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Hæð Eik

Active Member
I love love love love the idea of a soundtrack to listen to while reading! I think people sometimes take music and the feelings they can evoke for granted. Beautiful!
 

imaginepageant

Slytherin Alumni
I love love love love the idea of a soundtrack to listen to while reading! I think people sometimes take music and the feelings they can evoke for granted. Beautiful!
Totally. Every time I listen to You Know Nothing, I get choked up. That is one of the most beautiful yet heartbreaking pieces of music I've ever heard.

Now I have to read it all again while listening to this.
You might as well wait until the whole thing's finished because after I add the rest of the soundtrack, you'll just want to read it again. ;)
 

Wildroses

Well-Known Member
Please finish this. I hate not knowing how stories end, even if I'm sure Ralof's going to die. I was kind of surprised Annika managed to heal him actually, I thought he was going to croak it then and there. I missed all the clues it was Jorlief, although I wasn't completely surprised. It made sense. I did notice the motif of disappearing chaurus eggs I was sure would be important later, but didn't connect them with invisibility potions.

That scene where he tells Ulfric why he betrayed him is probably the most memorable scene in the entire story so far for me. His complete belief that what he was doing was right clashing with Ulfric's belief in the rightness of his course was nicely illustrated. You kind of summarised all 878 pages of that infamous thread in the Skyrim General Discussion in one scene.

Probably the reason I kept reading it was the characters. Characters are important to me and I feel you have created valid portrayals of all the NPCs which appear in-game. Speaking of which...will we get to learn Hadvar's ultimate fate in the final two parts to come?
 

imaginepageant

Slytherin Alumni
Please finish this. I hate not knowing how stories end

I will! Even if, for some reason, I decide to put the whole thing away, I would tell you all how it was supposed to end, because I would hate to leave those interested in the story left hanging.

That scene where he tells Ulfric why he betrayed him is probably the most memorable scene in the entire story so far for me. His complete belief that what he was doing was right clashing with Ulfric's belief in the rightness of his course was nicely illustrated.

That's so wonderful to hear, as that is exactly what I wanted to do. The ethics and motives of the war are so ambiguous and depend entirely on whose perspective you're seeing, and that's what made Skyrim such a memorable story for me. So I definitely wanted to highlight that in my own story.

You kind of summarised all 878 pages of that infamous thread in the Skyrim General Discussion in one scene.

And that made me literally laugh out loud. :D

Speaking of which...will we get to learn Hadvar's ultimate fate in the final two parts to come?

Hadvar will indeed make a (rather important) appearance in chapter eight.

Thank you so much for reading, and for your lovely comments!
 

AndersonGeh

New Member
three: chasing destiny


A spiteful wind snapped over Annika like a whip, its icy fingers seeking out her most vulnerable places: the nape of her neck, the backs of her knees, the ridges of ears she could barely feel. She drew the hood of Ralof's worn woolen cloak tighter around her face, more thankful than ever for his insistence that she take it; though it was heavy and wet with snow, it did, at least, give some respite against the gale that burned her skin as surely as the dragon's fire had.

She'd gotten halfway up the Seven Thousand Steps before the storm had begun. She could not be sure how much time had since passed; dark clouds and thick snowfall had plunged the world into perpetual dusk, and the painful sting in her fingers and toes stretched every minute into an hour. The higher she climbed, the fewer skeletal pines there were to cling to when the shrieking wind threatened to throw her off of the mountain, and the fear that she would never see Windhelm again grew with each treacherous step.

But when she rounded a slick bank of rock and saw the grim stone turret of High Hrothgar looming up against the leaden sky, its western face beaten with snow that cleaved to it in staggered waves, Annika fell to her knees in relief. She wept for a moment before pushing herself onward. Those last steps were, perhaps, the hardest, now that she was so close, yet still so far. It seemed another hour had crawled by before her numb hands hit the slick iron door of the monastery, and heaved it open without a moment's thought for knocking.

She stumbled inside, her ears ringing in the sudden quiet. Only the faint howling of the wind, seeping in through cracks in the stone, echoed off of the walls, and a distant crackle promised a roaring fire. In the absence of the storm, she felt for the first time the crust of ice that had built up on the cloak, and threw it down, only to shiver even more without it. The chattering of her teeth was so violent that she did not hear the footsteps hurrying through the chamber until a man, ancient and grey, stood before her, his arms outstretched to catch her as she collapsed into them.

Without a word, he helped Annika through the austere halls of the monastery and seated her at a long stone table, its middle hollowed to allow a brazier of fire that caressed her stinging face with soothing warmth. A second man draped a blanket around her shoulders, and a third put a steaming wooden bowl into her hands, a deep aroma of beef and potatoes wafting up from it to make her mouth water. She ate the stew in heaping spoonfuls as the Greybeards watched her, silent and still.

"Thank you so much," she rasped between swallows, the sound of own her voice a hammer to her head. "And thank the gods I made it here alive. I truly didn't think I would."

The monks remained quiet, and continued to stare.

"I've no idea how long I was out in the storm," she went on. "Is it nightfall yet?"

Again, they did not answer.

She looked down into her bowl, all at once very aware of how isolated this place was, how very far she had come. She appreciated the blanket and the stew more than she could say, but the silent stares unnerved her, and she had the peculiar sense that these Greybeards could not see or hear her at all.

But she was too weak to truly care. Fever was taking rapid hold of her, making her sweat even as she shivered. It was a challenge just to lift the spoon from the bowl to her mouth, just to keep her head aloft and her eyes open. She wanted to lay her weary body down and fall into sleep so deep that even the roar of a dragon would not wake her.

Then, finally, the silence was broken.

"Are you the one we have been waiting for?"

Startled, Annika whirled about to find a fourth man shuffling into the chamber, wearing the same roughspun robes and impossibly long beard as the others, but offering a small smile where they had only given a bow.

She set the rest of the stew down on the table and pulled the blanket tighter around herself, suddenly nervous and frightened. She thought of what Ulfric had said the night before, that the Greybeards had long sought someone to carry on their legacy once they were gone, and she was hesitant to answer the man's question, whatever its meaning.

"You summoned the Dragonborn," she replied slowly. "I am answering that call."

He took the seat across from her. The light of the fire brought every line and wrinkle on his face into sharp relief, and shone back at her from cloudy eyes. She had never seen a man this old before, older than she thought possible for a man to live. Older than she imagined anyone would want to live.

"We would taste of your Voice," he said. "Speak, if you truly have the gift."

Hot tears needled Annika's eyes at the command. She was struggling to whisper, and he wanted her to Shout? She could barely move her own rigid limbs, and he wanted her to take the reins of the thing that burrowed inside her? And if she could not, would the Greybeards throw her back out into the storm to die an imposter's death? It was pure fear of the wind and the snow that drove her to take as deep a breath as the weight on her chest would allow, and to shape her lips around the word that would prove her Voice.

"Fus."

The flames in the brazier shuddered and died.

The men before her rocked back as though hit by a hammer, and their eyes went wide, as astonished as Annika was herself at the might of her Shout. So the beast within would thrive even when her mortal body failed her.

Her last ounce of strength drained, she sank against the high stone back of her chair and closed her eyes for a moment, willing the room to stop spinning, but it did not.

"Dragonborn," the Greybeard breathed. "It is you."

She struggled to focus as he introduced himself as Arngeir, and his brethren as Wulfgar, Einarth, and Borri, but their faces swam before her until she could not tell one from the other. They were all echoes of the same drab robes and wiry beards, watching her with the same expectation in their eyes. When she spoke, it was to Arngeir, the only one she was certain of, for he was still the only one who had spoken to her.

"I have come to seek your guidance in the Way of the Voice."

"Of course, you will have it. We will do our best to teach you how to use your gift in fulfillment of your destiny."

"And what is my destiny?" she asked. "To defeat Alduin?"

Arngeir stilled, and all joy left his face. From the hazy corner of her eye, Annika saw the others share a suspicious look.

"How do you know that name?"

She hesitated, reluctant, somehow, to mention Ulfric.

"From the Song of the Dragonborn," she answered simply. "'Alduin, Bane of Kings, ancient shadow unbound, with a hunger to swallow the world.' Am I meant to stop him?"

Arngeir thought for a long moment before replying, and when he did, his words sounded carefully measured. "That is not for us to know," he said. "We can show you the way, but not the destination. Concentrate on honing your Voice, and you will soon find your path."

Even in the fog of her mounting fever, Annika knew Arngeir was holding something back. Surely, the Greybeards knew the Song of the Dragonborn better than anyone, and so they had to know of the prophecy it held. Perhaps they did not believe as Ulfric did, that it was a prophecy. Or, perhaps, they had a different interpretation of it.

But, as Ulfric had promised, it seemed they would guide her in their own way, and so she clung to that.

"How long will it take, honing my Voice?"

"True understanding of a Thu'um, or Shout, can only be achieved when your inner spirit is in harmony with your outward action," Arngeir replied. "This can take decades of training and meditation—for most of us. But you, Dragonborn, have been given the gift of the Voice from Akatosh himself. It is in your very blood. You will learn to harness it without effort." His eyes narrowed and darkened, suddenly, burning into Annika with an intensity that rattled her. "But do not let your easy mastery of the Voice tempt you into the arrogance of power," he warned. "That has been the downfall of many Dragonborn before you."

Her pride bristled at the insinuation, that she was weak enough to be seduced by power she had never desired and a gift she had never asked for. She wanted to tell him that she did not come to High Hrothgar seeking power, only knowledge... but an uneasy wave of doubt held her tongue. She remembered leaving Korvanjund, captivated by the idea of controlling the flow of time, curious about other words on other walls that might do even more incredible things. She remembered her thoughts of a Shout that could end a life, and felt sick with guilt.

She did not know what else to say, and so she only nodded.

"We will begin your training tomorrow," Arngeir announced, rising from the table. "For now, you need your rest."

She would not argue that, nor did she refuse his arm when he offered it to her. Her legs seemed boneless, and her head full of cotton that weighed more than rocks, and she doubted she would have been able to reach the bed that was to be hers without help.

Once again, each of the Greybeards did their part to accommodate her; one carried in an oil lamp to light the small alcove, another layered thick furs upon the bed, and another put a goblet of water into her hands. She drank every last drop before crawling beneath the furs and laying her head down.

With her body at rest and her mind swiftly following suit, it was nigh impossible to keep her eyes open. The last thing Annika saw before slipping into sleep was the Greybeard who had spoken to her, whose smile had seemed more ominous than obliging, and as cold as the storm that had almost claimed her.


