It was Summer, 2026.
In a busy train station at peak rush hour, a man stood among the crowd waiting for a train.
He was carrying a backpack and wearing a fit beige suit, ill-suited for the heat.
As people walked around him, he stood precariously close to the edge, eyes fixed on the horizon, or, well, the fence on the opposite side of his platform.
He was tall, dark-haired, slightly balding, and very annoyed for having to take the train today.
The man sighed, pulled out his phone from his pocket, and glared at the time shown on the screen.
‘Train is 10 minutes late again.’ He placed the phone back in his pocket and rolled his shoulders.
‘Can’t believe some psycho took a bat to my car in the middle of the night, can’t have anything nice in this city, I swear’
A rumbling came from the distance; his train had finally arrived.
‘Better late than never.’
The man sighed again and shouldered his bag, getting ready to board.
The train had just started rolling onto the station when he felt a hard push on his back.
Panicking, he tried to stabilize, but he wasn’t braced; still, he had solid core strength.
If only he didn’t stand so close to the edge, maybe he would’ve been able to push back and avoid falling onto the tracks.
Alas, it was not what happened; all he could do was turn around as he was falling and see the face of the one who pushed him.
What he saw did not make him happy in the slightest.
Among the crowd of gaping bystanders, right behind where he had just stood was a small blond woman; he knew her- hell, everyone at his workplace knew her.
She was an intern who started a few months ago; he had a good impression of her at the start, smart and cute, quite quick-witted too, and barely anything negative to say about her.
Until she started dating an older colleague, now, he had nothing against it, as long as it had ended there; the problem is, it had not.
While dating said work colleague, she got caught having an affair with his boss, a man who could’ve been her father.
Again, it should have been none of his business, except he was the one who caught them in the act at the office and didn’t keep his mouth shut; rumours started, and soon everyone knew what was going on.
The first boyfriend broke up with her and transferred departments, while the girl got promptly fired; his boss kept his position.
He instantly understood; this was an act of revenge.
She had chosen him as the culprit for all her suffering, as misguided as that was.
The man landed on the rail, hard, wincing in pain.
He lifted his hand, pointed at the woman, opened his mouth, and screamed at the top of his lungs.
“YOU WHOOOOOR…..”.
*BANG* *SPLAT*
====================
It was a chilly morning in Cyrodiil, despite the otherwise obnoxiously hot summer.
A boy walked down a dirt path; he was young, tall, with dirty blonde hair.
His clothes could barely be considered rags.
The sandals on his feet were coming apart, yet even so he walked, sun at his back, surrounded on both sides by fields of wheat.
He hacked and spat onto the ground before groaning; his throat was beyond dry, arid even.
Stopping to catch his breath, he stretched his back, the motion causing the small silver necklace he was wearing to snap and fall on the ground.
The boy noticed and tried to catch it midair; very unluckily for him, it had rained the previous night and so the soil was more mud than dirt.
His foot slipped, and he fell forward, heading straight towards the wooden pole of the low fence, headfirst.
*THUNK*
His tall body crumbled into a pile of limbs and mud.
For a moment there was no sign of movement before suddenly he lifted his head.
“…REEEEEEEEE!!!”.
*Breath In* “YOU PIECE OF SHIT, FUCK, MY HEAD’S KILLING ME!”
Breathing heavily, the boy looked around, his mouth slowly opening as he stared at the budding fields.
“There’s no way…” He lifted his hand and touched the bump on his forehead.
“Ouch, damn, that hurts, ok, it’s fine.
You just got run over by a train, and woke up in a field”
He looked down at his hands, large, calloused, and tan; he had never in his life had callouses, so he knew those weren’t his.
“Oh boy, oh no, this ain’t happening, please, please these better be the Elysian fields or something.” The man looked at the sky, blue with barely any clouds, then at the horizon, a plume of smoke coming from the distance.
Putting his hands together, he raised them to his chin and closed his eyes.
“Ok, I know this isn’t a prank, because I’m pretty sure I died.
Now, this can be very good, or very very bad, and I’m praying to whatever entity is out there laughing their ass off that this is at the worst backwater France and not what I believe it to be”
Having finished his impromptu prayer, he resumed his inspection of the surroundings.
First he looked down at his clothes.
Pinching the chest part and pulling, he muttered: “Is this a potato sack?” Next he looked at his feet, quite large and caked in mud, wearing some kind of half-straw, half-hide sandals.
Next he lifted his potato sack and checked on Junior as any respectable man should.
He raised an eyebrow.
‘Guess I’m a blondy now, damn’.
Lastly, he spotted the silver pendant shining in the mud.
Picking it up, he cleaned it on his clothes.
‘Just a normal pendant depicting some sort of symbol, shoddy, beat up and scratched all over’.
