid. The wind shifted, and scents flooded in, pine bark, wet stone, a musky trail of fur leading off from where I had crossed the river, probably.
"Snowberry bush," I murmured, eyes narrowing. It was ten paces to the left, nestled near the base of a broken tree. Half-covered in frost, but the berries were intact. I crouched, brushing snow-dust off the leaves and plucking a handful into my palm. Cold, tart, slightly sweet. I shoved a few in my mouth and sighed through my nose.
I dropped the rest into my system inventory. A soft ping confirmed the pickup. After a while, I just walked. It wasn't aimless, not really. More like drifting, letting my senses do the steering. The deeper I moved into this forest, the clearer it became that this world wasn't the one I knew from the game. It was vaster. Wilder. Untamed in a way even modded Skyrim never captured.
"This isn't just a loading zone," I muttered.
That's when I found the tracks. At first, I thought they were just shallow grooves in the earth, but when I crouched and ran a finger along the edges, I could feel the way the ground had compacted. Heavy wheels. A wagon, probably. Maybe two. I leaned down further, brushing back frost to spot footprints alongside. Definitely human-like. The truth was I had no idea how I knew this stuff, but I did. Maybe a few hours old. But they were fresh enough to give me a direction.
I stood, popped another berry in my mouth, and adjusted my cloak. "Well," I said to no one, "if I don't know where I'm going, may as well follow the people who do." I followed the tracks north, cloak whispering around my ankles.
The woods opened gradually. I had been walking for a few hours already, and I wasn't tired yet, must be because of my werewolf side, honestly, I was grateful, even the soreness from earlier was gone. I smelled it before I saw it, damp stone, fresh silt, that chill hint of iron in cold mountain-fed water. My steps slowed as light caught silver off the surface ahead. A lake.
Not huge, but deep, still. Glass-smooth in most places except where a quiet stream fed into one end and a faster, gurgling river slipped out the other. That meant it wasn't stagnant. That meant I could probably drink from it. I didn't feel like dying from a stomach worm this early into my second life.
I stepped closer, bare feet pressing into the cool, soft mud lining the shore. The ground squished a little beneath my toes. I sat on a flat rock close to the water's edge. My reflection was faint at first, blurred by ripples. Then it stilled.
What stared back at me wasn't quite what I expected. White hair fell in soft waves around my face, but my ears… my ears didn't look like they had. They weren't long or pointed anymore, not obviously. They'd shrunk slightly, rounded at the edges, just enough to pass for human.
I leaned in, narrowing my eyes. "…What the hell?" I murmured.
I touched one ear, feeling the cartilage underneath. Still pointed, just hidden. Magic, then. But I hadn't cast anything. My fingers traced the mask, I took it off, and looked at it. A faint glimmer traced its surface, dull steel pulsing like a heartbeat.
"Well, aren't you full of surprises?" I muttered. The steel felt warm. More like the comfortable warmth of sun-baked metal. Enchantment, maybe? I couldn't tell what kind. It wasn't like I had Detect Enchantment handy.
I slid it back onto my head like before, worn like a headband. The illusion came back on. Still human-looking. If I walked into any Nord hold looking like a snow elf, I'd probably get run through before I could say hello. Racist bastards. But if I looked human? Maybe I could pass.
Still, the thought didn't sit clean. I hated them. All of them. But I knew it wasn't from me, well kinda this body hated them, and from what I saw in those dreams, I didn't blame her, well me.
The faint breeze carried the scent of pine needles and wild moss. Somewhere in the trees behind me, a bird cried once, then fell silent. I watched the water flow from lake to river, the way it twisted past the banks, pulling leaves and tiny petals along with it. Moving forward. Always forward.
I sighed and dipped my hand into the lake. Cold. Clean. I splashed some onto my face, letting it run down my cheeks and chin. I took a few gulps.
I stood and shook off the water, stepping away from the shore. My toes sunk briefly into the soft mud again before finding firmer footing. It wasn't long before I caught the impression of tracks in the dirt beyond the lakeside. Wheels.
I rolled my neck, then looked toward the trail. "I've got nothing better to do," I said to the trees. "Let's see who's leaving ruts."
The wagon tracks cut inland for a while, parallel to the river, before swinging west again, toward the coastline. By late afternoon, I could taste salt on the air. Trees thinned, frost gave way to stubborn dune-grass, and gulls started screaming overhead like they'd just discovered self-reflection. I had managed to eat all of my snow berries.
Then the smell hit: fresh blood that hadn't quite gone stale. I crested a low rise and found the shoreline littered with horker corpses, at least a dozen, maybe more, sprawled like overturned barrels. Thick claw furrows raked across their blubber, deep enough to split hide and expose fat the color of candle wax.
"Lovely," I muttered, crouching beside the nearest one. The gouges were wide. Something big and hungry had come through. I wasn't about to waste free currency. I worked a tusk loose with my hand, then another. The cartilage popped with a wet snap, splattering my cloak. Ten tusks later, my arms ached and my hands smelled like rancid fish oil, but the bundle felt satisfyingly heavy. At fifty septims each, that would be five hundred… except I wasn't naïve. I'd be lucky to get twenty.
The tracks curved past the kill site and resumed, fresh grooves in sand leading toward wooden palisades in the distance. Lanterns flickered atop watch towers; gulls circled; smoke drifted lazily from squat chimneys. A port town. Bigger than a fishing hamlet, maybe thirty buildings clustered around two long docks where a three-masted schooner creaked at anchor.