* * * * *​


Three days passed, and thrice as many books. Histories of the Way of the Voice, chronicles of past Dragonborn, treatises of the legendary Dragon War of the Merethic Era. Arngeir said that to harness the Voice, Annika must first understand whence its power comes. And so by the light of day she read each of the tomes he gave to her, as dull and dusty as those Wuunferth had bid her to study.

But come nightfall, the books were put away, and Annika began her true training under the guidance of the Greybeards. Her throat grew raw and sore as she learned to better aim and project the Shout she knew—or thought she knew.

On her second evening at High Hrothgar, once she could knock a small but heavy pewter goblet off a plinth from across the courtyard, Arngeir deemed her ready to learn the second word of the Shout. It was Einarth who taught it to her. With a wave of his hand, the word was carved into the wet stone at her feet: Ro. It vanished moments later as a hot rush of wind passed from the Greybeard into Annika. The following night, Borri taught her a word of a new Shout in the same manner, and this time the wind flowed from his body and through hers. This magic had happened once before, when she killed the dragon in Whiterun, and the beast within her woke to take its soul. But unlike the dragon, Einarth and Borri had not turned to ash afterward. Unlike the dragon, they had given her their power willingly.

"Why can't you teach me all the Shouts you know this way?" Annika asked Arngeir that night.

"We could teach you the words... but not the skill to wield them, nor the discipline to control them," he said. "It would be as putting a greatsword into the hands of a girl who has known naught but daggers. Even if her arms were strong enough to make a clumsy swing, without understanding of both her weapon and herself, understanding that can only be attained through devoted practice, she could not hope to strike her enemy."

Annika appreciated his meaning, but resented it. She did not mean to make a life of study in the Way of the Voice. She merely wished to defeat Alduin, if it was her destiny to do so. These Greybeards could so easily impart their wisdom to her, so easily give her the means with which to strike these dragons from the sky, and yet they would not. Instead, they gave her riddles and mysteries, and a fool's quest to retrieve what they called the Horn of Jurgen Windcaller from a barrow in Hjaalmarch. How that would help her understand her weapon and herself, she did not know. She wouldn't have the chance to understand anything if she was incinerated by flaming breath or crushed between monstrous fangs first.

She had trouble finding sleep that evening, and when she did, it was fitful and restless. It seemed she tossed and turned for hours upon hours through a night that would not end. Time played tricks on her in the many moments she was caught between sleeping and waking, and feverish dreams blurred the lines between what was real and what was not.

She saw Ulfric, haunting the halls he had walked long ago. Sometimes he was no more than a boy, small and pale, urging her to leave High Hrothgar before it was too late. Other times, he was the sorrowful man she had left behind, pleading with her to come back, but when she called out to him, he did not hear her. It was her own voice that woke her, then, and she carried her oil lamp through the halls of the monastery, looking for the man she had been so sure was there, but found only drafty corners and empty shadows. Some time after she returned to bed, she felt Ulfric beside her, wrapping her up in his arms and holding her fast against the beat of his heart. This, she knew, was a dream, for she had dreamed it before.

Then came the dreams that were not dreams, but memories, flitting up from the deepest wells of her mind. Memories of soaring through clouds and past stars, of scorching the world below with a sigh, of falling apart, piece by piece, until the final darkness fell. Memories that could not be hers, and yet she saw and heard and felt them as surely as she did her mother's face, her sister's voice, the weight of her first bow in her young and awkward hands.

She woke from these visions gasping and shivering and overwhelmed with fear of something she could not name. She thought of her predecessors, the other Dragonborn she had read of, and wondered if they, too, had one day discovered memories they had not known before. But most of these Dragonborn had never come face to face with a living dragon. They had not killed one, or stolen one's soul. They had never looked into glowing red eyes set in jagged black scales and saw their own doom staring back at them.

Annika lay awake and afraid for the rest of the night.

And every now and then, she thought she heard the deep and steady breathing of a dragon, looming somewhere above her. She felt it watching her. Waiting for her to close her eyes, to succumb once more to sleep.


* * * * *​
After the harrowing storm on the Seven Thousand Steps and the damp chill that saturated all of Hjaalmarch, the dry, sunny plains of Whiterun may have been the sweetest sight Annika had ever seen.​
She was sorely tempted to spend the rest of the day in the city, wandering the market and taking her evening meal at the Bannered Mare, perhaps seeing the temple's priestess about treating the fever that had lingered for nearly a week now, despite her attempts to heal herself. But the roll of parchment tucked beneath her cuirass seemed to burn hotter than her fever, and so she rode her horse on past Whiterun, past the stables and the farms and the meadery, until she crossed the bridge that would bring her back to Riverwood.​
The village was just as she left it: calm and quiet, the sort of place she might have made a home and raised a family in, had her life taken a different turn. She was relieved to find it untouched by dragon's fire, though she knew the threat still loomed over every thatched roof that lined the cobbled roads. She hitched her mare outside the small inn at the heart of the town, and took a deep breath before going inside.​
It was as empty as one would expect it to be this early in the evening, housing only a single patron, the man Ralof had pointed out to her as the village drunk on her last visit to Riverwood. Even as she passed him, he took such a deep gulp of mead that two thin rivulets ran down his chin to stain his already spotted tunic.​
"Orgnar? Orgnar! Are you listening?"​
A woman, blonde and round-cheeked and a head shorter than Annika, stood with her hands on the hips of her apron at the far end of the inn, staring daggers at the man behind the counter.​
He didn't bother to look up from the flagon he was wiping out. "Hard not to."​
"The ale is going bad," the woman said. "We need to get a new batch." She waited, but got no reply. "Did you hear me?"​
"Yep," Orgnar grunted. "Ale's going bad."​
The woman rolled her eyes and huffed a sigh. "Just make sure we get a fresh batch in soon, would you?"​
She stormed away, but her theatrics seemed wasted on the man. He had not shifted his attention away from the task of wiping down flagons in the slightest, and Annika wondered if he had even noticed—or cared—that the woman had left. When she approached the counter, he sniffed and nodded at her.​
"Welcome to the Sleeping Giant Inn," he greeted in a bored monotone. "We've got rooms and mead. Food, too. I cook. Ain't much else to tell."​
"I need a night's lodging, please," Annika said, drawing open her coin purse. "Is the attic room available?"​
"Attic room?" He laughed. "Look up. You see an attic?"​
She did as he told her, and sure enough, the wooden rafters met at a steep point in the center of the roof. Flustered and confused, she pulled out the roll of parchment she had found deep within the barrow of Ustengrav, where the Horn of Jurgen Windcaller should have been. She read the missive once more to be sure of its instructions.​
Dragonborn,
I need to speak to you, urgently. Rent the attic room
at the Sleeping Giant Inn in Riverwood, and I'll meet you.
— A friend

