Deception, Domination, and Dragons (Skyrim Self-Insert)

She was running again. Fleeing, rather. And she hated herself for it, but at the same time, she couldn’t stop moving, one foot in front of the other. Back when she’d first made the decision to come back to Skyrim and seek revenge on the Thieves Guild for her exile, Svanna had made a promise to herself that she wasn’t going to run anymore.
 
She’d told herself that this was it. All or nothing. She would either get her own back from the Thieves Guild, or she would die trying. After getting captured by Imperials at the border, she’d initially thought that the ‘die trying’ option looked a lot more likely. Wasn’t like she could just tell the Imperials who wanted to cut off her head her life story and ask them to send her on her way or anything like that.
 
But then it turned out she was the Dragonborn, and Vayral was there to help her along the path. And then she found out who he was, and in turn got to help him along his own path. It was all… it was all coming together. She’d finally felt like maybe, just maybe she was ready to confront Riften, to confront the Thieves Guild, and to take her vengeance at long last.
 
… And now here she was, running because she didn’t understand anything. It didn’t make SENSE. No, worse than that… it did make sense. That was what Svanna hated the most about it all. She wasn’t a dumb girl. She wasn’t stupid. She’d picked up on the issues as well. Some of Riften was familiar to her. Some of the people, she vaguely recognized.
 
She’d assumed it was a time thing. It’d been years since she’d been in the city, over half a decade since she’d set foot within its walls. Surely… surely it made sense that a lot of it would be unrecognizable to her now. And yet, that didn’t explain Svana Far-Shield. Or Grelod the Kind not even knowing who she was.
 
That old bitch had beaten, starved, and abused Svanna for much her life. One might think it would be easy for a woman like Grelod to forget some of the orphans who went through her orphanage, but Svanna knew better. That kind of hatred? That kind of low cunning? Grelod the Kind never forgot. If she’d raised Svanna, if she’d been the one who Svanna remembered, she would have remembered her back.
 
Which meant… what? That Vayral was right? That Svanna wasn’t in her timeline, or something? How did that work?! She remembered it all! Her life, laid out before her! She didn’t… what did it even MEAN, for this to not be the Skyrim that Svanna knew? How would she have… jumped timelines or whatever in the first place?!
 
The only appreciable missing time period Svanna could remember was crossing the border. The Imperials had knocked her out though, so it was to be expected, wasn’t it? And yet… that was when Vayral had shown up as well. Utterly impossible Vayral, who had confessed the truth of his existence to Svanna. How he was two men in one, two minds in one body, and how he wasn’t JUST a Thalmor Agent, but also a human man from a whole other world.
 
She believed him, of course. What reason would he have for telling her such a fanciful lie? But it was still hard for her to wrap her head around all the same.
 
Answers. She needed answers. And in Svanna’s mind, there was only one place she could go, at this point. Riften was once her home. Honorhall Orphanage was where she grew up. But the Orphanage was too lived in by other people, and Riften was too damn big. Finding traces of her past in either was impossible. Or so she told herself, even as a treacherous part of her mind whispered that Svana Far-Shield was all the evidence she needed to know the truth.
 
But no… no, there was one other thing Svanna could check, one other place for the lithe Dragonborn to find answers in. And so she descends into the Ratway once more. First time through here a few hours ago with Vayral, she’d been tempted to make a detour, but had ultimately decided against it. It was more important for them to find the Ragged Flagon, more important for them to get in good with the Thieves Guild.
 
Now though, now Svanna follows familiar tunnels back to her old hiding spot. Her little home away from home, where she’d put her hoard, where the Thieves Guild had originally tracked her down to in the first place. Svanna wasn’t expecting to find coin or anything like that, she knew her hoard had been taken at the same time she was, and disseminated among the thieves who caught her.
 
But the hidey hole should still be there, right? She’d made it herself, all that time ago. Finding a spot in the wall where the stones were loose, scrambling with her small fingers until she could pull a dozen bricks out to make a secret passage, which she’d then pulled a few rotting crates in front of to hide. It’d been the work of weeks for a younger Svanna, a hard task to be sure, but one she’d thought worthwhile at the time.
 
Now… now it would be the only proof she could find of her past in this world. Of her existence in Skyrim. Just around the bend up here, she should be able to find… it.
 
Svanna stares at the wall in front of her, biting her lower lip for a moment before approaching. It was possible it was repaired, right? But no, as she runs her hands along the cracks, she can tell that the stonework isn’t only years old. The Ratway is so hilariously in disrepair that the thought of anyone coming down here to brick up a wall is laughable.
 
More than that, as the Dragonborn runs her much larger fingers over the stones, she recognizes the cracks, recognizes the looseness. These are the same bricks that she pulled out of the wall so long ago to make her secret passage, to create her hidey hole. They’ve just never been removed in… in this timeline.
 
Svanna’s breath hitches, and water strikes her hand, a tear falling from cheek, followed by more. Her face scrunches up in anger, and she snarls as she yanks one of the stones fully out of the wall. In a frenzy, she rips the rest down as well, pulling them out much faster than her younger self had been able to, completing what had taken her weeks all those years ago, in the matter of minutes.
 
