Chainmail jingled, armour plates clanked, and a considerable portion of her underwear was riding up into places that Sofia was trying not to think about. It was unfortunately all too easy to ignore that particularly unique problem at the moment, as she was yet again, surrounded by a large number of muscular, heavily armed men.

  The biggest difference this time, despite the ample distractions of being part of a band of axe-bearers and hold guards, was that she wasn’t the centre of attention or trying to worm her way into coin purses. Instead she was one of them, moving at an extremely brisk pace along the road with a mouth dryer than the deserts of Elsweyr, and hands sweating as though she had just dunked them into a bucket of water. Fear was coursing through her veins even more than the adrenaline of the situation, a fear that she had never, ever experienced before.

  And it had been such a pleasant morning too. Even despite the pounding headache that had been spearing the deeper parts of her mind as the hangover faded with the first bottle of mead of the day. She and Kaius had spent the night working their way through what proved to be an exceptional bottle of wine left behind by the Daedric Prince of Debauchery. They had even proven that the mercenary business was sometimes worth it as she woke in one of the Bannered Mare’s rooms, rather than in the stables or in the gutter.

  But then it had all gone horribly, horribly wrong. By the time that they had staggered their way up to the city’s keep, Dragonsreach the sun was already high in the sky but delivering the Dragonstone soon proved to be the easiest part. Farengar, as Kaius had correctly guessed before they even entered the enormous edifice, was practically bouncing on the spot with glee from their return, but as they were about to exchange the heavy obsidian tablet for an equally heavy pouch of septims, everything changed.

  The commotion was obvious enough, especially the way that Whiterun’s Marshal, Irileth practically kicked in the doors of Farengar’s study and stated in no uncertain terms that Farengar was to come with her. The Hold’s Marshall summoning the Jarl’s personal wizard was never a good sign at the best of times, especially in such a manner and these were certainly not anything close to the ‘best’ of times. For weeks stories had been circulating, telling tales of destruction and fire to the south and there wasn’t a man, woman or child alive in Skyrim who wasn’t aware that the rebellion had turned a dangerous corner. Something had happened in the south in the past month, and while no one exactly knew what that ‘something’ was, the effects were easy enough to see. Stormcloak raids were increasing, as were Imperial legion patrols and punitive attacks, and Whiterun, as it always had been, was caught right in the middle.

  For the Marshall to act in such a way heralded the worst news the citizens of Whiterun Hold could imagine. They were under attack. For over a decade their Jarl had managed to walk the dangerous path of neutrality, while sitting on one of the most strategically important locations in all of Skyrim, if not Northern Tamriel. Now, it appeared that the day everyone had been dreading had finally arrived.

  Expectation and dread however changed into something else. Something new. Something… impossible. One of the watchtowers to the west, a small stone fortress a short distance from the city had been attacked, but as Sofia and Kaius had followed the court wizard and his promised purse of coins, the truth left everyone stunned.

  A dragon. A creature from the darkest depths and myths of Skyrim. A creature whose kind had enslaved the ancient peoples of Skyrim thousands of years before, and who had been hunted into extinction over generations of gruelling war. A creature that shouldn’t have existed. Couldn't have existed yet had attacked, and destroyed the tower and all those manning it.

  Normally such a tale, a warning or message would have been ignored. A tall tale from someone drunk or otherwise intoxicated by a powerful blend of local mushrooms perhaps, but the first messenger was soon the first of many. Whiterun, with its tiered districts built into and onto the spire of stone in the sea of grass ensured that its people lived their lives with marvellous views of the region, but this had proven to be a double edged sword. Many, many people had been able to witness the destruction of the watchtower with their own eyes, and had even caught glimpses of the creature responsible.

  To his credit, Jarl Bulgruuf was no fool. He couldn’t afford to be if Whiterun was to maintain its independence, while crushed between the iron might of the Empire, and the cold determination of the Stormcloaks. His reaction and orders were swift. His retinue of huskarls was to be assembled and deployed to ascertain the situation first hand, but such a situation warranted more. After all, the ‘dovah’ of legends were creatures of death and fire, whose very words brought cities and castles low. The legends even spoke of how it had taken literal divine intervention before mankind broke free from their enslavement. Everyone who could fight or hold a weapon would be required, and Sofia and Kaius found themselves in the wrong place at just the right time.

