Through the darkness and the mead-soaked dreams there was a scuffing and movement, a sense of proximity on the very edge of her senses, but one easy enough to ignore. It was warm, and cozy and the very last thing Sofia wanted to do was let sleep’s grip on her mind loosen. Unfortunately for her though, the sudden clattering and an impact of cushioned, yet unyielding mass into her legs had other plans.

  Even if she hadn’t spent the night drinking until she inevitably blacked out, getting woken up early in the morning was not something she enjoyed in the slightest. Afterall, Sofia’s opinions on such matters was that the best kinds of mornings were the ones you slept through, or at the very least spent ‘sleeping’ with someone, and not have what felt like a sack filled with dwemer scrapmetal landing on your legs. It was rude, and despite the way her brain seemed to physically slosh about inside her skull she twisted, poking her head out from the blanket and immediately wished that she didn’t make the attempt.

  Mead was wonderful, and Whiterun was famed for several breweries of the honey alcohol but it certainly didn’t help when you had drunk enough only a few hours previously that you smelled like it. It was even worse when the moment her face exited the protective covering of the horse blanket, it was assaulted by the overpowering smell of hay, horse-piss and her own mead-sweat. The light wasn’t any better, especially by the fact that by the way that a finger of light, streaming through an opened door appeared as though the sun had a personal vendetta against her. For several moments she managed to do nothing more than grimace, crush her eyes closed and attempt not to waste several dozen copper septims worth of alcohol by adding it to the mess already occupying the stable floor.

  “What… Where am I?”

  As usual it appeared that the night before had resulted in her waking to the taste of mead clinging to her tongue like a mouthful of tundra cotton, but this time it wasn’t a gutter or haystack at least. Unfortunately at the same time it also wasn’t a bed that belonged to the latest stranger who gained her attention either, but the stables were a nice middle ground between the two.

  Standing just outside of the stall that she had claimed during the night, a figure stood framed in the beams of light and the dancing dust motes and straw dust that floated in the air. For a brief moment she wondered whether she did in fact spend the night literally ‘rolling in the hay’ with yet another stranger, but through the alcohol haze and threats of a hangover, she could see signs that this wasn’t the case. A travelling bag, cloak and various other items rested on the other side of the railings and even in her current state it was obvious that no, she hadn’t spent the night wrapped around someone. This time at least.

  "Oh, it's you!"

  Muscles stiffened as though struck by a bolt of lightning magicka, and it was near impossible not to see the way that the figure reacted to her words with suspicion and wariness.

  "Excuse me?"

  Back straight, shoulders tensed and a voice that was harsh and clipped, Sofia struggled to get a better look at the person who had inadvertently woken her from her mead-soaked dreams. He looked familiar, initially at least but the blurriness and beams of light poking her brain with claw tipped fingers via her pupils din’t help. The more she managed to see though, the more that her assumptions were proven false. He was not one of the stablehands, the stable’s owner or even one of Whiterun’s city guards come to arrest her for vagrancy, again. He was a stranger, a traveller, or one of the tens of thousands of people living in the city and despite herself she felt a twinge of awkwardness as he turned to face her.

  "Uh... I mean what?"

  A small collection of pouches on a harness had been the object that had fallen on her, dislodged from where it had been hanging over the top rail separating the stalls that they had chosen to spend the night. Like many of the businesses within Skyrim, the Whiterun Stables was slowly failing, its trade fading and withering as the Stormcloak rebellion bled commerce dry and most of the stalls were practically empty. Few horses remained in any of them and like her, the stranger appeared to have sought out the first unoccupied one to rest for the night.

  “Have we met?”

  Even through the mead haze, Sofia could detect the wariness of his tone, and the subtle hints of threat within the words, but it didn’t matter to her. Being threatened was a daily, if not hourly occurrence with the way she chose to live her life, let alone the wider state Skyrim was in at the moment. So instead she ignored it even as he stepped into her stall to collect his fallen items.

  “No.” Sofia said truthfully, looking up from her position on the piled hay at the end of the stall under her acquired horseblanket. “I’ve never seen you before.”

  It was the truth at least, the certainty growing stronger as she took the moment to study him. There was nothing that put him apart from the hundreds, if not more travellers and adventurers that roamed between the Holds and their capital cities. Worn leather, threadbare cloth and ragged straps and belts clung to his body, and over the ragged clothes he had been in the process of shrugging on a battered iron breastplate when his harness had fallen and woken her up. The armour especially had seen better years, perhaps even decades but appeared to match its wearer at least. Thick stubble clung to his jaw, a mouth unaccustomed to smiling framed in a goatee, hair hacked, rather than cut short and a pair of brown eyes that held no amusement, or any real emotion at all.

  “So, you don’t know who I am?” A jingling of metal and other smaller items made itself heard as he lifted the collection of pouches attached to a thick leather belt from her feet, but the stare he gave her made her feel as though she was faced by an ice wolf. There was still a tenseness, but strangely he seemed to relax at her admission.

  Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  "I have no idea who you are. There’s a lot of people in Whiterun and it's not like I've been stalking you or anything."

