A changeling's visit to Skyrim

In the dead of night, through the pitch darkness in the forests, a glimmer of moonlight reflected off a pair of eyes amongst the trees. The glowing orbs disappeared as quickly as they came, following the hulking form they belonged to and leaving the woods in darkness once more.

Fenora stalked through these woods, fitfully rubbing at her eyes in a futile attempt to clear her blurry vision. Her head pounded with every beat of her heart, and she staggered every now and again, having to use her sword as a cane when she wasn’t simply dragging it behind her.

She didn’t know how she had gotten out here, or even where here was. The soothing sensation that once filled her and made the pain she was in bearable had faded away. Now all she knew was that something was missing, and she had to find it.

“Shimmering… metal... infinite stars… power… key.” she droned to herself “Where?”

Suddenly the ground fell out from under her foot, and Fenora was sent tumbling down a steep cliffside, cursing the entire way.

“Shit- shit- ow- dammit! FIEM!”

Fenora’s body became ghostly, and the rest of the fall simply felt like landing on air. Finally she finished her decent on the road below, and the Become Ethereal shout wore off, leaving her lying there in the dirt. Though the fall did little to her, her headache became worse and she spat up a mouthful of blood.

Groaning, she rolled over onto her back, her insides feeling like they’d been torn apart. “What’s happening to me?” she moaned.

Suddenly a roar of challenge came from her right, and through her hazy vision she saw a great mass of fur charging towards her out of the forest.

Immediately grabbing her sword, Fenora rolled out of the way as the sabercat pounced on the ground where she’d been. She took a haphazardly swing at the beast and heard a satisfying hiss of pain, telling her at least one of her attacks had hit. Moving in for the kill she lunged forward, driving her sword as far into the beast as she could.

The giant feline roared and swiped at her with its paws. But her armor was more than a match for the razor-like claws, only suffering superficial damage at most. Finally the beast stopped moving and went limp.

Fenora gasped, breathing heavily as she retrieved her blade from its carcass and fell onto her rump. “Try to... make a meal out of... me… will ya? You had… you better die.”

However, just as she was getting some respite, another chorus of roars sounded behind her, and quickly became a song.

“Tro lo-lo la-la lo-lo lo lo-looooo!”

“Fuck’s sake!” Fenora growled as she turned to fight the monstrosities coming her way.

Meanwhile at the Fortress…docks of Solitude, a shaggy dog scampered across the wooden planks above the water. It looked around cautiously, quickly shifting from barrel to crate, cover to cover as it checked the insignias on the sails of the merchant ships that had pulled in to port.

“No trespassing!” a nearby guard yelled “Can’t you read? Beat it mutt!” he pointed to a nearby sign with his torch.

The dog whined and tilted his head.

“Oh lay off man, dog isn’t doing any harm.” Another guard told him off. “By the way, did that shipment of cakes reach the city yet yet?”

“Sure did, it’s the big ship over there with the chef’s hat painted on the sails and hull.” The first guard pointed to a large ornate ship that took up nearly half the port “Good thing too. These're not like the sweetrolls we make up here either; these cakes are specially made all the way from Summerset Isle. Don’t know what would happen if it was late… or got stolen. There would probably be armageddon, or an apocalypse. Certainly a cataclysm at least. Oh I know! Apocalypse-gedda-clysm.”

“Oh… you don’t say.” The other guard chuckled nervously, tugging at his collar.

“Yep, well anyway I’m turning in for the night. Toodles!” the first guard said and made to leave “Wait a second… who are you again? All us guards look and sound the same under these buckets.”

“Oh… umm, I’m actually new here, yeah. New recruit into the guard force.” The other guard stammered nervously, pulling off his helmet to reveal a face like any other.

“Ah, another one. What’s your name?” the first guard asked, walking back now.

“Umm,  Smitty… Werben… Jaegerman Jensen?”

The guard gave a scrutinizing stare at the unconvincing reply. “Okay… then how did you become a guard?”

