Late Merethic Era
More than 4,500 years before the birth of the Last Dragonborn
Falmereth / Skyrim
Seven Years Later
Feator
What was the preparatory training before joining the Temple of Auri-El’s knight-paladin initiates like?
Ooooooh, it was awful.
The Falmer weren’t nearly as numerous as the Altmer of Summerset—the Summerset Isles—or the Ayleids of Cyrodiil, which would one day become the heart of the Human Empires.
They had to make up for their smaller numbers with superior quality.
And there was no room here for the leisurely pace so often associated with long-lived races—that is, spending decades idling away.
Perhaps that was true to some extent for ordinary Snow Elves, but not for the knight-paladins.
Auri-El deserved nothing less than the best.
And “the best” also meant unwavering faith, because it was rather difficult for atheists to emerge in a world where the gods were undeniably real and manifested their will almost directly.
The only alternative was worshiping the Daedra, who…
well, were about as popular as demons.
But that wasn’t atheism—it simply earned you the labels of heretic and demon worshiper.
“Oh, for the love of…” I muttered, rubbing my long-suffering ass, where my vindictive Vaisy loved to smack me with a blunt sword of ice.
Yes, instead of ordinary wooden practice swords, the elves simply conjured weapons out of magic.
It was actually faster and easier, because for a Snow Elf, manipulating ice and snow ranked somewhere just after breathing and walking.
One moment—there was a blade in your hand.
Even I, despite my natural affinity for fire magic, could do it just as effortlessly.
The closest comparison would be reaching for a spoon after turning away from it.
Not literally instant, of course, but your hand would instinctively find the object almost without thinking.
“Do not complain.
Do not protest.
Do not retreat.”
Once again, she recited the knight-paladins’ unofficial mantra.
It had clearly been invented specifically for young recruits.
Because if even I found the pace of what was essentially preschool training absolutely brutal, what hope did the rest of my kin have?
“Have I ever complained or protested?” Meeting my distant cousin’s skeptical stare, I rolled my eyes and sighed, dropping my usual sarcasm.
“All right!
Have I ever seriously complained or protested?”
“Not seriously.
Just the occasional whining,” the girl admitted, though clearly through gritted teeth.
…All right.
Enough slacking off.
Time for today’s final spar.
“Come on, beat up your poor, helpless student, Miss Ice Queen…” I grinned impishly, cracking my neck and earning yet another displeased look from Vaisy.
Summoning a fresh blade of ice into my hand, I settled into my fighting stance, placing my feet, torso, and arms exactly as I’d been taught.
The instant I did, Vaisy lunged, opening with a particularly tricky strike.
There wasn’t enough time to dodge, so to block it I had to bend like an Olympic gymnast.
Fortunately, my body was capable of pulling off the maneuver.
My muscles certainly made me pay for it afterward.
“Too slow.”
The white-haired cutie delivered her brilliantly simple assessment as she broke blade contact and immediately flowed into another relentless series of slashes and thrusts.
Fortunately, this time we weren’t training with swords alone, otherwise I’d already have been lying face-first in the snow.
At the same time, I couldn’t simply rely on my fire magic either.
For all its advantages against Snow Elves, my fire spells took considerably longer to cast than Vaisy’s basic ice magic.
I needed to wait for the right opening.
Watching her movements carefully, I found one.
I recognized the pattern, and at the cost of what would have been a superficial wound to my thigh, I unleashed a full-powered torrent of ice.
Fire magic would have been better, but…
I simply didn’t have enough time.
The space around my distant cousin became coated in snow before freezing solid, even the trees behind her encased in crystal-clear ice.
Even that barely fazed my stronger, more experienced opponent.
It only slowed her slightly and forced her to spend a couple of seconds reinforcing her defenses.
There was never any chance it would win me the duel, but… it did give me the opportunity to launch one final attack.
Bursting forward, I immediately grimaced as my reserves of magical energy dwindled.
A mage’s power was formed from two kinds of mana: the small amount naturally generated by those born with magical talent, and the mana drawn from the world itself—or, more precisely, through the Sun.
“Not bad…
but not enough,” my opponent remarked with a crooked smile, effortlessly deflecting every slash and direct thrust from my one-handed sword despite being chilled and slowed.
That wasn’t exactly surprising, considering she was the one who had taught me every one of those techniques.
To have even the slightest chance of competing with her, I had to shamelessly improvise, twisting my movements into something that bordered on outright heresy rather than proper swordsmanship.
Avoiding a dangerous slash that passed right in front of my face, I—
“Aw, come on!” I hissed irritably as my right fist suddenly exploded with pain and Vaisy knocked the sword from my hand with an incredibly powerful yet graceful kick.
“Tch!” Firing off the last of my remaining magic in the form of a point-blank burst of flame, I tried to open the distance between us.
Only afterward did I realize that had been a mistake.
I should have done the exact opposite and closed the gap.
And I paid for it immediately.
I barely managed to twist my body in time and keep her elegantly sculpted foot from planting itself squarely in my stomach, but she still caught me solidly in the ribs.
Her leg had clearly been reinforced with magical energy, and even a glancing blow was enough to send me flying into a massive snowdrift.
I didn’t bother getting back up.
Instead, I sprawled there in the snow, exhausted.
For some reason, the snow felt like a soft, cool bed at the end of a long day, and my thoughts drifted toward the future.
The future that awaited the Falmer…
and Tamriel as a whole.
I probably wouldn’t live to see Alessia’s rebellion, the slave uprising that marked the true beginning of the Imperials in The Elder Scrolls… But there was another event, only slightly less significant, that I would certainly live to see.
Ysgramor.
Anyone who had played Skyrim had heard of him.
The forefather of the Nords and one of the greatest leaders of the ancient world…
who, at this point in history, was already in Skyrim.
Just last winter, persistent—and apparently well-founded—rumors had begun circulating about humanoids arriving from the north, from Altmora, as the Falmer called Atmora.
They were neither elves nor the beastfolk of the south.
Instead, they bore a striking resemblance to the Nedes of central and southern Tamriel.
“What are you spacing out for?” the charming young woman interrupted my grand transmigrator musings.
“Stop lying there.
Get up and conjure—Aaah!”
My cousin was forced to leap back as I casually hurled a fireball at her straight from where I was lying.
“You little Daedric brat!” the cutie cursed, still eyeing the magical flames warily as they decided to start devouring one of the nearby fir trees.
“You’ve been running me ragged for hours…
Give me a break,” I grumbled weakly, not even having the energy for our usual verbal sparring.
“Your swordsmanship is still terrible!” she shot back, though without much conviction.
“And you ought to stop comparing everyone to yourself.
I’ve seen only thirty-seven winters, while you’re pushing sixty…”