Annika looked back up at Orgnar. "Are... are you sure there's no attic room here?"​
It was the blonde woman, suddenly at Annika's elbow, who answered. "Let me show you our other accommodations," she said. "I'm sure we'll find something that meets your needs."​
At a loss, Annika followed the innkeeper into a suite outfitted with a large bed, wardrobe, and private dining table. Books were stacked on the nightstand, next to a mug and a crumpled handkerchief. The bed linens were slightly mussed. Why was the innkeeper showing her a room that was obviously already occupied?​
"I'm sorry, but is this the only inn in Riverwood?" Annika asked, suddenly uneasy. "You see, I was told specifically to ask for the attic room..."​
The woman closed the door and turned to Annika with a sly smile. "I know you were," she said. "There is no attic room, but I believe I have something else you're looking for."​
She crossed to the wardrobe and unlocked it with a large brass key. It appeared empty, even of shelves, but when the woman knelt down to reach in, Annika saw the ancient and gnarled tusk laying on the wardrobe's bottom.​
"The Horn of Jurgen Windcaller," the woman declared, offering it to Annika. "I figured the Greybeards would send you after it. They're nothing if not predictable."​
Annika looked from her to the Horn and back again, not quite believing her eyes. "You're the one who left that letter in Ustengrav?"​
"Not what you were expecting, am I?"​
"Not quite," she admitted, carefully taking the Horn into her own hands. It was heavy and cold, and ringed with bony spikes that time had made dull. "I didn't think innkeepers raided barrows in their free time."​
The woman chuckled. "I'm not just some little-village innkeeper, I assure you."​
She plucked a candlestick from the nightstand and shone it into the wardrobe. With a press of her palm, the back panel swung open to reveal a hidden staircase, leading down into shadows and an ever-thickening mystery.​
Annika shook her head in awe. "Who are you?"​
"My name is Delphine," she replied. "I'm part of an order that's been looking for someone like you for a long time—if you truly are Dragonborn, that is. Before I tell you anything more, I need to be sure I can trust you."​
She started down the stairs, waving for Annika to follow.​
"And how do I know I can trust you?"​
Delphine glanced back over her shoulder. "If you don't, you were a fool to walk in here in the first place."​
There was some truth to that, Annika knew. But walking into an inn was a much different story than descending a hidden staircase to a secret basement with someone masquerading as an innkeeper. Delphine may have been small of stature and along in years, but she'd left a long trail of dead draugr behind her in Ustengrav—she obviously wasn't as helpless as she looked. She might have been a master necromancer hoping to add Annika to her cache of corpses, or an assassin of the Dark Brotherhood with a contract to kill the Dragonborn. And yet, her eyes were warm, and her smile kind, and some instinct deep inside Annika told her that she could trust the woman.​
Nevertheless, she took her bow in hand as she made her descent.​
The basement was lined with racks of weapons ranging from sleek swords to hulking warhammers, an oddly reassuring sight; neither a necromancer nor an assassin would have need of such arms. Delphine lit the candleabrum hanging from the low ceiling. Beneath it, a wooden table held a map of Skyrim marked with bright red crosses, and a black book bearing the sigil of the Empire.​
"So, the Greybeards think you're Dragonborn," Delphine said, setting her candlestick down beside the map. "I hope they're right."​
"Why?" Annika asked. "Why are you looking for a Dragonborn?"​
"Because I remember what most don't—that the Dragonborn is the ultimate dragonslayer. The only one who can truly kill a dragon, by devouring its soul." She leaned over the table, her eyes wide and alight with the flames that glowed above her. "Can you do it? Can you steal a dragon's soul?"​
"That's how I discovered I was Dragonborn. A dragon attacked Whiterun a fortnight ago, and I helped bring it down. But it was my arrow that killed it, not my taking its soul," she confessed. "Anyone could have done it."​
Delphine sighed and shook her head. "These are the first dragons Skyrim has seen since the Merethic Era. Haven't you wondered where they've been all these millennia?"​
Annika raised an eyebrow. "You mean to tell me that you know?"​
"They were dead," Delphine proclaimed. "Not in exile. Not in hibernation. They were dead and buried, but they had been killed with arrows and swords, with fire and ice—deaths which aren't forever, not for dragons. Their graves now lay empty. They aren't just coming back; they're coming back to life."​
A long and still silence passed between them as Annika let this revelation take root in her mind. Once upon a time, she might have thought the woman's words absurd. But this was no longer the world she had grown up in. This was a world where myths and legends had become reality, where ancient beasts soared the skies, where she was a hero of prophecy who could steal souls and speak with the voices of demons. After all of that, nothing seemed impossible.​
"All right," she finally said. "What do we do about it?"​
"First we need to figure out how it's happening, and who's behind it."​
"Who's behind it?" Annika echoed. "You think there's someone out there, resurrecting these dragons?"​
"How else would they be coming back to life?"​
She thought of what Ulfric had told the people of Windhelm, that Talos himself had sent the dragon into Mundus to save the rebellion from annihilation, and doubted that Delphine would put any more faith into the theory than she had herself. But she did believe what Ulfric had told her and her alone, on that cold and quiet morning in the temple, about the prophecy and the parts they played in it. She believed it because he believed it.​
"Couldn't it be something, instead of someone?" she suggested. "A certain... chain of events could have triggered it, for instance."​
Delphine's eyes narrowed. "What do you know that you're not telling me?"​
Annika looked down at the table, at the black book embossed with a silver dragon that seemed to writhe in the flicker of the candles above. "Have you ever heard the Song of the Dragonborn?"​
"I have. What of it?"​
"It speaks of an ancient dragon that would be unleashed when brothers waged war."​
Delphine's features softened with understanding. "The Greybeards told you this?"​
"No, I knew of the song before I went to High Hrothgar. The Greybeards wouldn't say much on the matter when I asked them about it."​
"And neither will I. The Song of the Dragonborn is not the only prophecy that connects a war with the return of the dragons." She slid the book across the table to Annika. "There's another in there, if you care to read it. And another is said to have been carved on some lost wall by the ancient Akaviri. But all these prophecies claim is that the two events would coincide—not that one would cause the other."​
Annika couldn't help but smile. Ulfric would be pleased to hear this idea, that he was not to blame for any of it.​
"But then... what is bringing the dragons back?"​
"That's what I'm hoping to find out."​
"How?"​
Delphine nodded down at the map. "This shows every dragon burial site across Skyrim," she said. "I've canvassed about half of them since the attack on Helgen, and found four empty—two in the Rift and two in Eastmarch. Just this morning I received word that two more in Eastmarch have become nothing more than gaping holes in the earth. There's an obvious pattern, and I believe I know which one is next. If we get there in time, we can see how the dragon is resurrected."​
A shudder ran through Annika. Witnessing a dragon crumble into ash had been disturbing enough; she had little desire to see life breathed back into one.​
"And if we don't?"​
"Then we'll see a dragon," Delphine answered with a shrug. "And you'll have a chance to prove that you're Dragonborn. Once you do, I'll tell you everything I know."​
"Can't I just Shout for you?"​
She laughed, but it was cold. "Ulfric Stormcloak can Shout, but he's no Dragonborn."​
Hearing his name spoken with such derision was a slap in the face. Annika's spine stiffened, and she lifted her chin to stare down at the other woman with an unmistakable look of warning.​
"Do not speak ill of my Jarl to me."​
"Your Jarl? You're from Windhelm?"​
"Kynesgrove."​
The smirk melted from Delphine's face, and her eyes went wide and blinking. "Kynesgrove? But that's—" She pulled the map towards her and jabbed a finger at one of the red marks. "That's where the next resurrection should be."​
It seemed as though all the warmth had left the room.​
Annika was not sure what troubled her more: the thought of a dragon attacking the village she once called home, or the thought of stepping foot in that village for the first time since it had taken everything from her. She had always known that she would see it again, someday, but the thought of seeing it consumed by a dragon's flaming breath was almost too much to bear.​
But that did not have to happen. She could stop it. She had killed one dragon; there was no reason why she couldn't do it again. She could claim this one's soul for her own, and with it, she could unlock the unknown power of Tiid, or Feim, which she had found buried in Ustengrav, crackling on a wall the same as the others. It was, after all, what the Greybeards would have her do—earn her right to wield the Voice.​
And what other choice did she have? If she was meant to destroy Alduin, she would have to find him first. And if the Greybeards would not help her in this, she needed someone who would—someone like this innkeeper who was not an innkeeper. She did not know who this woman was, or how she fit into the puzzle that this was all becoming, but her motives seemed to align with her own. That would have to be enough, for now.​
Annika gave her a firm nod.​
"To Kynesgrove, then," she said. "Let's go slay us a dragon."​
* * * * *​

The moons were high and bright by the time they reached the road into Kynesgrove. Their horses bucked and whinnied at the threshhold of the village, perhaps sensing a dragon nearby... or maybe it was only Annika's apprehension, spilling over onto the mares. Some deep and visceral part of her knew that this was wrong, that she should not be there, that she should turn back before it was too late. But it was already too late.

Everywhere she looked, she saw a memory. There was the tree she'd climbed and fallen from during her seventh summer, suffering a sprained ankle that kept her in bed for weeks. There was the house of the boy who had wanted to court her when she was sixteen, but whom she had turned down, for a certain Jarl had given her a high set of standards with which she would judge all the men in her life, and the boy had fallen miserably short. And there were the mines that had killed her father, so long ago she could not recall his face, though she did remember how quiet and sullen her mother had grown every time they passed the smelter.

And yet, even in all its familiarity, there was something off about Kynesgrove, something she could not quite put her finger on. There were some noticeable differences, like the veneer of shabbiness and neglect that covered everything. The inn looked as though it might fall apart in a strong wind, and the grove that the village had been built up around and named for was a shadow of its former self, half of its trees reduced to rotting stumps. But they were still the same inn and the same grove she had seen every day of her youth. Why, then, did they seem so foreign?

It took her a minute to realize that it wasn't Kynesgrove that had changed. It was her.

"Do you know where the burial mound is?" Delphine asked.

Annika pointed to the hill that flanked the village's east side. "Up there."

They left their horses tethered at the inn, and with bated breath headed up the path that would take them to the top of the hill, and whatever waited for them there. But they found the grave intact. There were no dragons soaring overhead, nor any other sign that a resurrection was about to take place.

Annika knelt at the edge of the massive mound and skimmed a hand over the dirt. She had grown up hearing the same lectures that all Kynesgrove children did, to stay away from the grave, lest her soul become corrupted by the ancient evil buried there. Of course, such threats only made her more wont to creep up that hill, hoping to spy the demon she was supposed to be afraid of, to prove that she wasn't afraid of anything. She had to laugh, now, at the irony of it all.

"Looks like we're early," Delphine said, circling the mound.

"So, what do we do now?"

"We wait."

Annika sighed, casting wistful eyes north to the distant glow of Windhelm. "For how long?"

"If the pattern holds, it should happen tonight," Delphine replied. "Let's ask around at the inn in the meantime; if anything strange has been happening up here, surely the innkeeper will have heard tell of it."

Annika followed her back down the hill, but at the bottom of it, turned right instead of left.

"I'll catch up with you," she said. "There's... another grave I need to visit."

Delphine asked no questions, only nodded. Annika waited until she disappeared into the inn, and then, with a deep and shaking breath, set off down the road that would take her home.

It was one she had walked almost every day for years, one that had seemed so long after a tiresome day of hunting or trading, when she wanted nothing more than the warmth of her hearth and the comfort of her bed. Now that she dreaded turning that last bend, it came much sooner than she remembered, and all of a sudden, there it was. The house she had been born in. The house they had died in.

She'd both hoped and feared that it had been torn down, but whether out of respect for the dead or a simple lack of gold to waste on such things, the husk of the house still stood. What was left of its walls were black and crumbling, the stones covered in soot and the surviving wooden beams charred but still intact. There was no roof to speak of; the thatch had been the first to burn.

Annika took a tremulous step towards the house. The air seemed colder around it, and the myriad sounds of the woods fell quiet against the memory of crackling flame, her sister's weeping, her own cries for help. The small patch of garden on the house's western side had grown choked with weeds and pebbles, the only stones that marked the graves she had dug herself.

She went to her knees and laid her hands on the soil. Their remains lay deep below, but what had become of their souls? Not for the first time, she wondered if they had risen to Sovngarde, if such a realm would take the souls of a humble mother and an innocent child, if neither had ever wielded sword nor shield, if neither had ever had the chance to prove their valor. Since that terrible day, Annika had comforted herself with the hope of meeting them again in Sovngarde. Now, she could not even cling to that. Now, it was her soul she could not be sure of.

A rumble spread through the village. Annika felt it before she heard it, a slight ripple in the wind, a soft shudder of the earth. And then the roar echoed across the sky.

She ran for the inn.

Delphine burst through its doors as Annika rounded the bend.

"Hurry!" she cried. "It's happening!"

They hastened up the hill, breathless by the time they reached the top, and crouched close behind a boulder big enough to hide them from whoever had come to work dark magic on the grave. But it was as they had left it. They were alone on the hill.

Annika looked to the skies. Her eyes swung back and forth across the stars, but that was all she saw... until she noticed a patch of darkness where the stars were blotted out, but for two, glowing brighter than the rest. In half a heartbeat, she knew they were not stars at all.

A gust of wind lifted loose tendrils of hair from around her face as the dragon's wings beat the air. It was no more than a shadow shifting across the sky, until it swooped in close enough for Annika to see the moonlight glinting off obsidian scales, the curls of smoke seeping from its nostrils.

Delphine let out a faint gasp when she finally caught sight of the beast.

"We missed it!"

"No, we didn't."

This dragon was not newly resurrected. The sinewy wings, the curved talons, the thorned hide that seemed carved from stone, and those eyes, those burning red eyes... Annika had seen them all before, and not only in her nightmares.

It circled the hill once more before coming to a hover before the burial mound.

And then it spoke.

"Sahloknir! Ziil gro dovah ulse! Slen tiid vo!"

The last of its words thundered like others Annika had heard, from her own mouth as surely as from the mouths of dragons. An echoing crack followed, and the hard earth of the burial mound fissured and crumbled like spring soil under the bloom of planted seeds. But instead of flowers, a skeleton burst from the ground, stretching and swelling and unfolding itself from centuries of sleep. Annika heard a heartbeat, though the thing lacked a heart; she heard it take a rasping breath, though it lacked lungs to do so. The bones themselves were alive, and crawled like an infant to that which had given it life.

"Alduin, thuri!"

"Sahloknir," Alduin returned, "kaali mir."