“I-“ the other guard was about to answer, but let out a long-winded sigh at what he was about to say “I used to be an adventurer, but then I… took an arrow to the knee.” He groaned.

“Alright, everything checks out here. Keep calm. Carry on.”

Quickly ducking around a corner, Stross let the red embers of his disguise wash off of him. He sank to the floor as the chainmail shirt and helmet hung loosely on his frame. “Barbas, why by the Fallen are we doing this?” he asked as he slipped back into his Nightingale armor.

“Because Clavicus told us to.” Barbas waddled up to him.

“But he’s asking us to steal forty cakes!” Stross whisper-yelled “I don’t know how good dogs are at math, but that’s as many as four tens! And that’s just terrible. I promised Princess Celestia I wouldn’t do this kind of stuff.”

“But it’s for a good cause; getting me back to my master, and granting you any wish you want. Just use your wish for something righteous and noble or whatever to make up for it. Now get on that boat while I try and find a wagon or somethin’.”

“Okay, okay you can do this. You’re Batmare!” Stross told himself as he crept around the narrow corridors of the ship, hiding behind open doors and narrowly avoiding a couple sparse guard patrols along the way.

There was a close call involving a vase and twenty-eight wheels of cheese, but thanks to the swiftness and stealth granted by his armor, Stross was able to make it to the cargo hold without any problems. The fact that most of the crew was asleep may have helped too, but that’s beside the point.

“Na na na, Batmare… Batmare.” Stross quietly hummed as he carefully creaked open the polished wooden door and slipped inside where the cakes were supposed to be.

As he turned around, his jaw nearly hit the floor. Lining the walls of the lower hold were rows and rows of metal shelves filled with fancy glass boxes. And inside each of those boxes with an air-tight seal was a cake, each one of them different in some small way, be it the color of the icing or the arrangement of the sugar flowers.

“Mother. Of. God.” Stross pulled off his Nightingale sunglasses “It’s… beautiful.” He wiped a tear from his eye.

“OW! You did that on purpose!” came a voice in the far end of the hold, followed swiftly by the sound of a punch being received.

“Oi, keep it dune you two. We doughnut want t’ get caught.” A familiar accent scolded them.

Curious, Stross crept closer to the source. Peeking up over one of the many countertops, Stross found that it was exactly who he thought it was. Not three feet away, Delvin, Vex and Brynjolf were absconding with several of the glass cases via a cleverly rigged conveyer-belt that led out of a recently cut hole in the side of the boat. Tied up next to them, leaning against a table full of playing cards, were two guards wearing the same chef-hat logo as the ship they were on.

“Hey guys!” Stross gave a cheerful greeting, standing up and waving with a big grin on his face “How's it hang- EEP!”

He was grabbed and shoved onto the table, playing cards flying everywhere. A pair of knives were pressed against his throat, the owner of said knives pinning him onto an empty table table. “Not a single sound, you hear me.” Vex said through her teeth “Now who in Oblivi- Stross?”

“Uh, hi Vex.” Stross answered meekly. “Please be gentle with me?”

Suddenly quite aware of the position she had pinned Stross in, Vex quickly got off him with a huff and set him back on his feet. “Hah, even I have standards, you know? So what are you doing here?”

“I’m supposed to steal forty cakes for Clavicus Vile. Why are you guys here?”

“Well ya see lad, now that we’re back in Nocturnal’s good graces, she wants us ta steal eighty cakes for her.” Brynjolf answered, to which Stross’s jaw dropped.

“Eighty cakes!” he screeched despite how his thief buddies cringed and made to secure any nearby doors “That’s TWICE as many as four tens! And that’s doubly terrible!”

“Keep it dune lad! Yer gonna give us all away!”

“To late, criminal scum!” a guard in a flowing red cape yelled in a heroic tone as he dramatically kicked in the wall next to the door “You won’t get away with your dastardly crimes on my watch! These decadent cakes are for the upcoming wedding, and we won’t have you making off with them!”

