A tavern, then.

Reconstructing the events before he passed out, a lot of it is lost in a fog. He remembers walking towards a city, vaguely; he remembers walking, before he reached the city; he remembers the wolves; he remembers the fire, and the corpse; he remembers the dagger, and the book, and the amulet, which makes him immediately sit at attention—they're not exactly his belongings but they belonged to someone and it's probably a bad idea to lose them. He should at minimum give them to guards or something.

"At ease, fella," says someone behind him, leaning against a wall. He's wearing thigh-high boots, long gloves, a hood that wraps itself around his shoulders, a cloth-and-leather belt around his waist holding a satchel, and little else. His skin has a greenish tint, and his features are long, thin, sharp, and austere.

An elf, he immediately realises. He doesn't know how he knows that, but he knows that he's right. But now that he thinks about this, he looks around at everyone else, and finds them all to be humans. They're all of them of very similar ethnicity, and for some reason he finds it surprising, and especially that their skin is so white. He doesn't know why it's surprising—it's not like he remembers ever having met literally anyone else—but that's the gut reaction he has, is surprise. He turns back around to face the elf.

"Who are you?"

"Nelacar," he replies with no further comments. "And you?"

He looks down at himself—still covered in dried blood and dirt and sweat—then back up at Nelacar. "I do not know."

"A mage, though," he observes.

"...yes. Yes, I am."

"Not from the College?"

The word sounds a bell in the back of his mind. "The College?"

"The College of Winterhold, the only officially recognised school of magic in Skyrim. You're in Winterhold. You don't know of it?"

"N... Yes? Maybe? I... need to go there. For some reason?"

"Not complete amnesia, then, I see," Nelacar says, nodding. "Any idea why you showed up at the gates in the buff with only a book, a dagger, an amulet, and Oakflesh?"

Oakflesh, another word he—doesn't exactly recognise, because that's not what the armour spell is known as where he's from, but he knows the man is referring to it.

He also doesn't feel like answering the question. Certainly not in public; he has noticed other patrons surreptitiously or not-so-surreptitiously paying attention to their conversation. One of the more blatant ones is a woman in what must be a guard's getup, a blue tunic attached to her by belts that also hold a scabbard and a sword next to her hip and a shield on her back, metal gauntlets and greaves, and a metal helmet lined with fur for warmth.

"Is there somewhere to get cleaned? And where are my belongings?" He notes that he's still wearing the amulet, so they're probably not being kept from him.

Nelacar raises an eyebrow then stands up straighter and offers them to him. Even though the elf had not been holding them before. "Get you a name, and I'll rent you a room and access to the bath."

He accepts the book and dagger and says, "Thank you." It cannot have escaped the elf that he has no means to pay him back, so he focuses on the first half of the sentence. What will he call himself? He's got nothing. He's got a book and a dagger and an amulet and magic and the blood and sweat and dirt on his skin. The furs around his shoulder are probably only being lent.

"I'll be Ruby," he decides, out of pure free association. Blood, red, ruby. It's a nice enough name.

"A pleasure to meet you, Ruby. Come." Nelacar walks over to the counter and asks the barkeep for a room and a bath, on his tab. Then he leads the way past a back door through a corridor and out the other side, where a large tub awaits. There's a roof over it but it's otherwise open to the elements. It's already filled with water, but "Don't get in yet. I usually ask to not get heating because I can provide that myself so unless someone just used it the water will be cold." He puts a hand inside the water and starts heating it up.

Ruby watches this quietly for a bit, but then starts looking for somewhere to put the dagger and book. There's a little table over there, which seems good enough.

There isn't enough time for him to get cold again, because the water is soon hot enough there's steam fogging up the place. "Get in," says Nelacar, offering a hand to take Ruby's furs.

He gratefully goes up the wooden steps to the tub then into it, and there's just something different about getting a warm bath that just being in a warm room lacks. He grabs a scrubbing stone from a nearby shelf and starts getting rid of all the grime on his skin.

Nelacar vanishes the furs and then vanishes (what passes for) his clothes to follow Ruby in. At Ruby's questioning look he says, "You mind? I'm paying for it so might as well use it."

He shrugs. "Sure, suit yourself."

So he sits down and grabs another scrubbing stone. "So, ready to satisfy an old man's curiosity?"

"...yeah. But I don't have much. I woke up swimming. Then I wasn't swimming, and needed a fire, and I saw smoke and," grimace, "some experiment gone wrong. There was a charred circle and a burnt corpse and a campsite and," he taps the amulet, "these. Not sure what they're for but I wanted to find out who that person is and maybe give these to their family or something.

"And from there I walked here." Shrug.

"...huh. Maybe I should take you to the College." Pause. "Yisra, Ilas-Tei, Borvir, Rundi. Any of those names ring a bell?"

"...no?"