Wind Guide You

wind guide you

This is an ongoing fanfiction that will focus on the main storyline and the civil war storyline. It will, obviously, contain spoilers for both. I will at times take the liberty of adjusting certain events or game mechanics to better fit the story I wish to tell (and to keep it from being a million chapters long).

I greatly appreciate any feedback you can offer! Thank you for reading!

• Chapter One: Awakening
• Chapter Two: The Heart of a Nord
• Chapter Three: Chasing Destiny

cast of characters

one: awakening

The first thing she noticed was the cold.

The chill that bit at Annika's skin was a hundred times sharper than it had been only minutes ago. But had it been mere minutes? The stiffness in her back and the grinding ache of hunger in her stomach suggested otherwise. When she opened her eyes and blinked away the last blurry remnants of sleep, the dull light of morning settled it: hours, not minutes, had passed. Hours since she'd left Cheydinhal as the sun dipped below the mountains, since she'd reached Dragonclaw Rock in the dead of the night, since she'd been stopped by those Imperial soldiers on the road heading north. The left side of her face throbbed, a memory of an armored fist, of the blow that must have knocked her out.

A horse whinnied to her left, and all at once, she became aware of her surroundings. The horse, guided by an Imperial legionnaire gripping reins in gloved hands, pulled a wooden cart over a bumpy road. Two men sat across from her, and one next to her, each avoiding the eyes of the others. When she looked skyward, a wall of trees rose up before her. But these weren't the lush and leafy trees of Cyrodiil; these were the wild and snow-dusted evergreens of Skyrim.

Home.

The warm flash of joy that sparked inside of her at the revelation died with another: her wrists were bound.

"Hey, you. You're finally awake."

Annika jumped when the man's voice broke the rhythmic clicking of hooves against stone, and looked up from the thick rope scratching her wrists to see that he was bound just as tightly as she was.

"You were trying to cross the border, right?"

She hesitated before nodding, uncomfortable to suddenly be under the scrutiny of a strange man. His face was open and kind, and framed by the thick blonde hair that was the mark of a Nord, but she had lived long enough to know not to trust anyone who hadn't earned it.

"Walked right into an Imperial ambush, I bet," he said. "Same as us... and that thief over there."

The man he nodded to scowled at him before turning to Annika, making her shrink back on instinct. "You and me, we shouldn't be here!" he cried, as though she were to blame for their plight. "It's these Stormcloaks the Empire wants!"

The blonde man heaved a weary sigh. "We're all brothers and sisters in binds now."

On the road ahead, another carriage housed another handful of prisoners. Annika's brothers and sisters in binds. Maybe guilty. Maybe innocent. It didn't seem as though the Empire cared any longer... if it ever had to begin with.

She turned back to the passengers in her own carriage, and followed the thief's angry eyes to the man who was seated next to her. His back was to her as he watched the road disappear in the distance behind the carriage, and all she could see of him was hair as flaxen and wavy as her own, mingling with a heavy fur cloak that glistened with recent snow. He had been so quiet that she'd forgotten he was there, and as he turned towards her, as though he felt her gaze on him, she saw why: he was not only bound, but gagged as well. A dingy cloth hid the lower half of his face, but the defeat in his eyes was painfully clear.

The thief shrugged towards the gagged man. "What's wrong with him?"

"Watch your tongue!" the other man snapped. "You're speaking to Ulfric Stormcloak, the true High King of Skyrim!"

Annika could not be sure if it was the carriage jostling her about, or if it was the brute force of her heart pounding in her chest, but all of a sudden, the entire world seemed to shift beneath her. Ulfric Stormcloak, close enough to reach out and touch, if her hands had been free to do so.

Of course she hadn't recognized him—she'd only seen him at close distance once in her life, and that had been two decades ago, when she was but a child. Those years seemed to melt away now, as if she'd come in from the cold to stand before a blazing hearth. Behind his dismal eyes, she saw the fire and valor he had looked at her with so long ago. Through that gag, she could imagine the confident smile he'd boasted in his early days as a Jarl. Oh, yes, it was him. It was Ulfric Stormcloak.

"Jarl Ulfric," the thief gasped. "But if they've captured you..." His words trailed off and his eyes went wide with fear as he came to a catastrophic conclusion.

Annika reached it at the same moment. Imperial soldiers carting a bound and gagged Ulfric Stormcloak to destinations unknown could only mean one thing: the war was over, and the cost of the Empire's victory would be the rebellion's blood.

The thief whimpered denials of his fate, the terror in his voice striking a deep chord within Annika. But right alongside the fear of her own death was the fury and heartbreak of coming all this way to join the fight, and being forced to watch Ulfric Stormcloak fall before she could. The terrible injustice of it settled upon her so heavily that she worried her resolve would crumble under the weight of it, and that she would die with tears frozen on her face.

Annika paid no mind to the continued discord between the men across from her, but she could not help but feel a twinge in her heart when the blonde proposed that a Nord's last thought should be of home. Hers would be—at least she had that to cling to. Now that she was back in Skyrim, breathing that crisp air, feeling the golden warmth of the sun on her face as it broke through the clouds, she knew without a doubt that this was her home, no matter how many years she'd been away. How long had she believed that she'd had no home, that there was nowhere in all of Tamriel that she belonged? But she'd been wrong. She knew that now. She was a daughter of Skyrim, and it would always be her home. As her eyes roamed over the snow-capped mountains and the towering evergreens, she thanked the gods that she was able to see it once more before being sent to Sovngarde.

As the cart rolled closer to the stone walls of an unfamiliar village, a soldier rushed out to greet the head of the convoy, a grisled legionnaire in ornate Imperial armor sitting high atop a horse.

"General Tullius, sir," the soldier called out. "The headsman is waiting!"

"Good," the general muttered, leading his horse through the gates. He turned to glance at the passengers of the carriages with narrowed eyes, staring directly at Ulfric for a long moment. "Let's get this over with."

As the carriage crossed the threshold of the village, the thief began to pray to the divines.

Within minutes of the convoy's arrival in what the blonde man called Helgen, villagers were clustered together on the side of the road, flushed out of their homes by the scandal of prisoners being carted through their little town. Annika could almost feel their eyes piercing her skin, judging her for crimes unknown, eagerly anticipating the moment of her execution with perverse excitement.

The carriage slowed as it turned into the town square and rolled past the headsman standing in the corner of the snowy stone courtyard, his axe polished and gleaming in the sunlight.

An Imperial soldier appeared at the back of the carriage a moment after it stopped, and motioned for its passengers to disembark. Ulfric stepped down without hesitation, and Annika followed in his wake, far braver than she likely would have been had he not been there beside her. The thief, however, seemed to be rooted to the rough wooden plank of his seat, until the blonde man kicked his boot.

"Shouldn't keep the gods waiting for us," he muttered with the utter calm of a man who had accepted his fate.

The thief began to panic when the legionnaire pulled him forcibly from the cart, insisting that he wasn't a rebel, that they were making a mistake. But his pleas fell on deaf ears, giving Annika little reason to believe that begging for her own life would achieve anything.

She pressed her lips together and looked forward to the Imperial captain that stood before them all, commanding respect with her firm posture, and fear with her heartless eyes.

"Step towards the block when we call your name," she ordered, shooting hard looks at each of the prisoners in turn as the soldier beside her held up a length of fine parchment.

"Ulfric Stormcloak," the soldier announced, "Jarl of Windhelm!"

A collective gasp rose up from the villagers on the fringes of the town square as they realized the scope of the drama that was about to unfold before their very eyes. They turned to whisper into one another's ears, gawking and pointing at the leader of the rebellion, now at the mercy of the Empire he despised. A few appeared devastated, but the majority looked just as bloodthirsty as the Imperial captain did.

Ulfric stepped forward, his head still bowed, his fur cloak flaring out behind him in a sudden cold wind.

The blonde man from their carriage drew his shoulders back and held his head high, the best salute he could manage without hands.

Annika could only watch in stunned silence as Ulfric walked away from her, each step hammering a rusted nail into her heart. Beyond him, the headsman stood ready and waiting, stroking his axe with sickening glee. Panic began to rise up within her, turning her stomach and burning her throat, as she envisioned that mess of blonde hair being severed from that shaggy fur cloak, of Ulfric's blood coloring the snow beneath her feet. She slammed her eyes shut and prayed to the gods to take her first, so that she may escape the torture of witnessing the death of her hero.

"Ralof, of Riverwood," the Imperial soldier called out next.

The blonde man left her side and followed Ulfric to the center of the town square.

"Lokir, of Rorikstead!"

Once again, the thief refused to move, denying that he had anything to do with the rebellion, prompting the solder to grab him by the arm and pull him forward. They struggled until the thief managed to break free, and, without a moment's hesitation, ran for the road whence they had come.

Before Annika could even blink, a volley of arrows flew through the air and sunk into the thief's back, knocking him to the ground, where he lay still and silent, one arm still outstretched to the freedom he would never reach.

The captain turned back to the remaining prisoners, her face red with rage and her nostrils flaring. "Anyone else feel like running?"

Silence fell across prisoners and spectators alike as the weight of her words hit them all: their lives were in the Empire's hands, and they were powerless against it.

"You, there."

Annika's attention snapped back to the soldier, and she realized with dread that his eyes had locked onto hers.

"Step forward," he ordered.

She took a deep breath and willed her heart to calm down, but it seemed determined to make the most of its final minutes, and went on drumming its violent beat. She forced her feet to move, lest she, too, be struck down by an arrow. No, she would face her death with courage and honor. No one here would remember her once she was gone, but she wanted the gods to know that she did not die a coward.

The Imperial looked her up and down, one eyebrow raised in confusion. "Who are you?"

She had to swallow through the lump in her throat before she could answer. "Annika, of Kynesgrove."

Long wisps of his chestnut hair fell into his eyes as he studied the parchment in his hand. "Captain, what should we do? She's not on the list."

"Forget the list," the captain barked back, not even bothering to spare Annika a glance. "She goes to the block."

"By your orders, Captain." He turned back to Annika with a sigh. "I'm sorry," he said, his face drawn with honest regret—though not enough, it seemed, to question the execution of one who might be innocent. "Follow the captain, prisoner."

Once again, Annika had to fight to get her legs to work. They carried her to the center of the town square, threatening every moment to give out on her, but miraculously holding strong.

If the villagers' eyes had pricked her before, they burned right through her as she took her place among the other prisoners standing before the headsman. She had attended only one public execution in her life, when she was fourteen, and she had been sickened by it, and haunted by nightmares of it for months afterwards. She couldn't imagine how the people of Helgen could seem so thrilled by the promise of death—of murder—occurring right in front of them. To escape their harsh stares, she turned her focus to Ulfric, the one calm port in this storm.

What she could see of his face reddened as General Tullius approached him, the bronze embellishments on his Imperial cuirass gleaming in the sun.

"Ulfric Stormcloak," he boomed, speaking not just to the man he addressed, but to everyone present. "Some here in Helgen call you a hero, but a hero doesn't use a power like the Voice to murder his king and usurp his throne!"

Ulfric growled through his gag, the only rebuttal he would be allowed to give.

"You started this war," General Tullius charged, pointing a finger at Ulfric. "Plunged Skyrim into chaos! And now the Empire is going to put you down, and restore the peace!"

His words were punctuated by a rumble in the distance, not quite thunder, not quite the roar of a beast, but somehow both.

"What was that?"

"Nothing," the general dismissed with a wave of his hand. "Carry on."

"Yes, General Tullius!" the captain replied, sounding, for the first time since their arrival in Helgen, pleased to be there. "Give them their last rights!"

A priestess in golden robes lifted her hands into the air, an offering to the gods, and began to intone the blessings of the Eight Divines. At the affront to Talos, one of the prisoners stepped forward and spat on the ground before her. The crowd gasped, but the priestess did not seem bothered; she only bowed away at the prisoner's insistence that the execution commence.

He took his place before the block, sneering at the headsman who seemed confused by such willing prey. The Imperial captain jumped to action, lowering the prisoner to his knees before kicking him down onto the block like a dog, determined to strip him of his dignity before stripping him of his life.

In a flash, the headsman's blade sliced through the air and into the prisoner's neck. Annika jumped back and clamped her eyes shut, but it was too late: the red ribbon of his blood was already burned into her memory, for however little time her memory had left.

Cries rose up from the crowd around them, some cheers, some curses; some hailing the Empire, some bold enough to shout their support for the Stormcloaks.

"Next!" the captain shouted over the din. "The Nord in rags!"

There was no question that she meant Annika. She was the only Nord in rags left now that the thief lay dead with an arrow in his back.

Her entire body began to tremble with the sort of chill she had never before known with her hardy Nord blood, and she could not breathe no matter how hard she tried. All eyes were upon her, even Ulfric's—and as their gazes met, as surely as though the priestess had cast a calming spell on her, Annika stopped shaking, and the weight that seemed to crush her lungs was lifted. The gods had answered her prayers: she would not be made to watch Ulfric die.

Once again, the sound that was neither thunder nor beast rippled through the clouds. Everyone turned their faces to the sky, save Annika. She had seen enough of the sky throughout her lifetime. She wanted Ulfric Stormcloak to be the last thing she saw before she left this world.

"There it is again," the soldier mused. "Did you hear that?"

"I said, next prisoner!"

Annika's gaze remained on Ulfric as she approached the block, and when his gag twitched across his lips, she wondered what he was trying to say to her, and if, in whatever life would come after this one, she would ever find out.

She did not close her eyes until her cheek touched the cold, wet block.

"To Sovngarde," Annika whispered to herself, not quite blotting out the sharp scratch of metal against stone as the headsman lifted his axe.

She waited for it to come down, waited so long that she wondered if she was already dead, already outside of the realm of Imperial soldiers and Stormcloak rebels and bloodthirsty villagers. But then another thunderous roar tore through the air, the ground shook beneath her, and screams erupted from every direction.

Annika's eyes snapped open to meet those of a massive winged beast perched atop a stone tower, haloed by swirling storm clouds that flung fire down at the world. The glowing red coals that were his eyes stared at her, studied her, bored into her, and when its mouth opened, for a single moment of madness, she thought it was speaking to her.

"FUS... RO DAH!"

She was blown over with the force of a hurricane, the sky spinning above her and below her, and then the world was dark once more.

* * * * *

She could not see anything but smoke. She could not hear anything but ringing in her left ear, and muffled screams in her right. But she could feel everything—the ground quaking beneath her crumpled body, tiny embers landing on her face, strong hands closing around her arms and lifting her to her feet.

No sooner had Annika left the ground than a blazing ball of fire struck the very place she had lain. The explosion rocked her back into a wall of a man, and she felt the soft caress of fur against her cheek. She blinked rapidly, her eyes stinging with the acrid smoke that blurred her vision, and slowly, the face of her savior emerged from the fog: Ulfric.

His lips moved as he spoke to her, free of the gag, but his words were nothing more than dampened noise to her ears, so far away that he might have been calling out to her from Oblivion.

She shook her head, desperate to slough off her disorientation, and coughed long and hard when she breathed in a fresh gust of smoke and ash. Finally, the cotton in her head began to thin, and a single, terrified scream reached her ears above all the others.

"Dragon!"

But that was impossible. Like most Nords, she had grown up listening to the fables and legends of dragons, the stories of the ancient warriors who had slain the beasts and ended their tyrannical reign over the world—but that's all they were, stories. She searched the skies for it and found it easily, a dark silhouette against the inexplicable storm, its leathery wings, as black as deepest night, outstretched as it circled back towards the village, fire shooting from its mouth. She'd never seen anything like it in all of her travels... but could it truly be a dragon?

"Come with me," Ulfric shouted, the first of his words that Annika could hear, as he tugged her toward the stone tower across the courtyard. She followed close behind him, clinging with bound hands to the man who had saved her life in more ways than one.

She had scarcely wondered what had happened to his gag and binds when she spotted a villager slicing through the rope around Ralof's wrists with a dagger. He caught up to Annika and Ulfric in moments, and the three of them stumbled into the tower as another ball of fire rocketed down from the sky and burst against the stone behind them.

"By the Nine," Ralof gasped, "what is that thing? Could the legends be true?"

Ulfric's brows drew together in apprehension, and he hesitated for a long moment before replying. "Legends don't burn down villages."

Another blast of fire rattled the very walls of the tower, and cries of pain and anguish reached in through its door and windows. The vast shadow of the beast covered the ground outside and darkened the room within. When it lifted, Ulfric peered through a window, his eyes following the beast's flight.

"We need to move, now!" He waved for Annika and Ralof to follow him out of the tower. "Head south for the village walls!"

They hastened down the road amongst panicked clusters of villagers, rebels, and legionnaires alike, all fleeing the same threat. Annika tripped over a body on the ground—the thief from her carriage—and that moment of stumbling was enough for her to lose Ulfric and Ralof in the fray.

And then the beast was circling back towards them, a torrent of flames spilling over the village on the crest of its roar. Knowing she could not outrun it, Annika ducked into what was left of the inn, raising her arms to cover her face as the heat of the fire poured in after her. She could barely see past the swirls of black smoke that rose up from the blazing wooden beams of the floor, and she held her breath as she ran through it, dodging fallen chairs and pools of spilled mead waiting to catch, finally leaping through a hole that had been ripped into the wall at the far end of the inn.

Outside, chaos reigned as balls of flame continued to fall from the sky like shooting stars, setting homes alight and sending men, women, and children running for their lives. Even as Annika watched, an Imperial soldier was struck down and writhed in the dirt as the fire consumed him. She wished no one dead, but she could not help but be thankful for this devastation, for though it was taking the lives of so many, it was precisely what had spared hers.

Charred wood and chunks of masonry blocked the main road, but with a quick glance around, Annika found a narrow alley between a house and a battlement. Just as she reached it, a legionnaire ran into the passage from the other side, waving and shouting at her to get back, but he need not have bothered: she'd already seen the shadow of the descending beast. It landed heavily atop the wall, sending a shower of pebbles and dirt onto her head. It was so close that Annika could see each scale on its toes and each crease in its wing, so close she could smell the pungent scent of death rising up from its skin.

The legionnaire pulled her against the wall as the beast snarled above them.

"Still alive, prisoner?" he shouted over the din. "Keep close to me if you want to stay that way!"

It was then that she recognized him: the man who had called out the names of those condemned to die at the Empire's hands, who had apologized to her for her fate.

"You sent me to the block to be executed only minutes ago," she yelled back at him. "Why should I trust you now?"

"Because I'm the only hope you've got!"

But that wasn't true. She had Ulfric. And Ralof. And her own strength of body and mind—she had not survived skooma-starved Khajiits in Elsweyr and vicious Alik'r mercenaries in Hammerfell by being helpless, after all. And dragon or not, she was still a prisoner—had the soldier not said as much himself? Would following him now put her head back on the block later? Maybe so. Maybe not. But if she had to choose between being executed by the Empire and being killed by a dragon, she would happily take the dragon. It would, at least, be a courageous death, and she would become a part of the legend.

Her decision made, Annika pulled away from the legionnaire and ducked beneath the beast's wing, its sharp talon narrowly missing her face as it reared back for another assault.

"YOL... TOOR SHUL!"

This time, she was certain: it was speaking. A language she didn't recognize, but a language all the same. Those were not just roars or growls; those were words, and the moment they died on its tongue, another stream of fire shot forth, catching two Imperial archers who had dared to aim for its snout.

Annika ran under its chin, choking on the lack of air and closing her eyes against the blinding light of the flames. Behind her, the legionnaire called out for her to stop, to come back, but she pushed on. She dove to the ground and crawled beneath the torrent of fire until she could slip into the side of the ruined house, its splintered wall providing little respite against the searing heat. She gave herself three seconds to catch her breath before lunging forward and running as fast as her shaky legs would carry her, never looking back, sure that the beast would see her, or smell or, or pick her up in its powerful claws and fly off with her.

