To Bruma we were welcomed with arms most open, as any armed regiment is greeted by those desperate for reinforcement. Our journey through the foothills had been uneventful, taxing only in the encroaching altitude and accompanying bone-chill, yet whisperings beyond the road spoke of strife to come. We passed those with the aspect of refugees, perhaps from Skyrim, and others who bore neither scar-mark nor ragged garb, but held in their eyes the certainty of great loss to come. I have seen it before, in men whose disgrace has stripped them of title and land, forced to take a knee before their liege in full knowledge of what awaits.
Those inside the fortress were little more buoyant, though I found the Mages' Guild more implacable to their circumstance; and for the first time, with Elias at my side, I was free to roam and wander the halls. I was free to learn! It should have been glorious, in spite of the miserable cold. And yet... and yet.
My introduction to Bruma taught me well, better even than the slow-waning status of my family, that reputation is not everything. Famed for its part in the closing of that mythic Great Gate, for bearing the Champion's statue. These are things somewhat close to mine heart, by the teachings of Akatosh I have embraced and by said hero's status as my fellow countrywoman; and a mage of unsurpassing power to my child's eye. I wish only to be myself, to fulfill all that I might be, but if ever I could behold a model, a paragon...
But again I wander too far. My feelings on Cyrodiil's Champion, as little regard as I have for the bumbling empire, are of similar relevance to this telling. Passing, to note only that I believe her presence in and relationship to the Bruma Guild have fashioned an image that cannot be justified by the incompetence of those within. A neophyte I may have been these few weeks ago, and a novice I still am, but even I could tell that their newfound premiership amongst the guilds of the Imperial province was ill-deserved.
Nonetheless, I passed days in study, poring over a selection of tomes with all the time at my disposal. Rather than rely upon the tuition of the inept, I took what theory I could and ventured out at night to hone my talents alone, repeating over and again the incantations to draw forth mine magicks. Before long, I could bathe my shivering skin in a warming, soothing light, and bring to a fingertip the sparking mote of a will o' wisp.
My inward smile was rather more broad than the strained, frost-bitten gesture my visage managed; because here at last were the fruits of arcane labour, the demonstration that I were more than airheaded blowhard.
A mage I would be, in time. But by fortune, or some opposing force, it is e'er the case that talent attracts sponsorship from the most unlikely and oftentimes unwanted source. In the treachorous, snowy hillocks beyond Bruma's gates, I felt a cowlèd eye upon me... felt, I say. What then did I see? In a flash I beheld the dragon's maw of my night's terrors. My frozen knuckles closed about the hilt of my sibling's gifted blade, which rippled with an eldritch crimson sheen. It was not enough to light the rapid fall of darkness.
I could see nothing. I could feel nothing.
But I could hear; a voice possessed of humanity not echoed by its underlying resonance.
"You cling to the shade like one of mine, but your face..." A voice flung from within darkest shadow, possessed of a jarring sibilance. "Such shapely form should not dare conjure in my presence."
There was such hatred in the final saying, and I felt the conflagration of hysteria within my gut. It was the first earthly sensation I had experienced in the passing few moments, and it caused me to leap backwards, booted feet slipping through filthy tundra, catching upon stray rubble beneath. I fell, pitched to my side with such tremendous impact that I could not speak. A snowdrift is never so soft as it appears. At least I had my senses, and some remnant of wit, enough that I raised a hand toward the presumed source of this terrible tone.
My outstretched palm focused upon a knotted thicket of bramble and decayed leaf-pulp, where lay the stricken remains of a statue. I could not make out its features, and this somehow quickened still further the pulse of my pounding heart. Marshalling my heritage and my strength, I called out.
"This is no man's land, and I conjure where I please. Who are you to deny me my freedoms?"
"Freedom?" Came the crooning reply, and I realized with a start that it came from within my own breast. Was this ancient ruin even connected? Was this the creature that haunted my dreams? The dragon, in truth? I had no time to think. Worse; I could not, because I could focus on nothing but this sinister she-demon. "You mortals have only what we allow you to possess. And you, most of all, should know that what I speak is..."
It faded away, that voice, and first I thought I had imagined the encounter. I began to breathe easy. But no; she - it - had merely hesitated. What would give such a thing pause?
I know now; but then I knew not. I was reliant on the emergent, enigmatic purr.
"Interesting. You are untouched, uncalled, unanointed. Were that I could take you for my own, pretty little thing," I'd never before heard a compliment phrased so deeply as an insult - as though my comely countenance were a slight to the very surface of Nirn, "But you belong to another."
"I belong to nobody but myself!" I did not stammer, and I was proud.
"Then you will be carelessly availed of my shadow," replied the internalized apparition, her imagined lip curling as she lay upon me her sneering disdain, "Begone, preening pawn, pulchritudinous puppet, and seek out your rightful place far from my dominion."
I felt a breath across me, as vigorous as the bitterest northern wind, and a shudder wracked my spine that threatened to bend my inhibited body like a willowy reed. Something changed in the atmosphere around me, the lingering air of danger that had hung ever about the mountainside intensifying somehow. As though some unannounced protection had been removed; and then... then it was the screaming I heard first, a bloodcurdling caterwaul unlike that of even the most ferocious beast I had encountered upon my travels. A second followed in the wake of the first, and I scrambled to gain my footing as dark shapes blurred through the flake-strewn air.
I was surrounded. Thinking fast - perhaps not thinking at all, I flung out a hand, and dug deep into mind and spirit for the first words that would spring to my lips. An instinctive gesture, it was, far more natural than the grip my counter-hand sought upon my heirloom blade - and with hours of Elias' booming instruction to my name, this was natural enough. Yet what I hollered forth into the night... it felt more right than anything I had ever uttered...
And before me, my destiny emerged, claws raised and fangs bared.
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