A DRAGON'S BEGINNING
THE MANY ADVENTURES OF ELSEBET KIND-HEART BOOK 1

CHAPTER 2
WHY IS THE KEEP CONNECTED TO A CAVE?

Somehow, they ended up in the keep. Hadvar leant on his knees, trying to control his breathing, while Elsebet collapsed on one of the beds that lined one of the walls.

Hadvar straightened up, his hands on his hips. He looked over at where Elsebet sat on the bed, her fingers curled around the bedpost, her eyes squeezed shut, her breaths laboured. He understood; oblivion, he was having a hard time not to crawl into the corner and sob. Dragons weren't real; at least, not anymore. That couldn't have been a dragon, but… what else could it be?

"That was a dragon."

He blinked at her as she opened her eyes. They were wet with unshed tears, and he saw that they were not brown like he thought earlier. Her left eye was a dark brown, yes, probably the darkest he'd ever seen on a Nord. But her right eye? It was a bright blue, and it shone like a sapphire in the light, made brighter by the tears that threatened to spill onto her cheeks.

He'd never met anyone with two different coloured eyes before.

"Yeah." He looked around the room. "We need to find you some armour. Do you know how to use any weapons?"

She nodded as he turned around, looking for armour. "A bow."

"Good," he said, opening a chest and finding a bunch of Imperial armour at the bottom, waiting to be used. He pulled it out and turned to Elsebet, almost dropping the armour when he saw her stringing an elven bow. "Where in oblivion did you get that?"

"I've had it on me since Winterhold," she said, pulling arrows out of her quiver to count how many she had. They were steel, not elven, like her bow. "It's been hidden under my cloak." She nodded and put the arrows back in the quiver, standing up, the bow on the bed beside her. She undid the clasp of her cloak around her neck and let it fall onto the bed.

Hadvar saw that he hadn't been mistaking her hair for the cloak; both of them were the colour of snowberries. He handed her the armour and turned around to give her some privacy, and five minutes later they were headed down the first hallway, Elsebet's cloak around her shoulders but her hood down, unlike how it was before.

There was a gate at the end of the hallway, and they heard talking on the other side of it.

Hadvar swore. "Stormcloaks. Maybe we can reason with them."

She nodded, and Hadvar pulled a chain to open the gate. The two of them walked through when it sank fully into the floor, and Hadvar held his hands up to show that he didn't mean them any harm.

Unfortunately for the two Stormcloak soldiers—a man and a woman—they didn't get the memo, and pulled out their weapons. The man didn't get far before an arrow found itself in his chest, and he fell to the ground, dead. Hadvar watched Elsebet knock another arrow from the corner of his eye as he unsheathed his sword, ducking out of the way of the woman and her steel warhammer. She slashed at her middle, and she blocked it with the handle of the warhammer. She raised it over her head, but let out a scream when an arrow went through her chest. The warhammer fell to the ground, and Hadvar made quick work of her, stabbing her through the stomach.

She fell to the ground, and the duo went to the iron gate on the other side of the room. Hadvar quickly unlocked it with a key he found in the first room.

"You're pretty good with that bow," he said as they descended a large spiral staircase.

She groaned. "I was aiming for their knees."

He laughed, shrugging. "At least you hit them."

She smiled at him, but it disappeared quickly when the keep began to shake, and the roof just in front of them fell, blocking the way they headed. Elsebet coughed at the dust that filled the air, covering her mouth to stop it from entering her body. Hadvar's rough hand grabbed her arm, and she almost tripped in her too-big boots as he pulled her into a side room.

There were two Stormcloaks in there, and they were quickly disposed of. After fishing around for potions, since they were in a storeroom, they left the room through a second door and found themselves back in the hallway with the collapsed roof, only on the other side. The descended the stairs at the end of the hallway and they started hearing lightning. Elsebet took an arrow out of her quiver and knocked it, but didn't pull the string.

Hadvar sighed. "Torture chamber. Wish we didn't need these."

She shivered when she heard the battlecry of a Stormcloak, and when they rounded the corner she saw the torturer throw a bolt of lightning at a Stormcloak soldier, and he fell to the ground, his body writhing before stilling. And the death of his brethren, the other soldier attacked the torturer's assistant, but Elsebet raised her bow, pulled the string back to the corner of her mouth, exhaled, and let the arrow fly. It hit him in the neck—exactly where she was aiming—and fell to the ground, choking on his own blood. She swallowed the bile rising in her throat.

