• Welcome to Skyrim Forums! Register now to participate using the 'Sign Up' button on the right. You may now register with your Facebook or Steam account!
  • Hey there, thanks for visiting our fan fiction section. You should only write stories that aren't related to your character's encounters, if you wish to write a story about your character please post an entry in your blog.

    Before reading or writing a story, please make sure to read this thread. Thanks, Guest, and we hope you enjoy this section.

Viarco Strong-Head

By Azura, By Azura, By AzuUURUURAUURAARA
Hiya, thanks for checking this out! This is an idea I've been playing around with for a long time, so I hope you like it! The chapters will be much more "meaty" than the prologue, I assure you; just wanted to get the general setting thrown out there quickly. Thanks again for giving this a look, and enjoy When Hearts Grow Cold!

When Hearts Grow Cold

a Skyrim Civil War fan-fiction
Prologue

Hjolmund's knuckles had turned white from how he'd been gripping on to his mace during the battle, but he dropped it out of shock when he saw the sight before him. At the base of a Whiterun guard tower, uniform stained scarlet, was a female Imperial soldier. Tears ran down her cheeks as she clutched the body of a Stormcloak, an Imperial sword protruding from his gut. Hjolmund was able to recognize his fallen comrade as an acquaintance of his, Thomar.

He also recognized the Imperial soldier as Thomar's wife.

The conversations Hjolmund had heard underneath the tents at camp, in the days leading up to the attack on Whiterun, came flooding back to him almost instantly. "My wife Roana and I haven't seen each other in months," he remembered Thomar's gravelly voice as the men recounted stories of home. "She called me an imbecile for joining up with the Stormcloaks, before we left Whiterun for Windhelm; no word from her since."


Having been one of the men leaving Whiterun that day, and having seen this argument, that was about the extent of Hjolmund's relationship with Thomar outside of small talk. However, it was enough for him to fall to his knees, and be rendered completely immobile as he watched the scene before him from underneath his rusted helmet.

Roana slowly took the sword out, and threw it onto the ground with a loud sob. "My love...my love, I'm so sorry..." Hjolmund could clearly hear the woman lament, even from where he watched a fair distance away; which made it all the more easier to leave his mace where it lay, and run the other direction.

"HJOLMUND! What's the matter with you, soldier?!" He could hear his commanding officer calling to him above the fray, just before the Stormcloaks broke through the walls of Whiterun. The young Nord paid no mind, as he kept running and running, collapsing into a row of potato plants in the nearby Battle-Born Farm.

He had joined the Stormcloaks to fight for Skyrim's freedom. To fight for the right to worship Talos. To be the blade that met the Thalmor's, as they tried to cut the head off the Nords' very culture.

He didn't join to see Skyrim be torn apart. Lovers killing lovers, kinsmen killing kinsmen, family killing family. He knew what the cost of being a soldier was, and he knowingly joined up in the ranks, but he loved his home. And it was the same love that fueled the fire inside him to fight for his home, that he couldn't stop from drawing him back from watching it fall apart from the inside.

Sure that the Stormcloaks had broken through now, Hjolmund got to his feet, wiping the dirt from his face. He turned around to start remorsefully on his way back, and was greeted with a dagger to his throat. Its owner was neither Imperial or Stormcloak; rather, a man clad in black robes, with fluorescent orange eyes making direct contact with his.

Joined by a similarly ominous-looking Orc, the man smiled. "We were hoping you'd stay down. The best meals are always the ones that don't see it coming," he remarked. Immediately realizing who these people were, Hjolmund instinctively reached for the hilt of his mace; he realized that his weapon was not there all too late, though, and all he saw was the Orc's fist hurtling towards his temple before it all went black.



 

Viarco Strong-Head

By Azura, By Azura, By AzuUURUURAUURAARA
1

The walls around him were all too familiar as Hjolmund found himself in an equally as familiar bed. Was he...was he back in Vivec? His family had made for Morrowind when he was a teenager, upon the news reaching them that the Thalmor were stamping out Talos worshippers wherever they found them. Hjolmund didn't quite like the town, but he made do while he was there; for his family.

He could immediately identify the woman that came and knelt beside him as his mother, her familiar, loving smile giving rest to his racing mind, as it had always been able to do.

"Are you feeling any better, dear? Here, this should help with the joint pain." She extended a hand out to hand her son a potion, which Hjolmund took and drank. He hadn't noticed the pain in his joints until she had brought it up; must've been Rockjoint or something.