A fiery light enveloped the skeleton, illuminating the ashes that had suddenly appeared around it, borne from the air itself. The skeleton seemed to drink them in, and they turned to flakes of skin and scale as they covered the bones. In mere moments, the patchwork of flesh was complete, and it was no longer a skeleton, but a dragon.

"Ful, losei Dovahkiin?"

Annika's breath caught in her throat at the sound of a word she knew, a word she had heard before, thundering down from the Throat of the World to knock dust from the rafters in the Palace of the Kings.

Dovahkiin.

Dragonborn.

She looked up slowly, and her eyes locked with Alduin's.

"Zu'u koraav nid nol dov do hi." It gave a cold laugh. "You do not even know our tongue, do you? Such arrogance, to dare take for yourself the name of dovah."

Annika rose from her crouch and stepped out from behind the rock; she should have known, after Helgen, that there was no use in hiding from this beast, who could smell her, or hear her, or perhaps sense the truth of her soul in some other way. She shook from head to toe, not in fear, but in anger. This monster had stalked her through the blazing ruins of a village it destroyed for the chance of destroying her with it, and now it was here, in Kynesgrove, a stone's throw from the very spot she had been born, raising another of its like to raze another village, to kill more innocent people in the name of striking her down. And it was calling her arrogant?

"I take nothing for myself," Annika proclaimed. "It is a name others have given me, with the hope and trust that I will deliver them from your evil." She pulled an arrow from her quiver. "And I will."

She notched and drew, and Delphine appeared at her side, her sword ready and her lips pulled into an angry snarl. But Alduin only laughed again, if it could be called that; it was a mirthless sound, dark and cruel. The dragon's eyes gleamed with what Annika thought was amusement.

"Sahloknir," it purred, "krii daar joorre."

Both dragons took to the sky, their wings whipping the wind into a frenzy. Alduin soared south, quickly out of reach of Annika's arrows, and disappeared into the night. The other, Sahloknir, circled the burial mound and dove to bathe its foes in fire. Annika and Delphine ducked behind the boulder once more, just escaping the shower of flames.

"If you can bring it down with arrows," Delphine said, "I might have a chance of finishing it with my sword."

Annika gave the woman's blade a doubtful glance. "Half a hundred swords couldn't finish the dragon in Whiterun."

"Half a hundred swords in the hands of lazy city guards doesn't equal one in mine."

The dragon swooped around the rock, so low to the ground that the tip of its wing nearly grazed Annika's cheek. She loosed an arrow and saw it sink into the soft underside of the joint where wing met shoulder. It gave a sharp roar of pain, but still it flew. A second arrow found the back of a leg, and a third missed and disappeared into a thicket of pines... pines whose full lower branches created a wide canopy over the shadowed ground below.

Annika grabbed Delphine's arm to get her attention, and pointed to the trees. "Come on!"

They ran across the dirt and the snow, but Sahloknir was quicker, and his fiery breath caught their backs before they made it under the cover of the pines. Annika's blue Stormcloak wrap took to flame as easily as the last one had; Delphine beat it out with gloved hands, but her own arms were covered in angry red blisters. Annika took a moment to heal both of their burns before they drove further into the cover of the wood.

Sahloknir circled the hill three times. The trees blocked Annika's view as surely as they did the dragon's, and the darkness of night cloaked what little of the clearing she could see, but she heard its wings beating, and the grunts and snorts it gave as it grew more and more frustrated with its hidden prey.

But the dragon was her prey, now.

She had spent hours upon hours laying in wait for foxes and birds and deer, so still and silent that she might as well have been invisible. She knew that the best way to draw prey towards you was to trick it into thinking you weren't there at all. Of course, the dragon knew she was there, somewhere, but if it couldn't see her, if it couldn't reach her... it couldn't kill her.

Just as Annika had anticipated, Sahloknir landed in the clearing. It crawled forward on awkward limbs not meant for walking, and poked its snout towards the trees, sniffing the air.

Delphine raised her sword to strike, but Annika threw an arm out to stop her. The distance between them and the dragon was still too great, and its fire would reach them before Delphine reached it; nor could Annika chance loosing an arrow when all it might do was tell the beast where she was. Unlike Whiterun, there was no garrison of archers and warriors here to distract the dragon, and no high vantage point from which she could shoot it. And despite Delphine's insistance that her sword was worth more than half a hundred of Whiterun's, it wouldn't be worth anything unless she had the chance to run it through the dragon's head or heart for a swift kill.

Annika would have to give her that chance. And all at once, she knew just how.

She imagined the dragon in the courtyard at High Hrothgar, standing between the wrought iron doors of the massive gate she had missed countless times before gaining control over the direction and strength of her Thu'um. If she missed her mark now, she knew the mistake might be fatal. But with a dragon inching closer and closer, standing still could mean her death, too.

And she wasn't ready to die just yet.

Annika took a deep breath.

"Wuld!"

The world was a blur as she burst forward, past Delphine and the trees and the dragon's enormous snout, too fast for it to follow. In the split second after she came to a sudden standstill, she saw Sahloknir's eyes, wide with confusion and flaring with anger. It swiveled its head towards her, but its size made it slow, and it never got the chance to unleash its fury.

Annika leapt onto the beast, digging a foot into its spiked hide and pushing herself up to straddle its neck. Sahloknir gave a furious roar and bucked, but she clenched her thighs tightly around its straining muscles, and wrapped both hands around one of its long horns. It reared again, trying to throw off the pest that clung to it. In a flash, Delphine darted out of the trees, ran beneath its jaw, and drove her sword into the soft white underside of its chin, burying it to the hilt. The tip punched through the top of the dragon's skull with a hot spray of blood that showered Annika's face.

Another roar sputtered and died in Sahloknir's throat. It took two stumbling steps backward before collapsing into the snow.

And then came the light, the glow from within the beast itself, the fire that did not burn Annika, but filled her with warmth and life and power. She soaked it in, feeling it stretch through each of her limbs, to the tip of every finger and every toe, down her spine and between her legs, feeding the horror that was her soul.

She jumped down from the dragon's neck to watch its flesh dissolve back into the void. In moments, it was a skeleton once more.

The night was still and quiet, as though nothing at all had happened. As though two mortals had not just defeated a mythical creature that had been asleep in death for millenia before the prophesied eater of worlds brought it back to life. Annika blinked and laughed and shook her head, not quite believing any of it herself, even with the proof of the beast's bones right there before her, even with the thing's blood still wet on her cheeks.

Delphine, however, didn't seem to see anything but Annika. Moonlight glimmered in her wide eyes, her mouth an even bigger circle.

"By the gods," she breathed. "You are Dragonborn."

She went to her knees, and laid her bloodied sword at Annika's feet.

Annika shifted uncomfortably, wiping her face with her gloves. "Get up, Delphine. I'm Dragonborn, not High Queen."

"They're one and the same to the Blades. I am sworn to serve and protect you. And I will tell you all you want to know."

Annika sighed, thinking of all the questions she could ask, now that they would be answered, and knew that she did not wish to ask them there on that cold and windy summit, watched by the dark and eerie sockets of a dead dragon's skull. Worse yet was the scent of scorched grass and burnt earth that lingered in the air, reminding her of the shell of the house at the bottom of the hill, and the fire that had blazed through it fourteen years before. All at once, she could not stand to be there.

"We'll start with who, or what, the Blades are," she said to Delphine. "But first, let's go back down to the inn. I'm suddenly very thirsty."

And so they began their descent. Annika stopped to look back at the skeleton for just a moment, and wondered what would become of it—if it would be left to rot as her home had been, if it would someday be the superstition that the parents of Kynesgrove warned their children away from. She wondered, too, if those parents would tell of the hero that had defeated it, the Dragonborn that had saved their village from ruin.

She wondered if they would know that she had once lived in that very village. And if any of them would care why she had left.


* * * * *​

The keep was dim and quiet. At such a late hour, Annika did not truly expect Ulfric to still be sitting his throne, but she was disappointed to find it empty nonetheless. She stood alone in the Great Hall, caught between the barracks and the kitchens, too tired to eat, but too hungry to sleep, and weak from the fever that would not break.

Her choice was made when she heard voices drifting in from the war room.

Ulfric looked up from his maps and scrolls at the sound of Annika's footsteps. Their eyes met, and the corners of his mouth twitched up for just a moment. All thoughts of sleep and food faded from her mind.

"Dragonborn."

A dozen other faces turned towards her. Galmar frowned at the disruption, and Jorleif raised a suspicious eyebrow, but Ralof's smile was broad and warm.

"My Jarl," Annika replied with a small bow. "I don't mean to interrupt; I only wanted to let you know I've returned."

"Please," Ulfric said, waving her in. He looked to his men. "We'll continue on the morrow."

They took their leave without another word, though Annika could not miss the surly glare Galmar gave her on his way out. Once she and Ulfric were alone, the silence in the chamber was palpable. She did not know what to say or where to start, and was thankful when he spared her the trouble of deciding.

He nodded to the gnarled old horn hanging from her belt. "The Horn of Jurgen Windcaller?"

"You know it?"

"The Greybeards had me fetch it, too." He gestured to a small round table nestled in the corner of the room, and she joined him there. "I take this to mean your training is going well?"

Annika accepted the mug of mead he poured her from a pewter carafe, and thanked him for it. The first swallow made her empty stomach burn, but it gave her time to consider her answer. She did not think it wise to seem mistrustful of the Greybeards, or unappreciative of their help, so she merely said, "Yes, my lord."

But Ulfric saw right through her. "You hesitated," he pointed out with a smirk. "Tell it true, Dragonborn."

Annika flushed, contrite to be caught in her lie but relieved that she could now be honest with him. "I believe it is as you said," she told him. "The Greybeards want someone to carry on their order. They make me read all manner of history books, and send me to retrieve this useless horn, but they will say nothing of the prophecy, or of Alduin. They do not seem to care that dragons are attacking Skyrim, or that I may be the only one who can truly stop them." She sighed and shook her head. "They're only grooming me to be their successor in the Way of the Voice, aren't they?"

Ulfric took a long swallow of his own mead before replying. "Their intentions matter far less than their actions. Yes, they may see you as nothing more as their successor, but they will teach you what you need to know all the same."

"By the time they do, it may be too late."

He laughed. "It has been a week. I was at High Hrothgar three years before they sent me to Ustengrav. Have patience, and faith. Now, why do you bring the horn to me, instead of the Greybeards?"

Annika bit her lip. "I... got a little sidetracked."

She told him all: the note she'd found in Ustengrav, the mysterious innkeeper in Riverwood who turned out to be one of the last surviving Blades, the burial mound in Kynesgrove, Alduin's resurrection of a long-dead dragon.

