Rashan lay on his back, staring at the wooden beams of his ceiling, his mind running in circles. He had just finished meditating with his training sword resting across his lap—a habit he had developed ever since hearing the legend of the Shehai. Did it help? He wasn't sure. But meditating had become a part of his daily regression run, something he did without question, without fail. If nothing else, it sharpened his focus, helped him internalize every movement from training, every mistake, every correction.
Right now, though, his mind wasn't on his sword.
It was on magic.
How the hell was he going to convince his father to let him study it?
He really, really wanted to.
But magic wasn't like the game. You couldn't just cast a spell and level up. It required understanding the fundamentals—theory, formulas, and the very nature of how each school functioned. From everything he had read, most mages started learning magic between twelve and fourteen summers. But Rashan didn't want to wait that long.
His mother dabbled in alchemy, but it was just that—dabbling. He could use that as a way in, an excuse to explore the field… but alchemy wasn't what he really wanted.
He wanted to learn Restoration.
It wasn't about healing, not really. Restoration was about survival. The ability to mend wounds, to endure longer, to push beyond limits. It was a warrior's tool, even if most warriors didn't use it.
But he wanted more than just Restoration.
Conjuration fascinated him. The ability to summon bound weapons, spirit guardians, or even atronachs was a game changer in battle. It was about control, about bending the battlefield to your will. A sword that never broke, that never dulled, that could appear in an instant? That was an advantage any warrior would kill for.
Then there was Alteration. It was the foundation of all battlefield magic. Flesh spells could reinforce his body, making him harder to injure. Gravity manipulation, if he could figure it out, could turn the tide of any fight. And Perception magic? The ability to sense the world in ways no ordinary warrior could? That had more uses than he could count.
Destruction and Illusion, though? He had no passion for them.
Destruction was powerful, sure, but it was too brute force for him. He liked precision. He liked control. And besides, he already had a weapon he was mastering—his bow. With his HUD, he was an absolute menace with one. He only had access to training bows for now, but even with those, he was already impressing his instructors. He didn't need fireballs when he could put an arrow through a man's throat before he saw him coming.
None of that solved his problem, though. His father wasn't a mage. And Redguards… Redguards had complicated views on magic.
Rashan took a deep breath, thinking carefully. Unlike some of the other races, Redguards didn't outright hate magic. They weren't like the Nords, who saw mages as weak, or the Alik'r, who outright banned it in their ranks. But there was still a stigma. Redguards respected martial skill—swordsmanship, strength, speed. Magic was something foreign, something not entirely trusted.
But it wasn't completely absent.
Redguards had always had mage-advisors in the courts. Even in Taneth, his father had a royal vizier who dabbled in the arcane—though not openly. Those men were scholars first, spellcasters second, and their role was political as much as it was magical. They weren't battle-mages, not like the Altmer or the Imperials who wielded destruction magic with reckless abandon. Redguard mages were always pragmatists, their magic subtle, controlled.
There was the Mages Guild, of course, though its presence in Hammerfell had always been tenuous at best. Redguards never fully trusted it, seeing it as an Imperial institution, something built for the soft-handed scholars of Cyrodiil rather than the warriors of the desert. There had been chapters in cities like Sentinel and Stros M'Kai, but they were never as respected as the warrior academies.
And then there were the hedge-mages, scattered throughout Hammerfell—desert mystics, seers, alchemists who practiced in secret. Some were respected, especially those who could heal, but many were seen as little more than charlatans or hermits, dangerous and unpredictable.
Magic was there—it had always been there. But it was secondary to the blade. The true power of Redguard warriors had always been their bodies, their will, their skill with steel.
Rashan knew exactly how his father would see it.
A sword could be trained, tested, honed over years of discipline. Magic, to men like Samir Sulharen, was a shortcut. And Redguards did not trust shortcuts.
If he was going to convince his father, he had to frame it the right way.
Magic could not be his first weapon.
It had to be a tool, a weapon to enhance his martial skills, not replace them. He had to make it clear that he wasn't seeking to become some Imperial-trained battlemage—he wanted to be a warrior first, a mage second.
But how the hell was he going to sell that?
Rashan racked his brain, searching for any true Redguard heroes who had openly wielded magic.
Not just advisors or strategists, not hidden scholars or tainted legends—actual warriors who were respected and remembered.
The first names that came to mind were the Ansei—the Sword-Singers. They had wielded the Shehai, the Spirit Sword, a weapon formed through sheer willpower, perhaps even a form of magic that defied traditional schools. But they weren't mages in the conventional sense. Their power was spiritual, an extension of their absolute mastery of the blade.
Then there was Makela Leki, a name etched in Redguard legend. A warrior so skilled that even after being mortally wounded, she continued to fight. Some accounts claimed she had used Restoration magic to sustain herself, holding death at bay long enough to strike down her enemies. But her story, like all Redguard legends, focused on her sword, her discipline, her warrior's spirit. The magic, if it had been there, was a footnote, not the focus.
He dug deeper into his memory, searching for something undeniable.
Then—he remembered A'tor.
Prince A'tor.
A true Redguard hero. A warrior and a mage.
His legend was one of glory and tragedy. During the war for Stros M'Kai, he had fought against the Empire, leading the resistance with both steel and sorcery. He was a swordsman of incredible skill, but he had also wielded Destruction magic in battle, cutting down his enemies with fire and lightning. He had commanded battlemages, treating them as warriors, not cowards.
And then, there was the moment that defined his legend.
During the Battle of Hunding Bay, he had been struck down by Imperial forces, his body preserved only by a desperate spell cast by one of his mages. His soul was sealed within a gem, his body placed in magical stasis, waiting for the day he could rise again.
Some saw it as a tragedy, a fall from grace.
Others saw it as proof.
A true warrior could wield magic and still be honored. Prince A'tor had done it.
But his story ended in death and exile.
Rashan let out a slow breath, staring up at the ceiling. There was no easy answer.
The greatest Redguard warriors were swordsmen first. Even those who had wielded magic—Makela Leki, Prince A'tor, the Ansei—had been remembered for their martial skill, not their spells.
Magic wasn't forbidden, but it wasn't respected either. Not in the same way the sword was.
He racked his brain, turning the problem over and over in his mind. Maybe he was thinking about this the wrong way. Maybe it wasn't about proving magic's worth through history or legend. Maybe… he needed to make it personal.
His father had asked him what he wanted once before. At the time, he had been young. His father had even said he had asked his brothers the same thing, but they had been older when they answered.
Mostly, his answer had been about not wanting to be sent off to be a court advisor at the time.
Maybe he could use that.
He steeled himself. No point in waiting.
Time to talk to his father.