As the thieves scrambled to make their hasty getaway, Stross stood stalk still, several flashbacks to the days following that disaster in Canterlot plaguing his mind. The fear ponies felt, the hatred for his species flooding their minds, talks of putting together hunting parties, purging his kind from existance…

Stross breathed heavily and clamped his head between his hands fell into the fetal position “Not again… not this agai- Wait-a-minute… hey buddy, is it a royal wedding?” He asked Super-guard as he and the thieves were brawling it out.

“Well, I guess so.” He answered as Vex got him in an ineffective headlock “The bride is one of the Emperor’s cousins and the owner of the East Empire trading company; this ship actually belongs to her if you were wondering. Now then, back to JUSTICE!” he threw Vex into Delvin.

“Oh by the Fallen, not again; I just got to this world! Not another royal wedding; those things are bad for changelings! WAAAAAAHHHHH!” Stross screamed.

He then leapt to his feet,

“Nope, nope, nope, nope...”

And shoved his way past the brawl, lighting the occupants on fire as he did,

“Nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope...”

And then he dove out of the hole in the boat, swimming through the icy-cold sea to safety.

“Nnnnnoooooooooppe!”

He then pulled himself back up for just long enough to snag one of the glass boxes of cake.

"Yep."

Meanwhile on the other side of Skyrim, far from the shenanigans taking place near Solitude, in one of the few remaining orcish strongholds, one of the sentries stood guard on the northeast wall. He’d-

*Crash!*

Dude, you’re jumping around a lot this chapter. Not sure your readers will like that too much.

What the... How’d you get in here? And did you just break the fourth wall? Man are you kidding me? It was healing over so nicely after all my abuse during those early chapters.

I’m your sense of pacing. I’m always here in some way or other… mostly... sometimes. So, now that you’ve dropped Stross like a rock, I assume you're getting back to what was happening with Fenora; It looked like she was getting mauled by the local fauna when we left off.

I’m getting to that right now.

Really? ‘cause I’m pretty sure our favorite elf has nothing to do with an orc stronghold.

It’ll make sense if you’d let me get there. I’m trying to set up another viewpoint to kick off the next few scenes in order to smooth what would otherwise be a boring and awkward transition. It's something I do a lot actually.

Ah, well okay, let’s have it then.

Gladly. Ahem…

One of the orcish sentries stood at attention on the northeast wall. He hadn’t slept in days, and was dangerously close to nodding off. But he gripped his sword handle tighter and shook himself awake, knowing that he needed to stay at attention, just like his brothers and sisters that stood ready on the opposite wall, or at the forge sharpening their weapons. At any moment the cursed giants that had been attacking them from the nearby hills could swoop down upon them.

Just then there was a thunderous crash at the treeline and his head snapped in that direction.

“We’ve got something over here!” he called as loudly as he could to the others of his clan, wanting to be sure they heard him, but not wanting to take his eyes away for a second.

Sure enough, the monstrous figure of a man easily twice as tall as the wall he stood on emerged from the darkened forest.

“Alright everyone, over the wall!” Ugor ordered as she vaulted over the fence “Lob, Ogol, you two hit it from the left. Keep the giant distracted while I hack at its-“

Before she could finish, another four of the gangly brutes came stomping into view, raising their clubs and grunting angrily.

“Gods…” Ugor breathed as she raised her shield ready to stand and fight, knowing this would likely be the end of her and her kin either way.

“FUS RO DAH FUSRIIN! (Force balance push shockwave)” came a great roaring voice, and a sixth giant was sent flying out of the trees, several large branches following in its path.

“What in the world…” Ugor mouthed as a shadow darted out of the woods as well, landing atop the downed giant and severing its head.

Swiftly as the first, another giant lost both its legs, fell to the ground and was relieved of its head as well.