"You fellows happened along just in time," the torturer said, walking towards the pair. "I don't know how long we would've held them off for."

"We need to get out of here," Hadvar told them, a hurried tone to his voice. "A dragon's attacking Whiterun!"

The torturer scoffed as Elsebet spotted a book and knapsack on a low table. "A dragon? That's nonsense."

She made her way over to the book as the two argued back and forth. She picked it up and placed it in her pack, before opening the knapsack and taking everything inside of it—including several lockpicks.

"Forget the old man," the assistant said. "I'll come with you."

Hadvar nodded, then his eye caught on something. He started walking towards one of the cages on the edge of the room. "Looks like there's something in this cage."

"Don't bother with that," the torturer said, shaking his head. "Lost the key ages ago. Poor fellow screamed for weeks."

Hadvar ignored him and turned to Elsebet. "Can you pick locks? I'm horrible myself, but we might need the gold when we get out of here."

She nodded, pulling out one of the lockpicks she had just picked up and quickly picked the lock on the cage. She ignored the torturer as he scoffed and muttered something as she picked up the spell book and coins on the ground, raiding the pack on the man's side then stripping him of his mage clothes, which would give her a bit of gold. She ignored Hadvar's look as she folded the robes and placed them in her pack.

Hadvar turned and went down a corridor connected to the room, followed by Elsebet and the buff torturer's assistant.

Soon, they found themselves in a room full of Stormcloak soldiers, all of them looking for a way out and discussing whether they should wait for Ulfric Stormcloak or not.

Elsebet pulled an arrow out of her quiver and took aim at one of the archers on the other side of the room. The arrow sailed through the air and hit an archer in the shoulder, the man jerking backwards slightly as he cried out in pain. The three remaining people turned their heads to the trio as Hadvar and the torturer's assistant advanced from their position, Elsebet knocking another arrow.

After a couple minutes, the Stormcloak soldiers were all dead, the torturer's assistant heading back to his boss. Elsebet took the arrows out of the two archers' quivers and placed them in her own, as they were also steel. Hadvar led her through a tunnel, where he pulled a lever and a wooden drawbridge lowered over a gap. They crossed it as the keep shook again, and the roof caved in and broke the bridge.

Hadvar let out a breath as Elsebet inched towards the hole, the dragon roaring somewhere above them. "Guess we're lucky that didn't fall on top of us."

She slipped on a couple loose rocks and she tumbled into the hole. She landed painfully on her side, luckily on a flat surface of rock. Above her, she could see Hadvar's head poke over the side.

"You okay down there?"

She raised a hand and gave him a thumbs-up, groaning slightly. She stood up on shaky legs and brushed dust off her cloak. She picked up the arrows that had fallen out of her quiver. "I'm fine!" She put all the arrows in her quiver, then looked around for a way out. There was a tunnel to her left, and she looked up. "There's a tunnel here. I'm gonna follow it, see where it leads. Stay there, I'll come back."

She saw Hadvar nod, and she trekked through the tunnel. It was only a couple metres before she came to a turn, a skeleton lying in the corner, a coinpurse and a healing potion next to it. She pocketed the two items before turning. She walked through a set of broken bars, and she vaguely wondered if the other side of the tunnel was hidden by the rubble of the roof. A stream of water winded through the cavern she entered, and she looked around to see a part of a fort, with Hadvar pacing up a series of steps, running his hand through his dark red hair.

She laughed quietly, then cupped her hands around her mouth. "Hadvar!"

The Nord jumped, turning to her. He let out a breath and jogged down the stairs and over to her.

She pointed to the tunnel she had just emerged from. "The tunnel leads there."

He nodded. "I see that." He pointed to another tunnel, this one bigger and easier to see. "I think that's the way."

The two made their way over to the tunnel. It winded around, and along the way Elsebet picked up a coinpurse that was tucked into a corner. They came to a chamber with webs everywhere, and a couple spiders milling around.

Elsebet took an arrow out of her quiver and knocked it. She aimed it at the closest spider as Hadvar unsheathed his sword. The arrow flew through the air and hit the spider with a squelch, making all the other spiders in the roommate look at the pair and advance on them. Three larger spiders descended from the ceiling. The two made quick work of the spiders, and they both shivered once all of them were dead.

"I hate spiders," Elsebet muttered as they went through another tunnel.

Hadvar pointed ahead of them. "There's sunlight coming through there! It's the way out!"