But, by some blessing of the Divines, it didn't.

She made for a stone archway that led to the round tower of a keep, ducking beneath a barrage of arrows being sent skyward and dodging burning embers that rained down from above. When she emerged on the other side of the battlement, she spotted Ralof across the courtyard. Her heart leapt as he rushed toward her, but fell when she saw that Ulfric was not with him.

"Ralof," a voice shouted a distance behind her—the legionnaire. "You damned traitor!"

"There are bigger things to worry about now, Hadvar," Ralof shot back, reaching out to Annika when they met in the middle of the courtyard. "We need to get out of here! Come with us!"

"I will never ally with rebels," the soldier snapped, glaring at Annika as he rounded the pair of them, as though his captain's suspicions of her guilt had been proven true. "I hope that dragon takes you all to Sovngarde!"

Ralof shook his head in disappointment. "Better the dragon than you."

The soldier's eyes went wide and terrified. Annika and Ralof turned to follow his gaze and saw the beast hurtling towards them, wings aloft and feet stretched out to perch on the nearby village wall.

It was looking at her again, at her—but such a thing was absurd. She was nothing. She was nobody. Why in Oblivion would a dragon be bothered with the likes of her? And yet... had it not been stalking her through this village? Everywhere she turned, there it was, unleashing its fury in a path that led straight to her.

No, it was just a coincidence. It had to be.

The legionnaire fled to save himself, but Ralof swung an arm around Annika's shoulder.

"Come on," he shouted, turning her towards the stone tower behind them, "into the keep!"

She was once again drowning in unbearable heat, in that stench of bitter smoke and burning flesh, but she pushed towards the wooden door of the keep, praying to every last Divine that it would not be locked, and nearly collapsing in relief when it flung open at her touch.

They flew inside, and Ralof slammed the door closed behind them, muffling the roar of the fire and the screams of those caught in it.

* * * * *

Annika followed Ralof's lead and leaned against a wall to rest and catch her breath. Anger welled up inside of her at the sight of Imperial flags hanging from the ceiling, fluttering in a draft that had blown in on their heels, and she had the sudden urge to pull them down and tear them into pieces.

"Are you all right?" Ralof asked.

The truth was, she didn't know. She lifted her hands to her face, fearing what she would find, but although her skin felt tender in places and her right cheek was sticky with a dead man's blood, she did not seem to be burned or wounded. Her head ached from hitting the stone courtyard when the beast had first appeared, and several of her long blonde waves were singed at the ends, but no bones had been broken, and no blood had been lost.

"Yes," she answered, nodding. "And you?"

Ralof shrugged. "I'm alive, which is more than most can say today."

"And what of Jarl Ulfric?"

He shook his head, and Annika's heart pounded out a terrified beat.

"I don't know," he said with a sigh. "We were separated when that... that thing tried to land right on top of us. It was a dragon, no doubt. Just like the legends foretold. The harbingers of the end times."

"But dragons are supposed to be just that," Annika replied, "legends. Do you truly believe they're real?"

But Ralof was no longer paying her any attention. He pushed off from the wall and rushed across the circular room to kneel down before a body Annika had not noticed before.

"Gunjar?" Ralof shook the man, shouting his name into his ear two, three, four times more, but to no avail. He heaved a sigh as he slid the man's eyes closed with gentle hands. "We'll meet again in Sovngarde, brother."

Annika approached slowly, feeling that she was intruding on Ralof's grief just by being there. "He was your brother?"

"In binds," he replied, echoing his earlier words. "He was a Stormcloak, a true son of Skyrim. He fought bravely, and I'm sure he died that way." He stood up and turned back to Annika. "Come here, let me see if I can get those bindings off."

She held her arms out to him, and within a minute, he had the knot in the rope undone.

"There you go."

"Thank you."

"You may as well take Gunjar's gear—he won't be needing it anymore."

That may have been true, but the idea of stealing clothes from a dead man was a grim one. Her fear for her life, however, outweighed her respect for Gunjar's death, and even the dullest blade would find her heart through her own worn furs. They served well for hunting or traveling, but she would need something tougher if she was going to survive this day.

"Arkay forgive me," she murmured, kneeling at Gunjar's side.

Ralof joined her, and helped her to unbuckle and slide off the dead man's armor.

He turned away to allow Annika to dress. The chainmail was heavier than anything she'd worn before, and it hung on her like a dress; Gunjar's shoulders were considerably broader than her own. Once she added the leather tunic, she felt like a child in her father's armor, almost small enough to disappear in it. But when she draped the blue wrap across her chest, she swelled up with pride for bearing Stormcloak colors.

Behind her, Ralof rattled a barred door. "Locked. Maybe that gate—Imperials!"

Annika's head snapped up at Ralof's warning, and she saw them not far beyond the gate: a pair of Imperials rushing down a corridor and towards the central room of the keep, swords drawn and ready to be dipped in Stormcloak blood. They quickly raised the barrier and burst into the room.

Gunjar's iron axe felt clumsy and wrong in hands that were used to holding bows, but it was all she had to defend herself with, and when the first legionnaire lunged towards her, she swung the axe with all her might. It connected with thick steel armor, but the legionnaire staggered back, her eyes flaring with familiar rage—it was the captain who'd overseen the execution, and shrugged Annika's death off with cold indifference. With new anger, Annika raised the axe again and brought it down on the captain's helmet, sending her to the ground in a daze. A third swing hit the exposed line of her neck, and blood spouted from it like water from a spring.

It was not the first person she had killed—a woman traveling alone across Tamriel is bound to run into trouble—but it was, without question, the most brutal and violent death that had ever been dealt by her hands. She trembled as she stared down at the bloody captain with wide, haunted eyes, barely registering the other legionnaire hitting the ground beside her, Ralof's stolen sword deep in his stomach.

"You're wounded."

Ralof bent to inspect a slash across Annika's left arm. She hadn't even felt the captain's blade touch her. Now that she knew it had, pain flared up around the wound, and she winced as Ralof's fingers eased it apart so he could gauge the severity of it.

"Just a scratch. Nothing compared to what you did to that captain," he added with a smile.

"I don't like that axe," Annika replied. "I need a bow."

"An archer, are you? We'll have to find you one, then."

As Ralof rifled through the fallen soldiers' tunics, Annika raised her right hand over her wound and closed her eyes. A wonderful warmth emanated from her palm and enveloped her injured arm, knitting her skin back together with invisible threads and dampening the pain into a dull throb. When she opened her eyes once more, there was nothing left of the laceration but a soft pink line that would diminish with time.

"You can heal?"

Ralof was looking up at her with astonishment, and she wasn't sure if she should feel proud or ashamed. Most Nords looked down on magic, but most Nords didn't have to watch someone they loved bleed to death in their arms, knowing they were powerless to stop it. She would never let that happen again.

"I know a few spells," she told him, and though she tried not to sound defensive, she was unable to keep the edge from her voice.

But when Ralof's lips turned up into a smile, she relaxed.

"Never cared much for magic myself," he said, "but you won't hear me complaining when a priestess is using it to patch me up after a battle. Ah, found a key!" He withdrew his hand from the captain's armor and tossed Annika the key, a small bit of rusted silver. "See if it opens that door. I'd rather not have to go the other way—who knows how many more Imperials are down there."

Annika thanked the gods when the key turned easily in the lock. After pocketing a dagger and a few septims he'd lifted from the soldier, Ralof followed her through the door.

"Your name is Annika, right?"

"Yes," she answered. "And you're Ralof?"

"I am." He held out a hand. "Pleased to meet you."

Before she could stop it, a laugh bubbled out of her. The only reason she and Ralof stood before each other now was that they had just narrowly escaped having their heads lopped off by the Empire, and being roasted alive by a dragon—and he was pleased about it? The idea was absurd, but she was thankful that he'd said it. After the horror they had just been through, it felt good to laugh.

Ralof returned her smile, and for the first time, she truly looked at him. He was young; close to her thirty-one years, but not quite there. He had the height and brawn of most Nord men, but there was an air of innocence about him that Annika envied. He looked, she was startled to realize, like a friend. Though it had been less than an hour since she'd woken up on that cart surrounded by strangers, it seemed that a lifetime had happened between then and now, and Ralof had done enough to earn her trust.

Annika slipped her hand into his for a shake. "The pleasure is all mine."

"Come on, let's get out of here before the dragon brings the whole tower down on our heads."

But whether the dragon's ire was drawn away from the keep or it was taken down by whatever forces remained fighting in Helgen proper, it gave them no further trouble as they rushed through the dark and damp inner corridors of the keep. Past an abandoned mess hall and a torture chamber that made Annika's blood run cold, they came to a hole blown through a wall, revealing a tunnel forged of packed dirt beyond. She didn't savor the idea of burrowing any deeper into the earth, but there was nowhere else to go. Halfway through the tunnel, a familiar sound reached her ears: Imperial voices. Ralof charged ahead, ready for another battle, but Annika, hefting Gunar's axe with a tired wrist, dreaded what they were about to walk into.

It was a cavern, wide and yawning and harboring another cluster of Imperials. The legionnaires rushed forward the moment they spotted them, the prisoners, the rebels, the Stormcloaks who were to be struck down at all costs. Ralof took on two by himself, but Annika was rooted to the ground with fear—until an arrow whipped past her head.

Across the cavern, a legionnaire was loading another arrow into his bow, but by the time he let it fly, Annika was moving too fast for it to hit its mark. She darted past Ralof and the two soldiers he fought, across a mossy stone bridge, and straight towards the archer. He shot a third arrow at her, but she lifted her axe just in time to deflect it. And then the axe was swinging through the air in a wide arc, connecting with the archer's shoulder and making him drop his bow as he howled in pain. Annika released the axe, still lodged in the man's arm, and seized up the bow. In a single fluid motion, she tugged the arrow he had meant to kill her with from his hand and shot it into his left eye.

As the legionnaire crumpled to the ground, Annika heard footsteps running up behind her. She pulled an arrow from the quiver on the dead man's back and whirled around, ready to fire at her new assailant. But it was only Ralof, the bodies of his foes lying broken and bloody behind him.

"Ysmir's beard," Ralof breathed, his eyes wide and trained on the arrow that pointed at his chest. "You are an archer—and a damned good one at that!"

Annika lowered the bow, and got to work removing the sheath from the legionnaire's back.

"I have to be," she replied with a shrug. "There have been many seasons where I didn't eat unless I shot my meal myself. There's no better tool to hone a marksman's skill than hunger." Slinging the quiver over her shoulders, she felt, for the first time that day, like herself. "All right, let's keep going."

"And pray to the gods we don't run into any more trouble," Ralof added.

But they didn't. The caves were dark and eerie, one lit only by glowing mushrooms growing in patches on the wall, another dripping with webs that harbored frostbite spiders, easy prey for Annika's arrows. But the last of the Imperials were, thankfully, behind them.

When they finally emerged into fresh air and sunlight, blinking in the sudden brightness, a roar overhead sent a new wave of panic rushing through Annika's body. She ducked behind a rock, Ralof quickly following suit, and they watched the dragon soar through the sky, heading north, away from Helgen. Away from them.

They waited until the dragon had disappeared over the horizon before they stood up.

"Looks like he's gone for good this time," Ralof said, though not without a hint of worry in his voice. "We'd better clear out of here; this place is going to be swarming with Imperials soon enough. Where are you headed?" he asked. "You said you were from Kynesgrove, right?"

"Yes," she replied after a moment's hesitation, "but it hasn't been home for a very long time."

"Why not come with me to Riverwood?" he suggested. "My sister runs the mill there. I'm sure she won't mind giving us something to eat and a place to rest for a little while."

Annika returned Ralof's smile, deeply touched by his generosity. She had a bow and arrows with which to hunt and could have killed a rabbit to sate her hunger, but the comfort and pleasure of sharing a meal with the only friend she had was far more valuable than the meal itself.

"Yes," she told Ralof. "That would be wonderful."

He beamed at her. "That's great! Let's go, then—but keep your eyes peeled for Imperials!"

As they started down the dirt road that would lead them to Riverwood, the heavy weight of fear and uncertainty that had been dragging her down was lifted off of her chest. A day that had begun with such utter hopelessness was now full of promise, and for the first time since she awoke to find herself being carted towards her doom, Annika felt certain that she would be alive to see the sun rise tomorrow.

* * * * *

If it weren't for the towering mountain blotting out the sky to Riverwood's east, Annika might have thought she was walking into Kynesgrove. The vibrant evergreens, the thatched-roof cottages, the mist that had settled over the quiet village... it all reminded her so much of her home, of her past, that tears welled up in her eyes.

The people of Riverwood moved with slow and relaxed gaits, a jarring change from watching Helgen's frantic villagers flee a dragon's fire. Men were smiling, women were laughing, children were playing with a rowdy dog. It seemed impossible that peace could still exist in Skyrim after what had just happened, but here was proof that it did.

"Looks like nobody here knows what happened yet," Ralof murmured, leading Annika over a wooden bridge and the lazy stream that trickled beneath it. "Oh, there's my sister! Gerdur!"

A blonde woman carrying an armful of chopped lumber around the side of the mill whirled about at Ralof's voice, and her face lit up. She dropped the wood and rushed over to take him in her arms.

"Brother!" she exclaimed. "Mara's mercy, are you all right? Are you hurt?"

"I'm fine," Ralof said, swatting her hands away as they checked his face for cuts and bruises, but smiling at her fussing all the same. "Gerdur, I'm fine!"

"But we heard that Jarl Ulfric had been captured!"

"Keep it down," he hissed at her. "I'll tell you everything, but not here."

He nodded over his shoulder at the other mill workers, a couple of strong Nords and a wiry Bosmer, all busy chopping wood, but close enough to overhear their conversation between the hammering of axes.

"Let's go to the house," she suggested. "We can talk freely there, and you two can have something to eat—you look like you could use it."

As if on cue, Annika's stomach gave a great groan. Gerdur didn't even know her name yet, and here she was, offering her food. It seemed that this family was blessed with the merciful soul of Stendarr himself.

Ralof made the proper introductions on their way to Gerdur's home, a quaint cottage on the edge of the village. A hefty brown cow grazed on the front lawn, and two chickens stared up at the trio with interest as they crossed the threshold into the house. Ralof and Annika collapsed into chairs, and Gerdur urged her brother to talk while she gathered food and drink for her guests.

He told the tale of the ambush at Darkwater Crossing two days earlier, the long wait at the border while General Tullius contemplated their fate, and the journey to Helgen, where the headsman's axe was waiting. Gerdur thought him jesting when he revealed that a dragon had saved their lives; it was their dark and haunted eyes that finally convinced her of the truth. She paled when Annika told of the screams, the chaos, the carnage left in the wake of the beast's fire.

"By the Nine," Gerdur breathed when their story reached its end. "A dragon." After setting a platter on the table between Annika and Ralof, she drifted back to the kitchen, shaking her head, trying to come to terms with the nightmare Annika already wished she could forget.

A heavy silence fell as they ate, ravenous and desperate for food. The cheese was soft and spongy and possibly the most delicious thing Annika had ever tasted—until she bit into one of the apples, its juice running over her tongue like ambrosia. She wasn't meant to be alive to eat this meal, and knowing that made it all taste even sweeter.

"Thank you so much for the meal," she said between bites of crusty bread, feeling guilty, suddenly, for glutting herself like a barbarian. "I appreciate it more than you know. Is there anything I can to do repay your kindness?"

Gerdur thought for a long, quiet moment. "Actually, there is," she finally said. "If that dragon attacks Riverwood, we won't have a chance of surviving without walls or guards. We must get word to Whiterun, and ask Jarl Balgruuf to send soldiers to defend the village. Will you do this for us?"

"Of course," Annika answered without hesitation. "I'll leave right away."

Ralof jumped up from the table, startling the women. "I'll go with you!"

Gerdur rolled her eyes and smirked at her brother. "I should have known. You'll use any excuse to see Ysolda."

Ralof's face turned redder than Annika would've thought possible for a man, and his eyes skipped around the room as if unsure of where to land. She knew that look; it had been awhile since she'd last seen it, but it was the same as ever. Excitement, shyness, and turmoil all fused together to make a man drunk on love.

"Finish eating before you run off to Whiterun," Gerdur insisted with a chuckle, "and take an apple or two for the road, as well."

"Thank you, sister."

"I've got to get back to the mill before I'm missed. Make sure you say goodbye before you leave, you hear me?"

Once Gerdur was gone, Annika popped another wedge of cheese into her mouth, watching Ralof with a bemused smile. She wanted to ask about Ysolda, but his face still burned and he seemed to be avoiding her eyes. He began to ramble about Riverwood and the peaceful life he'd lived there, working the mill with his sister and her husband, before the war started ripping families apart.

A face drifted up out of her memory, a firm voice charging Ralof, of Riverwood to step forward. "That legionnaire, in Helgen, who called you a traitor. Did you know him?"

Ralof smiled, but it was full of sorrow. "He's my best friend."

Annika suddenly wished she had asked about Ysolda after all. "He sure didn't sound like a best friend," she replied, keeping her words as gentle as possible.

"We haven't exactly seen eye to eye since the war began. Hadvar joined the Legion as soon as he came of age; it's something of a tradition in his family."

"His father is a legionnaire as well?"

"He was." Ralof picked at the last of his bread, all trace of cheer gone from his face. "Henrik was killed when the Empire first attempted to take Fort Greenwall, in the Rift. All Hadvar could see was his father's blood on Stormcloak hands, but I saw more. Henrik died defending the Empire and their ban on a god he once prayed to! He died protecting the Thalmor's right to execute his own son should they discover that he still secretly worshipped Talos! And how many other Nords had already died for the same reasons? How many would continue to die for an Empire that had betrayed them? The injustice of it all infuriated me," he growled, shaking with the very anger he spoke of. "That's why I decided to join the rebellion. And that's why Hadvar called me a traitor—I'm in league with the people who killed his father."

Annika stared down into her flagon, speechless. It was one thing to be told of the war by those who weren't affected by it, but another thing entirely to speak to someone in the thick of it, to hear the pain in his voice and see the misery in his eyes. It made it all that much more real.

When she looked up again, she found Ralof watching her.

"You should come to Windhelm with me," he said. "Join the rebellion. You've seen the true face of the Empire today; you know better than most, now, why Skyrim needs to be liberated from it."

Despite the gravity of his words, Annika couldn't help but smile. "That's what I came back to Skyrim to do, actually," she told him. "That's why I was arrested at the border."

"What? You didn't tell the Imperials that you meant to join the Stormcloaks, did you?" he asked, his eyes widening.

Annika shifted in her seat. "Not exactly."

"What did you tell them?"

She took a sip of her water, and a deep breath. "They asked what business I had in Skyrim," she began, "and I told them the truth: that I was returning home after several years abroad. The captain warned me that I was safer in Cyrodiil, that Skyrim was a dangerous place now thanks to 'that murderer Ulfric Stormcloak and his army of savages.' It would have been smarter to hold my tongue, I know, but... I couldn't stop myself from charging back that Ulfric wasn't a murderer, but a hero." She said it with the same zeal and confidence as she had the night before, even though Ralof needed no convincing. "Needless to say, the captain didn't appreciate that. He threatened to arrest me if I didn't swear allegiance to the Empire right then and there... but I refused."

"Oh, by the Nine," Ralof gasped. "You must have a death wish!"

"They're already dictating which gods I'm allowed to believe in; I wasn't about to give them control over what I thought and said, too. But, to be honest, I didn't expect it to go as far as it did." She shook her head, her brows drawing together in anguish. "This is not the Empire I remember. To arrest a person for nothing more than speaking words they don't agree with—it's madness."

"It's what we've been forced to live with since the day Ulfric challenged Torygg," Ralof growled. "The Empire has become cruel and ruthless, imprisoning and executing people at the slightest hint of defiance. And for what!" He slammed his fist down on the table. "So they can keep licking the boots of those damned elves!" He thrust a piece of bread into his mouth and chewed it with vengeance until he calmed down. "So, what did the captain do?"