  A momentary pause, a slight rise of an eyebrow at her words, and a half smile was all that she got in response, as he stepped back and rummaged through some of the pouches. She caught glimpses of a varied collection of items. A waterskin mostly empty from the way it practically flopped about. A whetstone and chipped skinning dagger. Some travelling rations of hardtack and salted meats wrapped in muslin, and her experienced ear heard the clink of a literal handful of coins that she estimated to be barely enough to purchase breakfast. Unlike her, it seemed that his choice of lodgings for the evening was not as a result of intoxicated decisions, but of poverty, or at least, a lack of funds.

  Some sort of traveller or adventurer for sure. She thought to herself, seeing the way he moved with practiced ease and catching glimpses of further possessions of someone who travelled frequently and far. Everything he appeared to own was either in poor condition or exceptionally cheap and crude and little more than scrap, but there was something that definitely caught her attention. His sword. Everything else would have been lucky enough to gain him a handful of silver septims in total, but the lengthy bastard sword that rattled in its scabbard as he moved was a different matter. It was easily worth twenty, maybe even thirty gold septims and was exceptionally cared for. Besides the blackened scorch marks from being far too close to a fire that unnervingly marked the leather scabbard at least.

  "Hope you have a good morning and I’m sorry for disturbing you, but I have to go now." He said, sparing her a glance and turning for the door.

  Looking him over and studying his equipment and clothing with a practiced eye had done more than allow her to identify the lack of potential ‘acquisitions’ as was her habit, but had instead highlighted something very important. Unlike the stranger, Sofia had nothing. Not even her clothes. Again.

  "Wait! Don't leave!"

  He had barely managed to go more than three steps away from their adjacent stalls but somewhat surprisingly stopped without hesitation, pausing in mid step and looking back at her with a questioning expression on his face replacing the impassive one.

  Something about the stranger was unnerving, especially how her instincts for threats and potential marks was highly tuned, and he was giving off neither. Most women, even in provinces like Skyrim with the cultural norms of ‘honour’ needed to have some measure of awareness of the more ‘dangerous’ elements of society. Time, and experience had honed Sofias to a razored edge, but this man wasn’t triggering any of her highly experienced instincts in such matters. Which was unusual, and niggled at her brain as she tried to not let her sudden, jittering nerves take over.

  “I’m… Injured…”

  Even for her usual lies this was a terrible one and with sleep releasing its grip and waking before a hangover could start to manifest, her mind was beginning to churn, seeing an opportunity in the situation ripe for exploitation. The stranger however, seemed more amused and curious than concerned, even as she made a show of pressing her hand to her side under the blanket.

  “Injured? Really?”

  For a split second her instincts raised the hairs on her neck as she saw the shadows in his eyes and wondered whether her perception had been wrong. It was always a risky gamble feigning weakness around potential predators, but while she was completely naked between the hay covered floor and the blanket, the one thing that she never lost, no matter how drunk, was laying by her side. Only the dead were unarmed in Skyrim these days.

  "Uh... Yes... Injured..." What appeared to be true concern crossed his face for a moment as he seemed to study the way she was now sitting upright while wrapped in the blanket. After a moment’s pause she gave a smile that she hoped was partly alluring and partly that of someone in pain. The way that her head was throbbing, it wasn't too much of a sham. "I uh… I need some help. You will have to take me with you otherwise I might die, and I’m sure you wouldn't want that on your conscience."

  “Really?” Cold brown eyes met hers and he stared for a moment, as she did everything she could not to look away. There was something in his gaze that reminded her of the numerous veterans of the Great War as they were deep in their cups, and their minds took them back to bloodied fields almost thirty years before. "You look alright to me."

  "Yeah, well that's because..." Sighing, she rolled her eyes before meeting his gaze again. “Okay, fine. I may have misplaced a few personal items and if I walk out of here at the moment I’m bound to cause a bit of a stir.”

  “Did something happen to you?”

  This was different, and not the sort of reaction that Sofia expected. This wasn’t the first time that she had woken up somewhere with no clothes on or anywhere nearby, and for a vast majority of Nords, finding a young, naked twenty-one year old brunette, let alone one of Sofia’s attractiveness, was an opportunity. An opportunity that many had discovered also came with getting parts of their body cut open, or cut off if they tried the wrong thing. This reaction was one of legitimate concern, and unless the stranger was a Tamriel-class manipulator, he was actually genuine. As a Tamriel-class manipulator herself, she was quite confident that she could identify one of her own kind.

  “Nothing that I didn’t do to myself. I had a few drinks, had a bit of fun. Found this place to sleep until you woke me. Which, I think you owe me for by the way.”

  Again, no real reaction besides taking another couple of steps towards, her until he stood in the opened gate of the stall she occupied. She smiled as alluringly as she could. “I’ll be immensely grateful for any assistance.”

  “I owe you… for waking you up… heh. Don’t you think that whatever clothes and the like I might provide, will pay off that particular debt. If anything, this is going to leave you the one owing me a favour.”

  “That’s fine by me. I’ll even make you a deal then. You help me out and take me with you wherever you are going and I’ll make it worth your while. Afterall, you won’t find anyone tougher or more amazing than me in all of Skyrim.” Slowly, she leaned back, feeling the way that the blanket slid down far enough to reveal just enough of her favorite ‘assets’. “Not to mention as good-looking.”

  Blood of Dragons will be from Kaius's perspective. 30% from Sofia, and the rest of a mixture of other characters in one form or another, like Hadvar in the 1st Volume. I've tried to write this series as a practice of 3rd Person Omniscient (and to give me a break from Bloodtide Rising's 1st Person.)