Chapter 2: BFD

The young woman raised a hand to shield her eyes from the sun, and furrowed her brows when she too seemed to recognize the sleek form as a dragon. "A dragon, huh?"

Oh, no. I knew what such a determined look meant, and I didn't like it. "Nuh-uh, young lady. I'm going to stop you right there. This is not just any dragon, this is Alduin the Worldeater, firstborn of Akatosh, who happens to be the leader of the tamrielic pantheon. His son is a spoiled brat, but for now pretty much untouchable. You fight him, you die."

Her head whipped around and stared at me instead. "How could you possibly know that?" Oh. So that's why I am suddenly more interesting than the dragon.

"It's… complicated," was all I brought out while thinking feverishly how to explain the concept of video games to her.

She gave me a dark smirk. "You know, it's not a good idea to lie to a Witcher. One, your pupils dilate, two, your breath quickens, three, you start to sweat, four, I can hear your heartbeat getting louder. You better rescind your explanation, fast."

"Fine," I growled, "have it your way. Our civilization made machines to solve simple calculations, because it's trivial and time better spent elsewhere. Those machines advanced and got more complex to the point where they could be used to calculate the behavior of whole worlds, in a simplified way of course. This allowed people to predict how a certain world would interact with people. Calculations of certain worlds, such as the world of Tamriel, were of purely recreational use, others that depicted our world were used for the military as well. Happy now?"

The young woman just stared at me before shaking her head. "What you're saying is preposterous, but your body tells me it is the truth… although, to be honest, I've seen weirder things. You are a strange little man."

With that, she briskly walked off in the direction of Helgen. It took me a moment to realize that she effectively ended our conversation. "Hey, wait for me! And I'm not little!"

She was about the same height as I was, but she had longer legs, so I needed to jog to catch up with her. "Are you crazy? You'll get yourself killed if you walk into that village while Alduin burns it down."

"I'm not going to fight the dragon," she said and rolled her eyes, "but he won't keep burning it forever, and if we are to stay in this world for a while, I need to know what the dragons here are capable of."

I took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. "Well, at least it's not as suicidal as what I thought you'd do. Although, for future reference, Alduin already is the most powerful dragon alive, so whatever you find would have to be scaled down for other dragons."

"While we're at it…" I said and stretched out my arms placatingly, "I don't think I'd be much good in a fight with neither weapon nor armor, but I'll go wherever you go. I don't know you, but from what I've gathered, I think that at some point, you'll have to kick some Wild Hunt butt, and the moment it's over, I need to get back. Are we clear?"

"Chrystal," she replied with a smirk and took off again, with a cursing Me in tow.

It didn't take us long to get to Helgen, although watching out for dragons added time to the trip.

The smell attacking our nostrils nearly turned my stomach upside-down. "I will never look at barbecue with the same eyes ever again; I think I'm going to be sick." What little tried to escape was quickly swallowed again, against all instincts.

"I've smelled worse," she muttered, although her skin seemed to be one or two shades paler.

The image that awaited us inside the village walls made me appreciate the missing realism from the game. The largest scorch marks I had ever seen stretched over half the village (where his fiery projectile vomit had hit probably) while charred corpses of houses and people alike were strewn about the place.

Although to be honest, it didn't look as bad as in the game. The houses were charred, sure, but none of the actual stone buildings were crumpled. "Well, looks like the path to the dungeons is blocked off. Helgen is not that big, if we go around that, we essentially do a whole sweep of the village."

She gave me a terse nod and stopped to listen for a moment, before holding up her hand. "There are survivors here."

I frowned. "What? There aren't supposed to be any. Alduin isn't known to leave survivors; he feeds off their souls, so… yeah…"

She gave me a startled look before it turned to an annoyed one. "Trust me when I tell you, there are people alive here. I can hear them."

"I don't hear anything," I said with a raised eyebrow.

"Of course you can't," she sighed, as if explaining it to a small child. Which, for all intents and purposes, she might as well have. "For the most part, only witchers, and people trained by witchers, can."

That did kind of make sense; or it would, if I knew what witchers were. "You said that word quite often, but who or what are witchers, exactly?"

She pulled her sword before she answered, which made me a little nervous. "Men who undergo rigorous training, conditioning, and possibly deadly rituals in order to become a dangerous monsterslayer," she muttered absently, her eyes narrowing at the next corner and her body tensing.

I nodded solemnly. "So basically a Grey Warden, gotcha. Also… are you expecting trouble?"

"I always do," she shot back with a smirk. "And I have no idea what a Grey Warden is, but sure, let's go with that. Oh and by the way, the people behind that corner are armed."

I had no idea how she could possibly know that, but I didn't know better, so I went along. We stalked along the wall and rounded the corner, although in hindsight, I probably should not have wanted to. A score of stormcloaks were busy tearing down buildings, which would make them closer to what I expected to find.

One particular fellow was in charge, apparently, as he shouted at his "Remember your king's words, men! The actions of this dragon are to be made even scarier! When the Thalmor come to investigate, they need to soil their dirty elven panties!"