"Drew his sword, and ordered his men to disarm me," Annika replied. "One of them threw my bow and arrows into their fire, and another held my arms behind my back. That's when I knew I was in over my head. The captain began shouting at me, cursing me for turning my back on the Empire and supporting treason against a High King. I thought he was going to kill me right then and there... but instead of a sword, he sunk his fist into my stomach."

Ralof nearly choked on his bread. "That bastard! Striking a defenseless woman!"

"They all had a good laugh about it, too."

She heard them cackling in the back of her mind, and felt, as she had the night before, less than human. That is what they had made her into; a thing, a toy, a piece of meat. Something to play with, and laugh at, and throw away once they grew tired of her. And they called the Stormcloaks savages?

"At first, I did nothing," she went on. "I thought fighting back would only make it worse. But after the third blow... something in me snapped. I started struggling against the man who restrained me, and when the captain came forward, I spit at him and kicked him hard in the knee. Then his fist was flying at my face, and the next thing I knew, I was waking up on that carriage."

Ralof shook his head and let out a low whistle. "I guess that explains your black eye."

Annika gingerly touched the bruised skin over her left cheekbone. "I didn't know I had one."

For the first time in days, she took stock of her appearance. A black eye, a wild mess of singed hair, ill-fitting armor splattered with the blood of the legionnaires she had killed. She'd been able to wash the blood and soot off of her face at the river, at least, but she must have been a wretched sight nonetheless.

She began to laugh in spite of herself. "I can't step foot in Dragonsreach looking like this! The guards will think me a beggar and have me tossed out of Whiterun!"

"I'm sure Gerdur won't mind if you use her comb," Ralof suggested, trying to hide a smirk as he ran his eyes over her tangled mane, "Once we get to Windhelm, you'll be given armor that will fit you like a glove—if you still want to join the fight, that is, now that you know that the cost might be your life."

"I've always known that," Annika answered, a hot ferocity in her voice. "If anything, my desire to join is even stronger now."

"That's what I like to hear! You have just the sort of spirit Jarl Ulfric likes to see in his soldiers. Now, come on," he said with a grin, leaping up from the table once more. "We can make it to Windhelm by morning if we leave soon. You'll be a Stormcloak in no time!"

Annika beamed. The idea and the promise of being welcomed into Ulfric's brigade lifted her spirits and renewed her vigor. She downed what was left of her water, pocketed the last piece of bread, and stood up, ready and eager to begin their journey to Whiterun, and more importantly, Windhelm.

* * * * *

Whiterun's heavy gates were closed when Annika and Ralof arrived, an odd sight for a city known for its constant flow of traders and travelers. Two guards leaned back against the wall, shoulders slouched, arms crossed over one another, exuding an unmistakable air of boredom despite being faceless behind full iron masks. They snapped to attention when Annika and Ralof approached, and one stepped out onto the road to block their path.

"Halt!" the guard cried, holding one palm up while his other curled around the hilt of his sword. "City's closed. Official business only."

Annika and Ralof shared a worried look. Cities like Whiterun only closed their doors in matters of extreme danger—and what danger was more extreme than a dragon? This could only mean one thing: Imperials had made it out of Helgen and brought word to the city. There were likely legionnaires within the city walls at that very moment, perhaps searching for any Stormcloak prisoners who had escaped and were seeking refuge. But Gerdur's words echoed in Annika's head—we won't have a chance of surviving without walls or guards—and she knew they couldn't turn back now.

"We bring news from Helgen," she announced, hoping neither Ralof nor the guard heard the tremor in her voice.

"Do you?" The guard studied them for a long, tense moment before relenting. "All right. Go on in and speak with the Jarl."

He nodded to his partner, who swung the gates open and waved Annika and Ralof inside.

The moment they crossed the threshold, a cold chill ran down Annika's back. Her suspicions were right: a man wearing Imperial red stood not twenty paces away, a threat to her freedom, to her very life. She grabbed Ralof's arm and pulled him back, praying they could slip out of Whiterun before the legionnaire saw them, but the gates had already closed behind them.

"It's all right," Ralof said, coaxing her forward with a smile. "That's Idolaf Battle-Born. He isn't actually a legionnaire, just a staunch supporter of the Empire. All the Battle-Borns are, so don't expect a warm reception from any of them."

Sure enough, when the man turned and spotted them, his eyes narrowed.

"Get out of my city, Stormcloaks," he snarled at them.

"Nice to see you, too, Idolaf," Ralof returned as they strode past him.

Still worried, Annika glanced over her shoulder at the man. "What if he turns us in?"

"He won't. The Gray-Manes would have his head if he did something like that. They back the Stormcloaks," he explained, "and they have just as much power as the Battle-Borns do in Whiterun... maybe more, with their ties to the Companions."

Ralof related the history of the feuding clans as they walked through the city, but Annika's attention was elsewhere. Despite his reassurance, she couldn't help but fear the eyes of the people around them, unsure of who was a friend and who was an enemy. Not for the first time in her life, she regretted never learning the art of illusion magic; an invisibility spell would have made this journey much easier, and much safer.

Her worry began to abate once they reached the market, and memories came flooding back to her. She had only been to the city once in her life, the summer she was eleven. After a devastating winter, the summer had yielded exceptionally fruitful crops, and Annika's mother took her two girls to Whiterun to barter with merchants who were rumored to pay well for produce and game from other holds. Annika had made more gold from her meats and furs in one day in Whiterun than she did most weeks back home, and collected just as many compliments for being such a skilled hunter at so young an age.

Now, twenty years later, Whiterun was just as she remembered, though the dry, dusty roads were no longer as foreign and strange as they had been when she'd only known the rich soil of Kynesgrove, and the cold, wet granite of Windhelm. The inn, built of sturdy wood, looked cozy and inviting, and the aromas of fresh fruits and dried spices wafted over from the market stalls to envelop her in the warmth of familiarity. The mingling voices of merchants, citizens, and travelers weaved throughout the square in a soft but cheerful din. There were more people in this one district than in all of Riverwood, yet Whiterun, so enormous in her youth, seemed small now that she had lived a year in the Imperial City.

They weaved through the crowd at the market, Ralof craning his neck to catch a glimpse of each face. Annika wasn't sure if he was looking for Ysolda or for legionnaires, but he seemed to find neither before they continued up to Whiterun's middle tier. Beyond a majestic but wilting tree, a man in monk's robes stood with his hands outstretched to the sky, his voice booming over the empty courtyard that everyone else seemed to be avoiding.

"Rise up, children of the Empire!" He pointed an accusing finger at Annika and Ralof as they passed. "Rise up, Stormcloaks! Embrace the word of mighty Talos, he who is both man and divine!"

Annika's eyes went wide, and Ralof laughed.

"And you were worried about being seen in Stormcloak armor," he joked, bounding up the first of many steps to the palace. "Jarl Balgruuf hasn't sided with either the Empire or the Stormcloaks, so Whiterun is neutral territory."

"I didn't think such a thing as neutral territory existed."

"It does—or at least, it will until the Thalmor succeed at placing justiciars within the city walls. Try preaching about Talos in Solitude or Markarth," he muttered, "and your head will be rolling on the stone before you can blink. It's not nearly as oppressive here in Whiterun or down in Riften, but most people are too afraid to even say Talos's name out loud. Windhelm is the only city left that allows full worship; Jarl Ulfric wouldn't have it any other way in his hold. Here we are!"

Annika had only glimpsed Dragonsreach's pitched roofs from the market as a child, but now, it loomed up before her in all its grandiose beauty, and took her breath away. It was a seamless blend of Skyrim's rustic wilderness and Cyrodiil's cosmopolitan sheen, yet seemed bigger than both. As she turned in a slow circle, taking in the view of the palace, the city below, and the plains beyond, Ralof spoke to the guards flanking Dragonsreach's immense doors, and obtained their permission to enter.

Inside, there was even more to see. The vaulted ceiling seemed to be a mile away, shrouded in a gauzy veil of dust that swirled in the sunlight streaming through windows to the sky. Fine chandeliers hung overhead, but the light of their candles was eclipsed by the great hearth fire that roared in the center of the hall, surrounded by long tables dressed gaily and awaiting the evening's feast. Annika had never imagined that such regality could exist in Skyrim.

"What is the meaning of this interruption!"

Her eyes snapped forward to see a Dunmer approaching them, her brows drawn—as well as her sword.

"Riverwood calls for the Jarl's aid," Ralof answered. "They are defenseless against the dragon."

The woman's eyes narrowed. "You know about the dragon?"

"We were at Helgen when it attacked."

She sheathed her weapon, but not her suspicion. "The Jarl will want to speak with you personally. Come."

They followed her to the dais at the end of the Great Hall. The Jarl, in all his finery, sat upon his throne, arguing with a man who spoke with an Imperial's sophisticated tongue, more familiar to Annika's ears, and more similar to her own dialect, than the Jarl's thick northern accent.

"My lord, this is no time for rash action," the Imperial charged.

"What would you have me do, then? Nothing?"

"We need more information before we act!"

The Dunmer cleared her throat. "My lord," she announced, presenting Annika and Ralof with a wave of her arm. "Two survivors from Helgen."

Jarl Balgruuf turned towards them. The moment his eyes met Annika's, her body flushed from head to toe, remembering the day it stood under the suffocating heat of another Jarl's gaze. She suddenly felt like a child again, small and insignificant before a man who seemed to hold the entire world in his hands—or at least, her entire world. How similar this day was to that, and yet the woman she was now was nothing at all like the girl she had been then, thanks to that Jarl who had shaped all of her days since with one single act.

"Helgen!" Jarl Balgruuf exclaimed, drawing Annika out of her memories. "You saw the dragon with your own eyes?"

"Yes, my Jarl," Ralof said. "We saw it burn the village to the ground. Riverwood is now in danger of the same fate. We request your assistance on their behalf."

"My lord," the Imperial broke in, "if we send soldiers to Riverwood, Jarl Siddgeir will assume we're siding with the rebellion and preparing to attack Falkreath—"

"Enough, Proventus!" the Jarl shouted, turning angry eyes on the other man. "I understand your concern, but I do not share it. I will not stand idly by as a dragon burns my hold and slaughters my people! We might be able to trust in the strength of our walls, but Riverwood does not have that same advantage. Irileth—send a detachment at once."

The Dunmer gave a perfunctory nod, already starting down the steps of the dais, while the Imperial, not bothering to mask his displeasure, bowed and stepped back from the throne.

The Jarl turned to his visitors once again. "What are your names?"

Annika couldn't swallow through the breath caught in her throat, let alone speak, and was relieved when Ralof spoke for both of them.

"I am Ralof, of Riverwood, and this is Annika, of Kynesgrove."

"Well, Ralof and Annika, you've done my hold a great service," Jarl Balgruuf declared. "I appreciate the risk you took in seeking me out, and I won't forget it. But... there is something more you could assist me with."

They both hesitated, thrown by the Jarl's request.

"Yes, my lord?"

He rose from his throne. "Come," he beckoned, waving for the two of them to follow him through the hall. "My court mage has lately been looking into the history of dragons. You may be able to offer valuable insight, having not only seen one, but survived one."

He led them to a study off the east side of the great hall. Though she had never dabbled in the arts herself, Annika recognized the alchemy laboratory, the soul gems displayed in delicate silver holders, the tomes and scrolls that practically hummed with magical energy. The priestess in Cyrodiil who had taught her how to heal had quarters much like these, filled to the brim with various instruments of the arcane, but Annika had never expected to see such devotion to magic in Skyrim.

"Farengar!"

A man in hooded robes looked up from the scroll his nose had been buried in, sparing no more than a lazy glance at the newcomers.

"I believe I may have found someone to help you with your research into the dragons," the Jarl told him. "Ralof and Annika were present at the attack on Helgen."

"Really!" Farengar set the scroll down and stood from his ornate wooden chair, studying the two of them with great interest now. "How fascinating!"

His enthusiasm over their brush with death had the same unsettling tone as that of the villagers who had gathered in Helgen to watch the execution, and as he raked condescending eyes over Annika's bruised face and loose armor, she began to regret following the Jarl into the mage's study.

"I would very much like to hear the details of the encounter," Farengar said, "but there is a much more pressing task I could use your assistance with."

Protestations were on the tip of Annika's tongue. She didn't want to relive the nightmare of the dragon's eyes boring into her very soul; she didn't care to spend another minute in the uncomfortable company of a man who had so quickly earned her disdain; she had pressing tasks of her own that she needed to pursue. But before she could devise a polite way to turn down the request, the Jarl cut in.

"I will, of course, compensate the two of you for your time," he told them with a gracious smile. "Five hundred septims for your help in this matter—just see my steward, Proventus, when Farengar is finished with you."

Leaving that irresistible carrot dangling before them, Jarl Balgruuf turned and strode out of the study.

Farengar clapped his hands together. "Now then! While the story of the attack on Helgen is most intriguing, I believe it would be more prudent to focus on preventing any further attacks. To do that, I will need you to fetch something for me."

From the corner of her eye, Annika could see Ralof growing ever more impatient.

"What do you need us to fetch?" she asked.

"A Dragonstone," Farengar replied, "an artifact of the ancient Nords said to contain a map of dragon burial sites. Only minutes ago, I received word that this Dragonstone is housed in Bleak Falls Barrow."

"All right. Where is Bleak Falls Barrow?"

"You get straight to the point—I like that. Leave the details to your betters, am I right?" One corner of his mouth curled up into a smirk. Annika wasn't sure if the affront was deliberate or if he was always this patronizing, but either way, she was liking the man less and less by the second. "Fortunately, the barrow is very close," he went on. "It's near Riverwood, a miserable little village a few miles south of here."

She could almost feel the heat of Ralof's fury radiating out of him in waves, and when he drew in a deep breath, she worried that he was about to lose his temper with the mage and land them both in trouble. Instead, he forced a smile that was the very opposite of friendly.

"Excuse us for a moment," he said, taking Annika's arm and pulling her away.

She didn't speak until she was sure they were out of earshot.

"He's awful, I know," she whispered, "but five hundred septims! We must do this!"

But Ralof was already shaking his head. "Five hundred septims isn't worth the time we'll waste."

"It is to me," she insisted, clinging to the hope that the promise of gold had given her. "Your life is waiting for you in Windhelm, Ralof, but everything I had in this world was taken away from me last night. All we need to do is fetch something from a barrow, and we'll have enough gold for a warm meal, a good night's sleep at the inn, and a carriage to Windhelm—and we'll still make it there by sundown tomorrow! How can we refuse?"

He stared at her for a long moment, his eyes flashing between desire and duty, but he finally gave a sigh of defeat. "I'm sorry," he said. "I need to get to Windhelm as soon as possible. If Jarl Ulfric didn't make it back, no one there will know what happened at Helgen—and no one will know to go looking for him."

She knew at once that Ralof was right. He might be needed in Windhelm, and could not afford to spend any more time away. But she couldn't afford to pass up an opportunity like this, no matter how much she longed to stand before Ulfric Stormcloak and swear fealty to his cause. She could survive on hunting foxes and rabbits if she had to, but that wasn't possible without arrows—and the eight she'd salvaged from Helgen wouldn't last forever. The arrows alone would be worth postponing her journey to Windhelm, but that gold could also buy meals for a month and clothes to sleep in other than chainmail. Most importantly, it would buy her a sense of security—at least for awhile.

"Go on, then," she told Ralof. "I'll meet you in Windhelm."

His disappointment was written all over his face. "Are you sure? Barrows can be dangerous—"

"I can handle a few Draugr, don't worry." She gave him a tremulous smile. "I'll buy you a drink at Candlehearth Hall tomorrow night and tell you all about the adventure, all right?"

Ralof hesitated, likely still worried for her safety. But it wasn't his help she needed; it was his companionship.

"All right," he finally replied. "You have yourself a deal."

They shared a brief embrace, and a fretful voice in the back of Annika's head wondered if she would ever see him again.

She didn't want to watch him leave, so she returned to Farengar, holding her head high and hoping to convince both the mage and herself of her bravery.

"I will retrieve the Dragonstone for you," she announced.

The mage stared after Ralof, one eyebrow raised in confusion. "What of your friend?"

"He has other duties to attend to. Will that be a problem?"

He looked her up and down, and huffed his annoyance. "No, I suppose not," he sighed.

Annika made no effort to hide her dislike of the mage as he described the Dragonstone and the barrow in which it was interred, dropping snide remarks about his suspicions of her incompetence along the way. He painted a picture of certain death, smirking the entire time, as though the idea that she might survive was a joke.

"Find the tablet," he finished with obvious sarcasm, "and bring it to me—simplicity itself."

If it was so simple, she wanted to ask, why didn't he fetch it? And if he was so sure that she would be useless in this task, why was he bothering to send her at all? But she only gave him a curt nod before spinning around, more than ready to leave the study that had become too full of the mage's arrogance to have any room left for the likes of her.

Jarl Balgruuf, perched once more on his throne, paid Annika no mind as she marched past the dining tables and the hearth fire, nor did the whining Proventus, nor the children who strutted about, making absurd demands of the servants. Perhaps she did not need a spell to be invisible, after all.

The palace looked somewhat less impressive now that she had heard the Jarl bickering with his steward and bore the brunt of the court mage's condescension. In her youth, she had placed the nobility of the great city of Whiterun high on a pedestal, and was both stunned and disappointed to find it crumbling under their feet. These people may have lived in luxury, wearing fine clothes and eating gourmet meals, but beneath the surface, they seemed no more regal than the peasants in the market.

* * * * *

The Dragonstone hit Farengar's desk with a crash that resounded through the silent castle. Within moments, the mage stumbled into the study from an adjacent chamber, his nightdress flapping around his ankles, his face the very picture of confusion as he blinked at Annika. When his bleary eyes landed on the tablet, they grew to twice their size.

"The Dragonstone," he breathed, rushing over to it. He ran the tips of his fingers across it in great reverence, as though it were made of delicate vellum and not heavy stone. "You found it! And you came back in one piece!"

"That," Annika growled, "is debatable."

Farengar glanced up at her, and seemed taken aback by all that he hadn't noticed before: the blood coating her right arm, the slashes in her blue Stormcloak wrap, the ferocity in her eyes.

"Ah," he said, trying to hide his amusement, but not quite succeeding. "Run into some trouble with the Draugr?"

She had to laugh. Draugr were easy prey compared to the foxes and rabbits she'd hunted her entire life—it's hard to miss a target that's either sleeping or shambling mindlessly towards you. Even the master of the barrow himself hadn't offered much of a challenge; it may have taken her thrice as many arrows to bring him down, but she was much faster and spryer than he, and it hadn't taken much effort to stay out of reach of his rusted axe. No, she'd had no trouble with the dead denizens of the ruin.

"Did you know that place would be crawling with bandits?"

She had her answer as soon as Farengar's eyes skipped away from hers.

"I had an idea," he replied. "Barrows are often full of gold, after all, and gold attracts bandits, does it not?" With a shrug, he turned his attention back to the Dragonstone, tracing the strange symbols carved into its face, similar in design to those that had covered the curved wall behind the master's casket. "Isn't it beautiful? Imagine, a piece of ancient history, right here, in my very own hands!"

Annika shook her head in disbelief. She'd almost been killed by bandits he hadn't bothered to mention would be there, and all he cared about was an old slab of rock. She was covered in blood and bruises, and all he could do was shrug.

If she'd disliked the mage before, she despised him now. Not because of the wounds she'd suffered, or even the ambush itself, but because he had backed her into a corner with no easy way out. She'd had no choice but to kill those bandits, or else be killed herself, and if she accepted the Jarl's gold now, it would be nothing more than blood money. But without it, she'd be desolate and destitute with even less hope of reaching Windhelm alive than she would have had if she'd left Whiterun with Ralof.

