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SNEAK PEAK VIDEO GAME ADVENTURE: ELDER SCROLLS PART 1

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"Everyone suited up?"

"Yup."

"Better than ever!"

"Uh... I dunno. How do I look?" Landon turned to me, his arms out and displaying the shine of the sun on his elven chest plate crafted from the far reaches of the kingdom. Peaking out from behind his left shoulder was a warhammer, which I knew for a fact he didn't have the capability to even wield in real life. The thing was bigger than me!

Coming out from behind Landon, Kole strode onto the cobblestone path and waved a hand at Landon, saying, "That'll do. Now we've got to get across the kingdom on foot so let's get moving."

"Can't we ride horses?" Joni asked, her image switching from helmet to helmet until she fit into a tribal one with ram horns and an iron cap. If we were in the real world, she'd look like a viking, and everyone in town would lose their minds as if she'd gone off the deep end. Vikings were our mortal enemies--no offense to Kole, an original Minnesotan.

"Horses cost too much and I've only got three thousand gold," I explained.

"But I want a horse!" she whined, only to be interrupted by Kole, who was already ten paces ahead of us swinging a lengthy blade from hand to hand. I picked up my pace, so I was soon following behind him, Joni on my heels, and Landon tugging along after her aimlessly striking his warhammer this way and that.

The thing about playing video games was that we could be anyone that we wanted, and double it with strength, speed, and agility. More often than not I found myself over at Kole's on the weekends, spraying dark elf blood across the walls of dungeons and crumbling the bones of risen skeletons.
But today--today was a special day because Joni and Landon decided to join in on our escapade.

"So when do we get to pound some skulls in, huh? Who do we fight?" Joni inquired from behind.

"No one yet. We've gotta get to the town first and start the storyline," I told her as we reached the peak of the hill. On the horizon we could see the path breaking through the trees where it continued onto a hilly plain and intersected a city wall, built with a thick oak door and stone towers. In the center of it there was a massive castle, built on the edge of a steep, rocky hill.

"Ooh, what's that?"

"Whiterun. It's like... a capitol," I explained. "Now c'mon, it's getting dark."

We started running, mainly because Kole had already passed the river bridge and waited for us up by the nearest house on the outskirts of the city. By the time Landon was able to join us, Kole had already made chitchat with the farmer and his wife before nodding us along to the city.

"There's been a dragon circling around the city. They say it headed towards the west end," Kole told us, pointing his sword off into the distance.

"Dragons?! I thought you were joking about that!" Landon shrieked.

"Dragons? Alright! Let's do this!" Joni got into a battle stance and yodeled into the air before charging off the path and through the fields, leaving us to catch up with her on her tirade to the west side of the city outskirts.

Kole glanced at me through the eyeholes of his dwarven helmet and rolled his eyes. I laughed and slipped my bow off my shoulders. "I can't believe you convinced me to let them in the game. They're gonna get themselves killed," he told me.

"Then you better save the game now or else they'll spawn all the way back there," I replied, nudging him on the shoulder before taking off after the two goofballs galloping through the field.

As the sun dipped behind the mountains, darkness descended over the ancient sky and cast the northern lights overhead. The green streaks of light shimmered over the fields of grass, and illuminated on the golden handle of Landon's warhammer. On the side, Kole tugged Joni's hands up into the correct position to spark a mage's light. She snapped her fingers and lit a bluish orb over our heads, which glowed across our pack and a little beyond that to the deep shadows of a fortress ruin. On the horizon, Whiterun became a silhouette among the mountains.

"Did you see that? I learned a spell!" Joni called out to me, pointing up at the floating light over her head.

I gave her my compliments, but kept my eyes to the sky. The dragon had to be around here somewhere, because we could hear it's screeches echoing over the rocks.

Before Landon could even retrieve his weapon, the dragon soared near with it's black wings outstretched, beating hard against the air current and heading our way. Landon screamed and ducked as it came over our heads, causing all of our controllers to rumble and our chests to vibrate.

"Find cover! Go, go, go!" Kole shouted at us, which Landon was already doing, leaping over a rock and curling up behind it. "Skye!"

"On it!" I drew back the string of my enchanted bow and aimed the tip of my arrow up into the night sky. Inhaling, I tracked the beast; exhaling, I released, and the sound of the arrow sinking into its scales told me I hit it.

