"Hey, you, you're finally awake." The steel-blue eyes of a young man shot open and burned from the sun he was unfortunate enough to be staring at. "Ah!" He shot up from the coarse dirt and covered his eyes.
"Whoa there, calm down," someone put a gentle hand on his shoulder. He looked over with spotty vision and saw a tan man wearing clothes made out of animal pelts and small amounts of metal. He also didn't fail to notice the weapons on him. A knife, a bow, and a quiver of arrows.
"Where am I?" The half-blind boy asked the man.
"You're on the outskirts of Falkreath Forest. About 25 minutes out from the city. Can you stand?" The man informed.
"Ah, yes, I believe so." The hunter helped the boy off the rough ground. "And what do you mean by Falkreath Forest? I don't remember any forests with that name."
The hunter let out a hearty laugh. "Must've hit your head quite hard then. It's the biggest forest in all of Skyrim." The boy froze as the man brushed the dirt off him. "Pardon? Did you say Skyrim?"
"Of course, while it may not be the land I was born in, it is still my home." The world started spinning in front of the boy, his feet swirled like DNA as he tried to catch himself on the uneven earth. "C'mon, boy, stay awake." The hunter swung the boy's arm over his shoulder. "At least don't fall asleep here. Come on, I'll take you to my hunting shack."
The strangely dressed boy only heard muffled words but followed along nonetheless, his bare feet dragging across the ground.
After a 30-minute walk — one filled with blips in and out of consciousness — they arrived at a small wooden shack on the edge of the forest clearing and a creek.
"I didn't realize we started hunting people, Amiryn." Another dark-skinned man was leaning on the railing of the shack's tiny deck. "Very funny, Camvyn, help me lay the boy down. He's heavier than he looks."
Camvyn mumbled something inaudible, but hopped over the rail, trudged through the stream, and grabbed hold of the boy. "Seems like shock mostly. No surface wounds," Camvyn stated bluntly and matter-of-factly.
They pulled him up into the shack and laid him on a bedroll. Camvyn knelt and stared at him quizzically. "Strain around the eyes, along with bags," he lifted his shirt and felt around his upper body. "Some muscle definition, but not much. Mostly from light exercise rather than experience," he finally looked at the hands. "Hmph, smooth like royalty. Probably hasn't even held a sword before."
Amiryn pulled him away by the shoulder. "Calm down, not everyone is a warrior. The boy looks barely of age." Camvyn merely grunted and walked out of the creaking hut. Amiryn looked at the boy. "Get some rest, you'll need it. I have a feeling Camvyn wants to rough those hands up a bit," he gave a light smile and patted his shoulder before turning away to leave.
"...Annur," Amiryn stopped. "Hm?" The boy spoke up again. "My name. It's Annur," the Redguard let out a simple chuckle. "It's a pleasure, Annur," and he walked out as Annur fell asleep on the slightly scratchy bedroll.
*bang!* A strike from a wooden pole was blocked by another. "Lacklustre strength and technique," the attacker was pushed back with relative ease. "You must follow through with your strikes; if you don't, they will never have as much power as they could. Allow me to show you, Boy." After speaking, he charged with his weapon held high.
Annur raised his makeshift training sword above his head in an attempt to block while turning his head away. A sharp pain resounded in his ribs, and he rolled on the ground. "You should never turn your head away from your opponent. Always watch them, as they can change their attack to counter your block, however measly it was." Camvyn reprimanded while slowly twisting his weapon into the dirt.
Annur curled up with his back facing Camvyn. "Aughhhh, my chest!" The Redguard shook his head and approached. "It's a superficial wound. Get up, we aren't done just yet." Annur listened to him walking closer and spun to jab his weapon at Camvyn.
Only for him to be short by a few inches. "While you had a good idea, your execution was poor. Your body looked far too stiff for someone who was really hurt. We will continue another time," Camvyn walked away while using his training sword as a walking stick. "But I am really hurt..." Annur let out a large sigh.