"Your father will be back from the marketplace soon with food for the week. We'll see if it's cleared up by dinnertime, alright?" With a kiss on Hjolmund's forehead that felt all too real, she was about to leave when he heard himself speak up.

"Mother?" She stopped in the doorway, turning to him. "Yes, son?"

Hjolmund could feel himself slipping away from the room and into the consciousness he had left, but he tried to stay as long as he could. "When will we be able to go back to Skyrim?"

Her smile returning, his mother came back to the side of Hjolmund's bed and placed the palm of her hand on his cheek. "Soon, Hjolmund. When this mess with the Thalmor is cleared up, we'll be able to come back and it'll be just like it was before."

Nodding with a smile, Hjolmund had never wanted to stay in Vivec as much as he did in this moment. With every fiber of his being, he tried to keep himself in his childhood bedroom, away from reality.

"I know you don't like it here, son. We don't either. But we're Nords. We endure the harshest of conditions, no matter what."

Hjolmund's mother knelt beside him again. "Remember that, Hjolmund. No matter what, endure til the end. No matter who..."

Consciousness was beckoning to him, but Hjolmund still strained to fight it.

"...may lose, no matter what hopeless situation you find yourself in...you keep...enduring...till the end."

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

His mother was able to finish her sentence before Hjolmund was jolted back to reality. He was in a cave behind a cell door, with about five others around him in their own cells. Hjolmund seemed to have woken some of them up; one of them being a fellow Nord.

"You alright, kinsman? You were stirring quite a lot there." The man was in a roughspun tunic, common for prisoners to wear; and upon further observation, Hjolmund found that he and all the others in the room were wearing similar clothes.

"Yes, I think I'm fine. Just...just a dream."

The Nord chuckled. "They must have knocked you out pretty good, then, for you to be having a dream like that. You have any idea where we are, anyway?"

Hjolmund shook his head. "All I remember are the two vampires outside of Whiterun, knocking me out and apparently bringing me here. I assume you had the same experience?"

"Aye, but I've been here a bit longer than you have. I was out hunting for game outside of Falkreath, when he snuck up on me. He was a mage of some kind, and cast some kind of paralyzing spell on me before I could react. That must have been two weeks ago, now; been here ever since."

Before he could ask his fellow captive of his name, Hjolmund could hear the jangling of armored footsteps a ways into the cave, coming towards them. "Their leader! Lay down, the less attention you draw, the better!"

Hjolmund immediately complied, not wanting to take any sort of risks in this situation. He opened his eyes to where they were mere slits, and he could make out an Orc clad in black armor. Two figures in robes, both Dunmer, stood at either side of him, and they scanned the cells where their captives lay.

"What is your craving, sir? If I may suggest, it's been far too long since I've tasted Bosmer blood," one of them said, and Hjolmund was able to see the Orc's eyes move to the cell just next to his.

"That sounds alright. Get him up."

The two Dunmer shook the unlucky Wood Elf awake, and dragged him to his feet. "Stendarr preserve me..." the panicking Bosmer said, as he was roughly taken further into the cave. "Ah, I forgot you were a Vigilant. All the more flavorful, I'm sure," he heard the more vocal Dark Elf say, before the four men disappeared.

Hjolmund's Nord compatriot slowly rose when the coast was clear, and so did he and the others. "Divines keep his soul," the former man muttered, taking pity on the man. Hjolmund could infer what the Wood Elf's fate was meant to be, from the conversation; and judging from the circumstances, it did not bode well.

Still, even with the fear rising up in his gut, Hjolmund still had willpower. "There has to be something we can do. We can't let them just come in here and pluck us out like we're their meals!"

A hoarse-voiced Breton man spoke up from a cell adjacent to his Nord comrade's. "So what would you have us do? Unless you know any spells that open locked doors or something, that's pretty much what we are."

Reluctantly, Hjolmund's compatriot nodded. "He's right. We don't know where we are, if anyone's coming for us, anything. I admire your optimism, kinsman, but it seems out of our reach."

Hjolmund's gaze fell to the ground in front of him. He had to admit, no daring escape plans came to his mind as "plausible" at that moment. Still, though, there was a feeling inside of him; an intuition, of sorts, that told him that this would not be his resting place.

He fell on his back and stared at the stone ceiling; he didn't know he'd get out of here, but he knew he had to. This couldn't be the end.
 
Last edited:

Recent chat visitors

Latest posts

Top