JoS/Henriette/24th Journal - My Master and a Stranger

Morning Star, 24th, 4E 203

I could tell that something was wrong when I returned to Falkreath, but I had no idea how bad things were truly going to get. The most frustrating part about this is that I haven't really done anything wrong! Well, not anything you could prove anyway.

I entered the inn, but couldn't find my friends anywhere. The place was suspiciously quiet too. I was knocked unconscious from behind, and when I woke up my feet, hands and mouth were tied up tightly with a rope. I was laying naked inside cargo of a carriage running through a rough, rocky path. I was in pitch-black darkness, I couldn't make anything of what was going on outside, and I didn't know where I was going, or who had done this. I hadn't truly been this scared in a long while. It was like that for about an hour, until my captors finally pulled away the thick leather blanket that was preventing light from coming inside and stared me down.

"That's her alright", they said as they took me and dragged me by a leash to a somewhat familiar place, Castle Dour. They had brought me to Solitude, and they threw me in prison here. Waiting for me inside the cell as I laid naked on his feet was my Imperial master, who was holding the piece of crystalline metal in his hand, the very piece I had found in Mzulft.

He didn't greet me, he didn't seem happy nor angry, but he seemed very serious. He just pulled the gag from my face and asked me, "where did you find this?"

I saw no reason to lie to him, so I told him exactly where I found this treasure from. He also asked what my business in that place was, to which I also answered honestly. I thought it would be in my best interest to do so. I said that I was contracted by the College of Winterhold to go there, that I was looking for something else and stumbled upon this piece of metal by accident.

His thin-eyed expression scared me. It was like he was staring a hole through me. He said that he's not going to ask me about it, or what in the world had gone down in that place, but he also said that he was not happy, that the Thalmor aren't happy, and that I had caused a lot of unnecessary trouble and made a lot of unnecessary enemies. "Not only that, but you just had to get yourself in trouble in Falkreath too."

I said I have no idea what he's talking about, that I've done nothing, but it seems that it doesn't matter what I said. Jarl Siddgeir of Falkreath had placed a grand bounty on my head for aiding in an escape of a dangerous criminal, calling for my immediate imprisonment. There was no concrete evidence that I had done it, but a guard had said they saw me leave the prison when they were about to enter the place themselves for checks, only to find Sinding's cell empty. Coincidentally, my Master's men had been also looking for me since the day they heard news from Markarth. My master here has men in the Reach too, he seems to have a lot of influence in all holds under Imperial influence… That obviously means my Master has some influence in Falkreath too.

His men were just hoping to bring me to him, maybe even peacefully, because let's be real, I would've answered to his summons gladly, but since I had already been taken to the Falkreath prison, they had to resort to a plan B. Luckily for my Master, him and Siddgeir are friends. According to my Master, they have a little deal going on. Siddgeir, according to him, is a kind of Jarl who doesn't really care that much about duties of a Jarl, but enjoys the benefits that come with it: meat, wine, women, drugs… Of course he pretends and acts as just as he can, but if he can strike a good deal with a Moon Sugar smoke-filled backroom, he will. My master's men handed Jarl a check saying that they'd pay my bounty of twenty thousand Septims - yeah, I was in deep shit - to have me "freed".

That freed is in quotation marks because in truth, I haven't been really freed. I've just been turned from a prisoner serving a multi-year sentence to a slave. I guess that's a better deal for me, as Siddgeir just might've had me tortured in exchange for information about Sinding, or maybe even have me executed.

What's more, apparently my friends have been imprisoned too. He couldn't tell me where they are and what he plans to do with them, but he has stressed that it's in my best interest to do exactly as I'm told and don't even think about causing any more trouble than I already have.

Either way, at this point I'm pretty sure I'm royally fucked for the foreseeable future. I mean, my Master paid that twenty thousand Septims. What in Oblivion can I even do to pay that back to him? It also raises the question of, why is he so willing to pay that much to have me freed? Maybe he thinks I can make that money back to him? Well, if he intends to keep me as his slave for good, that might as well be the case… A girl like me can probably make him a lot of money over years… I don't want to think about that as a possibility, but it's simply the truth.

I don't imagine Solitude prison being a place you can just escape from either, at least not through Castle Dour. The prison is connected to the caverns and the East Empire Company's warehouse, but I don't see how escaping through that place would be any easier. There are just too many guards and soldiers here. I'm fucked, unless of course, there's something else he can use me for. You see, he was not holding that piece of blue crystalline metal in his hands for nothing.

He has been looking for pieces like the one I had for a long time now, and had one in his possession already. He thinks he knows the locations of one more, has a strong suspicion about where the third could be, and that this one I found is the fourth piece, the one he didn't have any idea where to find. They're something called Aetherium, something that Dwemer used to construct something back in the day. Apparently, this element is quite powerful, and my master here is looking to collect the pieces together because he wants to forge something terribly powerful out of them… For what purpose, he didn't specify, I don't need to know according to him. He said that he's happy to take the shard out from my hands. Did I get a reward? Kind of. The bounty on my head was not impossibly high, and he already paid it off in my stead, but I still owe it back to him. One piece of Aetherium isn't going to cut it. He expects more labor from me and "my followers" until our bounties can be paid off completely.

Alright, they're my friends, my equals, not my followers… But I digress.

He says that he expects total and complete obedience from me. No tricks, no nothing. If he even as far as suspects I might be planning escape, there will be a harsh punishment. He hasn't really even said anything about what my work entails, but I don't really need a strong imagination for that. It's probably the same old, me serving bandits down in the warehouses for a full working day, or maybe even guards in the Castle Dour itself, or maybe even in a public pillory like that one time.

Now, he has me chained inside a jailcell. They haven't provided me any extra restraints, so I can talk and use my hands freely, but the cuffs and collars on my ankles, legs, wrists and my neck slow me down considerably, and have some anti-magic enhancements placed on them as well to make sure I don't have any tricks up my sleeve. I can still access my fangs and my voice, but I wouldn't dare to use them. I need to keep up a good act. This is probably the best deal I'm ever going to get given the circumstances and I should be thankful that things aren't even worse. I won't protest, I can't afford to protest. He still owns me.