"After we slew the dragon, and I took its soul, Delphine finally accepted that I was Dragonborn, and... she told me of her suspicions that the Thalmor are involved with the return of the dragons."

"The Thalmor?" Ulfric frowned. "Why does she think that?"

"You were about to be executed. The war was at an end. Then a dragon descends, you escape, and the war goes on. And who does the war benefit but the Aldmeri Dominion?" Annika shook her head and took another drink. "These are Delphine's words, of course."

"She is right in some things. The war will weaken both the Empire and Skyrim," he admitted, "but not enough to give the elves any real advantage. And though the appearance of a dragon at that very moment could not have been a coincedence, it had nothing to do with the Thalmor. Alduin was there because you were there. I am sure of it."

"I told Delphine as much, and she did agree that it was likely. But she brought up a good question: Alduin may be raising these dragons, but who raised Alduin?"

He heaved a sigh. "I have been asking myself that same question. But how in Oblivion could the Thalmor have done it?"

Annika shifted in her seat. "Delphine thinks there may be a way to find out."

"Oh?"

"There's to be a party at the Thalmor Embassy, in three weeks' time," she explained. "Delphine wants to use the opportunity to infiltrate the Embassy and look for evidence that connects the Thalmor to Alduin's return."

Ulfric's eyes narrowed. "And she means to send you."

"Yes, my lord," she replied, and heard a growl rumble behind his tight lips. "She would do it herself, but they'd know her before she could get a foot in the door."

"Then she should hire a sellsword to do her dirty work."

"She did consider it, but a sellsword's tongue is easily loosened by gold. I'm the only one she can trust." Annika gave him a tentative smile. "It seems the two of you have that in common."

He softened a little, but still looked distraught. "Those elves won't hesitate to kill you should they find you sneaking around their Embassy," he warned her. "And that's if you're lucky. Their First Emissary, Elenwen... she might think death too lenient a punishment."

"They won't find me," Annika replied, but her voice was small and uncertain. His words had sent a chill through her. "I know how to keep to the shadows, and how to make my footsteps silent. And remember, the Embassy will be playing host to Skyrim's rich and prominent; the guards will be distracted, and there will be no lack of excuses if I do get caught somewhere I shouldn't be."

Ulfric didn't seem convinced, but in truth, neither was Annika. She knew she could get in and out of the Embassy without coming to harm, but that didn't mean she didn't dread the possibility of ending up in shackles once more. She would be no help to Ulfric or his cause if she was thrown into the Thalmor's dungeons.

But she couldn't hope to defeat Alduin if she didn't know the full scope of the threat she faced. If the Thalmor were indeed pulling the dragon's strings, then it was the Thalmor she would have to slay, not Alduin. Part of her hoped to find nothing of significance hidden within the Embassy; if the full strength of the Empire couldn't bring the Aldmeri Dominion down, her efforts would seem as a fly's against a herd of mammoths. It would be much simpler if all she had to worry about were dragons.

After a long moment's silence, Ulfric turned to her again. His worry was still written all over his face, and it made her tremble with a different kind of chill.

"Are you sure this is necessary?"

"No," Annika admitted. "I'm not convinced that the Thalmor have a hand in any of this. But this may be the only chance we get to find out."

He nodded slowly. "All right. Do what you must, Dragonborn. But be careful."

"I will, my lord."

He drained the last of his mead, and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. "Will you be here long before returning to the Greybeards? That is, if you'll be returning at all."

Annika chuckled. "I will, but perhaps not for a few days. I took ill at High Hrothgar, and my fever lingers."

"I thought you looked pale. Have Wuunferth brew you a potion if you still feel unwell in the morning; I've never had an illness he wasn't able to relieve. And," he added, "I suppose I'll have to relieve Kynesgrove of a certain carcass."

"A certain skeleton," Annika corrected. "The flesh, it... melts away when I take the dragon's soul."

"Truly?" His eyes lit up with intrigue. "I should like to see that someday."

The thought of slaying a dragon with Ulfric Stormcloak took her breath away. She looked down to her lap, and let her hair fall to curtain her face in hopes that it would hide her reddening cheeks.

"Perhaps you will, my lord."

Annika heard the trickle of mead into a mug, and declined when Ulfric offered her more; the little she'd already drunk had been enough to make her head swim. She would have loved to stay right there, talking and drinking with him all night long, but she was likely to nod off at the table. She longed for her bed, and her pillow, and the dreamless sleep she was sure she'd have now that the uneasiness of High Hrothgar lay behind her, if only for a little while. Even in that damp and mildewed inn in Morthal, the nightmares had plagued her. But she was home now, and knowing that Ulfric was near would be the sweetest lullaby.

Still, it was difficult to push herself out of her chair.

"It's growing quite late," she said. "I'll take my leave so you can get back to whatever matters I interrupted."

But Ulfric was lost in thought once more, and didn't seem to have heard her.

"Kynesgrove," he suddenly said. "You are from Kynesgrove, are you not?"

"Yes, my lord."

"I thought so. Why did you leave?"

Annika sat back down, the lure of her bed forgotten. She'd always known the question would come up eventually, but she was not prepared for it tonight. She was quiet for a long moment before answering.

"Because I had nothing left to stay for."

Ulfric set his mug down. "Forgive me, I didn't mean to pry. If it's too personal..."

"No." She shook her head and gave him a warm, albeit tremulous, smile. "I don't mind."

There were two secrets that she had always kept close to her heart, two secrets she had never told another living soul. Ulfric knew one, for he had asked her to keep it, two decades ago. And now he would know the other.

"The summer I was seventeen," she began, "I returned to the village one evening to see a pillar of smoke rising over the hills and the trees. Deep down in my bones, I knew whence it came. I prayed to every last Divine that I was wrong. But I wasn't."

It hurt to speak these words out loud, words she had long buried in the bottomless pit of her memory... but at the same time, every syllable seemed to wash away a bit of the darkness that had shrouded her heart since that day. For years after, she wouldn't tell anyone what had happened, hoping that if nobody else knew, it would seem as though it had not happened at all, as though it was just a terrible dream that she would someday forget. It had never seemed any less real, and she had never come close to forgetting. But she'd never stopped trying, even after admitting to herself that it was useless.

"The first thing I saw was my sister, crawling out of our burning home, black with soot and red with blood. Anya was screaming and sobbing, but she calmed when I took her in my arms. She told me how she and our mother had come home to find bandits prowling the house, stuffing anything of even the littlest value into sacks. My mother grabbed Anya's hand and tried to run, but the bandits caught her, and drove a dagger into her heart."

She heard Ulfric draw a sharp breath, a million miles away.

"They argued over what to do with my sister," Annika continued, hardly hearing her own haunted voice. "She was thirteen, then, and small for her age, and she looked such a child with her big round eyes and her two long braids. One of the bandits didn't want to kill a little girl, but the other two insisted that they had to, lest she run to the guards and they ended up with their own heads on the block. But when one of them went for Anya... two great waves of flame exploded out of her palms."

"By the gods," Ulfric breathed. "She was a pyromancer?"

"None of us had known. Not even Anya herself. She begged me to believe her, that it had just happened, that she didn't mean to do it, that she couldn't control it. Of course, I believed her. This was the girl who had wept the one and only time I brought her hunting with me, because she couldn't stand to see a rabbit die. Anya would never have hurt a fly." Her voice, not much more than a whisper, hitched in her throat. "And yet, she'd burned the skin right off this man's face. He fell upon her in a rage, screaming and slashing with his dagger. The blade caught her in the stomach, and the fire burst from her hands again, and suddenly the man was dead, and the others were gone, and the roof was on fire, and then the walls were, too. Anya went to my mother and shook her and shouted in her ear, but she wouldn't wake up. So she crawled around the flames and through the smoke, and somehow made it outside, and that's when I found her."

Annika heard her sister's voice as surely as if she were there in the room, pleading with her to believe that she hadn't meant to kill anyone. Anya had seemed more frightened of her own hands than of the burning house, or the gash in her middle. That, perhaps, is what hurt the most. The fear in her sister's eyes, not of what had been done to her, but what she had done herself.

"I screamed for help, but nobody came," Annika murmured. "Blood was pouring out of her, more blood than I'd ever seen in my life. I knew I couldn't save her. So I held her, and rocked her, and told her how much I loved her, and that I'd see her someday in Sovngarde. And then she was gone."

A deep silence fell between them. Annika heard the beat of a heart, but she wasn't sure whether it was hers or Ulfric's. Finally, he sighed, so long and so heavy it sounded as though he was breaking apart.

"I remember that fire," he said. "I remember seeing the smoke from the castle windows. I sent a contingent to help, but by the time they got there, the fire had already burned itself out. One of them told me, later, that three bodies had been found—a man, a woman, and a child. I'd believed them to be a family who had perished together in a terrible accident." When he looked up at her, his face reflected her own pain. "I am so very sorry."

"You're not to blame."

"Everything that happens in my hold is, in the end, my responsibility. If there had been more guards stationed in Kynesgrove, if these criminals had already been locked away in the dungeons..."

"If I had gotten there half an hour earlier," Annika returned. "If I had spent less time haggling at the market. If the tern had been enough, and I hadn't gone chasing after that squirrel, too." She smiled, but it was full of sadness. "I've thought of a thousand ifs over the years, my lord. None of them will change what happened, so none of them are worth dwelling on."

"But a Jarl's duty is to protect his people," he insisted. "And look at what has befallen mine—the Grey Quarter is falling apart, beggars and orphans roam the streets, innocent children are murdered by bandits." Ulfric hung his head low, his eyes dark with the same sorrow she had seen in the temple on the morning she'd left Windhelm. "I wish I could help everyone."

Annika's breath caught in her throat, remembering those same words spoken by this same man, twenty years before. "I know you do."

"Thank you for sharing your story with me," he said. "It is good to know that you trust me as I trust you."

"Of course, my lord. Thank you for letting me tell it."

Now that she had, now that the door to that darkest of chambers of her heart was finally opened, it seemed she could breathe easier than she had since watching her sister die in her arms. Ulfric may not have been there that day to give her comfort, but his knowing, now, his sharing the weight of her pain, gave her more peace than she could have imagined possible. And she never could have imagined letting any other but Ulfric into her heart to help heal it.

He rose from his chair, and Annika was quick to do the same. He towered over her at his full height, and even this late, even in the safety of his castle, he wore his mail, his leather pauldrons, his fur cloak. He looked a giant amongst men. But she was beginning to see that he wore guilt, regret, and sadness, too, just as she did. When these things creased his brow and dimmed the light in his eyes, he seemed smaller, and he wasn't a king, or a Jarl, or a soldier, or a rebel, or a hero. He was just a man. And she loved him even more for it. And she hoped that, someday, he might let her into the dark chambers of his own heart, and she might be able to give him comfort, too.

