The town was in flames.
'Do me proud, Son.' His Father had whispered, before he and his Mother had succumbed to their wounds. He had wanted to cry but he couldn't. He was a big boy now.
The wide open streets leading to the main gate and keep belched smoke and embers, flames devouring the sparsely clustered thatched houses and licking at the keep walls. From the west, the screams and clamor of vicious battle and the dragon's shouts grew even louder.
Their attacker had swooped down on them unexpectedly, shattering their fortifications which had been held so vigilantly by the Imperial Legion, a handful of townsmen carrying pitchforks and bows had joined the foray, trying to protect what was theirs. Horses, once so majestic decked out in their finery, flew over the barricades rider less and aflame.
Glistening fire was sowing unprejudiced death amongst the defenders.
Haming felt the knight who carried him before him on his saddle abruptly spur his horse. He heard his cry. 'Hold on,' he shouted. 'Hold on!'
Other knights wearing the colours of the Imperial Legion overtook them, sparring, even in full flight with the dragon. Haming caught a glimpse of a skirmish from the corner of his eye – the crazed swirl of crimson evaporating in fire and red cloaks amidst the death and carnage, the dying cries of soldiers, the neighing of horses-
Shouts. No, not shouts. Screams.
'Hold on!'
Fear. With every jolt, every jerk, every leap of the horse pain shot through his little hands as he clutched at the reins. His legs contracted painfully, unable to find support, his eyes watered from the smoke. The arm around him suffocated him, choking him, the force compressing his ribs. All around him screaming such as he had never heard before grew louder. What must one do to a man to make him scream so?
Fear. Overpowering, paralysing, choking fear.
Again the sound of bows loosing arrows, again the sound of spells and again the grunts and snorts of horses. The houses of Helden whirled about him and suddenly he could see his home belching fire. A few minutes before, his Mother and Father had been trying to protect him from looking at the Stormcloak executions. Now there was nothing but a muddy little street strewn with abandoned possessions of the fleeing population. Now there was nothing but burning corpses, corpses that included his Mother and Father.
All of a sudden the knight at his back was wracked by a strange wheezing cough. Blood spurted over the hands grasping the reins. More screams. Arrows and fireballs whistled past.
A fall, a shock, bruising against armour. Horses pounded past him, a horses belly and a frayed girth flashing by above his head. Grunts of exertion, like a lumberjack when chopping wood. But this isn't wood; it's iron against dragon fire. A shout, muffled and dull, and something huge and black collapsed into the mud next to him with a splash, splurting blood. An armoured foot quivered, thrashed, goring the earth with an enormous spur.
A jerk. Some force plucked him up, pulled him on to another saddle. Hold on! Again the bone-shaking speed, the mad gallop. Arms and legs desperately searching for support. The horse rears. Hold on!...There is no support. There is no…There is no…There is blood. The horse falls. It's impossible to jump aside, no way to break free, to escape the embrace of these chain-mail clad arms. There is no way to avoid the blood pouring onto his head and over his shoulders.
The street is on fire, a roaring red wall of flame. Silhouetted before it, a dragon towers over the flaming roofs, enormous. His black profile prances, tosses his head and he roars.
The dragon stares down at him. Haming sees his eyes glistening framed by his huge wings. He sees the fire reflected in the numerous swords of the dead littered across the street.
The dragon looks at him. Haming is unable to move. The dead man's motionless arms wrapped around his waist hold him down. He is held in place by something heavy and wet with blood, something which is laying across his thigh, pinning him to the ground.
And he is frozen in fear: a terrible fear which turns his entrails inside out, which deafens Haming to the screams of the wounded horse, to the roar of the blaze, to the cries of dying soldiers and the pounding of the dragon's wings. The only thing which still counts, which still has any meaning, is fear. Fear embodied in the figure of a black dragon frozen against the wall of raging, red flames.
The dragon is spurred to flight, the wings beat as the massive beast takes off, launching itself to attack it's helpless victim, paralysed with fear. The dragon roars terrifyingly, cruelly, triumphantly. A black dragon and behind this – the flames. A sea of flames.
Fear.
The wings beat, the wind assaults his face. Fear!
Help! Why doesn't anyone help me? Alone, weak, helpless – I can't move, can't force a sound from my constricted throat. Why does no one come to help me?
I'm terrified!
Eyes blaze through the dark dramatic wings. Even with fires raging everywhere the dragon is veiled in darkness. It's scales are so -
'Haming!'
He woke, numb and drenched in sweat, with his screams – the scream which had woken him – still hanging in the air, still vibrating deep within him, beneath his breast bone and burning against his parched throat. His hands ached, clenched around the blanket, his back ached...
'Haming. Calm down.'
Sky Haven Temple was dark and damp. The barracks fireplace flickered its light while distorting shadows against the chamber's wall. There was no malevolent fire, no screams only the Dragon Born in all his glory.
Beside the fireplace, flickering with warmth and lights was Haming's Akaviri long sword and his Blade armour. It's reflected flames gleaming red in the leather wrapped and steel banded hilt. There was no other fire and no other steel. The hand against his forehead smelled of leather and ash. Not of blood.
'Dragonborn…'
'It was a dream. A bad dream.'
Haming shuddered.
A dream. Just a dream.
The fire was already dying down; the birch logs were red and luminous, occasionally crackling giving off tiny spurts of blue flame which illuminated the Dragon priest mask of the man strapping on his dragon bone armour.
'Dragonborn, I…'
'I'm right here. Get ready, Haming. Today we continue to avenge your parents and we have a long way to travel'.
I can hear my Father's last words to me, he thought suddenly, at the beginning of the chaos of that day sixteen years ago.
'Do me proud, son'.
Amidst the other Blades, adorning their armour, he marched out with the Dragonborn one more time.
He continued to make his Father proud.