Looking once more towards the horizon, he decided to head over to the possible settlement indicated by the smoke in the distance; surely, he would find out what was going on once he reached it.
Slowly walking down the muddy path, he couldn’t help but think of what happened and what the future could have in store for him.
‘So I died, huh?
Man, I had a good ride, should’ve had kids, I guess.
My mom is gonna be so sad, I’m an only child too.
Girlfriend’s going to be sad too, should have wifed her up when I had the chance.’ He sighed
His mind kept going over all the major events in his life, up until the moment he died.
Eventually, he reached the base of a hill, the road gently sloping upwards.
Making his way up, he crested the hill and stopped, his hands hanging powerlessly at his side, the silver pendant, with its broken string, wound around his fingers.
What he saw made his shoulder slump; it was not a quaint village in the backwaters of France; well, it was a quaint village, but it certainly wasn’t in France, unless Joan of Arc was still around killing the English.
The huts, cause that was what they were, were made out of wood and thatch; very little stone seemed to have been used from what he could see from far away.
‘Anyway, it’s now or never; let’s figure this stuff out, shall we.
‘ And with that thought, he stepped forward, making his way down to the village, the sun now above him.
At the bottom of the hill, almost at the village entrance, he ran into his first human in this presumably new world.
Eyeing the man, he could see that he was wearing notably better clothes than the original owner of his body.
He had pants, leather boots, a green shirt, and a bow of questionable make resting against the fence; there was a noted lack of a quiver.
He was at least a head shorter than him, had very tan skin and a dirty, bushy beard; as far as first impressions went, he looked like some sort of grizzled hunter.
Clenching and unclenching his fists to steady his nerves, he slowly made his way to the man, giving him a wave to catch his attention.
“Hello there, sorry to bother you, but could you please help me with something?
I’m a bit lost.
Would you happen to know where we are?” The stranger lifted an eyebrow and looked him up and down, his hand wandering up to his bushy beard, scratching it, some mysterious white powder falling with the motion.
“Aye, I can.” He started slowly.
“This”, pointing behind him to the huts.
“Is a no-name farm right outside of Hackdirt.
With that said, who are you, boy, and what do you want here?”
“Uhh, where is Hackdirt exactly, like part of what uhhh, country?” The stranger, hearing his question, furrowed his brows.
Crossing his arms, he scoffed.
“Country?
We are in Cyrodiil, lad, heart of the empire, a week out from the imperial city.
How hard did you hit your head, boy?” Squinting his eyes, he uncrossed his arms and pointed at his head.
“How did you get that lump?
Looks like it must’ve hurt”
“Uhh.
What?
Cyrodiil?” He mumbled back.
“That sounds somewhat familiar.
Where did I hear that before?
It’s on the tip of my tongue…”
“Stop mumbling to yourself, boy; you’re not one of them crazy knife ears”.
And hearing the words knife ears, he quickly associated them with elves, which made a lightbulb light right up in his mind.
‘Cyrodiil, an empire, an imperial city, crazy elves, medieval ambiance, fuck me sideways I’m in Tamriel now’.
Suddenly feeling his mouth dry out, he dry-swallowed.
‘Tamriel is from the Elder Scrolls games, the place with mad gods, constant war, bandits, undead, invasion via hell gates, and world-ending dragons’
*sniff*
‘Focus now, it’s fine, we’ll figure it out as we go, it’s alright, just relax, we’re good, yup’.
“Uhh, yes, uhh, my name is Septimus?
I had an, umm, run-in with some bandits up the road; they knocked me on the head and took all I had.”
Hearing this, the stranger’s brows shot up.
“Bandits, you say, up that road?
I’m surprised they let you live then.
When did it happen?
Names Garis, by the way, as you can probably tell from my attire; I’m somewhat of a hunter”
The man, now known to one person as Septimus, nodded his head and replied.
“Yes, I was very lucky; it happened last night.
I think I barely even saw them, tried to run, and one of them smacked me right on the head.
I woke up this morning; they just left me there with these rags on me”.
Of course, there were no bandits or anything of the like as far as Septimus knew; he had no memory of this body’s previous owner.
He just woke up a few hours ago, lightly banged up, but if corporate life taught him anything is to fake it till you make it.
Garis nodded.
“Well, lucky you, Septimus, the other day I found some poor wretch’s body in the woods right over there, must’ve been the same bandits.”
‘Damn, there are actual bandits.
I was making it up; can’t expect anything else from Oblivion, I guess.
It depends on the time we’re in.
How do I tell what part of the timeline I’m in?’
Septimus was thinking very, very hard, trying to remember all that he once knew about the world.
It had been a good few years since he last touched any of the game, at least ten for Oblivion and half that for Skyrim.
“So Garis, as you’re a hunter, I imagine you wander around somewhat, meet people, right?”
“Ay, some.” He nodded.