I set five more arrows loose before it descended and landed heavily on the ground. Kole ordered Joni to come out from hiding, and the two of them sprinted to the dragon as it opened its mouth and breathed a cloud of fire at us. Joni wailed as she took damage, but released an array of sparks on the beast that sent blue lightning across its back.

Kole wielded his sword and slashed at the dragon's side until it craned its neck over and snapped its jaws at him. I shot arrow after arrow at it until it took off for the sky again, it's health depleted and draining still.

"It's gonna go on the fort!" Joni shouted when it made for a second landing. "I don't have enough magicka!"

"Here, take this potion. It's a magic regen," I told her, shrieking and running for cover before I even had the chance to hand it over. The dragon released a breath of fire at us, driving us back to the boulders where Landon had his head peaking out.

"This is nothing like Peggle," he said, causing Kole to laugh out loud as he leapt down next to me and flattened his back against the rock.

He popped the cork on a health potion and downed it all. "You'd think this would be easier with four people," he told me, and I rolled my eyes and heard Joni retort from over the blaring sound of fire hitting the rock, "Hey, I'm doing my best!"

After consuming a magicka regeneration potion, Joni chased after the dragon as it flew off over the field. Lightning ejected from her fingertips, scorching the tip of the dragon's tale before it cruised off, breathing fire across the grass and setting it aflame. Kole groaned and hopped back onto his feet, staggering under the influence of blood in his vision.

"Wait, I got this," I told him, leaping up to my feet and dragging him back down.

"Just give me another potion, I can handle it," he told me, but I refused and pulled Landon up with me instead.

"Relax a sec, will ya? We got this," I told him.

"I dunno about you, but I definitely don't got this," Landon muttered dreadfully as I yanked him onto the playing field and shoved him into the direct line of the dragon, which shook the ground under its feet as it landed nearby where Joni was shooting flames and sparks out of her hands.

As Landon wildly swung his warhammer around, I stood atop a rock, gaining leverage with the dragon so I could get a direct hit on its head. After my last arrow was let loose, I swapped weapons, and unsheathed my greatsword from its holder just as the dragon became set for takeoff.

I lunged from the rock, sword raised in the air as the dragon took off from the ground. The blade sunk into its skull through the eye socket, and I pinned it to the ground with its body still spazzing under the attack of Joni's lightning sparks. The dragon's body went loose and collapsed to the ground, falling to one side.

As the scales from the dragon shed and disintegrated into the atmosphere, Joni raised her hands to the sky and shouted, "We did it! The mighty beast is slain!"

Landon dropped his warhammer to the ground and evaporated from the scene. He set his game controller on the bed and stood up from the carpeted ground. "I officially hate dragons. That was so stressful."

Kole slipped off his headset and said, "C'mon, it wasn't that bad."

"We all almost died! There was blood all over your screen!" he shouted.

"It's a video game!"

"It's real! It's all real! The nightmares are real, the world is ending, and dragons suck! I'm going to the bathroom." Landon exited the room and marched down the hall. We could hear his heavy footsteps like the vibration of the dragon landing on the ground.

Joni was still in the game, chasing circles around the dragon and shooting sparks into the air. I sighed and leant back against the side of Kole's bed, controller in my lap and arms folded over my chest. He glanced at me, and discovering that I was already looking at him, turned away. He pressed his hand against his gray beanie and readjusted it carefully, pretending like his cheeks weren't flushed.

"Nice goin'. With the dragon and all--that was a pretty neat stunt you pulled," he told me.

"Neat? That was so epic! It was in slow motion and everything!" Joni cried out, throwing her headset practically halfway across the room. "C'mon, we gotta do that again! Didn't you say there were dungeons with skeletons?"

"They're called draugrs, but yeah. We need to up our levels a bit more before we go into all that," I told her. "Just wait till you see the giants! If they hit you with their clubs, you go flying into the air!"

"No way! Let's do it!"

"So that's what we're doing next? Getting slaughtered by giants?" Kole commented, his voice betraying his amusement as a crooked smirk spread across his lips. Joni was all for it, and when Landon came back, he didn't have much of a choice.

Because when it came down to it, it's all or nothing.

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