Another three giants turned to face this new foe and began wildly stomping and swinging their clubs at the ground, causing great craters but not coming anywhere close to hitting their agile mark. And within moments, another two had joined the dead.

Ugor was so distracted by this display that she barely noticed the final giant rearing up to flatten her with its fist. She quickly sidestepped and raised her shield, but the blow still sent her sprawling.

She was about to recover and roll out of the way of a subsequent kick, but the giant was suddenly struck in the face with a bolt of frost that shattered on impact, a bit of cover from their shaman in the stronghold. It barely did more than anger the brute, but it also gave just enough time for her battle companions to leap from the wall onto the monster’s back, stabbing and bludgeoning it while it flailed to get them off.

Seeing her chance, Ugor gripped her sword and rushed forward, driving her blade deep into the giant’s gut.

The giant howled in pain, slapping her away and tearing her allies from itself before throwing them to the ground as well.

It raised its weapon over its head, a tree trunk nearly as wide as itself, preparing the killing blow as its prey tried to scramble to their feet.

“Krah Toor Haar! (cold inferno pillar)”

Suddenly the giant was engulfed from head to foot in a blaze of blue flames. Through the din the orcs managed a glimpse of a bloodstained elf in the dark, her stance and face devoid of emotion and thought, and her dead gaze seemingly staring right through them.

The giant reached up to the sky and howled in defiance as its body was frozen from the inside out by the flames licking it. Frost formed in its blood and slowly pushed out of its leather-like skin. Finally, it stood still, and all was quiet.

The orcs regained their posture and let their gaze wander in silence from the corpses of six giants littering the ground outside their stronghold, to the elf standing ten feet away with her sword hanging limply in her hand.

“We… we did it? We’re alive?” Lob asked slowly.

“YEAH!” he and Gularzob yelled their triumphant cries, thrusting their weapons into the air.

But Ugor noticed as the elf perked up, and how her head eerily twitched in their direction.

With three great strides she was upon them, impaling Gularzob through his gut with her sword, pinning him to the ground.

“Grah! What the fu- ARAAHH!” he screamed as the elf twisted her sword’s blade.

“Hey, get off em!” Lob yelled and tried to drag the elf away, but only succeeded in wrestling her sword away before she kicked him off and began strangling him with her bare hands. The small bosmer was doing a good job of making it hard to breathe, even though orcs had naturally bulky muscles around their necks and everywhere else.

“Stop this now! We have no quarrel with you, outsider.” Ugor tried to reason with her.

The elf gave a swift headbutt to the bridge of Lob’s nose, sending him to the ground in a fit of pain before turning on her.

Ugor raised her shield and sword, backing up defensively. In all her years guarding the stronghold, she’d never found herself so fearful of a foe, let alone a single elf. “I will fight you if I must, back off now!” she warned, though unlike most times it was more of a bluff than anything.

“What is going on out here?!” a large orc in heavy armor demanded as he marched out of the gate with his axe raised “Are the giants dead?” he then saw his kinsmen on the ground and cowering before a bosmer a head and a half shorter than each of them.

“Are you kidding me?” he said as though offended by their weakness “Kill this outsider and get back on the wal- HU-Gurk!”

The elf had taken advantage of his lowered guard and was now pinning him to the wall of his own fortress by the handle of his own axe, choking the life from him and crushing his windpipe, seemingly ignoring the punches and kicks he delivered to try and get free, or at least some breathing room.

“Nrg- No… Not… like this!” he squawked out.

But to the orc chieftain’s good fortune, help was on the way. A familiar pair of hands wrapped around the bosmer’s head, shoving a mixture of herbs into her nose and mouth. Within a few long moments, her muscles relaxed and she went limp, falling to the ground and releasing her victim.

Growling as he retrieved his axe, the orc was about to show the outsider what happens when you mess with a chieftain.

“Wait Yamarz!” Atub stopped him “Spare this one. I have a feeling she’s just who we need.” She spoke cryptically as always.