The magicka seeped back slowly at first, then as a merciless kick to the teeth, breaking his whole body in. Like gaining a six sense back, but one he’d always had yet hadn’t missed until it was gone—colors too bright, over-saturated, sound and silence piercing, deafening. It left him jittery, moody, unable to calm down, craving a semblance of physical and mental peace, a state he half-remembered from a lifetime ago, another Amerigo, not the pathetic creature doubled over, tightening upon himself.

“F-Fuck!” He’d been drained and hexed before, back in the Niben, fighting screaming Colovian war bands too eager to prove themselves to their war lords. Things were simpler then, easier—godless heathens selling the Ruby Throne for scraps of comfort, sourceless power. Putting them down was duty, blind, blessed duty. Everything in Cyrodiil revolved around duty and, in his race-cursed ignorance, Amerigo thought himself capable of fulfilling it, if not to the letter then to the spirit. “Fifty fucking years!” he screams, fingers clawing into his bedding, bracing himself against another painful jolt that starts in his chest, then works its way down his spine, shoots down his legs, settles in his toes. The lore of four empires and no middling bureaucrat-turned-battlemage realized that, for a mage born under the sign of the Atronach, draining and keeping him magicka-less for more than a couple of days meant a case of withdrawal. Acute withdrawal, in Amerigo’s case, because Akatosh thought it prudent to make him dragonborn (a sick joke, that) and, as every dusty tome Amerigo ever read on the subject loved to harp on, dragons are intrinsically magickal creatures.

—

Sacred silence and sleep, that’s what the Greybeards called it. Other than the wilderness of the Nibenay Basin, where I lost myself and was better for it, Throat of the World is the only place where I’ve felt at peace.

I shouldn’t have been made the way I was. Everyone around me says it’s a blessing, a privilege, yet to me it feels like a noose. The rope of history and culture and religion and duty crushing my windpipe. I labored for years readying the Ruby Throne for the poor fool meant to fill it, unaware that it was me all along. Akatosh must be laughing at the contract I inked into my skin. The hubris of it all.

I write in the tongue of poor Cyrods for some measure of privacy, lest the other legionnaires I share space with, most of them Nords, pry into this re-purposed ledger. I also write it in hope that no idiot in the future dares to claim I was a lord, a prince—or worse, a Colovian. I want them all to know that their fabled cultural hero was flotsam from the Waterfront. An idiot who prayed for fame and got what he wanted, misremembering that the gods are cruel, even more so in turbulent times.

My name is Amerigo Metaxian and I’m a melancholic fool.

—

“You look terrible.”

“Love you too, Nord.” It’d become a game for Amerigo, to see how often his words could redden Hadvar’s cheeks. It was also egotism, for Amerigo knew he was attractive and charming, even for an Imperial—sharp-faced, high boned-cheeks, deep green eyes that contrasted his olive-toned brown skin, brown hair. More mer than man, enough to be exotic in a land of milkskins, but still man enough not to be threatening. Snake-like, a jilted lover insulted him with once. But Amerigo had made that his own too.