"Aww, don't let it get to you, Annur. Camvyn was really impressed by it." Amiryn smiled while sitting on a nearby rock. "Doesn't feel like it," Annur rubbed his already bruising side. "Trust me: He's just got a funny way of showing it"
The Redguard's training over the past month had been exhausting, to say the least. He didn't hold back in the slightest.
Amiryn had said the training Camvyn had received was 10x worse. Annur couldn't imagine how bad that would feel.
After a small rest and a quick head dunk in a nearby creek, Annur was ready to train with Amiryn. This training was significantly easier as it was just archery and meditation without needing to get him beaten up.
Luckily for Annur, he had done some archery when he was younger, so he wasn't too bad a shot. At least he thought so until Amiryn started criticizing everything from his aim to his breathing.
"I don't get it," Annur groaned. "I'm consistently hitting the target center mass. What is the problem?"
Amiryn shook his head. "Aim at that target again."
Annur did as instructed. Back straight, he lined up the target with his finger and pulled the string back, elbow raised high.
"Wrong," Amiryn simply stated, to which Annur responded by dropping the hunting bow to the ground next to him, where it landed with a light clatter on the earth.
"What is wrong? Please, just tell me," Annur begged, to which Amiryn sighed.
"It's simple. You're aiming with your hand, not your eye," Annur's eyebrows furrowed together.
"What do you mean?" he questioned. Of course, I'm using my eye to aim; I need to see the target." Amiryn shook his head.
"You use your finger as a crutch. Stop it. Look where you want the arrow to strike." It was Annur's turn to sigh as he slumped his shoulders.
"Sure, alright." He pulled an iron arrow from the leather quiver around his waist and knocked it into the bow. Back straight, arms up and — without using his hand — aimed at the hay bale that was his target. Pulling back on the string, Annur let the arrow fly through the air, cutting the wind as it reached the bale. Dead center, right where Annur had aimed.
"Very impressive, Annur! Even if it was probably a fluke," Amiryn let out a hearty laugh, his usual cheery demeanour returning.
"Now go meditate up on the hill for a while. Consider it a reward." He referenced a nearby mound about 100 feet tall.
"Yeah, some reward. Sitting around while nothing happens." Annur ran a hand through his dirty blonde hair and let out a sigh while Amiryn put a hand on his shoulder.
"You understand why I have you do it, don't you?" Annur grumbled.
"Yeah, yeah. Cause my Magicka is abysmal. I know," He repeated what both Amiryn and Camvyn had told him multiple times before when he asked to learn magic. Amiryn stared at him in pity at Annur's downtrodden expression, but said nothing as his young disciple walked toward the vantage point a while away. Amiryn had always found being above everything brought a sense of calm, and he hoped it worked for Annur the same.
Annur ascended the grassy incline. "Meditate, he says. What the hell even is meditation?" To say he was a little annoyed would be an understatement. Annur quickly reached the summit of the hill and got a nice view of the land.
To the south was a dense forest teeming with life, and also the city of Falkreath, somewhere he couldn't see. The North had a vast lake that was far larger than in the original game. He could barely see the massive mountain that held Bleak Falls Barrow.
Annur looked eastward and stared at the spire known as The Throat of The World, home to the Greybeards and their master Parthunaax. His gaze lingered on the snowcapped mountain for a moment before falling between the two colossi of earth, knowing Whiterun, Riverwood, and Helgen lay somewhere.
Annur turned his attention back to the present and found a comfortable place to sit on the dirt and rocks. He slightly sank into the soft ground while the wind gently danced around him. He crossed his legs and sighed before closing his eyes as the Redguards had instructed him to. Time passed as Annur sat there, lost in thought.
'Ugh, this isn't working at all. What am I even supposed to do, absorb the Magicka in the air?' Annur thought about that for a moment.
Thinking it wasn't such a bad idea, he straightened his posture and controlled his breathing as he imagined himself to be a young master from a wuxia novel. He thought about pulling Magicka into his body.