"You were right, Dragonborn," Ulfric said, scrubbing both hands over the whiskers on his cheeks. "It is growing quite late. Forgive me for keeping you overlong; I can see how weary you are."

"There is nothing to forgive, my lord."

"A good night's sleep might help that fever of yours."

Annika nodded. "I hope so."

She bowed her head and made to leave, but the sound of Ulfric's voice pulled her back.

"We have more in common than I would have thought," he mused, voicing just what she'd been thinking. "Perhaps I'll tell you a story of my own, soon."

Annika smiled, and was warmed through when he returned it.

"I would be honored to hear it, my lord."

And with that, she left him to his maps and his scrolls, and to his thoughts, thoughts she dared to hope might be of her. Leaving was easier, this time, than it had been before, for even as she walked away, she knew they grew ever closer.


* * * * *​


As she had hoped, a long and dreamless sleep did much to ease Annika's troubled mind and spirit. But it did nothing for the fever that had her both sweating and shivering when she awoke, nor did a soak in the bathhouse or a breakfast of hot porridge and buttered bread. And so she found herself in Wuunferth's study against her better judgement, begging help from a man who was not known for being charitable.

"I cast every healing spell I know, to no avail," she told the mage. "The fever won't break."

"Healing spells are meant to heal injuries, not cure illnesses, you witless girl," Wuunferth railed. "Haven't I taught you anything?"

Annika gritted her teeth. "Not that, obviously."

He raised a hand to her forehead, and she flinched at the touch of his wrinkled palm, but did not pull away. After a moment, he nodded, muttered a few wordless syllables to himself, and shuffled to the cluttered shelves that lined the chamber. There must have been hundreds, if not thousands, of vials and bottles, pouches and chests, none of which were labeled or organized in any apparent pattern, and yet Wuunferth plucked containers from the wall with barely a glance at what they held.

"Frost salts," he declared the first vial, its glass iced from within. "Mandrake root. Lavender. chaurus—" His eyes went wide and his hollow cheeks trembled as he snatched a faintly glowing jar from the shelf. "Confound it!"

"What's wrong?"

"It's happened again!" Wuunferth thrust the jar at Annika's face, stopping mere inches from her nose. "I had a sellsword harvest a full score from Stillborn Cave just days ago! Does this look like a full score to you?"

Clusters of jellied eggs filled half the container, clinging to the inside of the glass and giving off an eerie shimmer. Chaurus eggs. Suddenly it all made sense, and Annika gave a weary sigh.

"Perhaps you miscounted, Wuunferth."

"I never miscount," he insisted. "And I didn't simply lose the last jar, either. Someone is stealing them, I tell you!"

"Take it up with the Jarl, then. Shouting at me isn't going to catch your thief, nor will it cure my fever."

He sniffed and grunted, but thankfully said nothing more of the missing chaurus eggs as he brewed her potion.

Annika watched the mage toss a pinch of this and a dash of that into a bowl, measuring only with his eyes and fingers. His mastery of the art astounded her. She had never been able to make sense of alchemy; there were too many rules and too many ways a potion could go wrong, and she had found a good number of them as a girl, when her mother tried to teach her what she knew of the trade. Of course, her mother had only what common herbs she could grow in their little patch of garden, or in clay pots on the windowsills; they would never have been able to afford the rarities that Wuunferth had at his disposal.

She drifted to one of the small and murky windows set deep in the study's eastern wall, and looked past the courtyard of the castle that had been home to kings, past the city walls built by Ysgramor and his Five Hundred. She couldn't quite see Kynesgrove in the distance, but she knew it was there, the tiny village of miners and loggers, and wives whose lives were spent whelping children. She wondered what her mother would say to see her now, in the Palace of the Kings, having a potion of fresh chaurus eggs and imported mandrake root brewed for her by the court mage, at the behest of the Jarl himself.

Below, a pair of soldiers passed beneath the high arch of the courtyard, and hurried over patches of melting snow and ice. Annika recognized them as Ralof's friends, Tormund and Mors, men she'd shared mead and broken bread with at Candlehearth Hall. They had been sent to garrison the rebellion's Whiterun camp before she'd left for High Hrothgar. Had they been recalled so soon? The urgency of their stride and the determination in their hardened features hinted otherwise. Something was wrong.

"Here's your potion," Wuunferth grumbled. "Take it slowly, and—"

The concotion was scalding its way down Annika's throat before he could finish. She slammed the cup down on the alchemy table with a wince.

"Thank you, Wuunferth."

Leaving the mage to rant about her foolish insolence, Annika fled the study and hastened through the dim and stony corridors of the keep's western wing. When she emerged into the Great Hall, the soldiers were already in audience with Ulfric. She knew at once that the news they'd brought had not pleased the Jarl.

"How did they get in?" Ulfric demanded. "Our last reports claimed Balgruuf was still denying the Thalmor admittance to Whiterun."

"By decree of the Emperor," Tormund answered. "The guards had no choice but to let them pass, or be put under arrest."

"And how many people were put under arrest?"

The men shared a look. "Sixteen. And one executed."

The Great Hall fell utterly silent. Ulfric leaned forward in his throne. Even across the chamber, Annika could see the muscles in his neck and jaw tightening and pulsing.

"Who?"

"A priest of Talos, my lord, by the name of Heimskr," Mors said. "He preached daily before the shrine of Talos in the city's Wind District. The justiciars went to his home to place him under arrest, but he resisted, and cursed them and their kind in the name of Talos. After some struggle, the justiciars dragged him bodily to the Wind District, and put him to the sword in front of the shrine."

Ulfric's face twisted into a storm of rage.

Annika remembered the priest, charging her and Ralof to embrace the word of Talos as they passed the square on their way to Dragonsreach. Ralof had told her that the man's head might have rolled if he'd tried preaching in Solitude or Markarth, but Whiterun was neutral territory, and so he would not be prosecuted. Instead, he was killed. It seemed that neutral territory offered as much protection as a paper shield.

"Balgruuf did nothing to stop this?"

"The Jarl came to the square too late, my lord," Tormund replied. "When he saw what had happened, he ordered the Thalmor agents to leave the city at once, but they presented the Emperor's decree, and warned him that he himself would be arrested under charges of treason if he impeded their investigation in any way. He then consented to the investigation, but demanded that no further executions be performed within city walls. Whether the justiciars heeded this demand or were simply not given cause to put anyone else to the sword, we don't know, but no more blood was spilled either way."

Ulfric drummed his fingers on the arm of his throne. "Did any elves remain in Whiterun after the raid?"

"No, my lord. Six entered the city, and six left the city."

"And you are certain of all of this?"

"We are. Olfina Gray-Mane rode to our base herself with the news. As you know, my lord, Clan Gray-Mane has been our most reliable source within Whiterun since the start of the war. We have no reason to mistrust her tidings. Furthermore, one of our scouts saw the Thalmor entourage heading west with three carts of prisoners at the hour of the wolf."

Ulfric nodded. "Thank you for your report. You have done well. Eat and rest, but I will need you back in Whiterun by day's end."

Tormund and Mors gave a brief bow before leaving the Great Hall.

Ulfric rose from his throne and gestured towards the war room. "All in command, with me." Annika took this to mean Galmar, Alvis, Ralof, and Erik, the only officers and lieutenants present to hear the report, but at the threshhold of the war room, he looked back and nodded at her. "And you, Dragonborn."

Her heart leapt. She didn't think he'd even seen her there, amongst the guards and soldiers who'd lingered to hear the news from Whiterun. She hurried down the length of the Great Hall and followed the others into the adjacent chamber, where Galmar stood red-faced and indignant before the Jarl.

"Why should she be privy to our war councils?" he hissed. "She isn't an officer or a lieutenant. She's barely even a soldier!"

"She is the Dragonborn," Ulfric said, his tone plainly warning Galmar not to press the matter further.

Annika edged into the room, avoiding Galmar's eyes. Ulfric took up his usual place on the far end of the table, while the other men gathered opposite. Annika thought it best to stay apart from those in command, so as not to appear too presumptuous and rile Galmar's temper any further; she stood off to the side, hovering near the chair that had been hers the night before.

Ulfric stared down at the map on the table, at the tiny blue and red flags that delineated support for Stormcloaks or for Imperials throughout each hold.

"The time has come to take Whiterun," he announced. "If the Emperor could force Thalmor into the city once, he can and will do it again, and having found the Jarl so lax in enforcing the terms of the White-Gold Concordat, my guess is it will happen soon. Unless, of course, the raid frightened Balgruuf enough to declare for the Empire, in which case an Imperial contingent will be sent in from Cyrodiil in a matter of days. Either way, if we lose Whiterun, we lose the war." He jabbed a finger at the city's spot on the map, the only area unmarked by neither blue nor red. "We must have the city before the week is out."

Galmar gave a grunt of approval. "I can have my men ready to storm the gates by tomorrow night."

"Have them muster in the Pale and prepare to attack from the north. I'll send word to the Rift and have Gonnar move his men to Ivarstead to ready an attack from the south. But do not advance on Whiterun," Ulfric commanded with a strong and firm voice. "Not yet."

The second-in-command was not so pleased by this order, and threw his arms up. "And why not?" he growled. "The time is ripe, Ulfric, you said it yourself!"

"It is... but if we can win Balgruuf's allegiance without bloodshed, all the better. Tullius's ploy might have backfired, doing more to sway Balgruuf to our side than to scare him into compliance. He must see, now, that we cannot abide the presence of the Empire or their Thalmor puppeteers in our lands." Ulfric's hand went to the axe on his belt, and he stroked it with the tenderness and love of a man for his wife. He withdrew it from its holster and laid it across the map. "I have appealed to Balgruuf thrice with words, but words are wind, and men who understand each other often have no need of them. This time, I give him my axe."

The axe bore a curious resemblance to its owner. It was old, its head chipped from battles past, but its blade diligently kept sharp and deadly; there was a certain barbaric vulgarity to its roughly hewn edges, yet the leather that hugged the haft looked supple and smooth. It was nothing at all like the one Balgruuf had put into Annika's hands a fortnight past, ostentatious with its ornate carvings and immaculate gleam. But that axe's purpose had been much the same as this one's.

Annika took a tentative step forward.

"My lord, if I may?"

All eyes turned to her, and Ulfric nodded. "Of course."

"Before I came to Windhelm," she began, "I helped slay a dragon in Whiterun. Jarl Balgruuf's housecarl and half a hundred of his guards saw me take in the dragon's soul, and the whole city heard the Greybeards' summons. And in the morning, the Jarl presented me with an axe of his own, and the offer of a thaneship within his hold." She hesitated, uncomfortable to speak ill of one Jarl to another, but she knew she must. "I believe he only did so in interest to ally himself with the Dragonborn. He was not pleased when I turned down the thaneship, but... it may be that he still holds that interest."