She simply could not afford to leave Dragonsreach empty-handed.

"Where can I find the steward?"

"Sleeping in his bed, I presume," Farengar replied, taking a seat at his desk and waving her away now that he had no further use for her. "If you'll excuse me, I have a great deal of work to do."

This time, Annika was the one to shrug, and she made sure to wipe her muddy boots on Farengar's fine carpet on her way out of the study. That small piece of retribution was nothing compared to what the mage had put her through, but it would have to be enough.

She stalked past the long dining tables that had been cleared since the evening's meal, thankful she hadn't been there to smell the rich aromas of what the highborn could afford to eat; what little she would be able to buy for her own dinner would pale in comparison. She doubted the guards would wake the steward for anything as paltry as her reward, but she had lifted enough septims from the bandits to buy herself room and board at the inn for the night; she would return for the gold promised to her in the morning.

She was steps away from the castle's doors when they flew open with a clatter. Three guards tumbled inside, one badly burnt and injured, the other two supporting him on either side.

"Dragon!" one of the men cried out. "A dragon is attacking!"

In moments, the hall was filled with the entire court and their guards, as well as a tension so thick the air itself seemed to hum. Thoughts of the inn slipped away as Annika lingered in the shadows the castle's foyer, listening to the guards tell the Jarl that the dragon had all but burned down the western watchtower, watching the fear wash over everyone's faces before they could mask it with courage. The stench of burnt flesh, singed hair, and fresh blood—and the grim memories they conjured—might have made her ill had there been anything in her stomach.

When the guards described the dragon's pearly gray hide and snowy white wings, Annika knew it could not be the same beast that had attacked Helgen, and that chilled her more than anything else. There were now two of these horrors razing villages and killing innocents. How many more were taking to the skies at that very moment? How many would they be able to quell before Skyrim was completely decimated?

The Jarl, looking no less dignified in his silk robe and stocking feet than he had in his earlier regalia, thanked the injured guard for his bravery, and asked the others to see him to the temple to be healed. He ordered Irileth to gather the city's garrison at the front gates to ready a retaliation, and denied Farengar's beleaguered requests to accompany them. He was about to turn back into the castle when he spotted Annika on the fringes of the crowd.

"You!" he cried, waving her forward. "The survivor from Helgen! You're the only one here who has any experience with a dragon!"

The hall went silent, and all eyes fell upon her. She shrunk into herself, growing hot under the sudden attention of nobles and warriors alike.

"But—but I don't," she sputtered, too stunned by the claim to remember the proper etiquette for speaking to a Jarl. "I have no experience with dragons aside from watching men fall under one's fire while running for my own life."

"But you've seen one," the Jarl insisted. "You've survived one! Surely you must know more about the beasts than any of us do!" He approached Annika in her failure to answer his beckoning, squaring his shoulders and lifting his chin so that his height seemed greater and more intimidating than it truly was. "You called for my help earlier," he reminded her. "Now I'm calling for yours."

But he had already asked for her help—the hastily-healed wounds and bruises that shadowed her arms and hid under her armor could attest to that. How many times did she need to risk her life for the Jarl before he would be satisfied? At least once more, it seemed; his stony eyes and heavy brow were an obvious warning that she would never see the gold he'd promised her if she refused him now. And so she found herself trapped in yet another corner. She could turn her back on the Jarl and his hold and try to make her way across the wilds of Skyrim with only a sparse pocketful of gold to her name. Or, she could face this dragon, and leave Whiterun five hundred septims richer—if she managed to live through the night.

But this wasn't Helgen. She was no longer a helpless prisoner with bound wrists. She had a sturdy bow, and two full quivers of arrows stolen from the crypts of sleeping Draugr. She had chainmail and leather armor, and the colors of the Stormcloaks swathed across her chest. She had confidence and valor born from rushing bravely into impossible battles and emerging triumphant. And, this time, she would be running towards the dragon, instead of away from it; she would be the hunter, not the hunted. And that would make all the difference in the world.

"Of course, my lord," she acquiesced with the slightest sigh, bowing to the Jarl. "What is it that you need me to do?"

"Follow Irileth to the western watchtower," he replied, "and put that bow on your back to good use. If we are to have any hope of defeating this thing, we need to be able to attack it in the air with as much force as possible."

"Yes, my lord."

Irileth had already disappeared through the grand doors. Annika hastened after her, barely able to keep up as the Dunmer charged down the long stone staircase and through the winding roads of the city. Whiterun was dark and quiet, most of its residents asleep in their beds, enjoying dreams of fancies and blissfully unaware of the danger that lurked nearby, threatening to burn their homes to the ground at any moment. She wasn't sure whether to envy them, or pity them.

Every one of the city's guards were, as the Jarl had ordered, mustered at the front gates; some were more than eager for battle, while others shook with fear. They fell quiet as Irileth approached, and gave her their full and rapt attention as she addressed them. She spoke of honor and duty, of the peril their homes and families faced; she spoke of the glory that was theirs to take, the glory of killing a creature that had been but a legend until that very morning. Her words seemed to inspire courage and drive in even the most frightened men, who took their swords and axes to hand, while the more zealous warriors amongst them pounded their chests and bellowed battle cries.

Annika, too, pulled her bow from her back, and while she knew she would have a better chance of landing blows with her arrows than the warriors did with their steel, she couldn't help but feel small and insignificant as she got lost in the crowd of men nearly twice her size. It didn't help that the housecarl shot her a cold and disparaging look as the garrison surged through the front gates, making it clear that she did not share the Jarl's delusions that Annika had anything worthwhile to offer them. After all, what was one outsider with a simple hunting bow amongst the hold's best archers who had trained all their lives for battle?

As soon as they were past the city's walls and battlements, they saw the western horizon aglow with fire; the stars above had been erased by the billowing smoke of dry brush burning. But the night was silent, and that, somehow, seemed even more foreboding than a dragon's roar would have been.

The closer they drew to the watchtower, the slower the guards moved; even Irileth seemed to grow anxious, her grip on her sword faltering. Annika, however, was stunned to find that, instead of fear beating its frantic wings against her heart, she was filled with nervous excitement. As she searched the sky not in dread, but in anticipation, she realized that some small part of her wanted to see this dragon. Wanted to see if its eyes would dig into her as the last one's had; if this one would speak to her, too. She needed to know if it had all been in her imagination.

The pounding footsteps and rustling armor of the approaching garrison drew two frightened guards out of the watchtower.

"Get back!" one of the men shouted, waving them away with both hands. "It's still here somewhere!"

But the only movement on the plains came from the plumes of smoke and their perpetual rise into the air. Irileth rushed to the men hovering in the archway of the watchtower, wasting no time in pummelling them with questions.

"When did you last see it? Which way did it go?"

"I don't know," the guard answered, shaking his head. "It—it grabbed Hroki and Tor when they tried to run! It picked them up in its mouth and flew off..."

The man continued to speak, but his words became nothing more than noise. Another sound had lured Annika's attention away, a sound so faint that it was more of a quake in the air, something to be felt rather than heard. It moved across her skin and into her bones, echoing throughout her body in perfect tandem with the rise and fall of her chest.

The dragon was still here, somewhere. And she could hear it breathing.

Annika tilted her head back, lifting her gaze from the base of the watchtower to its roof. She could just make out the seam where stone ended and sky began through the curtain of smoke, but nothing more. Nothing, until the pointed tip of a thick and muscled tail slithered up into the air, flicking back and forth in undeniable glee. And there were its eyes, two pinpricks of reflected fire against the dark backdrop of the night, watching her watching it.

Neither Irileth nor any of the guards noticed Annika's arm snaking up and over her shoulder to slide an arrow, inch by inch, out of its quiver; their voices continued to dance around her, contemplating the whereabouts of a beast that lay in wait right above their very heads. She held not only her tongue, but her breath, as she drew the string of her bow and took aim. The dragon tilted its head ever so slightly to the side, as though amused, perhaps believing that her flimsy little arrow would do nothing to its tough and leathery hide.

But she wasn't aiming for its hide.

The dragon reared back with a thunderous roar when the arrow sunk into its left eye, and the fragile calm of the night shattered into chaos.

The garrison scattered as the beast launched into flight, and in its rage and confusion, sent a torrent of fire down onto an empty plain. Whiterun's archers shot arrow after arrow into the sky, while sizzling bolts of lightning streaked out of Irileth's palms to catch the dragon's tail. It circled the watchtower three times before it dove towards the bulk of the garrison and grabbed one of the men in the gnarled claws of its feet. The guard plunged his sword into the dragon's leg; it roared in pain once again, and let its prey plummet back down to the earth.

Annika counted down her arrows as she fired at the beast—twenty-three, twenty-two, twenty-one—but none were reaching their mark. When she hunted, she aimed not where her prey was, but where it would be, but this dragon flew too high and too fast for her to keep up with. And the way it moved was dizzying in its unfamiliarity—it swam through the air like a snake in the sea, weaving this way and that quicker than she could make sense of it. At twenty arrows, she lowered her bow, knowing that she would have little chance of hitting the dragon from the ground. She needed to be higher.

Darting past the archers who refused to surrender and the warriors awaiting their chance to strike, Annika tore across the plain and into the watchtower. She climbed over the rubble that covered the spiraling staircase, remnants of a wall that now opened to the sky, until she emerged into a night cooler and clearer than it was down below.

Breathing hard and feeling sweat trickling over her temples and between her breasts, Annika crouched behind a parapet scored with claw marks to watch the dragon swoop over the heads of those who couldn't reach it. It was teasing them, taunting them, bathing them with fire as it spiraled through the air with twists and turns that were almost graceful, despite the arrow jutting out of the beast's blinded left eye—the arrow that had not been enough to kill it, only anger it.

When the dragon next swerved away from the watchtower, Annika let an arrow fly, watching just long enough to see it hit its shoulder before ducking once more below the parapet. Nineteen, eighteen, seventeen—she landed three more hits before her prey grew wise to her scheme and arced over the roof, snarling in fury when it found her. Their eyes met, and in that flash of a moment, Annika was stripped bare of clothes and skin, of a name and a history, of her entire life, and she was no more than a soul floating in the mist between realms, just as she had been in Helgen when the fiery eyes of that hellish beast had pinned her down and picked her apart.

The dragon's jaws stretched apart, and the same strange words Annika had heard once before roared out of its mouth.

"YOL TOOR SHUL!"

She raced for the stairs, but the dragon's flaming breath beat her there. She leapt through the curtain of it, feeling the skin peeling from her arms and her lungs curling up into ash. She was dead, or dying, she was sure of it, but as she tumbled down the watchtower's unforgiving stone steps, each one seeming to break a new bone, the pain that engulfed her entire body promised her that she was still alive. The curve of the wall broke her fall, and she collapsed into a heap, gasping for air that didn't seem to exist. When she dared to open her eyes, she found that the agony was far worse than the actual damage; her arms, though red and blistering, had not melted away, and her bones were still intact. Her hands trembled as she healed herself, and she wondered just how much destruction her body would be able to handle before it became impossible to put it back together again.

A resounding crash shook the walls of the watchtower, sending a shower of dust down into Annika's face. Outside, the dragon howled, and it took her a moment to realize the sound came from below her, not above—it had finally landed. But this battle was not over yet.

She pushed herself to her feet and began the climb to the roof once more. Making no effort to conceal herself this time, Annika stumbled to the edge and peered over the parapet at the bedlam below. The warriors of Whiterun hacked and slashed at the dragon as it snapped its jaws at them, and when it tried to take to the skies, it lost its footing and fell once more. Its hide was growing bloodier by the moment, but that would not be enough to kill a creature of that size and strength.

Annika braced one foot against the parapet and sent a volley of arrows down to the plain. Sixteen, fifteen, fourteen—she missed her mark as the dragon whipped its head at the guards who had gotten too close. Thirteen, twelve, eleven—the sinews of the creature's neck strained and snapped as they were severed by the piercing tips of her arrows. But it still was not enough.

She wiped her damp hands on her tunic before drawing her bow once more. One eye snapped shut as she took meticulous aim and let the arrow—ten—soar through the air and the smoke, past the dragon's swinging tail, to pierce the back of its head. A cry louder and more chilling than any others before it burst from the creature's gaping mouth before its entire body went limp and slammed against the ground.

She waited for a twitch of its tail or a beat of its wings, for its back to rise and fall with breath, for fire to pour from its mouth and into the faces of the men who continued attacking. But nothing happened. The dragon was dead.

It was over.

Thank the gods, it was over! And she was alive! Bruised and bloody, but alive! She dropped her bow and leaned back against the parapet, laughing and crying, in relief and disbelief, that she had not only survived a second dragon, but she had helped defeat it. And she knew, now, beyond all doubt, that the beasts—both of them—had looked into her soul, and spoken to it, and tried to extinguish it with flaming breath that carried words on its crest. But the questions of why, and how, and to what end, would have to wait. She cared not to think on these impossible things now; all she wanted to do was revel in the life she still pumped through her veins, that the dragons had not managed to snuff out.

Her exhaustion no longer eclipsed by adrenaline, Annika now felt every ache in every muscle, and a heavy blanket of fatigue weighed down each of her limbs. She would have been content to lie down and sleep right there on the coarse stone of the roof, but as cheers of victory rose up from the ground below, metal clanging against metal as the men embraced and beat each other on the backs in congratulations, she pushed off of the parapet and began the descent through the watchtower, step by arduous step.

Outside, fires continued to smolder across the plain, keeping the air clogged with smoke, and the triumphant smiles of the men who had escaped death were thinning as they began to tend to the broken bodies of those who hadn't. They might have won, but not without suffering some loss.

Irileth, however, seemed more concerned with the body of the dragon; she gave it a wide berth as she circled it, her sword still drawn and lightning still crackling in her hand, as though fearful that it would attack the moment she let her guard down. But the thing lay completely still, and the eerie sound of its breathing had ceased, leaving it as stiff and silent as a statue carved from stone. Annika moved closer to tell Irileth that it was, indeed, dead, but before she had drawn the breath to speak, the dragon's body began to glow from within. She stopped short, as did the housecarl, and they watched with tense anticipation as the light grew brighter and stronger.

And then it was engulfed in flames. Its flesh seemed to disintegrate in the fire, turning to ash and floating away into the night as if it had never existed at all, leaving nothing but the gleaming white bones of its skeleton behind.

A pulsing heat suddenly enveloped Annika's body, and she stumbled back in a panic before seeing that it wasn't fire, but wind, that was flowing out of the dragon and into her. It blew her hair up off of her sweaty neck and flapped what was left of her Stormcloak wrap around her waist, but it didn't harm her. It caressed her, stroked the tender skin of her face with comforting hands, filled her with something so vast and endless it was a wonder that her small body could contain it all.

The wind and the fire died out together, leaving her invigorated and weakened all at once, buzzing but breathless, staggering on legs that were no longer strong enough to bear her. She whirled about to see a hundred wide eyes watching her, questioning her, revering her.

Annika fell upon the singed and dusty grass, surrounded at once by silhouettes that blotted out the stars that spun in the sky. She reached out for something that might anchor her to the world, but her fingers closed on air, and then she was spiraling into the void. A veil of blindness slid over her eyes, but her ears caught a single word echoing across the plain before she was plunged into the realm of darkness and dreams.

"Dragonborn!"

two: the heart of a nord

Annika awoke with a start.

The nightmare that had pushed her from sleep with violent hands slipped away, faces and voices and words dissolving before she could cleave to them. She was left with only the sensation of flying, and of falling, and of not quite knowing what was real and what was not. Breathing hard, she sat up in a bed she did not remember lying down in. The room itself was just as unfamiliar, but its opulence—polished wooden floors, fresh candles glowing despite the morning sun beaming through the high windows, fine linen bedsheets that had grown damp with her sweat—told her she couldn't be anywhere but Dragonsreach.

Swinging her legs out of the bed, she saw that she was wearing a simple white nightdress. Her armor lay folded atop a chest at the foot of the bed, though she didn't recognize it right away: half of the leather tunic was charred, and nothing but tatters remained of the blue wrap. The odor of smoke and fire rose up from it—remnants of a dragon's scorching breath. So that, at least, had not been a dream.

As she pulled on what was left of her armor, a deep sense of discomfort settled over her. She felt different, somehow. Bigger. As though the armor was suddenly a size too small, despite having been worn by a man much taller and broader than she. Annika twisted and turned before realizing that it wasn't the chainmail or the tunic that no longer fit; it was her own skin.

"Good morning!"

Annika jumped, startled by the unexpected intrusion that made her feel like a child caught stealing a sweet roll, and whirled about to see an elderly woman in a servant's apron bustling across the room towards her.

"Good morning," she returned in a hesitant mumble, unsure of what else to say; she was not accustomed to being tended to by servants.

The woman held out a goblet of crystalline liquid. "Drink this tonic; it'll alleviate any lingering pain."

"Thank you, but... I haven't any," Annika told her, mystified to discover that, unlike her armor, her body lacked any evidence of the battles she'd fought in the past day and night. The raw sting of her burns and the deep ache of her muscles were no longer, nor did she see any bruises or scars on her arms. "Did someone treat me?"

"One of the temple's best priestesses," the woman answered with a nod. "The Jarl insisted on it."

Annika was taken aback. The Jarl hadn't seemed to care much for her wellbeing earlier; why such concern now? Had he put the city's entire garrison up in lavish chambers after the battle, or just her? Perhaps he was only showing his gratitude for her help in killing the dragon... but the suspicion of a more insidious agenda smoldered in the back of her mind.

"He asked to speak with you as soon as you awoke," the servant added, deepening the enigma. "I am to escort you to the Great Hall."

"Of course."

Annika watched the woman from the corner of her eye as she slung her bow and arrows over her shoulder, wondering whether she was her escort, or her warden.

They made their way through the winding corridors of the keep and emerged into the Great Hall. The long dining tables were once again lavishly set in preparation for a meal, and the aromas of the Jarl's cooking breakfast wafted in from the kitchens to make Annika's mouth water. How long had it been, now, since she'd last eaten? Fifteen hours? Twenty? She'd gone much longer without food in the past, but reminding herself of that didn't seem to lessen the grinding pain of today's empty stomach.

The Jarl sat upon his throne, conversing with his steward and housecarl, but he waved them away as soon as he noticed Annika approaching. "Here she is!" he exclaimed, clapping his hands together and beaming a wide smile her way, looking for all the world like a proud father whose daughter was to become High Queen.

Annika stopped at the bottom of the dais, but the servant nudged her forward, making her trip over her own feet as she stepped up to bow before the Jarl.

"It is I who should be bowing to you," he said, "for defeating the dragon!"

"Thank you, my lord, but—but you are too kind," she replied with a stutter, her face flushing with heat at a compliment she was sure she didn't deserve. "It was not I who defeated the dragon; it was all of us."

"Irileth tells me it was your arrow that delivered the final blow."

"I believe it was, my lord, but I was only able to take the shot after your men had grounded the beast."

Balgruuf's smile only grew broader. "Such modesty!" he laughed. "That must be why you failed to tell me you were Dragonborn!"

Dragonborn.

The word richocheted through her mind, knocking loose memories she had thought were mere fragments of her dream. The dragon's flesh dissolving off of its bones, a searing wind embracing her, a hundred eyes staring down and a hundred voices rippling into the night.

"Dragonborn?"

The Jarl's eyes widened at her confusion. "Don't tell me you don't know! Our oldest legends tell of those born with the body of a mortal, and the soul of a dragon—those who can wield the Voice as only the dragons themselves can."

Oh, she knew the legends, the stories, the songs. She had sung them herself, countless times, when Anya was too frightened of the howling wind to fall asleep without her sister's soothing voice to coax her into dreams. But she had never taken them any more seriously than she did the tales of dragons. There was no denying, now, that dragons were more than just myths, and Annika had no trouble believing that the Dragonborn could be real, too. But that didn't mean she was one.