“Yeah, so, any news, anything interesting happening lately?” Hearing the question, Garis ‘ eyes lit up; he seemed to be somewhat of a gossip.
“Well, let me tell you, lad, you didn’t hear this from me, but the widow of ol Crassus is a nasty lass; I’ve heard rumours.”
Hearing this, Septimus was caught fully off guard.
“Really, that’s crazy, but I meant more like politically with the empire, any big thing happen lately, places to avoid and all that.
I’m trying to make a new life for myself; it’s been going pretty well before the bandit situation”.
Garis sniffed and shrugged, seeming unimpressed by the lack of interest in the widow.
“Yes, well, the usual, bandits as you know, they’re everywhere feels like, some necromancer cult was spotted a while ago, heard they sent the legion after them so it’s probably fine now, what else, can’t really think of anything, things have been going well since the end of the war against the elves”
Septimus’ eyes lit up.
“Oh, the war against the elves, on the islands, right, when did that end again?
It’s been a while, right?”
Garis scoffed.
“On the islands, he says, yeah, the Summerset Isles, my father was in the legion, you know, fought them knife ears back in the day.
Well, it’s been some 20 years now since the war ended.
Were you even born back then, lad?
You don’t look it.”
Septimus’s eyes lit up; a touch of childlike wonder filled them.
‘Oh my god, I’m in Skyrim; this makes me so happy for some reason’
“No, you’re right, I’m too young to remember, heard some of the older folks talk about it.
Anyway, thank you for the help.”
Changing his weight from one foot to another, Septimus then asked.
“So, you know my situation with the bandits and all, could you maybe spare a septim?”
Garis scoffed and crossed his arms.
“Of course, that’s what this was, trying to talk me out of my septims now, are we, damn beggars think they’re clever.
Go away, I have nothing for you, wretch!”
Then he spat at his feet before turning away from Spetimus.
‘Really, a no would’ve been enough.
This is bad.
Am I about to starve in a fantasy medieval world?
I feel like something’s missing; don’t people usually get some sort of system or cheat or something by now’
Septimus then took a step back and walked around him, heading towards the village.
He soon saw a well and almost felt like crying; his mouth was so dry his tongue felt like sandpaper.
With quick movements, he ran up to the well, examined it before lifting the bucket and dropping it inside.
It reached the bottom with a satisfying splash.
Operating the rusty wench, he eventually got a bucket full of cold water, which he proceeded to chug down.
“I’m alive again; that felt so good.” Cleaning his mouth with the back of his hand, he finally started to pay more attention to the not village but farm.
The first thing he noticed was the lack of people.
‘They’re probably out working.
‘
Walking up to the nearest house, he knocked on the door.
“Hello!” He knocked again.
“Is anyone home?
I just want to ask for some directions”.
No one answered; he tried to push the door open, it was locked.
He then tried the next house over; same thing, no one home, the door locked.
‘Ok, so, what now?
I’m starving here.
I need to follow some sort of survival guide, need to remember all those survival shows I’ve watched, let my inner Gryll Bear out.’ He scoffed.
‘There’s no elephants to get water from here tho, baby steps’
With the pep talk done, Septimus looked around once more before heading towards the shaded part of one of the houses; it just so happened to have an open window.
Slowly pushing the wooden blinds open further, he looked inside the hut; it was mostly empty except for a bed, a table, and some sort of stone oven with what looked to be a pot on top of it.
‘I hope there’s food in that.
He quickly scurried up the window, trying not to make noise.
Once inside the hut, he walked straight to the pot and saw it sat empty.
In a hushed tone, he let out a soft “Damn”.
Looking around for food, he found a small sack; it was full of flour.
“Useless,” he grumbled.
Getting frustrated, he went to the bed and looked under it, only to find a crate.
Pulling it out, he found it full of vegetables: some leeks, potatoes, and a couple of apples.
Septimus quickly grabbed a couple of leeks, held them using his armpit, then grabbed an apple, bit into it, and held it in his mouth before grabbing another apple and scurrying out the same way he came in, through the window.
Once outside, he dropped the leeks and started biting into the apples, finishing them both core and all in under two minutes.
Now somewhat sated, he grabbed the dirty leeks from the ground and headed to the well, where he washed them before quickly eating them.
‘Not even a day in this world and I’m already a thief.
Sorry to whoever lives there, blame the entity that brought me here; it dumped me in the road, injured and starving, couldn’t help it’
Now Septimus, his hunger sated, walked to the other end of the farm, finding a shaded spot under a tree where he could sit and think about everything that happened.
Sitting down in the grass, he rested his head against the tree for a moment, the sound of the wind blowing gently across the fields all he could hear.
Looking at the blue sky, tears started filling his eyes.
“Fuck man, can’t believe this is happening to me.
All I wanted was to be happy; is that much to ask for, world…”