The roar split through the crisp morning air, magnified by the mountains' echo. Kaie paused and turned in the direction of the sound, scanning the clear blue skies above the line of trees crowding the road for any sign of disturbance. The birds, which had been chirping and twittering to their tiny hearts' content just moments before, were now silent. The only sound to be heard was that of the chilly Skyrim breeze blowing through and gently rustling the needles of the surrounding pines. The piercing roar came again from the south, shattering the eerie silence, and smoke rose up above the treetops shortly thereafter. Ominous storm clouds gathered in the distance, and faraway streaks of fire plummeted from the sky. Helgen was burning.
Kaie pulled her hood up a little farther, shading her delicate porcelain features from the harshness of the sun's blinding rays. Her heart sank in her chest as she studied the woods behind her, staring hard at the dense and towering trees as though she were looking straight through them to the blazing town beyond. Faint screams and shouts of alarm could now be heard, and the diluted stench of blood and smoke traveled on the northward breeze to her nostrils. She couldn't help but to feel disappointed at this particular turn of events. Helgen had been a fairly important base for the Imperials, and it was likely home to, at the very least, a small wealth of classified military documents. Kaie hoped that those documents would survive the apparent chaos, as such loss of valuable information would be quite unfortunate. Perhaps she should intervene? She could take advantage of the confusion and find out what was going on in addition to retrieving the papers. Her Prince would want those, and would likely be unhappy with her if she did not make an effort in fetching them for him when such an opportunity had arisen.
With the issue settled in her mind, Kaie reversed course and sprinted back up the wide, uneven cobblestone path towards Helgen. Her sandaled feet slapped audibly on the dirt and the rock as she dashed past, the nearby trees blurring into a mass of green at the edges of her vision. Best not to waste any time. The town was indeed ablaze when she arrived, the flames climbing high and burning so hot that even some of the massive stones that made up the towers and the outer wall had begun to melt. The air rippled and warped, the crumbling, decimated buildings lit by a harsh, flickering orange glow. The screams of the dying and the vengeful pierced the air, nearly drowning out the crackling of the fires, accompanied by the delicious, now-overpowering smell of blood. Hunger gnawed at her stomach in response to the scent, but she pushed it down. Now was not the time.
Then there was the matter of the dragon. He was a massive, beautiful creature with sharp, elegant spines and glistening ebony scales that perfectly reflected the light of the flames below. He soared in wide, graceful circles in the skies above Helgen, great leathery wings cutting silently and easily through the air, spewing impossibly hot fire from deep within his belly at the comparably pathetic and puny soldiers fighting for their lives on the ground. Kaie suspected that the hail of blazing meteors raining from the dark, turbulent storm clouds above had something to do with the dragon as well. It had been a solid hundred years since last one had been seen, after all, and she felt that she knew this one in particular. But it couldn't be. The World-Eater was gone… wasn't he? Best not to tangle with him regardless.
Either way, the dragons were returning. This was a valuable morsel of information indeed, but even in the light of this new discovery, the documents that Kaie had come for were no less important than they had been. She would still need to retrieve them.
"Get back here and fight, you damned cowards!"
Kaie started at the sudden, enraged exclamation amidst the clamor and chaos of battle. That voice… What was she doing there?
A tall, somewhat slender Nord woman darted around the corner several yards to Kaie's right, hardly hindered at all in her movements by the enormous ebony blade whose handle she clutched tightly in her gloved palms. Her short, choppy, impossibly navy hair appeared a rich purple in the light of the surrounding fires, and her pale grey eyes flashed dangerously over the dark mask covering her mouth and nose. She passed Kaie in a blur without so much as a second glance, pursuing a fleeing group of soldiers dressed in thick, faded blue and brown uniforms. Stormcloaks. This situation would only continue to get more curious, it seemed. The masked woman looked as though she might catch up to them, but she never got the chance. One of the meteors chose that precise moment to plummet from the sky and crash into the wall above the gate a mere foot or so in front of her. Kaie watched as she slid to a sudden stop, rolling aside just in time to avoid being crushed by a particularly colossal chunk of dislodged stone. One of the Stormcloaks was killed in the incident, buried beneath the massive, newly-created pile of smoldering rubble. The woman screamed in frustration, fuming and cursing loudly above the din at the retreating soldiers. The gate, it seemed, was now impassible.
"Rangel."
She quieted and turned at the sound of her name, raising an eyebrow as she seemed to notice Kaie for the first time. "What in Oblivion…?" Rangel sheathed her sword as she approached the significantly smaller, hooded Breton woman, crossing her arms and tilting her head ever so slightly to the side in a subtle gesture of curiosity. "Didn't expect to find you here, Scarlet. Got business in Helgen, or are you just enjoying the show?" She gestured at the carnage all around them with a broad sweep of her arm, slightly muffled voice drenched in bitterness with just a dash of amusement.
"I happened to be passing by, and decided that now would be a good time to take care of a small matter of business."
"You're after information, aren't you? What do you want? Military records? Classified documents?"
Kaie smiled slightly. Even after several decades had passed without so much as a glimpse of one another, it would appear that her old acquaintance still knew her all too well. "Perhaps."
"You'll want to head to the keep then, obviously," Rangel snorted. She turned, pointing to a large, as of yet mostly intact building constructed out of the same heavy stone blocks as the wall surrounding the town. It was all but a few yards away. "There."
Kaie nodded and looked back up at her, scanning what little she could see of her face for a heartbeat or so as she pondered what she was going to say next. That blue hair of hers really was absurd. Beautiful and delightfully unique, yes, but absurd. An odd gift from a daedra, bestowed upon her long ago. Kaie had often wondered what, exactly, the Daedric Prince of Night was thinking when she marked her devoted follower with something that would make her stand out like deathbell among common mountain flowers. This was, of course, a pointless use of her time. She knew better than anyone that to understand the inner workings of the minds of such beings was impossible.
But she had allowed her thoughts to wander for long enough… there were far more pressing matters at hand. "Here's an idea. Why don't you come with me?" Rangel glanced at her, eyes faintly alight with mild surprise and curiosity. "It'll be just like the old days, if only briefly. And from what I've gathered in the confusion of the current situation, the likelihood that we'll run into stray Stormcloaks in there is quite high."
That caught her attention, as Kaie had suspected it might. In fact, she had counted on it. "Those poor unlucky traitors did have their executions interrupted by that incredibly rude oversized lizard. Would be a shame if someone didn't correct that." She laughed, running a hand through her sooty mess of a head of hair. "You're right. Just like old times."