She swallowed hard and shook her head. "Forgive me, my lord, but you must be mistaken."

"Oh? I've had no less than twenty men tell me they saw you take in that dragon's soul with their own eyes."

"They're wrong," she charged back. "I can't be Dragonborn. The idea is preposterous."

The housecarl shot forward, scowling, her hand clenched around a steel axe instead of her usual sword. "Regardless of what you are, girl," she snapped, "you will show some respect when addressing a Jarl!"

"Irileth. It's all right." But Balgruuf's eyes had lost some of their warmth; he didn't appreciate Annika's attitude any more than Irileth did. "Tell me—why are you so convinced that you are not Dragonborn?"

"Because I'm... I'm nothing," Annika answered. "I'm nobody." She could not meet the Jarl's eyes as her doubt in herself poured past her lips. So she stared down at the grain of the wood flooring, at her stolen armor, at the hands that were callused and weathered from a lifetime of honest work—not heroic adventures. "There's nothing special or remarkable about me, and I haven't done a single extraordinary thing in all my life."

"Slaying a dragon isn't extraordinary?"

She opened her mouth to reply, but no words came out. Slaying a dragon—he made it sound much more grandiose than it actually was. All she'd done was shoot a few arrows. It had been dangerous, yes, but so was hunting wolves and boars, and she'd been doing that for years. Besides, it wasn't courage, or valiance, or honor that had driven her to face the beast; it was greed and desperation. Where was the glory in that? The Dragonborn of legend was a hero, a champion, a leader—everything Annika was not.

But... something had happened to her after the dragon's death, had it not? Something had settled inside of her. Something that was still there, now, making her skin feel too tight, her body too small. Something that felt like wrath, and terror, and doom.

"Whether or not you believe you are Dragonborn," the Jarl went on, "the Greybeards do."

"My lord?"

"Their voices thundered down from the Throat of the World while you slept." The last of his gaiety faded away, a sign of the gravity of the situation. "It is a great honor to be summoned by the Greybeards, one that has not been bestowed on anyone since Tiber Septim himself—and one that cannot be refused. You must go to High Hrothgar right away."

A fierce resentment bubbled up inside of her at the command. She had returned to Skyrim with a single ambition: to fight for Ulfric Stormcloak. And what had she done so far? She'd come to Whiterun to appeal for assistance on Riverwood's behalf. She had traversed a perlious barrow in search of a dusty stone tablet. She'd helped defeat a dragon. And now she was expected to climb the Seven Thousand Steps to speak to some monks who thought she was something she could not be?

No. She had been distracted from her purpose for long enough. She was done following paths that others laid out for her; it was time to pursue her own.

"I will leave at once," she told the Jarl, not quite lying but not quite telling the truth, either. It was best to let him believe she was headed for High Hrothgar; outright defiance of both a Jarl and the Greybeards would be nothing short of foolish. "Pardon me if I am out of line, my lord, but... but there is still the matter of my compensation—"

"Of course, of course," he cried, beckoning his steward forward. "As promised, five hundred septims for assisting Farengar... and another five hundred septims for the service you have done my hold in killing the dragon."

Annika's breath caught in her throat as the steward dropped a heavy coin purse into her hands. One thousand septims. She'd never held so much gold at any one time in her life... but now that she had it, she was not sure it was worth what she'd risked for it.

"Thank you, my lord."

"I wish to show my gratitude in one more manner."

He rose from his throne and motioned for Irileth. Her eyes flared in silent defiance as she surrendered the axe to the Jarl, who in turn presented it to Annika. It was heavier than the delicate engravings on its head and the supple leather wrapped around its haft suggested, and it felt awkward and unbalanced in her hands. She looked up at the Jarl, awaiting answers to the questions that surrounded this gesture.

"I doubt you will find much practical use in this axe, being an archer," he said, nodding at her bow, "but let it symbolize the title I offer to you by my authority as Jarl—Thane of Whiterun."

Annika nearly lost her grip on the axe, but her shock subsided as the final piece of the puzzle slid into place, revealing a dark and nefarious picture. She had not been given a bed in Dragonsreach and treatment from one of the temple's best priestesses out of simple kindness, nor was she being offered the title of Thane, despite being an outsider who had only stepped foot in the city the day before, in gratitude for anything. None of this would have happened, she was sure, if the Jarl hadn't been convinced that she was Dragonborn. That she possessed a unique gift, an immense power—one that he would rather have beside him than against him. By giving her status within his hold, Balgruuf would effectively be claiming the Dragonborn for Whiterun, before anyone else could get their hands on her.

The only problem was, she wasn't Dragonborn.

And she would not be claimed by anyone.

"I am honored, my lord," she finally replied, forcing a polite smile. "But I am afraid I cannot accept your offer."

She held the axe out to the Jarl. He blinked down at her for long, speechless moments, his face reddening in indignation, before he snatched it from her hands.

"And why is that?"

"I do not intend to take up residence in Whiterun," she told him, "nor any other hold. I have not come back to Skyrim to put down roots. I have come only to support my people in their fight for freedom."

Balgruuf took a step back, his eyes narrowing. "You wish to join the rebellion?"

Annika took a deep breath before answering. "I do, my lord."

He resumed his seat on the throne, yet still managed to glare down his nose at her. "You should know, then, that you won't be supporting your people—not all of them. For not all of them want to give up the protection the Empire offers, even if the cost of keeping it is worshipping our god privately while we deny him publicly."

Annika said nothing. She had no interest in debating the politics of the war with anyone, especially not a Jarl who had just tried to buy her favor with a title. Instead, she held his frosty gaze, determined not to show any weakness or fear, and praying that her frantic heart wasn't beating loud enough to betray her.

Finally, the Jarl waved his hand in dismissal. "If you'll excuse me, I have a city to keep."

Annika gave a cursory bow before turning away.

She knew that this was not the last time she would face Jarl Balgruuf the Greater. Whiterun may have been neutral ground for the moment, but he would have to make his choice eventually. If he chose to support the rebellion, they would become allies after all... but if he chose to side with the Empire, he would be her enemy until the end. When they met again, it would, perhaps, be with her arrow aimed at his chest.

Annika felt the eyes of the entire court on her back as she hastened for the door, and she didn't breathe again until she was safely on the other side of it.

* * * * *

The cook at the Bannered Mare may not have had the same gourmet ingredients to work with as those at Dragonsreach did, but Annika doubted the Jarl would be served anything as delicious as the honeyed apple and flatcake dish that she ordered at the inn for her breakfast. She was pointed toward the Drunken Huntsman after inquiring where she might buy arrows, and was pleased to find a Bosmer behind the counter there; she allowed herself a few minutes to reminisce with him about Valenwood, his first and her last home, before setting out with full quivers.

The road out of Whiterun wound naturally around streams and rocks, leading to the stables and the handful of farms dotting the plains around the city. This was the third time Annika had walked it, but the first in the clarity of day. The sun had just risen in the east, spilling cleansing light and rare warmth over Skyrim and chasing away the early morning mist that still hung over the west. She turned in a circle, in awe at how far she could see: the White River that led all the way to Eastmarch, the very tip of the Throat of the World, the hazy ranges of the Reach.

The watchtower was a blight against the glorious blue sky. The fires had been put out and the smoke had dissipated, but the hole that had been ripped into the structure itself would take time to rebuild—as would the spirits of the men who had tasted the rage of a myth come to life. And there was the skeleton of the beast, bones gleaming white under the sun as though it had lain there for centuries instead of just a single night.

Annika did not know she was walking toward it until she was halfway there. Some invisible thread that stitched her and the dragon together was tightening, pulling her forward, even when her body began to seize up in fear of the thing. But it was harmless, now. It was dead. And the closer she drew to it, the smaller it seemed—smaller than it had been in life. Perhaps it was just that the skeleton looked so feeble in comparison to the roaring demon that had flown over her head and breathed a torrent of fire down on her. Or, perhaps, it was because she had stolen its soul.

She could not, truly, think of a single reason that she couldn't be Dragonborn... except that she didn't want to be.

Who would want the body of a human, but the soul of a dragon? A body was nothing but a shell, after all, a husk to be left behind when this life ended. And when it did, the promise of Sovngarde awaited—for those with the brave and valiant soul of a Nord. Into which realm would hers be cast, if it was not a Nord's, but a dragon's?

What frightened Annika the most, however, was not what would happen upon her death, but what this revelation would mean to the only life she had ever known. She did not want to find that she wasn't the person she'd spent thirty-one years believing herself to be, that she had been deceived and betrayed by some trick of fate. She didn't want to look at her reflection and see a stranger staring back at her. She didn't want this evil and vicious thing living within her, seeping into her heart, her mind, her body, and taking those from her, too. She did not want to be the hero of legend, for she didn't believe she could ever live up to such an impossible title.

Nobody ever wanted the burdens they were made to bear, but that didn't change that they had no choice but to bear them. She could turn away from this burning question, but that would not silence it. She could try to run from her fate, but it would lay at the end of every road.

If she was Dragonborn.

There was, of course, one way to find out.

Annika reached a cautious hand out to touch the edge of the dragon's skull. It was smooth and rough at the same time, just as those strange engravings on the curved wall in Bleak Falls Barrow had been. She had known, the moment she saw them, that they were words... words not unlike those she'd heard a dragon speak earlier that very morning. She couldn't read them, but there was one cluster of markings that, somehow, she understood, one that had seemed to burn and crackle and hum with a thousand voices calling out to her from across time.

Perhaps it was time to answer.

"Fus."

Her voice seemed to explode out of her mouth, louder than she had ever heard it before, louder than should have been possible, and the skeleton trembled as though a violent gust of wind had stricken it. Annika stumbled backward, tripping over a tangle of dry weeds and falling to the ground; her eyes wide and her pulse pounding, she scuttled over the dirt like so many mudcrabs, trying to get away from the creaking bones. But as the dust settled, so did they, and she knew that it wasn't the skeleton she should be afraid of, but herself.

She clawed at her arms, at her neck, her fingernails leaving long welts across the skin that felt even tighter now, so tight she could barely breathe even as she gasped for air. But there was no reaching it, the thing whose voice had thundered through her throat, the curse she had never asked to harbor within herself, the cataclysmic truth she could no longer deny.

She had Shouted.

She was Dragonborn.

Annika looked around in a panic, worried some guard or farmer had heard or seen what she had done, but the watchtower and the plains around it were deserted, save for her. Thank the gods. No one knew, and no one would ever have to find out. She could leave Whiterun the same way she came to it: as Annika of Kynesgrove. Not the Dragonborn.

She ran back to the stables on shaky legs and paid the fare for a carriage to Windhelm, before she could change her mind.

* * * * *

"You're sure you haven't seen him?"

The woman behind the counter sighed.

"Like I already told you," she said, her voice flat and weary, "he hasn't been in here for at least week. Now, are you going to buy something or not?"

Annika paid for a night's lodging despite the innkeeper's sour attitude. Ralof's absence was much more worrying; he should have gotten back to Windhelm hours earlier. Perhaps he hadn't yet had the time to stop into Candlehearth Hall to leave word for her. Yes, that had to be it. After all, the Palace of the Kings must have been in a state of turmoil since Ulfric and what remained of his regiment had returned late last night—thank the gods—with news of Helgen.

To hear the innkeeper tell it, Ulfric had stormed into Windhelm with the rage of a midwinter's blizzard, wasting no time in addressing his people with a speech that was as inspirational as it was passionate. The Empire, he had told them, had tried and failed to execute their Jarl, to abolish their fight for freedom; in what could only be a merciful act of Talos himself, a dragon had come out of myth and time to lend its voice to that of the rebellion who would not be so easily silenced. How Annika wished she had been there to hear it for herself! She might have believed it, coming from Ulfric. As it was, the idea that the dragon had been led by the hand of Talos seemed nothing more than wishful thinking.

The innkeeper showed Annika to her room, and, with an air of impatience at the request, brought in a bucket of well water and a rag. Annika scrubbed her face, neck, and hands the best she could before slipping into the green dress she'd purchased at the market upon arriving in the city; she could not stand before Ulfric Stormcloak in armor stolen from the body of one of his fallen soldiers, after all. She combed her fingers through the tangles in her hair until her long blonde waves were smooth and shiny. And then she was out of reasons to remain at the inn, to put off doing what she had come all this way to do. It seemed the longer she waited, the tighter the knot in her stomach grew, and by the time she had finally talked herself into leaving Candlehearth Hall, she was certain she would be ill before she reached the keep.

The afternoon had begun its descent into evening. The sun that had shone its warmth over Skyrim that morning was now smothered in heavy clouds the color of old bruises; a certain gloom had fallen over the city, one she had not seen in all her years away, and one that would always sing of home. Men and women bustled this way and that, hurrying to get home before the snow began to fall, and a few familiar faces stood out from the crowd. The blacksmith who'd always paid a good price for Annika's skins and furs. The crotchety old Altmer who owned the apothecary. The priestess at the Hall of the Dead who had been so kind to Annika after death had come into her life.

But as she ambled through the stone labyrinth of the city, the memory that rose up above all others was, of course, that of the night she first came face to face with Ulfric Stormcloak. That night of desperation and terror and, at the end of it all, hope. That night, when everything had changed. And here she was, at the end of the circle that had begun on that night to lead her back to Windhelm, twenty years later. The memory was as strong and vivid as though it had been but a week.

And when she stood before the imposing iron doors of the Palace of the Kings, she shook with the same fear that had consumed her all those years ago. The difference was, of course, that this time, she was there by choice.

Inside, the keep was dim and quiet, but for the groan of the door closing behind her. The two guards flanking the foyer eyed her with suspicion, but did not stop her; she must not have looked threatening enough to bother with. Still, her walk down the length of the Great Hall was slow and cautious, made with held breath and wide eyes that flew from the long banquet tables to the blue Eastmarch banners decorating the walls to the throne that sat empty at the end of the chamber.

Where was everyone? Annika had expected the castle to be clamoring with people, but it seemed deserted. Had Ulfric already taken his men back out to seek retribution for his attempted beheading? Or was he hidden away in the safety of the depths of the castle, in case of an Imperial siege on the city? After building this moment up to the heavens, would she see him at all?

Her questions were answered at once.

"You think I need to send him a stronger message?"

She whirled about, and there he was. Ulfric Stormcloak, not bound, not gagged, but striding into the Great Hall with the power and the confidence he had come to be known for. Their eyes locked, and her heart thumped with such intensity that she was sure he could hear it.

The man trailing behind him barked out a laugh. "If by message," he growled, "you mean shoving a sword through his chest—"

Ulfric held a hand up to silence him.

His eyes stayed on Annika as he closed the distance between them and took his place on his throne. He watched as she bowed to him, as her shaky hands fidgeted with one another, as she reddened from head to toe under his searing gaze.

She was eleven years old again, tiny and weak, trembling with both fear and awe of the man before her. But Ulfric was no longer the fledgling Jarl she had met all those years ago; time had aged him, leaving lines around his eyes and mouth, giving a rough edge to the features that had once been more delicate than rugged, more beautiful than handsome. There was a weariness in his eyes, now, that had not been there before, a sadness she had not expected to see on the face of a man who seemed too strong to be tormented by such things.

Finally, he spoke.

"Only the foolish or the courageous approach a Jarl without summons."

"I—I mean no disrespect, my lord," she stammered, ducking her head in deference. "I only wish to join the rebellion, and fight for Skyrim's freedom."

Ulfric's heavy brow rose in interest. With a wave of his hand, he dismissed the man who had followed him in, and who grunted his disapproval of the command, but obeyed it nonetheless.

And then they were alone, Annika and this man who was as much of a legend as any dragon. He didn't seem quite real, but rather a figment of her imagination that had come to life and was greater than she had even dreamed. She found herself entranced by the wave of his hair, the twin scars on his cheek, the rise and fall of his chest, all with the same breathless fascination she thought a mortal might have in the presence of a god.

Ulfric, however, seemed as unyielding as the stone walls surrounding them, and studied her face for a long and tense moment before his own lit up.

"I know you."

Annika went still. He could not possibly recognize her as the pitiful young girl who had stood in that very same spot two decades earlier... could he? The memory of that pivotal night had been etched in her mind ever since, but surely it had meant nothing to him, nothing to a Jarl who saw so many problems, both trivial and dire, laid at his feet every day. Surely he did not remember the day their worlds had collided.

"Yes," Ulfric continued with a nod, "you were at Helgen."

A sigh of relief tumbled out of her before she could stop it.

"I was, my lord. You helped me up off of the ground after the—the dragon attacked."

"I remember. They called you the 'Nord in rags,'" he mused, his words slow and syrupy, but cold as ice. He raked his eyes over her long hair, her milky skin, every inch of her generous height. "You do look like a Nord... but you speak like an Imperial."

Annika's cheeks grew even hotter, and despite the chill that hung in the air, sweat began to bead on the nape of her neck. This was not going at all as she had hoped. But could she blame Ulfric for being distrustful and suspicious, after being captured and nearly executed only the day before? Would she not be wary of outsiders, too, if she could never be sure which of them wanted her dead? If she wanted his trust, she would have to earn it, and if she wanted his respect, she would have to prove herself worthy of it—such was the way of the Nords.

"I was born and raised a daughter of Skyrim," she told Ulfric, "but I left years ago to travel across Tamriel. I have spent time in Cyrodiil, it is true, but also in Hammerfell, and Elsweyr, and Valenwood. My accent was born from all of these places." She had not meant to pull her shoulders back and lift her chin, a posture unbecoming of a commoner speaking to a Jarl, but her pride, it seemed, was stronger than her humility. "I may not have the voice of a Nord, but I assure you, my lord... I have the heart of one."

Ulfric's head cocked to the side, and Annika held her breath, unsure if he was amused or offended by her boasting. But then his lips softened into a smile, and a husky laugh fell from them to break through the tension.

"Yes, it seems you do," he said, gazing at her with great curiosity now. "Does the 'Nord in rags' have a name?"

"Yes, of course," she quickly replied. She couldn't help but smile, too, half in embarrassment that she had forgotten to introduce herself, and half in elation at Ulfric's attention. "My name is Annika."

"And you have returned to Skyrim to fight for her freedom?"

"I have."

"Why?"

Annika shook her head in confusion. "My lord?"

"Why do you wish to fight for a place you no longer call home?"

She was caught off guard by the question, one she had not anticipated, nor prepared for, but it was not difficult to craft an answer. She only hoped it would be enough to appease his concerns.

"I believe in your cause," she began, trying desperately to keep her voice steady. "I believe Skyrim should be freed from a crumbling Empire that will only drag her down with it. I believe Skyrim needs a High King with the strength and the will to do what is right, instead of what is easy."

These were not lies; Annika did, with all of her heart, believe everything she claimed to. But that was not the real reason she had come back to Skyrim, the true reason she wished to fight alongside Ulfric in this war. That, she would never tell him. That, he could never know.

But the passion she put into her words must have been convincing, for Ulfric nodded, and smiled once more.

"Am I to assume by the bow on your back that you are an archer?"

"Yes, my lord."

"A skilled one?"

This time, Annika hesitated. "I have been hunting since I was a child," she told him, "but I must admit, my bow has not seen much battle."

He considered this, but shrugged it off. "Either way, you made it out of Helgen alive—and not many people can say that."

"I can't take all the credit for that, my lord," she replied. "I doubt I would have lived through the morning had it not been for the help of one of your men—Ralof."

Ulfric leaned forward, his eyes wide. "Ralof's alive?"

As his hopes soared, Annika's sank.

"He—he was when he left me in Whiterun yesterday afternoon," she told him. "He meant to come straight to Windhelm. Has he not arrived yet?"

Ulfric sighed and slumped back in his throne. "No, he hasn't," he murmured, pensive and worried. "I'd given him up for dead, along with the others we couldn't find after escaping Helgen. But if he managed to get out of there in one piece, I'm sure he's all right now."