  Any other Jarl would’ve hesitated or considered his options but not Jarl Bulgruuf the Greater. He took one look at Kaius and Sofia, and some of the other people occupying his great hall and ordered all those with martial bearing to assist. Refusing had certainly not been an option and so here she was, wondering what in all of Oblivion she had gotten herself into this time.

  At least she wasn’t alone. Kaius was there, and somehow despite the impossibility of their potential adversary it was extremely comforting standing side by side with a two hundred year old vampire. Especially one who had zero qualms about throwing down the gauntlet and kicking a daedric prince in the shin, as he had proven the night before. Dragon or no dragon, he was a beacon of confidence, if you ignored the strange reaction of wariness and resignation that he had, while everyone else reacted with shock and fear.

  All things considered, Sofia was thankful that the Dragon had attacked one of the closer watchtowers, even if it was one close enough to be seen from within the city built upon its rocky throne in the middle of the rolling plains. There were dozens of other fortified watchtowers scattered throughout the hold, with some like the dual towers in the Valtheim pass to the east more than a day's march away. The big problem though was that while it did make it possible for the Jarl’s military to quickly respond, it also meant that the city of seventy five thousand were fully aware of what had happened. Panic and terror had gripped the city, and as such the entire city guard, its militia and levied reserves, and even the mighty Companions had been mobilised to deal with the unrest spreading like dragonfire through the streets.

  And so, here she was, surrounded by a ragged column of chainmail and plate armoured huskarls and fyrdmen, marching almost to the point of jogging towards the pillar of smoke rising into the clear, blue sky. Smoke, fire, and something that smelled suspiciously like roasted pork was being carried on the breeze, and combined with the bitter taste of sweat and fear around her, it was increasingly damaging to her calm.

  She should have been able to feel safe, confident in the sheer number of Whiterun Hold’s elite soldiers. In fact, a vast majority of Jarl Bulgruuf’s personal retinue were present, but the sweating faces of his huskarls, while mostly hidden behind spectacle helms and chainmail aventails still revealed wide eyed expressions. There was not a single man or woman among their number who didn’t reek of fear, their heads turning and gazing into the sky, or locked on the broken, crumbling ruin of what had once been a tall and powerful fortification.

  "Talos preserve us." Even surrounded by their comrades, such a statement was even more dangerous than whatever had broken the watchtower, and Sofia heard the muffled jiggle as the speaker was elbowed in their side. It did however speak volumes of how nordic discipline had been eroded by the situation that their hidden beliefs surfaced, even just for a moment.

  Fear and uncertainty, however, wasn’t something that Kaius shared with the six dozen soldiers as they came to a halt several hundred metres away from what was now a burning ruin. He was standing tall, eyes narrowed and carefully studying the sight before them, until he was interrupted at least.

  Among the men and women present there was one who by far stood out among their number. A figure of authority, but not one of nordic blood, or even human ancestry. Flesh a dark ash-grey framed eyes as red as the burning embers within the watchtower ruins, ears pointed like daggers, and ash-ink tattoos practically carved into her scarred skin like badges of honour. The tattoos especially, their trailing, tribalistic designs only seemed to highlight the significant cultural discrepancy of the nordic steel plate that she wore. Irileth was a dunmer, one of the peoples from the abandoned lands of Morrowind long since lost to lava and volcanic fury two hundred years before. She was also the marshall and military commander of Whiterun Hold’s soldiers, no matter whether they were oath sworn axe-bearers, levied militia, or sellswords like Sofia and Kaius.

  "No signs of any dragon right now," Her words were almost snarled as she moved around and through the troops in the band under her command, and Sofia couldn’t tell whether she was talking to herself, or those nearby. "but it sure looks like he's been here."

  That would’ve been obvious even to a blind Moth-Priest. The watchtower was destroyed, practically annihilated in a way that only a protracted siege with numerous siege engines could accomplish. The outer ring walls, almost a hundred metres in diameter around the central watchtower, were broken and crushed. Wooden supports and the interiors were burning, or at least anything flammable was, and even the central watchtower was cracked and on the verge of collapse. What had once been a solid, tiny little fort of stone and brick was now nothing more than a pile of rubble, ash and dust. With curt gestures and a combination of half-shouted orders and whistles, Irileth directed the band of soldiers to spread out, turning the ragged column into a large, wide fan of a formation covering an area a few hundred metres wide. Sofia took this opportunity to ignore the dunmer woman’s commands and practically slid alongside Kaius as they picked their way over clumps of hardy tundra grasses and boulders poking out of the rolling countryside.