Behind the wall, as she expected, is an empty space, just like before. Stepping into it, Svanna doesn’t see a single trace of… of anything that might tell her a little girl once used this place to hide her treasures. No coin can be found under the dirt, no markings along the walls. There’s something that might be some unfortunate animal’s skeleton that got trapped back here… and that’s it.
 
The anger leaves her, to be replaced with sorrow and despair. Svanna drops to her knees in the space, and then onto her side, curling up into a ball as she lets her tears flow. She… she knows she should go back to Vayral. She knows she shouldn’t have left him. He’s the only one in this entire world who actually cares about her.
 
But in that moment, she’s exhausted. Not physically, she actually hasn’t felt the need for sleep since… since she woke up in this strange land, met Vayral, and became the Dragonborn. But at the same time, she’s mentally and emotionally exhausted. It’s so easy to let her eyes drift shut. It’s so easy to just… drift off.
 
And so the Dragonborn sleeps for the first time in weeks.
 
-x-X-x-

 
As she begins to wake up, it’s wooden boards she feels beneath her, rather than the dirty of her hidey hole. That’s the first sign that something is wrong. As she opens her eyes, a smug, female voice speaks up… the second sign that something is wrong.
 
“Sleep well?”
 
Nostrils flaring, Svanna rises. Her armor is untouched, and she still has her bow, her arrows. And yet… this hut is not where she went to sleep. Nor is she alone, as she was when she was last awake. There are three people in front of her, but none of them were the source of the voice, considering all three are kneeling, tied up, and wearing bags over their heads.
 
Turning, Svanna gazes up at the one who spoke, a woman in all black who’s currently lounging atop a bookcase in the far corner of the one-room house.
 
“… Who are you?”
 
“Who I am really isn’t as important as what I am. And what I am is an admirer… of sorts.”
 
Svanna narrows her eyes. She could kill the masked woman in an instant… but she doesn’t even know where she is. Where has she been taken? What IS all of this? She needs answers, so she stays her rising bloodlust for now.
 
“Where am I?”
 
“Does it matter? You’re warm, dry, and still very much alive. That’s more than can be said for old Grelod, hmm?”
 
Grelod? This was about Grelod? Svanna grits her teeth, ready to kill right then and there if this woman actually cared for Grelod in any way. But no, a second’s thought tells her that can’t be it. Grelod didn’t HAVE friends. There had to be something more to this. She needed more information.
 
“What about Grelod?”
 
“Hah! What about Grelod, says the woman’s murderer! Good one. Oh, but don’t misunderstand, I’m not criticizing. It was a good kill. Old crone had it coming. And you saved a group of urchins, to boot. Ah, but there is a slight… problem.”
 
Svanna cocks her head to the side, and remains silent. It’s obvious that this masked woman, whoever she is, likes to hear herself talk. If Svanna stays quiet… yep, there it is.
 
“You see, Aventus Aretino was looking for the Dark Brotherhood. That would be me, and my associates. Grelod the Kind was a Dark Brotherhood contract. A kill that you stole. A kill that you must repay.”
 
Svanna had heard of the Dark Brotherhood, and even remembered the Aretino boy being mentioned during Vayral’s interrogation of Maul. But…
 
“I’ve never met Aventus Aretino in my life.”
 
There’s a pause. And then a twitch from the woman atop the bookcase. Svanna stiffens, her hands almost going to her bow, but the masked woman doesn’t draw a blade or try to attack her. It’s just a twitch… and then she continues on, as if Svanna hadn’t even spoke. No, it was more like… more like she was acting as if Svanna had said something else entirely.
 
“… Well now, funny you should ask. You’ve already noticed my guests. I’ve collected them from… well, that’s not really important. The here and now, that’s what matters. You see, there’s a contract out on one of them, and that person can’t leave this room alive. But… which one? Go on, see if you can figure it out. Make your choice. Make your kill. I just want to observe… and admire.”
 
The woman was strange, and not just because she was apparently having a different conversation than Svanna was. There was more bloodlust in the masked woman than in Svanna herself. But then to be fair, the Dark Brotherhood were assassins, weren’t they? So she supposed that made sense. A glance back at the three kneeling, tied up figures, sees Svanna frowning. She was no stranger to killing… but this? This didn’t sit right for her.
 
“Am I to take your silence as acceptance? Then you know where we stand. Make your kill, and we’re square. Repayment of your debt is a mere discreet knife thrust away.”
 
The masked woman was REALLY obsessed with making Svanna kill for her. Svanna, meanwhile, was disinclined. She needed to get out of here. But apparently she couldn’t leave if she didn’t kill one of these three people?
 
Turning to regard the trio, Svanna narrows her eyes. How was she supposed to decide which to kill? Was she supposed to talk to them? What sort of assassin had a chat with their victims beforehand? The sick and twisted sort, she supposed. Best to just shoot an arrow through one of their throats and be done with it, but which fucking one? She just wished Vayral were here, because he would know what to do. He would…
 
Svanna blinks, as she finds herself imagining EXACTLY what Vayral would do in this situation. And… why couldn’t she do the same? Sure, she didn’t have the same equipment as her companion, but that shouldn’t stop her. Feeling the thrum of her armor’s enchantments against her skin, feeling the pulsing heat of the Dragon Souls beneath her flesh… Svanna begins to smile, as she makes her choice.
 