Annika nodded, but did not hold much faith in his words, nor did she believe Ulfric himself was convinced. Ralof had been so adamant about getting back to Windhelm that she could not imagine anything would've stopped him... aside from bloodthirsty bandits, hungry wolves, another raging dragon. How many different deaths might he have met out there?

The creak of the castle's door echoed through the Great Hall, followed by a patter of footsteps. Annika looked over her shoulder to see a diminuitive man hurrying towards them.

"Jarl Ulfric!"

"What is it, Jorleif?"

"A letter, my lord."

The man approached the throne and presented a scroll of creamy parchment. Ulfric stared at the red wax seal that held it closed for a long moment before ripping it open with eager hands. His eyes flew across the page, growing darker and smaller with each line he read. By the time he reached the end of the letter, Annika could almost feel his fury, quiet yet terrifying, pouring out of him in waves.

Finally, he crushed the letter in his fists and thrust it back at Jorleif as he leapt from his throne.

"Gather the messengers."

"How many, my lord?"

"All of them!"

Jorleif nodded, and rushed out of the keep as quickly as he had come in.

Ulfric stepped down from the dais to stand before Annika, and she was lost in his shadow. He was a beast of a man, his height and breadth rivaling that of most Orcs, and with his shoulders squared and his head held high, he seemed larger than life, wonderful and terrible all at once. Though she knew his anger was not directed at her, she could not help but tremble in the wake of it.

"There are important matters I must attend to," he said, his voice tight and harsh. "In regard to your wish to join the rebellion, so long as you fight with honor and integrity, we will welcome you into our ranks. Speak to Galmar Stone-Fist, my second in command—he will handle your initiation."

"Thank you, my lord."

Annika gave a deep bow and watched Ulfric stride away, his fur cloak flaring out behind him, the heavy soles of his boots thundering against the stone tiles. She did not turn away until he had disappeared from sight, and even then she remained rooted to the floor, afraid that if she took a single step, she would wake up to find that this was all a delirious dream.

But it wasn't.

She let out the breath she didn't know she'd been holding, and smiled so wide that her cheeks hurt. Despite the mysterious letter that had angered Ulfric, despite Ralof's worrying absence, she was happier than she had been in months. She wanted to laugh and cry and dance atop the banquet table. She wanted to run through Windhelm and tell anyone who would listen that she was a Stormcloak. She wanted to count down the minutes until she would see Ulfric again—no longer just her hero, but her leader.

And she knew now, more than ever, that she would follow him anywhere.

* * * * *

A group of men stood hunched over a massive wooden table, staring down at a map that was peppered with tiny red and blue flags. They were so entrenched in their thoughts and their muffled conversation that they didn't hear Annika come into the room. She waited in the doorway for several awkward moments before clearing her throat to announce herself.

Three of the men's mouths curled into lascivious smiles when they saw a woman in their midst, but the fourth didn't seem to care who or what she was. When he stepped forward, she saw that he was the same man who had accompanied Ulfric into the Great Hall earlier. He glared at her now, just as he had then, as did the dead yellow eyes of the bear that had become his helm.

"Pardon me," Annika began, timid and nervous. "Are you Galmar Stone-Fist?"

He grunted in what she was quickly learning was his favored reply.

"Jarl Ulfric asked me to speak with you about—about my initiation."

Galmar walked a slow circle around Annika, looking her up and down with complete disinterest, tapping a finger on the tip of one of her arrows to test its edge.

"Heard Ulfric say you were at Helgen," he growled. "You don't look like much, but if you made it through all of that, you might be worth something to me."

She wasn't sure whether to be insulted or flattered, though the smirk that peeked out from his thick beard could not have been a good omen.

"Good with a bow, are you?"

"Good enough."

Galmar's laugh was low and gritty. "We'll see about that," he taunted. "Before I can put you to use, I need to know what you can do."

Annika swallowed hard, but her mouth still seemed to be full of cotton. She started to slip the bow off of her shoulder, but Galmar held a hand up to stop her.

"Not here," he said. "Shooting an arrow at a practice target will prove nothing."

"Then... what shall I shoot?"

He thought for a long moment before answering. "A sabrecat has been causing trouble just south of the river," he told her. "Nearly took the arm off one of our messengers last night, but by the time my men got there, the animal was gone." He folded his muscled arms across his chest and gave her a sly smile. "Bring me its pelt, and I'll know you have what it takes to be called a Stormcloak."

She blinked up at him in disbelief. She hadn't expected an audition—especially after Ulfric himself had given her his blessing! But questioning Galmar's order would only make her look weak, and scared, and insolent, and she could not afford that. So she lifted her chin and met Galmar's fiery eyes with her own.

"Consider it done."

Annika started for the door, but the confidence in her gait slackened when she heard stifled laughter trailing after her. Was this task truly a test of her mettle, or were Galmar and his men only playing with her, mocking her, sending her to what they believed would be her doom? After all, what chance did such a wispy woman have against a vicious sabrecat? What chance did a simple bow have against fangs and claws?

Her insecurity was eclipsed by her anger, her indignation at these narrow-minded men, writing her off without even giving her a chance. They likely didn't think they would ever see her again, but they would. And they would not be laughing then.

She'd killed wolves, bears, bandits, a damned dragon—and she would kill this sabrecat, too.

* * * * *

If there was one thing Annika hadn't missed about Skyrim during her years away, it was the cold.

Her Nord blood may have blessed her with a natural tolerance to the frost of the tundra, but it certainly hadn't given her any sort of affinity for it. Once she'd decided to leave home all those years ago, she'd headed right to the hot sun and dry deserts of Hammerfell, longing to know how it felt to be warm all of the time. After that, she'd gone on to Cyrodiil, and then Elsweyr, before finally settling in Valenwood. She'd been spoiled by those warm climes, and she was paying the price now. An icy wind tore up the White River, carrying the first of the evening's snowfall with it, and the cold seemed to dig deeper into Annika's bones than she remembered. And it wasn't even winter yet.

The road out of Windhelm diverged at the end of the bridge: to the right were the riverbanks, and to the left was the path up the hillside to Kynesgrove. Annika had made that journey so often in her youth that she could've walked it with her eyes closed. She likely still could, if she'd wanted to. But she wasn't ready to take that road yet. She had been running from more than just the cold when she left Skyrim, and now that she was back, she knew she would have to face those ghosts eventually. But not now. Not today.

But even the riverbanks plagued her with memories. All those hours spent scouring the shores for rabbits, foxes, and deer who might have stopped for a drink. Sitting by the waterfall in the autumn salmon season, hoping for a bite on her homemade line. And the lazier summer days of collecting river rocks, seashells, and barnacles with Anya.

Annika shook off her reflections to focus on her present pursuit. She had gotten used to the lush soil and soft bark in Valenwood that made it easy to find and follow prey, and had almost forgotten how challenging hunting could be in Skyrim, especially amongst the hard ground and prickly evergreens of middle Eastmarch. If that wasn't enough, the shadows that stretched across the hold now that the sun had dipped behind the Throat of the World would cloak whatever tracks the sabrecat might have left behind—and the falling snow would soon erase them completely. She flew past the scrubby bushes and through the steam rising from fissures in the earth, as quiet as a whisper and as graceful as a doe, looking for any sign that the sabrecat had been there: pawprints in the dirt, claw scratches on rocks, the sharp scent of its mark on its territory.

But what she found was blood. A small spattering of red amongst crushed weeds and, so faint beneath the dusting of snow that she almost missed them, clumsy bootprints that had stirred up the dirt around them. The blood looked too fresh to belong to the messenger who had been attacked the night before; the sabrecat had found another victim.

The trail grew from mere droplets to full splashes, leading to a disused fisherman's shack tucked into a nook in the cliffside along the river. Its door was smeared with blood, but closed—something a sabrecat dragging a meal back to its nest could not have done. Someone was in there, either dead or dying.

Annika hurried to the shack, but the door, though half off its hinges, would not open. She peered through a gap between the rotting wooden planks of the shack's wall and spotted the rounded shape of a man's body huddled in a corner. He cradled his left arm against his chest, the cloth he had wrapped around it almost completely stained red with blood, but for a small patch of blue at the edge. In the midst of the tangled blonde hair that curtained his face, she saw a single braid.

A shiver that had nothing to do with the snow ran down her spine.

"Ralof?"

His head snapped up, and the fear on his pale but sweaty face was palpable.

"Annika!" He stumbled across the shack, cringing at the pain it caused his wounded arm. "You've got to get out of here!"

"Are you mad? You need to be healed before you bleed to death!"

"No, listen to me, it's still here, it's—"

And suddenly she understood, but by then it was too late. She heard it behind her, its snarl as low and steady as a purr, its heavy paws almost silent on the snow. Annika whirled around, reaching for an arrow, but the sabrecat was already lunging at her, and she knew that she had mere moments to live, that all the arrows in the world would not save her now.

But maybe something else could.

"Fus!"

The Voice shot out of her like a whip, more instinct than decision. It staggered the sabrecat for only a second, but it was enough. She sunk an arrow into its skull before it could regain its footing, and with a sharp cry, it fell back into the shallows of the river. She readied a second arrow, and though she was shaking so hard she could barely hold her bow steady, she kept it trained on the animal until she was sure it was dead.

Annika dropped her bow and turned back to the shack. She heard the scrape of wood against dirt, and through the hole in the wall she saw Ralof, breathless from the effort, tugging a bookshelf away from the door with his good arm. She wedged herself inside the moment she could fit through the gap.

"What... what was that?"

Instead of answering, she helped him to the dilapidated bed in the corner. "Give me your arm."

"By the gods," he whispered as he sat down, his face growing even paler than it already was. "That was a Shout, wasn't it? The Greybeards were summoning you, weren't they?"

"Your arm, Ralof!"

He gritted his teeth as he lifted it away from his chest. With gentle hands, Annika peeled away the soaked wrap, and gasped when she saw the mess underneath. His arm had been cleaved apart from shoulder to elbow, the sabrecat's claws ripping clean through leather and chainmail and flesh, and though the flow of blood seemed to have slowed, it still trickled from the laceration with each beat of his heart. She knew she wouldn't be able to heal a wound this severe with her simple spells, but she also knew Ralof wouldn't make it back to Windhelm alive if she didn't try.

He sighed with relief as she began to cast her magic, and though he closed his eyes to savor the reprieve from the pain, they locked on her the moment they opened again.

"I can't believe you didn't tell me—"

"I didn't know. Not until this morning."

"What are you doing here, then? You should be up at High Hrothgar!"

"If I was," she retaliated, "this shack would have been your tomb."

With that sobering thought, Ralof fell silent.

Annika poured everything she had into healing him, not letting up until she was entirely spent. She had managed to staunch the bleeding, but his arm still looked raw and mangled, and, she imagined, burning with pain.

"Look at that," he joked with a weak laugh. "Good as new."

It was only then that Annika could allow herself the joy of finding Ralof alive, and her lips broke into a wide smile. Minding his injured arm, she pulled him into an embrace and held onto him for a long moment, comforting herself as much as him.

"Thank you, Annika," he whispered. "You truly did save my life."

"Maybe so, but we should get back to Windhelm as quickly as possible nonetheless."

He brightened as she helped him to his feet. "You made it, then? To Windhelm? Did you speak to Jarl Ulfric? Does he know you can Shout?"

She could not help but laugh at all of his questions, at his boyish enthusiasm despite having just nearly been mauled to death, and she thanked every last one of the Divines for their mercy on this man. She hadn't known how much she'd missed him until he was beside her once more.

"Yes, I made it to Windhelm," she answered, "and yes, I spoke with Jarl Ulfric. But no, he doesn't know that I'm—I'm Dragonborn."

It was the first time she had said it aloud, and hearing herself speak the words made them seem all the more real, and all the more dreadful.

"Why didn't you tell him?"

"Because..." Her voice trailed off as she cast around for the right words, though she wasn't sure there were any. "Because I want him to see me for who I am, not who legend says I should be."

Ralof rolled the idea around in his head before nodding. "Your secret is safe with me, then."

Not a single silent moment passed on their careful walk back to Windhelm. He told her the tale of the sabrecat's ambush, how it had chased him south and stalked the shack for hours after he'd barricaded himself inside, bleeding and starving and too weak to even consider fighting the animal. And Annika told him all that had occurred since they parted—the glowing wall inside Bleak Falls Barrow, the dragon's attack on Whiterun's western watchtower, Balgruuf's bribe of a title, her audience with Ulfric. By the time they'd reached the city, he knew of her reluctance to believe that she was Dragonborn and her utter thrill at finally standing before the man she had revered for as long as she could remember. She was stunned at how easy it was to tell him these things, things she couldn't imagine sharing with anyone else... but there was still so much he didn't know. So much she could not tell him.

When they stepped through the high archway into the front courtyard of the Palace of the Kings, Ralof beamed up at the dark facade of the keep.

"I thought I'd never see this place again," he said with a delighted laugh. "But here we are. Home."

Annika thought of the path to Kynesgrove she had turned away from, the misty tips of the village's evergreens she'd spied from the riverbank. She thought of the small cottage she had been born in, and wondered if its remains still stood. She thought of her family, and knew that, without them, Kynesgrove would never be home again.

She longed to believe Ralof's words, that this, the ancient city of Windhelm, the historic Palace of the Kings, could become home to her, but the familiar apprehension that had flared up within her the moment they'd set foot in the city was less than encouraging. Would she ever be able to face these doors without worry of what awaited her on the other side?

"Home," she repeated, and bit her lip as Ralof took her hand to tug her inside. "That remains to be seen."

* * * * *

Annika's earlier expectation of a busy and bustling keep was at last fulfilled: twenty or more soldiers swarmed the Great Hall, carrying an array of swords and shields and pieces of armor as they rushed about. Several of the men gave Annika and Ralof curious looks as they crossed the chamber, but it was Galmar who, in the midst of shouting orders at a group of young recruits, truly took notice.

"Ralof!"

He bounded toward them, relieved to see his lieutenant alive and well and back home in Windhelm. But his broad smile faltered when he saw the pallid sheen of Ralof's face, and died when his eyes landed on his bloodied arm. He seemed even more stunned to find Annika, in her charred and slashed armor, at Ralof's side, guiding him to the banquet table and insisting he rest.

"Ysmir's beard, what happened to you?"

"He needs a healer," Annika declared in way of a reply. "I did what I could, but..."

"What I really need," Ralof interrupted with a tired grin as he sunk down onto the bench, "is a thick, juicy mammoth steak—and a whole bucket of mead."

"Mead won't save your arm. A healer, Galmar!"

Galmar looked from one to the other, too confused and bewildered to care—or perhaps even notice—that he was being given orders by a commoner. It was, to Annika's dismay, Ulfric who followed them, breaking through the crowd that had quickly gathered.

"Hroldir, fetch Wuunferth," he commanded one of the men. "Engar, meat and mead from the kitchens." He stood before Annika and met her eyes, his own demanding but kind. "Now, tell us what happened."

For a moment, she could barely find her breath, let alone speak. "I found him holed up inside an old fisherman's shack a few miles south of here," she told him in a nervous rush, "badly injured by the same sabrecat Galmar sent me to kill."

"Which she did," Ralof put in. "I know I'm not quite as valuable as that pelt you asked for, Galmar, but I hope you won't hold that against her."

Galmar's widening eyes blinked in disbelief. "You—you killed the sabrecat?"

"And saved my life in doing so," Ralof added, beaming up at her with such pride that he might have been the hero of the tale, and not Annika.

She flushed, ever uncomfortable under the heat of praise, as all eyes turned to her. She spotted two of the men who had mocked her earlier, now looking entirely abashed, and Galmar's gaping shock subsided into a smile that seemed—dare she even think it?—rather impressed. She had worried that Ralof's account would not be proof enough of her success in the task, or that Galmar would merely shrug it off and continue to think her a milk-drinker. But maybe it was possible, after all, to win his respect. Maybe she had.

When she glanced up at Ulfric, however, she was startled to find him staring at her from beneath drawn brows, a hundred questions darkening his pensive eyes. Unlike the others, he didn't seem at all interested in her victory over the sabrecat, only thoughtful and, perhaps, suspicious.

"What did you mean," he asked slowly, "when you said you had done what you could?"

Annika hesitated, frightened, somehow, of telling him that the wreck of flesh that was Ralof's arm was, in part, her doing. "That I healed him, my lord," she answered, a tremble in her voice betraying her uncertainty in herself.

Though Galmar and the other men grunted and gasped their astonishment, Ulfric gave no reaction other than a small nod.

"You can heal," he mused, a statement rather than a question.

"Not well enough, I'm afraid. I thought he might bleed to death if nothing was done for his wound, but... perhaps I should only have wrapped it and left the sorcery to more capable hands."

"Don't be ridiculous," Ralof chided with a laugh. "I had about three drops of blood left in my veins when you found me. I'm alive now thanks to your hands, inadequate as you think they are."

Annika appreciated his faith, but knew he was giving her far more than she deserved, and a sharp stab of guilt pierced her stomach when she glanced at his arm. How presumptuous she had been to think her paltry spells were needed to save his life; she should have waited, should have cast them only as a last resort. Now, he would likely be left with mangled tendons and hideous scars.

But Ulfric did not look down on her with contempt or reproach, nor did he chastise her for her hastiness. He only studied her for a few moments longer before turning to Galmar.

"Take her with you."

Galmar's eyebrow rose, disappearing into the perpetual snarl of his bear's head helm. "But she hasn't taken the oath yet."

"There will be time to honor traditions later. We've just gotten word from a scout in the Pale," he told Annika, "that a small band of Imperials stopped at Nightgate Inn two hours ago, asking after one of our couriers. I want them taken alive. A healer may be needed to ensure that happens."

A heavy dread seized Annika's heart. She was a hunter, not a healer! Had he asked her to slay another sabrecat, she would have gone forth in confidence, but this? This was not what she came here to do. This responsibility was too great for someone of her meager skill to bear. She could not be relied upon to heal the deep wounds of real battle, or to chase death away from every man or woman it wished to claim. She looked once more to Ralof, eagerly tearing into the rabbit haunch that had just arrived from the kitchens, and knew that if she had saved his life, it was only because the gods had saw fit to grant her that one mercy. Were she to face the same challenge again, she was sure she would fail.

But how could she refuse the will of her Jarl? It had been so easy to counter Balgruuf's claim that she was Dragonborn, but she could not imagine telling Ulfric that he was wrong, that she was not what he believed her to be, that she would not do what he asked of her. She couldn't stand to let him down. But whether it was now or when she returned to Windhelm with the cold bodies of the men he wanted brought back alive, she feared she would.

Before she could say another word, an elderly man hobbled into the Great Hall, complaining loudly about the disruption of his research to the young soldier who had been sent to fetch him.

"Wuunferth," Ulfric called, waving him over. "Ralof's been wounded, and needs treatment."

"All right, all right," Wuunferth rasped with an air of impatience, pushing men a quarter of his age out of his way with a gnarled staff. He huffed a sigh when he saw Ralof's wound. "Again? Didn't you almost lose that same arm a fortnight ago? You need to be more careful, boy."

Ralof ducked his head, a smirk pulling at the corner of his mouth and quickly hidden by a flagon of mead as Wuunferth began to heal him.

Annika watched the mage with fascination. His spells burned brighter than her own, and seemed to not only close Ralof's wound, but reverse time itself, as new skin bloomed over the raw flesh of his arm. In mere minutes, he was healed to near perfection, and Annika was left breathless in wonder. She had not known restoration magic could work such miracles.

This was the caliber of healer that Ulfric deserved to have on the field—not a novice like herself. This was the caliber of healer she would need to be if she could ever hope to save herself the sort of devastation she'd once been helpless to prevent. She glared at the mage with bitter envy at the power he held in his hands. The power over life and death.

"Wuunferth."

Annika started at the sound of Ulfric's voice, and looked up to find his eyes, blazing and shrewd, locked on her, even as he spoke to the mage.