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  Kaius was staring, studying… Silent. His face grim and mouth pursed tightly as they crunched their way over a long, burnt fallow of ground several dozen metres in length. The heat that rose out of the soil was incredible, and Sofia noted with some deep concern that in places the ground itself had been melted into tiny shards of glass from impossible heat.

  “What do you think?”

  "It was a dragon." There was a growl in his voice that somehow made her mouth dryer. She had heard it several times before, and it always heralded a fight.

  Such a statement, and the weight of its words though were almost more than the great mountain Throat of the World that blotted out the horizon to the south and she shivered. He knew what caused this destruction. He had somehow seen or experienced it before but questions were churning through her mind, struggling for dominance amongst themselves.

  “So what do we do?”

  Even surrounded by the elite of Whiterun’s military, the way Kaius’s jaw moved as he ground his teeth together was telling. He had no issues almost picking a fight with Sanguine the night before but now he was clearly on edge and weighing his options. The worst part was she wasn’t entirely sure why they were still here in the first place. Kaius wasn’t the sort of person to run from a fight, but he was definitely thinking about it as they picked their way over increasingly scorched and damaged ground.

  “If things go the way I think they might, we hide. If things go even worse, we run.”

  “Run? From a dragon?”

  A clank of metal from his pauldrons rubbing against the breastplate for a moment was surprisingly loud in the stunned silence that surrounded the ruined watchtower.

  “If I do start running, make sure you try to keep up. The trick though isn’t going to be outrunning the dragon, but outrunning some of the others.”

  Such a cold, dispassionate logic from him was somehow more chilling than the prospects of being attacked by a long-dead legend. Not once in the past month had he shown any inkling that he would sacrifice others in his place and the realisation that he was truly concerned was horrifying.

  “You have seen something like this before…”

  “I have.”

  The thought that had been struggling to make its way to the forefront of her mind finally succeeded in shouldering its way through the panicked mess to reach her tongue but she paused, feeling the chilled ice in her belly. While now he was clad in newer and better steel armour and chainmailed leathers, when they met in the stables, Kaius smelled of ash, smoke and death. His armour and equipment was tattered and on the verge of ruin, and the way that several pieces were burnt or singed left creeping realisation blooming in her mind.

  The rumours had been rife throughout Whiterun for weeks now. Tales of destruction and fire and a town wiped off the map. Helgen had perished to sword and fire, the latest casualty in the Stormcloak rebellion but like all stories the details were as varied as those who spoke them. A Stormcloak raid some said, an Imperial cohort attacked and destroyed by the rebels in a town that would share their fate. The propaganda was normal and expected, but some of the details seemed a little too far fetched. Especially those that would swear that not only was the province’s military governor, General Tullius was present, but so was the leader of the rebellion, Ulfric Stormcloak.

  The rumour that the Jarl of Windhelm had been there was the part that Sofia refused to believe. Especially how some of the rumours had spoken about how the Nordic Jarl had somehow been a prisoner when the town was attacked. He was a legend, and had been for more years than Sofia had been alive and so she wasn’t surprised when such legends grew as they had a habit of doing so. Over the past week she had heard the stories that a dragon, not Stormcloaks or the Legion had destroyed the town and so like everyone else had chosen to ignore them.

  Now things were different. Now she had some truth lying before her that some of those claims were true.

  “At Helgen?”

  Kaius almost stopped in place, turned and looked at her with something approximating a smile despite the grim nature of their situation. He was amused, and a little impressed that she had put two-and-two together in such a way.

  “Yes. It was a dragon at Helgen and I was there when it happened. A lot of the tavern tales and gossipmongers have been correct more than they realised.” They were closer to the fort now, the gatehouse less than a dozen metres in front of them that was nothing more than a pile of shattered masonry and flickering embers. “It attacked and destroyed the entire town and almost everyone in it.”

  “But not you?”

  “Obviously not. Some of us who were lucky or smart enough either hid or ran. It wasn’t the first time I have fought such a creature. So be ready to do either, or even both of those things if it returns.”

  Sofia didn’t need to be told twice, especially as they began picking their way carefully over the broken gatehouse, seeing the way that many of the others were following them or taking advantage of the several breaches in the outer wall. There were bodies, or at least things that might have once belonged to bodies scattered about the ruins and more than enough signs of a one-sided slaughter. A leg lay in the fort’s interior, its owner nowhere to be seen, and some distance away a portion of the fort was coated in a copious amount of blood that was too much to be from a single person. What was worse was the other signs of exceptional violence that had claimed lives; a wall that was still molten and cooling from incredible heat, another portion covered in ankle deep ice frozen into vicious shards. Everywhere else was covered in remains of those who had been stationed at the fort, their bodies broken, rent, and shattered by incredible strength.