Ulfric grasped her meaning at once. "You wish to take my axe to Balgruuf."

"That the Dragonborn has sworn fealty to you may be an added incentive for him to do the same."

"Or," Galmar cut in, "he may take it as an insult, that we send your axe with an envoy who threw his own back in his face!"

The chamber was quiet as Ulfric considered both sides of the coin, his eyes darting back and forth across the flagged map, his fingers rubbing the whiskers of his chin.

"By all our legends and traditions," he mused, "the Dragonborn is a figure of honor and integrity. The Dragonborn is a hero, a shield that guards the realms of men, whether the threat is dragons... or elves." He looked once more to Annika, and pride shone in his eyes, in his smile. "That is what he will see when he sees you."

Ulfric closed the distance between them and put his axe into Annika's trembling hands. He unfastened the belt that held its holster, and gave her that as well. She was suddenly very hot, as though she was clad in flames instead of a cotton tunic and woolen breeches, and yet, when his gaze met hers, she felt so open and so vulnerable she might have been wearing nothing at all.

"You will need to leave at once," he told her. "If Balgruuf accepts the axe and our terms, have a rider from the Whiterun camp bring word to Windhelm. If he refuses, send one rider to Windhelm, and one each to our contingents in the Pale and the Rift, to mount the attack."

"Yes, my lord."

"Leave your armor behind at the camp. Wear plain clothes, and carry no arms but the axe; it is not so different from what a farmer might carry. The Thalmor have eyes within the city, that is a given now. It would not do for them to hear of an archer in Eastmarch blue parading up to Dragonsreach to see the Jarl."

Annika stilled, thinking of her last sojourn to Whiterun. She'd been wrapped in the Eastmarch blue she had taken from a fallen soldier, with Ralof beside her, wearing the same. They would be safe in Whiterun, he'd promised her. But he had said the same of Heimskr.

Ralof appeared at her arm, then, as though he'd heard her thoughts. His face was so rigid and tense that, at first glance, she did not recognize the man who always had a smile for her. And then she remembered: Ysolda. She hoped, for Ralof's sake, that she hadn't been one of the sixteen prisoners carted off by the Thalmor.

"Jarl Ulfric," he said, his voice just as strained as the rest of him, "may I have your leave to accompany Annika to Whiterun as her shield brother?"

Ulfric's hesitation lasted for only a heartbeat. One less attuned to his every breath would have missed it, but it did not escape Annika's notice.

"You may."

Ralof gave a firm nod. "Thank you for the honor, my lord."

"We haven't the time to draw up new terms for a treaty. Jorleif," Ulfric called, and the steward seemed to melt from the very shadows. Annika had not even seen him come into the room. "Meet the Dragonborn at the stables with a copy of the last proposal we sent to Balgruuf. It will have to serve."

"At once, my lord."

Ulfric turned again to Annika and Ralof. He took a deep breath, and pulled his shoulders back. "Now, go," he said. "Ride swiftly, and be careful. Talos guide you."

They bowed to their Jarl before taking their leave.

Neither Annika nor Ralof spoke as they hurried through the city and over the great stone bridge to the stables. His thoughts were with Ysolda, Annika was sure, but her own lingered on the axe that hung at her hip, brushing her thigh with every step. So much hinged on that axe. So much hinged on her. If she succeeded, she would be giving Ulfric Whiterun, the most integral seat in Skyrim. She would be bringing him that much closer to the crown and the throne that were rightfully his.

But if she failed...

She would not fail. She could not fail.

A month ago, she had been living a peaceful life in the lush green forests of Valenwood, and she would've been content to spend the rest of her days amongst the serenity and safety of the trees she had come to think of as her home. But then word of a civil war in Skyrim, of a rebellion led by Ulfric Stormcloak, had reached her ears, and changed everything.

Since then, she had been captured and beaten by Imperial legionnaires. She had laid her head down on a block that had just seen another's sliced off. She'd been singed by a dragon's fire. She'd knelt in bloodstained snow to steal gold from a corpse who had, moments before, tried to kill her. She had lost count of the number of times she'd felt death's rattling breath on the back of her neck.

Annika had known from the start that hers would be a treacherous crusade. She'd known that fighting in this war could likely mean dying in it. She had come to fight it anyway. She had come to see Ulfric take Skyrim's throne.

And she would see it done, no matter the cost.


* * * * *​


The Whiterun they walked into was not the same one they had left two weeks before.

The streets were empty and silent, the only movement coming from the swirls and drifts of dirt kicked by up an errant breeze. The forge at Warmaiden's was cold, and the shutters in the windows of the Drunken Huntsman were shut. Half of the stalls in the open market were closed; the ones that were open for business boasted a scant few buyers, but their footsteps were hurried, their eyes ever darting over their shoulders. None of them had red hair.

"She might be at the Bannered Mare," Ralof suggested. "She's going to buy the inn from Hulda one day, you know."

A thin curl of smoke rose from the inn's chimney; Annika took it as a good sign. But when they stepped inside, they found it almost as bereft as the market. Two men sat at the bar, their heads together as they spoke in whispers, a grisled woman in dented steel plate nursed a mug of something steaming in the far corner, and the innkeeper was sweeping the floor with an air of boredom.

"Come on in," she called to the newcomers, "just stoked the—" Her eyes went wide when she spotted Ralof, and, broom in hand, she hurried to meet them at the hearth. "Ralof, what are you doing in the city? It isn't safe—haven't you heard what happened?"

"I've heard," he replied. "Is Ysolda... was she..."

Hulda sighed and smiled, and nodded over Ralof's shoulder.

They turned around. A pretty young woman with flaming red hair stood in a doorway behind them, her face bright with joy.

"Ysolda!"

Ralof rushed to the girl and wrapped her up in his arms. They embraced for a long while, and though they didn't kiss, Annika still felt she should look away. Ralof had told her the story with a furious blush one evening at Candlehearth Hall: he'd grown sweet on Ysolda, and she on him, while he was stationed in Whiterun during the early days of the war, but they'd agreed not to marry until the fighting was finished. Ralof knew there was a chance he wouldn't make it home, and didn't wish to make Ysolda a wife and a widow in the same year.

"I was so worried about you," he said, pulling back to look over Ysolda's face. "When I heard the Thalmor had gotten into Whiterun..."

"What, you thought they'd find some great shrine up on my mantle and take my head off?" She clucked her tongue and smiled. "You should know I have a bit more sense than that. But what about you? Hulda's right—it isn't safe here for you, not anymore."

"That's why we've come." His voice dropped to nearly a whisper. "Jarl Ulfric hopes to finally win Jarl Balgruuf's allegiance, now that he's seen what happens when elves have the right to rule... and now that we have something Jarl Balgruuf wants."

"What's that?"

Ralof turned to wave Annika over. "This," he told Ysolda, "is the Dragonborn."

Ysolda's mouth dropped open.

"My name," Annika said, shooting Ralof a frustrated but bemused look, "is Annika."

"By the gods," Ysolda breathed. She gaped down at Annika's offered hand for a moment before taking it. "Are you really..."

"Yes, I am." She gave Ysolda a warm and geniuine smile. "It's lovely to meet you, Ralof's told me so much about you. But I'm afraid time is short. I must get to Dragonsreach."

"You must get to Dragonsreach?" Ralof echoed. "You're not going alone. You could be arrested if the Jarl's already decided to side with the Empire!"

"And if I am, will you fight off the entire city guard single-handedly? You'll be arrested, too, if you're with me. And who will bring word back to Windhelm, then? Who will bring word to the contingents in the other holds?" She shook her head. "Stay here, Ralof. If I'm not back by sundown, leave the city at once, and finish what we were sent to do."

He was still and silent for a long moment before nodding.

"All right," he said, but with obvious reluctance. "Just... be careful."

"I will."

With that, Annika left the inn.

Though she had only been there once before, she easily recalled the way to Dragonsreach. Through the market, past the wilting Gildegreen, and across the courtyard where—

A wave of dread roiled her stomach. She knew, of course, that the zealous priest would no longer be preaching in that courtyard. But she had not anticipated the dark stain of blood blanketing the stones, drying to a crisp burgundy in the afternoon sun.

The last time she'd been there, Ralof had assured her that Whiterun was safe, that no harm would come to them. And none had. But that did not mean that they hadn't been seen by whatever eyes the Thalmor had hidden within the city. Had the presence of two renegades wearing Stormcloak blue led to the invasion that had captured sixteen and killed one? Was that priest's blood on her hands?

She fled the courtyard without looking back.

The steps leading to Dragonsreach seemed endless, and Annika was out of breath by the time she reached the keep's massive doors, more from her panic at seeing the remnants of the execution than from anything else. The guards on either side of the bridge were as faceless as all the others; for all she knew, they might have fought the dragon alongside her at the western watchtower. But neither of them showed any sign of knowing her as they let her into the keep.

Jarl Balgruuf slouched on his throne at the far end of the Great Hall, in audience with a dark-skinned man wearing a fine quilted tunic. His diatribe seemed to be boring the Jarl almost to tears, but when he spotted Annika drawing near, his eyes went wide and he sat up straighter. Standing sentry beside him, his housecarl, Irileth, sneered.

"I'll take your advice into consideration, Nazeem," Balgruuf said to the man, cutting him off mid-sentence, and gestured for a guard. "Thank you."

The guard led the stymied Nazeem away from the dais, allowing Annika to approach.

"Dragonborn," the Jarl announced. "I must say, I didn't expect to see you here again. I thought you meant to join the rebellion."

"I did, my lord," she said. "That is why I'm here. I've come to treat with you on behalf of Jarl Ulfric Stormcloak."

He stilled, and his features tightened. Irileth's lip curled even higher.

"I see."

He waved a hand, and another guard came forward, though this one wore war paint instead of a mask, and the long handle of a greatsword loomed over his right shoulder. Annika's entire body tensed up, and she had a sudden overwhelming urge to run before she could be put in shackles.

"Hrongar," the Jarl said, "escort the Dragonborn to the solar. I'll be up momentarily."

Annika relaxed by a small degree—he'd said solar, not dungeons—and followed the man to the staircase off the east side of the dais. Her foot had barely hit the third step before she heard angry whispers erupt behind her. She couldn't make out any words, but she was sure Irileth was making as grand a case against her as possible.

Hrongar bade her to take a seat in one of the wooden chairs set before a table overlaid with maps. One was dotted with red and blue flags, a twin to another map in another keep in another city. Annika found Whiterun amidst the flags, and sighed with relief to see it was unmarked here, too.