"How would you like an apprentice?"

* * * * *

Wuunferth, as it turned out, did not like having an apprentice.

"No, no, no," he snapped, snatching his hand away from the light of Annika's spell. "What do you mean to do, heal me or tickle me? You need to concentrate!"

"I'm trying," Annika shot back through gritted teeth. "It's difficult to concentrate when you keep shouting at me."

"You'll have a lot more than an old man's shouting to worry about when you're healing soldiers on the battlefield," he reminded her. "Now, try again."

In the week since she'd arrived in Windhelm, much of Annika's time had been spent holed up in Wuunferth's dark and eerie study, listening to his wheezing lectures and grumbling rants and resisting the urge to throw whatever dusty tome he'd charged her with reading that day into his hearth fire. But every now and then, between the endless criticisms of her incompetency that she tried not to take personally, she managed to actually learn something.

The oath she'd taken to pledge her blood and honor to the service of Ulfric Stormcloak hadn't been for naught, however. Three days after assisting in the capture of the legionnaires at Nightgate Inn, she'd helped defend Fort Amol from an Imperial siege, her arrows striking down six men in total. Now there was talk of the rebellion advancing on Whiterun, if Balgruuf continued to withhold his support. Annika embraced every chance she had to wear her new armor—not tailored to her own body, but at least made to fit a woman's curves—but was not looking forward to attacking such an immense and well-defended city, and hoped it wouldn't come to that.

All in all, life in Windhelm was agreeable enough. The frost of the impending winter—and of Wuunferth's attitude—was a small price to pay for a bed in the keep's barracks, a nightly meal, and as many arrows as her quivers could hold. When she wasn't out on assignment, Annika closed her days at Candlehearth Hall with Ralof and his friends, drinking mead, sharing stories, and singing along with the tavern's resident bard. She fell into bed each night tired and aching, but completely content.

Today, however, Annika was not at all content. She took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and tried to focus her mind on the words of the incantation, but her frustration needled her like a sliver. She had found Wuunferth in worse spirits than usual that morning, having misplaced a jar of Chaurus eggs (though he would never admit to it, and had instead insisted that it had been stolen), and he seemed intent on taking out his ire on her.

"By the gods, child," he raged, spittle flying from his lips to catch in his long beard. "You couldn't heal a hangnail with that magic!"

"How am I supposed to heal what isn't there?" she retorted. "You don't have a hangnail!"

A man cleared his throat behind her, and she whirled about, praying that Ulfric hadn't overheard her shouting at his court mage. But it was only Ralof, wearing his armor and a bemused smile that he wasn't trying very hard to hide.

"Sorry to interrupt," he said, "but Galmar's found it."

Annika jumped up from her chair, her annoyance with Wuunferth already forgotten. "He has? Where?"

"Korvanjund. We're setting out on the hour." Ralof's smile stretched into a grin that covered his entire face, bright with boyish exuberance. "He's asked that you come along."

* * * * *

They were ten minutes away from Korvanjund when the scout came riding back to them, his mare's hooves almost silent on the snow.

"Imperials," he called out before he had even come to a stop. "At least six of them standing guard outside the barrow."

Galmar's face twisted and reddened with rage until Annika imagined she could see steam rising from his skin. "Damn them!" he cursed. "How in Oblivion did they find it? Let's make haste!" He dug a heel into his horse and bounded forward, followed by the two lieutenants with the benefit of mounts. "We can't let those bastards get their hands on the Crown!"

Though Ulfric himself did not set much store by the legend of the Jagged Crown, Galmar's zealous obsession was infectious, and Annika had been caught up in his quest to find it since hearing the story five days before. Made of the bones of dragons and imbibed with the power of every king to wear it, the Crown was lost to the ages after the death of its last master, King Borgas—a death that had borne the first era's War of Succession. It seemed wonderfully poetic that the catalyst of Skyrim's last civil war could end this one, and to Annika, any myth that might bring Ulfric closer to the throne was one worth chasing.

She only wished she had a horse upon which to chase it. She was already tired from trudging through the heavy snow of the Pale that had quickly soaked through her boots to numb her toes, but she pushed herself to keep pace with the others on foot. By the time they caught up to the contingent's leaders, Galmar, Yrsarald, and Ralof had hitched their mounts a distance away and concealed themselves behind a thicket of low evergreens. The barrow lay in a bowl dug deep into the earth, giving the Stormcloaks a broad view of the legionnaires below.

"Six Imperials," Galmar confirmed once everyone had gathered around him. "We're twice as many and twice as strong, so this should be a walk in the park. I know some of you used to be in the Legion and may know men on the other side, but remember this: they are the enemy now." He shot several of his men a stern look, but not Annika, nor, she noticed, Ralof. "We need to hit them hard and fast. I want the heavy armsmen to take the vanguard for a strong opening blow, and—"

"No!"

Annika was just as stunned as anyone by her interruption; it had come out unbidden, a reaction to the strategy she knew, instinctively, would be the death of them all. Galmar's mouth hung open though his words had died on his tongue, and the rest of the group looked either appalled or amused that she would have the audacity to contest the second-in-command's orders.

"Forgive me," she rushed on, knowing she had little time to justify her insolence, "but I don't think that's the best course of action."

Galmar barked out a cold laugh. "And what do you know about war?"

"Very little, I'll admit," she replied, "but this isn't a battle for a fort or a stronghold; this is a hunt for the Jagged Crown. The moment the men nearest the door see us, they'll flee into the barrow to alert the rest of their contingent. We can't give them that chance. We do, and we're handing them the Crown on a silver platter."

He stared at her for what seemed like an hour, until his eyes, small and shrewd, skipped back to the barrow, and Annika knew that reason had won out over rage.

"All right," he said, a hint of mockery in his voice. "What do you suggest we do?"

"I'm an archer, if you recall—put me to use. I can take out the men guarding the door before any of them even know we're here."

Annika held her breath as Galmar eyed the bow slung over her shoulder with suspicion. Like most Nords, he trusted in the power of brute force and sharpened steel, not knowing—or perhaps refusing to believe—that the bow could be just as deadly a weapon, making up with swiftness and silence what they lacked in strength.

"Fine," he finally relented. "We'll do it your way. But gods help you if it goes wrong."

No one could say that Galmar Stone-Fist wasn't a stubborn man, but it seemed, Annika was relieved to discover, that he would not put his pride before the integrity of his mission. She gave a firm nod and set off without another word.

Keeping low to the ground to evade the eyes of the legionnaires below, Annika approached the southeast side of the barrow's sunken threshold, and readied an arrow before taking position. The men at the door made perfect targets: standing still, shields lowered, the soft curve of their necks exposed between collar and helm. She took careful aim and let her arrow fly, another following a moment after the first hit its mark. The legionnaires collapsed, their swords and shields hitting the stone ground in a clatter that their allies could not have missed.

But before they could rush to their fallen comrades, Galmar and his men were charging down the steps towards them, roaring their rage and lifting their battleaxes and warhammers high into the air. Annika watched from above, her bow drawn and ready should any of the legionnaires make for the barrow's door, but after a minute of bloody battle, none were left alive to try.

"Good work," Galmar grunted with a nod when Annika rejoined the group, a slightly begrudged compliment, but one bearing respect nonetheless.

"Thank you."

"I suppose there's something to be said for stealth and subterfuge after all."

Indeed, Galmar was so swayed by their success that he instructed his contingent to continue with the strategy once inside the barrow, delegating Ralof, with his penchant for silent strikes, to take the vanguard with Annika.

They made their way through the barrow, Annika sniping legionnaires at a distance while Ralof crept up behind them to bury his axe in their necks. The Imperial forces seemed thin; only two or three legionnaires were to be found in any given chamber. Watchdogs, Annika was certain now, meant to alert their allies rather than fight their enemies... though they hadn't the chance to do either.

It was not until they came to the barrow's Hall of Stories that they met any real resistance. Past the ornate carvings that lined the walls, past the dead Draugr that littered the floor, past the urns and candles and cobwebs, a group of legionnaires crowded around an iron door inlaid with engraved wheels that struck a familiar chord within Annika. There were far too many soldiers for her and Ralof to eliminate on their own, but she was able to shoot two down before the others grew wise to the attack, and Galmar's warriors charged in to take over.

Steel clashed with steel as rebels fought legionnaires, flesh splitting and blood spilling faster than Annika could keep up with. She had done enough killing; now was the time to heal. She cast her spells in a continuous stream, with much more success than she'd had on Wuunferth's imaginary hangnail. But she could not heal the artery severed by one legionnaire's dagger, nor the decapitation dealt by another's greatsword. Two Stormcloaks were beyond her help, but eight Imperials had lost their lives in return.

Ralof raised his axe to dispatch the ninth, but did not swing.

"What are you waiting for?" Galmar hissed after a moment. "Kill him!"

The axe only hovered in the air.

The legionnaire, surrounded and vastly outnumbered, dared not raise his own sword. At a glance, his dark brown hair and olive skin suggested he was a native of Cyrodiil like all the rest, but as Annika inched forward for a closer look at the man Ralof was so hesitant to kill, she knew he wasn't. For she had seen him before, only on that day, she and Ralof had been at his mercy... and he hadn't any. If it had been any other legionnaire, he would already have been dead. But it wasn't any other legionnaire. It was Hadvar.

"Kill him!" Galmar ordered once more.

Ralof pointed to the small silver badge pinned to Hadvar's cuirass. "He's a Quaestor."

"So?"

"He could be of value to us. The Legion's still holding some of our men prisoner in Fort Snowhawk, right? Maybe they'll agree to a trade."

Galmar glared at Hadvar, his jaw pulsing as he clenched his teeth. "Fine. But you'll be his keeper until we get back to Windhelm," he snarled at Ralof. "Tie him up."

Ralof took one of his own belts off and wrapped it around Hadvar's wrists until he was as bound as they had been in Helgen. Hadvar stared at him with utter contempt the entire time, but Ralof kept his eyes down.

"Just kill me," Hadvar growled under his breath. "I don't need your mercy."

"Maybe not," Ralof replied. "But I do."

When he turned and caught Annika watching them, he paled, worried, she assumed, that she would tell Galmar the true reason he wished to spare this man's life: not because he was a Quaestor, but because, once upon a time, he was Ralof's best friend. Because he had forsaken Galmar's earlier words of warning: they are the enemy now. She gave a small nod to assure him that she wouldn't.

"Now," Galmar said, kicking aside a body that had fallen on the threshold of the door. He pried at the wheels with gloved fingers; they turned, but did not give way. "How does this damned thing work?"

"I know."

Galmar turned to Annika with a look of exasperation, as though he was growing tired of her having all the answers. "And how, pray tell, do you know?"

"I've seen one of these doors before." She ran her hand over the engravings on each of the three wheels, symbols different from those on the door in Bleak Falls Barrow, but she guessed the riddle could be solved in the same way. "The key is shaped like a claw."

"All right," he said, a hint of disbelief in his voice. "Does anyone see a claw anywhere? You, Quaestor—you know anything about this?"

Hadvar said nothing, only met Galmar's glare with one of his own. Annika had the distinct sense that he knew all about the claw, but she couldn't blame him for keeping quiet. After all, she wouldn't be very forthcoming with information the Legion needed were she in his shoes.

But it didn't matter. After half of the dead legionnaires had been turned over, the claw, crafted of gleaming ebony, was found pinned beneath one, the tip of its long middle finger embedded in the man's arm. Galmar pulled it out and wiped the blood off on the corpse's armor before handing it to Annika.

"Now what?"

She turned the wheels on the door until their seals matched those carved into the claw's palm—a fox, a moth, and a dragon. Once the key was in place, the door creaked and groaned as whatever ancient magic it had been enchanted with worked to open it. Galmar let out a hearty laugh as the iron slid down into the earth, allowing them passage into the barrow's frigid crypt.

At the end of a long and winding corridor they found an anteroom, lined with bookshelves full of crumbling tomes, that opened into a round chamber. Upon a raised stone dais, a throne sat between two sentry caskets, both taller and broader than even Ulfric himself.

"By Talos's grace," Galmar breathed, stopping short before the dais and lowering his battleaxe. "There it is. And that—that must be King Borgas!"

He approached the throne slowly, humbled, it seemed, to be in the presence of one of Skyrim's ancient kings, regardless of how dessicated and moldering he now was. The corpse's bowed head bore the Jagged Crown, the helm forged of the bones of dragons, and, Annika saw with a start, the fangs of one as well.

It was not until Galmar reached out for the Crown that the corpse's eyes snapped open.

"Fus... ro dah!"

Galmar was blown backward by Borgas's Shout, the words sounding more like a sharp clap of thunder than the roar Annika had heard from the mouths of dragons—or perhaps that was the sound of the caskets breaking open, two more Draugr awakening within.

All at once, they attacked. Yrsarald lead the charge with a fierce bellow, sinking his axe deep into Borgas's stomach and withdrawing a trail of blackened viscera; the corpse's eyes, glowing a ghastly blue, narrowed in anger, but betrayed no pain or weakness. Once Galmar had caught his breath, he leapt into the fray and added his steel to the assault, focusing his strength on the king who had sent him flying with naught but his voice. Only Ralof and Annika stayed on the fringes of the battle, Ralof to keep his prisoner from fleeing and Annika to heal the wounds inflicted by the Draugr's rusted swords, praying to every last god that, this time, she would not fail.

She didn't. When the dust had settled and the king and his court lay dead, she was relieved to find that her allies, though somewhat worse for wear, were still standing.

Galmar plucked the Jagged Crown from the fallen king's head, holding it up in great reverence for all to see. A hush fell over them as they beheld the ancient relic, and through the quiet came a sound almost too faint to hear, but tangible enough to make the hair on the back of Annika's neck stand on end.

"Do you hear that?" she whispered to Ralof as he came up behind her, Hadvar in tow.

"Hear what?"

"That... chanting."

She peered into the darkness beyond the throne and the caskets, beyond the ritual candles and their immortal flames, and saw a tiny flicker of light, the same blue as King Borgas's eyes. She moved towards it as though in a trance, the chanting growing stronger and the light brighter, and she knew, long before she stood inside the curve of the stone wall and read the scratches etched upon it, what they were, and what they meant.

Tiid.

The word burned and crackled on the wall and in her mind, and the Voices removed from time itself embraced her tingling limbs. Their mystery had frightened her in Bleak Falls Barrow, before she knew she was Dragonborn. Now, their truth frightened her even more. She knew the beast that stirred within her in response to their call, the beast that stretched and purred and locked its claws into her lungs and her throat. She knew, and she could not run from it, this time.

When the wall went dark and the chanting died away, Annika turned to find Galmar, Ralof, and a handful of others behind her.

"What was that?"

She shook her head and swallowed hard. "I don't know," she replied. "Whatever it was, it's gone now."

But Galmar's eyes, dark with suspicion, followed her out of the crypt.

The sky was just beginning to darken when they emerged from the barrow, and a bitter wind blew pinpricks of snow into their faces as they marched eastward. To Annika's relief, Galmar's attention seemed solely focused on the Jagged Crown, safely nestled in the crook of his arm, and she hoped that, by the time they got back to Windhelm, he would forget all about the mysterious curved wall buried deep within Korvanjund.

She did not dare speak the word with the others so near; its balance on the tip of her tongue was so precarious that she tried not to speak at all, for fear that it would fly out on the wings of her curiosity. She knew—or the thing inside of her knew—that it meant time. But beyond that, she could not imagine what power the word held. Would it stop time? Reverse it? Quicken it? The idea that she might be able to bend the flow of time itself was terrifying and tantalizing all at once.

Annika wondered, too, how many of these walls were scattered across Skyrim, how many of these words smoldered in the darkness, waiting to be read. She wondered what other magic could be done simply by uttering a few syllables. Could she breathe fire like the dragons had, or whip the skies into the same tempest that had laid waste to Helgen? Was there a Shout that could save a life? Was there a Shout to end one?

It was not until the Palace of the Kings rose up over the river that Annika shook free of these thoughts and questions. She was not here, she told herself, to hunt down strange etchings on stone walls. She was here to see Ulfric Stormcloak become High King, and until that day came, nothing else mattered.

* * * * *

"All hail to Ulfric, you are the High King! And in your great honor, we drink and we sing!"

The song had never rung as true as it did that night. Though he had protested at first, Ulfric had eventually given in to Galmar's behest to wear the Jagged Crown, polished and buffed to brilliance, a symbol of the title that was rightfully his. All who had assisted in its recovery had been invited to dine with the court in the Great Hall, where flagons never lacked mead and the walls shook with raucous and drunken song late into the night—a true Nordic celebration. Her head dizzy and her cheeks aching with laughter, Annika looked up and down the banquet table and wondered how she had ever had any fun with the pensive Redguards of Hammerfell or the serene Bosmer of Valenwood.

Ralof was the only one who spent more time brooding down into his mead than making merry, and each time Annika turned his way and saw the worry on his face, her heart broke for him. It could not be easy to celebrate when your best friend sat stewing in the castle's dungeons, even when that best friend despised you. Seeing that his flagon was almost empty, she filled it from one of the many jugs on the table; if the music wasn't lifting his spirits, copious amounts of mead surely would.

He tried his best to return her warm smile. "Trying to get me drunk, are you?"

"Trying to make you feel better."

Ralof downed half his mead in one swallow. "What if General Tullius doesn't accept the trade? Am I supposed to stand by and let the man I've loved as a brother all my life have his head cut off?"

Annika hesitated. Hadvar had been willing to do that very thing, but she didn't think it very kind to remind Ralof of that right now. "You may not have a choice," she told him gently. "Whatever else he is, he's still a legionnaire. He's still the enemy. And aiding the enemy is treason."

He heaved a sigh. "I know. I'm sorry you have to be involved in this, just by knowing who Hadvar is. Thank you for keeping it quiet."

"Of course. You kept my secret, after all."

"Yes, but now you have two secrets," he returned. "You lied to Galmar back at Korvanjund, didn't you?"

Annika shushed him, though she needn't have; no one was paying them any mind, and the din of the celebration was so loud that they could barely even hear each other. "The etchings on the wall," she said. "They were words."

"How could you tell?"

"I could read one of them." She gave a small laugh. "How can I read a language I've never seen before?"

"Only the gods know. What did it say?"

But Annika's attention had moved to her mead. It had begun to tremble, tiny ripples swelling out from the center, and she could not make sense of why. A moment later, she had her answer. The sky was split open by a crack of thunder so deafening it was as though the castle lay within the clouds themselves. Plates and cutlery rattled, flagons pitched over to flood the table with mead and wine, and dust fell in waves from the rafters. The very walls shook, and the floor beneath her feet seemed to be falling apart. A chorus of voices rolled in on the edge of the devastation.

"Dovahkiin!"

The echoing call died away, and the Great Hall was plunged into silence for a single moment before dissolving into bedlam, everyone asking their own questions and nobody having any answers. But they all seemed to have some idea, at least, of what had just happened—all except Annika.

"What was that?"

"The Greybeards," Ralof told her. "Didn't you hear them the first time?"

She shook her head, thinking back to the morning she awoke in Dragonsreach to discover that she had been summoned by the Greybeards while she slept. "No, I didn't."

"It was so much louder this time, though. I wonder why?"

It was the foremost question on everyone's lips, but Annika couldn't believe that Ralof had to ask it. She knew the answer at once.

So, it seemed, did Ulfric. He rose from his seat at the head of the table, effortlessly demanding the attention of every man and woman in the Great Hall without a word.

"The Greybeards have spoken again," he proclaimed, his voice booming through the Great Hall. "Why did their Shout almost bring the entire keep down on our heads? Because, this time, it was directed at us. The Dragonborn they seek must be here in Windhelm—perhaps in our very midst."