  "Shor's bones... Did... Did it kill them all?"

  A huskarl knelt down over one of the many charred cadavers, seeing the way that the hapless individual had been fused into the position that they had died in. Nothing was left but blackened flesh, a rictus grin where the mouth hung open in a silent scream and white bones as it lay with arms extended in the useless attempt to stave off its demise. So incredible was the flames and heat that had killed the soldier that the metal plates and chainmail had turned molten and run like water, fusing into their flesh and dribbling onto the ground in streams of silver.

  Sofia would never admit that she was afraid. She would admit to everything else; hungry, happy, horny, but never, ever scared. Even at the worst of times in the dark shadows of ancient barrows filled with undead, the fear never moved a muscle on her face. This time was different. This time she could feel her stomach churning, the trembling of her fingers and the solid, unyielding mass pressing into her heart and lungs like she was being suffocated by a stone. Something that had never happened in thousands of years had happened and she was now standing knee deep in it.

  Only Kaius’s presence, and the fact that he and he alone moved through the ruins without the slightest concern kept the screaming terror at bay, and she watched as he moved carefully around tumbled walls and ruined corpses. For a moment he lingered, gazing at the side of a wall blasted with such heat that the stonework was still partially molten, with a pair of the fort's inhabitants nothing more than shadows permanently frozen in the last moments of their existence.

  “Any survivors?”

  Irileth’s voice was the only one raised above that of a whisper, the men and women under her command reduced to muttering prayers and oaths to all the gods, banned or otherwise and more than one jumped at the sudden noise. Until that moment only the faint breeze, the crackling of fires and the sounds of armoured men and women moving over tumbled stonework were the loudest sounds in the destroyed fort.

  There were no survivors. Not a single one remained and even the handful of soldiers that attempted to check the broken, partially collapsed watchtower were forced back from the blazing fires within its ruined interior. No one who had been outside during the attack had survived, and in a lot of cases couldn’t even be found, and the fates of those within the buildings were sealed just as thoroughly.

  A morbid feeling of despair had fallen over them all, as thoroughly as a woolen cloak, smothering the mood and deepening their fear. Death was everywhere, mingling into the destruction and ruins but what was not present was the source of it all. Neither in the sky nor on the ground was there any trace of the winged creature that so many in the city had witnessed circling and attacking the tower only a short couple of hours before. It was certainly impossible to know what was worse, the fact that the fort and all its inhabitants had been annihilated, or the fact that the creature of such destructive force was somewhere else entirely.

  “Right then. Secure the walls, I want sentries out. Hroki! Tor! You’re on bucket detail! Salvage what you can and get the well working, we need to put these fires out.”

  Sofia stood in place, watching as the Dunmeri Marshal rallied and organised her troops with a practiced ease, but in amongst all the activity there was one person who remained still, standing and staring off towards the south. She had seen statues and clothier’s mannequins with more of an animated nature than Kaius at that moment, especially how his muscles were practically humming under his steel armour. Then, slowly she watched with growing horror as his hand came to rest on the hilt of his sheathed broadsword, before he drew it in a steady, practiced motion.

  There were many sounds that would catch the attention of those who lived in Tamriel’s north, and a live blade being drawn from a metal and leather sheath was certainly one of them, but Kaius drawing his sword was only the prelude. A shiver, a strange pulse of raw power rippled through the ground and the soles of their feet, as though Nirn itself had been struck by a god’s smithing hammer. Earthquakes were certainly uncommon in the region, but this was no simple movement of seismic activity, but something far, far worse.

  Grasses were whipped by the sudden rush of wind, flames roaring into infernoes or being snuffed out if they were too small by the strong, unnatural gale that felt more like an ocean wave than a gust of air. Those few soldiers standing on the ruined walls staggered from the impact, shuddering and trying to keep their footing as their chainmail aventails and cloaks whipped about them.

  The wind-that-was-not-wind wrapped around them, shuddering through the earth and soil as though the world itself was trembling from the power contained within it, carrying three words of terrible meaning and promise of what was to come.

  “MIR! MUL! NIR!”