-x-X-x-
 
I try to give Svanna her space, and quickly come to regret it. To be fair, it’s not like I could have chased her down anyways. If she didn’t want to be followed, not even I could find her, not with how powerful the stealth enchant I’d put on her armor was. That said… almost immediately in the wake of her absence, I felt quite dearly just how much I needed her.
 
It wasn’t like I could go back to the Thieves Guild. I was terrified of what might happen, if I tried to turn in the ‘quest’ Brynjolf gave us without Svanna presence. How would the narrative react if I tried to do more of the Thieves Guild Questline without the Dragonborn there? It was possible that Brynjolf wouldn’t even give me the time of day.
 
Instead, I was hanging onto the debt money we’d been given for the time being, while waiting for Svanna to show back up. In the meantime, I’d headed over to Riften’s Alchemy Shop and power leveled some more using the Alchemy Skill. Getting over level Nine Hundred was pretty nice, even if there was no one to appreciate my ‘its over nine hundred!’ joke as I dinged nine hundred and one. To be fair, it was a pretty shitty joke anyways… I’d have to get to nine thousand and one to make it actually worthwhile.
 
Regardless, once I hit nine hundred and one, I was officially bored… and beginning to get worried about Svanna. And so I pulled out my trump card, the Clairvoyance Spell. Night had fallen on Riften hours ago, so I wasn’t sure what I was expecting when I used Clairvoyance with the objective Find Svanna firmly in my mind.
 
The way it worked in the game, Clairvoyance drew a line of blue energy to the current objective on your quest log. If you had multiple quests active, Clairvoyance showed the nearest one. Given how your ‘mini map’ in Skyrim worked, Clairvoyance was a novelty of a spell, and ultimately completely useless and forgotten in most playthroughs.
 
But since I didn’t have quests in my limited interface, it was the only way I could hope to find Svanna. And thankfully, it actually seemed to work. A line of blue energy did indeed appear when I cast the spell while thinking about finding my Dragonborn very, very hard.
 
… The problem was, the line went out of the city. Why would Svanna leave Riften? Even if this wasn’t her timeline, we could still take some sort of vengeance on the Thieves Guild here in place of those who had wronged her in the past! More than that though… why would she leave Riften without me?
 
I had to admit, I was hurt. And wanting answers, well, I went after her. Following the blue line out of the city, I put on speed… and swiftly moved along. Traveling by myself, with my enchanted gear, there was… well, not much holding me back. I could sprint indefinitely, and more than that, I was FAST. Inhumanly fast, but then to be fair, I wasn’t human was I? I also wasn’t really Mer. I was some sort of anomaly, a Gamer Body with a Altmer coating over it.
 
… I make it to Valtheim Towers in an hour. And yet, the line of blue energy Clairvoyance is giving me is still pointing off into the distance, still nowhere near to being done. It doesn’t make sense… unless…
 
But no, that was impossible, wasn’t it? For the briefest of moments, when Svanna had killed Grelod, I’d been worried about the Dark Brotherhood. Except, I actually knew about that interaction from one of my previous playthroughs, so I’d figured it should be fine. You had to get the job from Aventus before the Dark Brotherhood would come after you. Even if you killed Grelod ahead of time, you still had to go to Windhelm and talk to the boy, where he would then express amazement that you had managed to do the deed before he even gave you the job.
 
Neither Svanna nor I had spoken to Aventus, I was certain of that. And more than that, for the Dark Brotherhood to kidnap you, you had to go to sleep! Svanna hadn’t slept since I arrived in Skyrim, as far as I was aware! I’d thought she did, that first night in the Riverwood Trader, only to find out after the fact that she’d been awake and watching the entire time!
 
Why would she sleep now?
 
And yet, even though it didn’t make any sense, the idea wouldn’t stop rattling around my brain. And so, because it was faster anyways just to check really quick, I Recall to the Mark I set up outside of Morthal and recast Clairvoyance. Sure enough, it points north, to where I vaguely remember the Abandoned Shack being located.
 
It seems impossible, but then, I just found out my Dragonborn is apparently from a different timeline. So who knows what the fuck is possible and not, anymore? Racing North from Morthal, I follow Clairvoyance right up to the door of the shack, and without hesitation, bust in through it into the one-room abode beyond.
 
… I’m not sure what I’m expecting to find, truth be told. Dead bodies, maybe? But no, there’s no one tied up in the shack, no one on their knees with hoods over their heads. The three prisoners that Astrid procures for you to kill in the game are nowhere to be seen.
 
Svanna is there though, I’m grateful to see. And so is the Dark Brotherhood’s current leader, Astrid. On her knees. Hands tied behind her back. Black and red armor torn from her body with nothing more than tatters clinging to her busty frame… and her face, buried in Svanna’s muff as my cute little Dragonborn snarls down at her, humping Astrid’s mouth like there’s no tomorrow.
 
… Heh, I never really had to worry, did I?

-x-X-x-

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