Wide eyes and suspicious whispers flew around the table, looking for some sign that the Dragonborn was there amongst them, or, perhaps, wondering if they themselves were the Dragonborn. Annika sipped her mead, waiting for someone's gaze to light on her and remember that she was the outsider, the one person who had not been there a week ago, when the Greybeards sent their first summons down across the world. But no one seemed to remember that she was there at all, and with every moment that passed without a finger being pointed her way, it became easier to breathe.

And then, Galmar stood up.

"Her," he said, looking right at Annika. "It's her!"

She was as frozen as she'd ever been in the coldest winters of her youth. All eyes turned to her, but the only ones she could see were Ulfric's, looking at her as though he had never seen her before.

"Why do you think this, Galmar?"

"There was this... this wall, in Korvanjund," he recalled. "Marked all over with runes I'm sure were Draconic. And when she drew close to it, it began to glow, and—"

Ulfric held a hand up to silence Galmar; that was all he needed to know. His gaze had never left hers, but where uncertainty had been, conviction now took root.

"Is this true?"

Annika could not lie to him. Not Ulfric. Not even when she was a child, trembling in fear of him, knowing a lie might have been her only hope of salvation, could she speak anything but the truth when he asked her for it. Not when he pinned her with those burning blue eyes that seemed to see right through her.

She took a deep breath, and, slowly, she nodded. "Yes, my lord."

A low murmur of awe and disbelief swelled over the crowd until Ulfric spoke again, a simple demand.

"Leave us."

The soldiers and lieutenants paraded out of the Great Hall, some taking their flagons or half-eaten haunches with them. Annika felt the heat of every gaze upon her, but she kept hers down on her fidgeting hands. Soon, only she and Ulfric remained, and the pounding of her heart was the only sound that filled the chamber for a long while.

Finally, he breathed something between a sigh and a laugh. "Never in a hundred eras would I have guessed that I would find the Dragonborn sitting at my very table," he mused, shaking his head. "Why did you keep this from me?"

"Forgive me, my lord," Annika pleaded. "Perhaps I should have been honest with you from the beginning. But—I didn't want your opinion of me to be based on a legend. I wanted to prove my worth to you."

After a beat of hesitation, Ulfric smiled. "You certainly do have the heart of a Nord, don't you?"

She flushed from head to toe. He remembered. And here she thought he had forgotten her entirely.

Ulfric left his honored place at the head of the table to join her at the middle of it, leaving the Jagged Crown behind. He topped up both of their flagons and took a long swill of mead before leaning back against the polished wood. "So, Dragonborn," he teased with a smirk, "tell me: why did you not answer the Greybeards' summons? Why are you not at High Hrothgar?"

"I didn't come back to Skyrim to be closeted away in a monastery."

A true laugh tumbled past his lips, melting away the last of her worry. "Talos knows I can't blame you for that. I couldn't stand to be closeted away in a monastery when war was at hand, either. Did you know that I was to become a Greybeard myself?"

Annika blinked up at him in wonder. "No, I didn't." She knew, of course, that Ulfric had been taught by the Greybeards, but she could not imagine him as one of them. She could not imagine this man, the very image of a fighter and a leader, living a lifetime of silence and passivity high atop a mountain. "If I may, my lord—why did you wish to study the Way of the Voice?"

He said nothing for a long moment, and Annika feared that she had asked too much; Dragonborn or not, she was still a commoner and he was still a Jarl. But a faraway look came into his eyes, and he began his tale.

"I idolized Tiber Septim in my youth, as most Nord boys do," he told her. "Not because he was a conqueror or an emperor, but because he was the Dragonborn. While others my age played at being warriors with wooden swords, I had greater ambitions. I wanted to use the Voice, as Tiber Septim had, and as not many others could. I wanted that most unique gift of the Dovah Sos—the Dragonblood."

He took another swallow of mead, his features darkening with some memory, perhaps painful, that played in his mind. He seemed just as mesmerized by his recollections as Annika was with him, hardly daring to breathe in fear of breaking the spell.

"I wanted to be Dragonborn more than I had ever wanted anything," Ulfric murmured. "I had convinced myself, for a time, that I was Dragonborn, but that I would only be awakened as such if I gave myself fully to the Way of the Voice. The Greybeards, in their infinite wisdom, sensed my devotion to their creed, and chose me to be their apprentice. Since I was my father's second son and thus not meant to inherit his Jarlship, he proudly sent me up to High Hrothgar at the age of nine. I was there for nearly a decade, and though I eventually came to accept that I was not and would never be Dragonborn, I was content with the life I had chosen. Until," he added with a smile that spoke of sadness, "the Great War began. The Greybeards believe it blasphemy to use the Voice for anything but worship of Kynareth, but my loyalty was never to Kynareth—it was to Talos. I could not sit back and do nothing while his own Empire was under attack."

"And so you left."

"And so I left," he echoed. "Much to the Greybeards' dismay. They are a dying breed, and they have been seeking someone to carry on their legacy for a long time. They had hoped I was that person, but all I turned out to be was a disappointment. They will now, most certainly, see you as their savior. You may even come to see yourself as such."

Annika's heart had soared with Ulfric's understanding of why she'd eluded the summons, but fell as she anticipated the course of his words. "You wish me to go to High Hrothgar."

"I wish you to do what your heart tells you to do," he replied. "I may not agree with their philosophy, but I cannot deny that the Greybeards have an unmatched wisdom in the Way of the Voice. Their guidance and their counsel can be of great benefit to you. But it is your choice, Dragonborn."

"I have already made my choice," she countered. "I pledged an oath to you, my Jarl."

"You need only ask, and I will free you from it."

It seemed as though all warmth had been drained from the Great Hall. Ulfric was not ordering her to leave, but he was not asking her to stay, either. He was giving her freedom to do as she would. And though she wanted nothing more than to stay by his side, she would, above all, trust his judgment.

"I shall go to the Greybeards, and take what knowledge I can from them. But I will come back to fulfill my oath," she promised. "I do not wish to be freed from it now, nor will I ever. I am yours, my lord."

He nodded down at her, and she thought she saw a gleam of pride in his eyes.

"I will have a mount readied for you at the stables in the morning—assuming you can ride?"

"I can."

"Good. The horse will get you to the bottom of the mountain, but the Seven Thousand Steps must be walked on foot. Rest well tonight," he bid her, rising from the table. "You'll need it."

"Thank you, my Jarl."

Ulfric stood before her for a long moment, haloed by the light of the candleabra that flickered above him. "I look forward to hearing about your pilgrimage, Dragonborn. I do, now and then, miss the serenity of High Hrothgar. But," he added, a smile tugging at the corners of his lips, "don't tell the Greybeards I said that. Goodnight."

"Goodnight."

And then he was gone, and Annika was alone in the vastness of the Great Hall, where she remained for some time. She nibbled at a sweet roll no one had wanted, her head spinning with all that had come to pass, and what it would mean for the days ahead.

She was no longer a nameless, faceless pawn in this game of thrones. She was someone now. She was the Dragonborn. And for the first time, she saw it the way Ulfric did: as a gift, not a curse.

* * * * *

The sun, just peeking over the east side of Windhelm's high walls, cast a rosy glow on the stone facade of the temple, and on the hesitant hand that hovered over its door. Worship of gods was so often passed down from father to son and mother to daughter, a tradition more than a devotion for children too young to understand why they prayed, or to whom. Annika had prayed to Talos because she'd been taught to pray to Talos, and had otherwise not given much thought to the man who had become a god.

But as she stood before the temple, a shiver ran down her back that had little to do with the morning frost. To Annika, Talos was no longer just a god; he was the last true Dragonborn. Whatever her soul was made of, his had been the same, and though his soul had not ended up in Sovngarde, as she feared hers wouldn't, it had ascended somewhere much higher. It only seemed fitting to pray to him now, to ask for guidance as she pursued her destiny as the new Dragonborn.

The door whined as it swung open. A biting chill hung in the air, the temple not yet warmed by the dawn's light, nor the weak flames of the candles that flickered at the base of the shrine at the far end of the chamber. It was as silent and still as a grave, and as she crept through the temple, Annika believed she was alone. Had he not turned in the polished wooden pew to face her, she would not have noticed Ulfric at all.

"My Jarl," she breathed, fumbling to bow as she backed away. "Forgive me, I didn't mean to intrude. I'll take my leave."

"Stay, please," Ulfric insisted. He gestured to the pew, an invitation to join him. "I was just thinking about you."

The frost of the temple was forgotten as her cheeks filled with warmth. "You—you were?"

He gazed up at the towering statue of Talos, glorified in his defeat of a monstrous serpent, and remained quiet for a full minute after Annika seated herself next to him. She had not been this close to him since they were both prisoners on a carriage heading to Helgen, and now that she no longer feared their imminent deaths, she noticed so many intimate details she had missed before: the comforting scent of the fur cloak she had never seen him without, the tiny white whiskers sprinkled through the blonde of his beard, the heat that seemed to emanate from his very skin.

But she also saw the bleakness in his eyes, and the slouch of his shoulders. The good humor of the night before was utterly gone.

"Have you ever heard of the Song of the Dragonborn?"

"No, my lord."

"I don't believe many have, aside from those who've studied dragon lore. I had not thought of it in years," he told her with a deep sigh. "Not until last night. The few words I remembered plagued me, keeping sleep at bay, until I finally went down to the library to seek out an old tome I'd kept from my days at High Hrothgar. What I found was enough to keep me awake for the rest of the night." Still staring up at the shrine, Ulfric recited a pair of couplets in a low and reverent voice. "'And the Scrolls have foretold of black wings in the cold, that when brothers wage war come unfurled; Alduin, Bane of Kings, ancient shadow unbound, with a hunger to swallow the world. But a day shall arise when the dark dragon's lies will be silenced forever, and then, fair Skyrim will be free from foul Alduin's maw. Dragonborn, be the savior of men.'"

A memory flared in Annika's mind. The dragon chasing her through the chaos of Helgen, so black it could have been shrouded with night itself. Alduin, Bane of Kings. She knew at once, and without a doubt, why the song troubled Ulfric so. It was not a song at all, but a prophecy.

"Do you see?" Ulfric asked, finally turning his anguished eyes to her. "I began the war that woke Alduin's hunger. And you, Dragonborn, must save us all from it." He bowed his head. "Our fates, it seems, are entwined."

Annika's heart quickened. Oh, yes, their fates were entwined, but he had no idea how deeply. He had no idea that, were it not for his kindness on one long-ago winter's night, she would not have come back to Skyrim two decades later. She would not have been at Helgen when the dragon attacked. The sleeping beast within her would never have stirred. There would be no Dragonborn.

Not for the first time, she wished to tell him the truth of it, but she resisted. She would not show him the weak and helpless girl she'd been when their paths first crossed, in such need of mercy, in such need of saving. But she could appease some of his guilt, with some of the truth. She owed him that much.

"I suppose they are, my lord," she finally replied, her voice little more than a whisper. "But think on this: were Skyrim not at war, I would have no reason to be here. If the song is to be believed, and you did waken Alduin, then you also brought the Dragonborn back to destroy him."

"Perhaps," Ulfric mused. "But all the same, I would rather this evil never have been unleashed into the world. We have enough evil to contend with as it is."

Annika didn't know what to say to that, and so said nothing, only gazed up at the shrine of another Dragonborn defeating another evil. She thought of the song that had rung through the Great Hall the night before: we're the children of Skyrim, and we fight all our lives. Whether the enemy was cold or hunger, wolves or dragons, the Empire or the Dominion, it seemed there was always something to fight. Always something to slay.

"Go to High Hrothgar," Ulfric urged. "If you are to defeat this menace, you must know how to fight fire with fire, and though the Greybeards are against fighting at all, they will guide you in their own way."

"You could guide me," Annika proposed, quietly and carefully. "You know the Way of the Voice. You know how to fight with it."

With a gentle smile and a shake of his head, the hope that had begun to kindle within her was put out. "The Greybeards have many lifetimes of wisdom and skill to offer you. I, on the other hand, need you more than you need me."

Disbelief widened her eyes and thrill colored her cheeks, asking the questions she was too speechless to ask herself.

"I trust you, Dragonborn," Ulfric continued, "but I don't know who else I can trust."

"Why is that, my lord?"

He hesitated, heaving an uneasy sigh before answering. "The Imperials at Korvanjund weren't there by coincidence."

Annika's brows furrowed with confusion. "Of course not. They were there for the Jagged Crown."

"Yes, but Galmar had been searching for the Crown for months," he reminded her. "The Legion may have been, too; we can't say for sure. But what are the chances they'd find it on the very same day we did?" A cold and bitter laugh fell from his lips. "No, they knew where to look because they were told where to look."

"But... by whom?"

"That is the question, isn't it? By whom."

Somewhere, in the dark shadows of her mind, Annika knew just what Ulfric was implying, but she didn't want to believe it.

"Maybe—maybe it was just a coincidence," she suggested. "It's possible, isn't it?"

"Alone, it would be," Ulfric agreed. "But did the Imperials at Nightgate Inn simply guess the route of my personal messenger? And the contingent that ambushed me at Darkwater Crossing, outnumbering my men three to one—were they only there to see the waterfall?"

Annika saw his meaning, and could not deny its truth: once could be chance, but thrice could only be design. She bowed her head in remorse that she had doubted the man who seemed to have none in her.

"The Legion is always one step ahead, and not by coincidence," he insisted, his tone darker than ever. "I have been betrayed. Treachery and corruption lie beneath the stone and snow of my city, and I will need your help to uncover it."

"I will do anything you ask of me, my lord," she began slowly. "But, though I appreciate your faith in me, I don't understand it. Why do you trust me, an outsider, over men and women who have served you for years?"

"This has been going on far longer than you've been around to have any part in it," he replied. "But that is insignificant. I trust you because you are the Dragonborn. You are what I have longed to be all of my life, and you came into my life the very day it was to end. And on this day, when Skyrim's soil was walked by the first Dragonborn in centuries, her skies saw the first dragon in millennia. How can that be a coincidence?" he asked, his eyes blazing with zealous conviction. "I would have been executed were it not for that dragon. And I don't believe that dragon would have been there, at that crucial moment, were it not for you."

All thoughts of trust and betrayal flew from her mind, and she shivered with dread, with the terrible revelation that was building up within her. "That morning in Helgen," she murmured, hearing the crackle of fire and the screams of the dying in the back of her mind, "I thought the dragon was following me through the village. I thought it was speaking to me. I thought it was looking into my very soul. And I couldn't imagine why, then." She sat back in the pew, shaking her head. "It knew, didn't it? It knew what I was, before I did. It was only there to see me dead."

"If the Song of the Dragonborn is true," Ulfric replied gently, "then it is your destiny to destroy Alduin. And Alduin will do everything he can to destroy you first."

There it was. The truth that had been haunting her every step for days. She'd known it all along, hadn't she? That some thread connected her to these beasts. Something beyond blood and souls. Something beyond fate. Their very lives were tied to each other; while one lived, the other walked in the perpetual shadow of death. She had to kill them, or they would kill her.

And as they sought her, these dragons would leave a trail of carnage in their wake. She thought of Helgen again, of the legionnaire who had writhed in the dirt as his flesh burned away, of the men and women and children who could not outrun the fire of a beast who saw no difference between the guilty and the innocent. How many had lost their lives that day, on the chance that she would lose hers?

And yet... Ulfric had lived. Annika stole a glimpse of him from the corner of her eye, of the man she had thought of every day for the last two decades of the life he had saved. And, if he was right, and she had saved his, then perhaps the price had been worth it.

Fate. She had never embraced the idea of it, that her life was not hers to live as she saw fit, but a fixed path she had no choice but to follow. But if her destiny was to slay these dragons, it was that destiny that bound her to Ulfric. And that was a path she would walk willingly.

He turned to her, then, and her gaze skipped shyly away.

"Do not forget: Alduin is not the only evil that threatens us. You are the only one I can trust," he told her once more. "If you come back to Windhelm—and I hope you do—I will need you to be my eyes and ears. I will need your help to root out the cancer that has been eating away at this rebellion, before it's too late."

"I will come back," she promised. "You have my word."

He nodded, and gave her one last smile, though it still spoke more of guilt and sorrow than anything else.

"Talos be with you, Dragonborn."

The rising sun glinted through the high windows, warming the still air of the temple as surely as Ulfric's faith had warmed Annika from the inside out, despite prophecies and destinies that may or may not be true. She bowed to her Jarl before taking her leave, loath to walk away from him, but taking solace in knowing that she would be back. That he trusted her. That he needed her. That, one way or another, their fates were entwined.

For she was everything he had ever wanted to be. And he was everything she had ever wanted.

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 twelve 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, come 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 ticking. 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.

Reserved.

Reserved.

Reserved.

Reserved.

Reserved.

Reserved.

My main gripe with it is that, in the beginning, I thought that the story followed the game's script way too much. The first scene was one I could read with my eyes closed and hear in my head just about word for word by heart. Curveballs are always highly appreciated.

However, I highly enjoyed Annika's interactions with Hadvar. I honestly think that he's a good guy and that he's doing what he thinks is best. But can he really be trusted, if he follows orders like that without a word?

And it's eerie how well the cast looks like the characters they're portraying! Ralof without dirt on his face - I never thought I'd see the day.

That's actually exactly why I wanted to get the Helgen scenes as close as possible to the game: it is rigidly scripted, and the only scene in the entire game that is exactly the same for everyone playing it, and one that we've probably all memorized by this point. I felt wrong messing with it too much. But I can definitely see what you're saying—since we do know that scene so well, it can get repetitive. Do you think it would be better if more of that scene was introspective, and included less of the actual dialogue (without adding completely new dialogue)?

In any case, I am planning on using dialogue from the game here and there and to at least loosely follow the more important scenes, but I can promise that there will be curveballs. I already have the final Stormcloaks vs. Imperials scene planned out and it will end quite differently than it does in the game.

Vladimir Kulich actually voiced Ulfric in the game! It is uncanny how much his character in Ironclad resembles Ulfric. If the film hadn't been released just a few months before Skyrim, I would be convinced that Bethesda used his character as inspiration for Ulfric.

I'll be adding more of the cast as the story goes on. I'm wracking my brains for someone to play Hadvar and coming up empty, though... Nevermind! Found him!

Also, thank you so much for reading and commenting! You're pretty much the fanfiction queen around these parts, so your advice is greatly appreciated!

Wow, Imag, I really can't imagine the amount of work, time, and hard effort put into this amazing article. I love the fact that you included the part where the general didn't really if Annika went to the block or not. Stories like these not are fun to read and recognize thee hard work put in, but you need to make sure you clarify that the Imperials ARE wrong in the final scene! Thank you for your hard work, and I can't wait for more

Thank you for reading and commenting!

I'm pretty vocal about being a Stormcloak supporter myself (I mean, look at my icon), and I hope I've showed in the first few scenes that Annika will be as well, so you can be assured that this story will be quite anti-Imperial.

I could tell simply by recognizing the title from Ulfric's little speech.

Wow, Imag, I'm really sorry about some mistakes in my last reply lol. When I was talking about the commander I meant that he didn't "care" if she went to the block or not, thats what i meant. And the second one was that I meant not "only" are these stories fun to read and so on...

Your selected Hadvar does look quite Hadvar-ish. Maybe not as much as your Ralof looks Ralof-ish, but....

I think Thor looks more like Ulfric than that Vladamir guy...

Yes, but Vladimir Kulich sounds much more like Ulfric. And for a rather good reason, too.

But... but... Vladimir IS Ulfric! Well, he's his voice, at least. I think he works perfectly to play him, though... he's got the long blonde hair, the fur cloak, even the axe! And they're about the same age - Vladimir is fifty-five and I imagine Ulfric has to be at least in his late forties, since he was in the legion thirty years ago. Chris Hemsworth is only twenty-eight, so I don't think he'd be a good pick for Ulfric, seeing as he wouldn't even have been an embryo when he fought in the Great War!

Oh, and I got what you were trying to say in your last post, no worries!