I tugged my cloak tight, nudged the steel mask higher on my brow, and followed the wagon's ruts through the open gate. No guards tried to stop me; they were busy arguing about a shipment of fire salts with a bored Imperial clerk. Perfect.
Inside, the place stank of tar, salt, and wet wool. Nords in leather jerkins hauled crates; a pair of Altmer scribes, tall and haggling over parchment widths; Dunmer dockhands smoked sweet-leaf behind a stack of rum barrels.
The wagon stood on the far pier, oxen unhitched and dozing. Chains rattled from its side rails where seven slaves were half-dragged, half-pushed onto the planks. Orcs, two of them, thick wrists bound but shoulders squared. An Argonian with dull bronze scales and downcast eyes. A Khajiit male whose ears twitched restlessly. And, at the end of the line, a human girl, maybe fifteen, brown hair hacked short. She shuffled, faltered; a Dunmer driver jerked the chain, barking for speed.
My jaw clenched. I counted five slavers, all Dunmer, long knives at belts and bows slung lazily across backs. They hammered iron staples into the pier, securing each prisoner to a post for the night. Cheap lodging.
I forced myself to keep walking. Punching five armed men in the face was a tomorrow problem. Step one: gear and spells.
The first merchant to spot me was a Nord woman with arms like mast beams and a stall full of fish hooks and bone trinkets. Her sign: Sea-Bounty Curios. She eyed the tusks under my cloak, nostrils flaring.
"Selling?"
"Depends on the offer," I said, sliding a pair onto her counter. Fresh blood glistened near the root. She examined the weight, tapped the density. "Good. Twenty-five each."
I snorted. "Forty."
"Twenty-seven."
We glared. Eventually, I settled at twenty-seven. 270 Septims clinked into a small leather pouch. Next stop: a weapons stall run by a grey-bearded Redguard polishing axe heads. Spears lined a rack behind him: ash hafts, iron leaf blades. I hefted one—balanced, maybe six feet, it even had a butt spike.
"Fifty," he said.
I tried haggling; he didn't budge. Paid the coin. The moment the weight settled in my palm I felt marginally less naked.
Across the alley, a cramped shack glowed blue from soul gems set in sconces. A faded sign read Rune-Weaver Tomes. Inside, a High Elf mage in rust-colored robes catalogued scrolls. Spellbooks lay open on a slanted desk: Illusion, Alteration, and Restoration. Prices, however, were… ambitious. Eighty septims for Candlelight. One-fifty for Muffle. "Do you have one for healing?"
"Beginner restoration?" he repeated, as though the phrase physically pained him.
"Something that stops bleeding and keeps me on my feet," I clarified, dropping four septim-tens and two fives on the counter. Fifty in total. I kept the spear in view; a polite reminder we were both armed.
He sighed, plucked a slim booklet bound in deer hide, and set it down like an unwanted pet. "Heal Minor wounds. Touch-range, trivial magicka cost. Read it, hold the focus for a breath, and your nerves will do the rest." And he whispered low. "It's not even a good school of magic..."
I raised a brow. "Self-study?"
"Naturally, do I look like one of those mage guild members?"
A faint pulse shimmered in my vision the instant my palm touched the cover:
[Spell learned: Minor Heal]
Restoration 15 → 16
[Memory Echo] ♦ Destruction cantrip tier restored Spark, Frostbite, Flames.
I blinked hard. Spark, Frostbite, and Flames, three basic projectiles. Apparently, my nerves remembered more than I did. I slipped the booklet into inventory, exchanged curt nods with the Altmer, and backed out before my wallet could volunteer for anything flashier. Maybe I should have returned it, but the small timer of less than a minute made me think it was best not to. I waited out the minute and watched as the book became ash. "Huh, interesting."
Well, with those things out of the way, I'd look for an inn. The inn sat almost on top of the water, planks groaning every time a swell rolled under the pilings. Sign read The Salty Lantern; smelled like smoked haddock and cheap mead, which beat horker rot by several horizons.
I paid eight septims for a corner room: pallet bed, bowl-sized wash-basin, one crooked shutter that wouldn't fully latch. The innkeeper, a squat Breton with a moustache like burnt straw, slid a trencher of fish stew and black bread toward me as part of the price. I carried it to a window bench with a view over the pier.
Steam rolled up from the stew, potatoes, leeks, and something vaguely shellfishy. I tore bread, dunked, and ate in silence, eyes on the slaves below. They'd been left right where the Dunmer hammered them: seven silhouettes huddled under thin blankets, ringed by two bored guards nursing bottles.
Ale sloshed around the common room; dice clattered; a rigging-bell clanged somewhere in the harbor. That's when I heard the gossip drifting from a pair of deckhands at the next table.
"… Captain wants off at first tide. They'll be halfway to Blacklight before sunsets."
"Those tuskers pay double in Morrowind markets, I hear. Even that little milk-drinker girl'll fetch a pouch."
"Pfft—ash-landers can have 'em. Cargo's cursed the lot."
I followed their gaze.
Outside, both moons hung massive, Secunda a swollen coin of rust, Masser a darker maroon lid overhead. Light bled red across wave-crests, painting every rope and shingle in subtle burgundy.
Back in my room, I laid down on the bed and did a metal check of what I had now:
Septims: 170 left after stew and room.
Spear
Spells: Minor Heal, Spark, Frostbite, Flames.
Food: two handfuls of snowberries; half a loaf of black bread.
I sighed and started to close my eyes. Ive tried being a hero already and almost died. Unless something happened, I wasn't going to risk my life. And so I began to fall asleep.