"Eep!" I really, really should have stopped my surprised yelp. Twenty pairs of eyes (twenty one, if you count my companion giving me an incredulous look) fell on the pair of us and everyone stopped in their tracks.

The rebel lieutenant recovered his wits first. "Intruders! Kill them both, dead men tell no tales!"

His men were well trained, they stepped into motion immediately. As did my interdimensional chauffeur, incidentally. I tried to pull her into a retreat, but my hand grabbed empty air as she was already charging into her imminent death. The first stormcloak didn't fare better than I and hit the ground with her overhead swing, her greatsword stirring up dust. She had time to look up in wonder at her missed target, only to lose her head over the miss, quite literally.

By that point, for lack of better ideas, I ran in as well with my bare hands.

My ashen-haired companion was a blur. She weaved through the enemies, blinking in and out of existence randomly, which was extremely cool, and cut down half a dozen bluecoats before I even joined the fray. Everyone concentrated on her and saw her as the real threat. They were right, of course, but that didn't stop my pride from flaring up a little.

Thinking better of bringing fisticuffs to a swordfight, I picked up the unlucky first stormcloak's greatsword from the ground, positively surprised that I had wielded even heavier sticks during apple harvest, and stormed at the nearest stormcloak soldier with a crazed battle cry, not caring the least bit that this bear of a man was easily two heads taller than me.

As I expected, they weren't bad, but they had nothing on the ninjas I had faced back in my simulation, at least in terms of speed. I stepped out of the way of a warhammer heading for my midsection with relative ease and sliced up the guy's chest in return, albeit only giving him a shallow cut, barely half an inch deep maybe, since I overestimated the reach of the newly-acquired sword and underestimated the thickness of the fur-padded Stormcloak armor.

With the help of the momentum from the swing, however, I spun around for a second helping, catching him between his neck and his shoulder. It was a close call for him, having missed the carotid artery by maybe a hand, if I remembered my biology classes correctly.

He cried out in pain, which only grew in intensity when I pulled out the offending blade. The man dropped his warhammer, his right arm hanging limply at his side; I noted with strange satisfaction that I had to have severed some muscles with my swing. Nonetheless, he suddenly started smiling through gritted teeth.

That should have already alarmed me, but it soon became clear what he wanted to do when he went for my throat with his good hand. Most people would need two hands to strangulate someone.

Not this guy.

I suppose it was the Nord's hardy constitution that had him lift me up by the neck with one big paw. As I wasn't into asphyxiation, the spotty vision with darkness creeping in from the edges was a very unpleasant experience. Not to mention the distinct lack of air.

I vaguely heard my new sword scatter across the ground with a dull metallic thud. Here I was not five minutes into something my brain had yet to decide between dream and nightmare for, and I was already brushing too close for comfort with death. Which also meant that my brain was screaming "Oh god, oh god, we're all going to die!" at me on repeat while I was being strangled. So I resorted to harebrained ideas.

Whatever drove me to snake my legs around my potential killer's neck and squeeze hard, I had no idea, but I would like to buy it a drink. Apparently he wasn't into asphyxiation either, as he dropped his grip on my neck to pull me off him.

I'm sure it was his instinctive reaction, because had we remained as we were, I would have passed out long before him.

Instead, I pulled close enough that his face was right at my groin, which was dangerous for my man parts if he had bitten, but it had the side effect that I could now squeeze with my thighs.

You have never seen my thighs, but let me tell you, it took me maybe ten seconds to split his skull. That little explosion in the middle of the fight made everyone stop in their tracks and stare at me for a second. Blood and brain flying everywhere, splattering all the soldiers around us in a three foot radius.

"Huh," I coughed out between deep breaths, trying to get all the bloody Nord brain off my shirt and jeans (a lost cause), "haven't done that to anything other than a watermelon."

The ashen-haired woman made use of my overkill of a diversion to dispatch of the rest of the Stormcloak soldiers. Which put her at nineteen, and me at one. On one hand, that's a pretty bad balance, on the other hand, I had just killed a guy.

She strode over and waited respectfully a few steps away while I emptied my stomach by the leftovers from the fight.

"So… first kill?" she asked, surprisingly gently.

"What gave it away?" I snapped and wiped my mouth. "But yes, first kill. Unless you count flies and mosquitos. I learned how to fight pretty well, but not how to kill. That," I said and pointed at my victim, "was purely panic from the strangulation."

"If it makes you feel better, I've seen many fights and even more kills, but yours was very… unique," she offered.

I snorted. "You have never really consoled anyone, have you?" I asked drily.

She started chuckling, and after a moment of resisting the urge, I joined in. We must've been a weird image, two armed persons chuckling among their fallen enemies.

But, I survived my first fight in Skyrim. Go me.

For now, I have found a more or less doable schedule! I try to keep the updates to my stories a nice daisy chain- although my Dragon Age Story might lag a bit, since it's the only story I have a beta reader for.

Also, I don't often use this much graphic detail. This chapter was an exception, although the M rating is not just for smut, you know ;)