Frostbite - a TES:V Skyrim Fanfiction Series

7 - Lost

Flashes of white light exploded behind his eyes as his senses cracked and his muscles convulsed. Round and round and round he spun down a whirlpool of screams and ice and flashes of half-remembered visions – a chair with rough leather restrains cutting into his wrists and ankles under his seizure; the beam of crystalline headache cutting into his irises from a metal framed face; blood pressure building as a dam about to break. A gentle hand on his shoulder.

His head submerged and he saw her face – dark ringed eyes, greasy midnight hair, and slashes of grim determination. He reached out for her, unable to pull up a shout from his lungs, but he was too late. Her face snapped from existence and was replaced with bright, blue sky.

Isaac blinked up at the baby blue sky. He lay on his back, breathing heavily in a cold sweat. A gentle breeze caressed the side of his face and the tip of his nose. He felt hard ground against the back of his head.

Isaac shot up into a sitting position. "Willow!" His shout carried on the wind and echoed off the landscape around him. As he looked around, breath caught in his throat. Grey mountain peaks shot up all around him for miles in each direction, majestic and towering like no landscape he had ever seen. In an amongst their peaks, he saw trees of deep greens and oranges. Way off, a titanic waterfall cascaded from some unseen source above and landed in pools before dropping into a basin just beyond his sight, in and amongst some trees.

"Oh," he said. "That's ... not normal."

The landscape of the mountain bowl was rugged itself. Rocks and boulders grew from beneath the rough, dry looking earth. The ground cracked and raised up in nolls and small hills.

Isaac shivered as that wind brushed across his, and he realised he was naked. "Oh. That's ... slightly embarrassing."

He looked around his immediate vicinity. A jumble of wood lay close by. He stood on stiff limbs caught himself as his blood redistributed itself around his body, as though he'd been laying there for a long time. When his vision ceased its swimming and retracted dark vignette from the edges of his eyes, he saw that the wooden wreck it was some form of old horse drawn cart. Its front two wheels had collapsed, causing it to crash forwards to the ground.

All across the ground, he saw scorch marks. They weren't obvious to begin with, but as he got closer to the carriage, he saw the ground was blackened and dried out.

"Oh ... good."

And a dead horse lay on its side, just passed the carriage. The smell hit him, then, of singed hair and flesh. Isaac clenched his teeth as he prepared for his stomach to turn, but instead, it rumbled, and he became aware that he was ravenously hungry, too.

Preparing to run at the first sight of danger, Isaac tentatively rounded the front of the cart. Lying face down was its driver – mercifully, wearing clothes which, despite their strange old-fashioned look, he reckoned would fit him and at offer some respite from the cold air. He started to shiver, unsure whether due to the temperature or his hunger.

Isaac leaned down and turned the driver's body over and jumped back with a shock.

At first, he thought the driver's face had been mangled or burned, but as his eyes relayed the information to his brain, he realised he was looking at the face of a large cat. Ginger brown fur covered its head and hands, and didn't look to be some kind of outfit or costume. It had a snout, complete with whiskers, and two large ears sprouted from its head. Stepping back, he saw it had a long tail which protruded from the back of its waistband.

The cat carriage driver was dead, but he couldn't see any blood or scorch marks across its clothes or body. Perhaps it had fallen and impacted the ground face-first when the carriage broke.