'But what is Magicka exactly?' Annur thought back to all the lore videos he used to watch as a tickle of sunlight danced on his skin, as a cloud moved away from the sun's view.
'Magicka falls unto Mundas via the sun and stars. So is it light or photons?' Annur shook his head lightly at that thought.
'No, if that were the case, Earth would have magic as well.' Clouds coalesced around the lone hill, leaving room for Magus' creation to watch the boy not of this world.
'The stars were created as a result of the Gods fleeing Mundas, poking holes into Aetherius. So is it an element native to the realm of the Divines? Or maybe...' Thunder started booming around the sky as if Kyne was whispering ancient secrets.
'Maybe the Gods and Aetherius are pure Magicka, and the holes produce a type of waste like how nuclear materials do, and the waste Magicka drifts down here alongside photons or even attached to them.' Something started happening on an unseen level. Perhaps by Annur's will or something else entirely, ions, molecules, photons, and Magicka started drawing themselves into Annur's body.
All outside disturbances had been completely blocked out by Annur. Even the rocks that began floating with arcs of electricity bouncing between them as torrents of thunder, lightning, and rain demanded attention from all. The smell of fresh rain enveloped the entire area.
Amiryn sprinted across the landscape with Camvyn close behind. "Why hasn't he come back? This storm is dangerous!" The wind staggered the two Redguards the closer they got to Annur, their hair sticking to their faces. Lightning started striking the ground around them as if attempting to scare them off. They finally laid eyes on Annur, and Amiryn began to shout.
"Annur!-" Camvyn suddenly covered Amiryn's mouth, cutting him off.
"Look at him," Camvyn commanded of Amiryn with nigh disbelief. "He's in an almost perfect state of flow; he doesn't even know what's happening. Breaking him out of it could be disastrous."
Amiryn's eyes widened. "By the Gods..."
Camvyn stared ahead steadfastly. "I've witnessed something like this once before. He needs to do this himself."
The look of indecision on Amiryn's face was blatantly obvious, but he chose to listen to his companion. They both watched as the electricity surged around Annur.
Not far away in the city of Falkreath, a heavily armoured man with a scowling mask stopped and stared in the direction of a large magicka fluctuation. "Interesting..."
Further yet, a battle-scarred woman was hastily packing a bag when she suddenly stared north through the damp stone walls of the cellar she was residing in after getting a strange, but familiar feeling.
A Dark Elf in a distant land stopped what he was doing and looked West and smiled widely under his hood before turning back into the crowd of the market.
An old man with a fantastical outfit was telling a story to a mad emperor while eating, before suddenly seeming lucid for the first time in centuries. "Ohhohohoho... This is going to be fun."
An elderly Dovah whispered into the heavens while wistfully staring at the storm raging in the south-west.
All these events happened simultaneously to each other as the lightning that was carving valleys into the sky ceased to make way for a single incandescent bolt of magicka that fell from the sky directly onto Annur.
Magicka surged like a flood through his body, like lava flowing from the top to the bottom in an instant. Annur's body convulsed as his muscles were shredded and rebuilt thousands of times every second. It wasn't just his muscles that were being reborn; his entire body was experiencing the same thing, causing Annur unimaginable pain.
His eyes rolled to the back of his head as he tried screaming up at the heavens, only to fail. The only thing that would have been heard if not for the rumbling thunder and raging winds would have been his vocal cords being ripped apart.
Death. Death was the one thing Annur wished for, the one thing he could think about. He begged silently for what felt like years to be released from the pain.
In reality, a mere few minutes passed, and the pain slowly receded, as did the clouds that beat like a warrior's heart with thunder. Soon, all that was left was the breathtaking vista of an aurora weaving between the stars as if dancing in celebration and the bloody tears that fell from Annur's eyes as he blankly witnessed it. Whether he cried from the pain or the scene in front of him, only Annur knew.
"Annur!" Amiryn's shout cut through the silence. The Redguard grabbed Annur as he was falling backwards into the sweet hold of unconsciousness.