Several anxious minutes passed before she heard footsteps coming up the stairs. She stood when the Jarl came into the solar. He was alone, though Hrongar remained to stand guard in the housecarl's place.

"Please," he said, motioning for her to sit. He took the chair on the other side of the table. "Now, then. Does Jarl Ulfric send new terms?"

Annika handed him the scroll clutched in her unsteady hand. He tore through the blue wax seal and unrolled the parchment. His eyes skimmed its length, and he frowned.

"These are the same terms I rejected almost a month ago."

"They are, my lord. But today Jarl Ulfric also sends this."

She unhooked the axe from her belt, and laid it across the table.

Balgruuf stared down at it with shrewd eyes. "I see," he said again. "So it has come to this. An ultimatum."

"Jarl Ulfric was shocked and saddened to hear of the tragedy that befell your people last night," Annika told him, "and he does not wish to see it happen again. He has thus far respected your decision to remain neutral in the war, but at this point, to do so would be to give the Thalmor the open door they need to take control of your city, and through it, all of Skyrim. He cannot allow this to come to pass."

"And he thinks the best way to save Whiterun is to attack it?"

"No, my lord. He thinks the best way to save Whiterun is to join the strength of his army to yours in alliance against your common enemy."

"But he will storm my gates nonetheless, should I refuse."

"Whiterun would be better off taken by Stormcloaks than by Thalmor."

Balgruuf exhaled deeply through his nose, and tapped his fingers on the table. "Whiterun would be better off not taken at all, but left in my rightful rule."

"Do you think General Tullius would agree, now that he knows you've allowed a shrine to Talos to remain in a place of prominence in the city, in direct violation of the White-Gold Concordat?"

He reddened, but said nothing.

"The Emperor forced a contingent of Thalmor agents into your city last night," she continued. "It is only a matter of time before he does so again. You must see that."

Balgruuf threw the scroll onto the table. "All I see," he growled, "is Ulfric taking advantage of my misfortune to further his own interests. That is his way. That has always been his way."

Annika felt a palpable change in the atmosphere, as though the Jarl's indignation was consuming the very air around him. She was losing him. Perhaps he clung to some foolish hope that the Empire would protect him and his city from the Aldmeri Dominion. Perhaps he believed the rebellion to be the easier challenge to overcome, or the greater of the two evils he was faced with. Or perhaps whatever Ulfric had offered him was not enough.

That, at least, she could change.

"Jarl Balgruuf," she began slowly, "this treaty can further your interests as well."

"Do you think promising me a greater number of soldiers to defend my city or additional lands to expand my hold will convince me?"

"I lack the authority to make such promises, whether or not they would sway you. But there is one thing I can offer you."

"And that is?"

"Me."

They stared at each other over the maps. Balgruuf kept his emotions well concealed; only his lower lip gave the slightest twitch. But Annika could almost hear the wheels in his head spinning.

"A fortnight past, you offered me a thaneship," she reminded him. "If you make this alliance, and if you support Jarl Ulfric's claim as High King when the Moot convenes, then, when the war comes to a close, I will accept that offer."

"You presume it is still on the table."

"Yes, I do, because I know as well as you that having the Dragonborn as your Thane would be a great advantage—and not only in the prestige it would bring to Whiterun." She turned her head just enough so that she was facing the bookcase to Balgruuf's right, but not Balgruuf himself. "Fus."

Everything seemed to happen all at once. The bookcase quaked, and half a dozen of the tomes lining its shelves tumbled to the floor in a loud clatter. The Jarl, crying out, jumped up from his chair and stumbled back, and behind her, Annika heard Hrongar drawing his greatsword. She leapt from her seat, reached for Ulfric's axe, and spun around.

"Hrongar," the Jarl shouted, and the man stopped in his tracks. "It's all right. She means no harm."

Only after Hrongar sheathed his greatsword did Annika lower the axe.

"That," she said, turning back to Balgruuf, "was a mere glimpse of the power that would be sworn to protect you and your city."

He attempted a laugh, glancing at the books on the floor, but the strangled noise he made instead beytrayed his uneasiness. "That was an impressive trick, but I fail to see how it will protect anyone."

"Do not forget that we are fighting a second war—a war against dragons. I've already killed one that threatened your hold. Last night, I killed another in Kynesgrove. There will be more. Many more. And every one I slay only makes me stronger." She gave him a moment to swallow that before going on. "Tell me, my lord—have you heard of the Song of the Dragonborn?"

"I'm afraid not."

"It foretells the return of an ancient dragon, Alduin, who threatens our entire world. And it foretells its defeat by the Dragonborn."

"A story," the Jarl said, waving the idea away with a hand. "Just as all the others."

"Believe me, I wish that were so," Annika replied quietly. "But you cannot deny that dragons have returned to Tamriel, or that the Dragonborn sits before you now. I have seen Alduin with my own eyes. I have felt the heat of its fire on my face and I have looked into the cold depths of its soul. It has twice tried to kill me, and I have twice survived it. And I will defeat it. And my glory will be your glory—if I am your Thane."

She watched Balgruuf, his jaw taut, his eyes darting back and forth, and she feared that this offer still would not be enough for him, despite it being everything to her. She cared nothing for power, or prestige, or glory, but she was giving up her freedom to go where she would and to do as she liked. She was giving up her freedom to stay by Ulfric's side for as long as he would have her.

When the Jarl finally looked back to her, she saw the gleam of greed in his eyes. He reached across the table for Ulfric's axe, and then for one of the flags that lay in a clay pot on the corner of the sprawling map of Skyrim.

He pinned the flag to the sigil of the horse that represented Whiterun. It was blue.

Annika left Dragonsreach half an hour later, holding a scroll sealed with golden yellow wax. Within was written Balgruuf's acceptance of the alliance between Whiterun and Eastmarch, his support of Ulfric's claim to High King, and his right to take the Dragonborn as his Thane once the war was over. Between battling legionnaires and hunting dragons, Annika knew it was unlikely that she would live long enough to hold up her end of the deal. But if she did, if she one day had to walk away from Ulfric...

She ground the heel of her palm into her cheek to wipe away the tear that had fallen.

She had known, leaving Windhelm that morning, that she might have to trade her freedom to secure the allegiance of Whiterun that Ulfric so desperately needed.

What truly broke her heart was that Ulfric had known it, too.
Just awesome..It was such an exciting chapter..I hope you will keep sharing some more chapters..
 

imaginepageant

Slytherin Alumni
I apologize for taking so everlastingly long in continuing Chapter Seven. I just needed a break. But, now that I'm gearing up for Nanowrimo in a couple of weeks, I am determined to finish Chapter Seven by the end of this month! To that end, one more scene is up, and I will (hopefully) have another for you very soon!
 

ArcaneBelleza

The Benevolent One
Alright, let me start off by saying this story… is beautiful, it's the only word I can describe it to be honest. I'm surprised at myself for not discovering this work of art earlier. You're writing style is descriptive and captivating, I very much enjoyed every sentence, and every chapter is a pleasure to read. You're characterization is amazing and accurate, nearly in sync to the game's original dialect and dialogue. And of course, I'm quite fond of your character Annika; her resilient and kind nature is inspiring.
This fanfiction is definitely a new favorite of mine, and I can't wait for the last couple chapters to be finished. :)
 

imaginepageant

Slytherin Alumni
Alright, let me start off by saying this story… is beautiful, it's the only word I can describe it to be honest. I'm surprised at myself for not discovering this work of art earlier. You're writing style is descriptive and captivating, I very much enjoyed every sentence, and every chapter is a pleasure to read. You're characterization is amazing and accurate, nearly in sync to the game's original dialect and dialogue. And of course, I'm quite fond of your character Annika; her resilient and kind nature is inspiring.
This fanfiction is definitely a new favorite of mine, and I can't wait for the last couple chapters to be finished. :)

Thank you so much! <3 I'm so glad you've enjoyed the story so far.

I will finish this story soon, guys. I promise.
 
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Teegan

New Member
I love love love this whole story, but I'm wondering why it says reserved for chapter 7 & 8? I want to read the whole story please!!!!!!!!
 

imaginepageant

Slytherin Alumni
I love love love this whole story, but I'm wondering why it says reserved for chapter 7 & 8? I want to read the whole story please!!!!!!!!

Because I haven't written them yet. :) Well, chapter seven is almost complete and chapter eight (and the epilogue) are still to come.

I WILL FINISH IT EVENTUALLY I PROMISE. All of my available writing time has been spent working on an original story lately.
 

Teegan

New Member
I love love love this whole story, but I'm wondering why it says reserved for chapter 7 & 8? I want to read the whole story please!!!!!!!!

Because I haven't written them yet. :) Well, chapter seven is almost complete and chapter eight (and the epilogue) are still to come.

I WILL FINISH IT EVENTUALLY I PROMISE. All of my available writing time has been spent working on an original story lately.
OK I JUST LOVE THIS STORY ❤️❤️❤️❤️ Hurry w/ ur writing !!! ❤️
 

imaginepageant

Slytherin Alumni
Well.

Three and a half years later, Part 7 finally continues.

I apologize for the outrageously long hiatus. Between creating a tiny human and writing my own novel, fanfiction has fallen to the wayside over the years. But Annika and Ulfric have always been in the back of my mind, waiting for me to return to them. I always planned to, someday. And now that day has come. I can't promise frequent updates (that tiny human and unfinished novel still require most of my attention), but I will try my hardest to have something new for you every month.

If any of my original readers are still here, I want to thank you for your patience and loyalty. To any new readers who somehow stumbled upon this story in its years of stagnancy, welcome! I'm so glad you found us! As always, I sincerely appreciate your comments and feedback, so let me know what you think of the new scene and what you think might be in store for Annika and Ulfric in Part 8!
 

imaginepageant

Slytherin Alumni
Part seven is finally, finally, FINALLY COMPLETE.

I checked the word count and it's over 27k. Oops.

I have had the end of that scene in my head for years. It was one of the first sequences I had ever envisioned for this story. And it's such a relief to finally see it put into words. I hope you guys enjoy it!

I'm going to switch my focus back to my novel for the next two months, but I do have a lot of the next few scenes of Wind Guide You already written, so it shouldn't be too long before you see Part Eight!
 

Start Dale

I got 99 problems but a Deadra ain't one.
This is great that your story is still going. My engineering degree completely destroyed my ability to work on my own fanfic. I keep trying to start at random moments and lose the will. I have some resits soon so may tackle it again between the point they end and 3rd year starts.

Haven't managed to read anything either recently. Degree hard. But looking forward to reading the story once i get a chance.
 

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