"A plan," Aela stated.

"Yeah," Harry said quietly. "The dragon's dangerous, but he doesn't appear all that bright." He glanced a few dozen metres away where the dragon was now sniffing the ground. He didn't know how powerful a dragon's sense of smell was, but now that he noticed, he could smell his own blood, cloying and metal thick, mixed with something that smelled like leather and liquid fire. He bet the dragon could smell it too, since it was now facing his direction. Or maybe it was the talking. They weren't being particularly quiet.

"By your lead then."

"Circle around and kill him while I manoeuvre him to the tower," Harry gestured behind him. "Can you get him through this dust?"

Aela shot him a pointed glance. "He won't fall for that," she said, what Harry wanted dawning on her.

"And why not?" Harry raised his eyebrows at her.

She sighed. "You'd better not get hurt." She grabbed the sword at her side and held it out to him. "Here, take this in case, whelp. It's Skyforge steel."

He picked up the blade, giving it a few experimental swings, testing the weight. Harry nodded his thanks. "Hey!" he yelled at the dragon. "Come and get me, you poor excuse for an overgrown skeever!" He picked up a stone and threw it, hitting it squarely on the snout. It roared, scrabbling along the ground towards him.

Aela crept around, slipping quietly behind it, footsteps silent and bow drawn.

"Yeah, that's right, I'm talking to you, you great bandy-legged brute!" Harry yelled, making a point to make his footsteps as loud as possible as he charged towards the tower.

"DIR!"

"You've said that before!" He called behind him. "I thought dragons could speak, but it appears you only know the one word. You want to have a bit of a chat?" He took a deep breath. "FUS!" It barely shook it. The dragon tore along the ground in earnest after him. "That ought to settle your need for conversation."

The dragon snapped at him. Harry barely missed the teeth tearing him in half. It managed to rip a hole in his tunic. The temporary distraction allowed him to dive into the tower, the dragon hot on his heels.

It snapped at him, its long neck able to reach nearly to the back of the tower. He stumbled over some rubble. Harry pressed his back to the wall as the teeth of the dragon snapped at him again, catching the front of his tunic again and ripping it near off. It tilted its head down and tried to pull itself out of the tower door, but the large ridge on its head made that nearly impossible. He couldn't tell what Aela was doing. A long thin tongue snaked out towards him, licking him on the face. Harry wrinkled his nose at the smell of rotten meat and the texture. "Anytime now would be brilliant, Aela, thanks!" he yelled.

He lit his hands and pushed fire at the dragon. It barely singed its nose. Out of options, he brandished the sword and fought through the singing of his blood and the sweat in his eyes to remember Rayya's training.

It was too late; he could see the light of inspiration in the dragon's good eye. It took a deep breath.

"Oh, f—"

A moment's pause as the dragon jerked upwards, but it was enough. "YOL TOOR SHU—" Harry stepped forward almost as soon as the first word was out, right into the maw of the dragon. He drove the sword upwards before it could finish, slipping on its tongue, twisting it with all his might as hot blood poured from the wound. It tried to close its mouth, but that just drove the sword farther into its skull. With a great shudder, the mouth closed around him and the dragon disintegrated around him.

He slumped down against the jawbone, not caring to move. "Great, Harry, mental, have a go at a dragon, that'll work well," he muttered to himself. "It's not enough it wants to eat you; no, you've got to go and give it ideas!"

"I'd dearly love to ask you what made you think you could take on a dragon, but I think it was more the dragon taking on you," Aela said. She moved around the corpse, retrieving her arrows. One had gone straight through the neck, giving Harry the chance to avoid being burned.

"No, really?" Harry fired off as the familiar aethereal lights swirled around him. Su. Air, the voice of the dragon whispered to him. He closed his eyes. Blood drums beat in his head to the rhythm of his pulse.

"Someone grew a bit of bite while I was away," Aela raised an eyebrow, hands on her hips.

Opening one eye, Harry just waved her off. "Give me a moment, would you? You can lecture later. I promise to even listen."

"How good of you!" Aela said, but she didn't add anything else, much to Harry's relief.

Su. Air. He didn't even have to think about this one. Air was his life and his being. The wind whipping through his hair as he dove for Neville's remembrall. Air was peace and freedom, weightless limbs outstretched and a broom between his legs. Clouds building and moving and storming and dying. Air moved, flitting from side to side like the snitch. It was always in motion; it never stayed still. And then he knew. He was Air and Air was he. He stood, exhaustion forgotten, leaping out of the mouth of the dragon. "SU!" And he moved through Rayya's forms like lighting, faster than ever before. To his own eyes, he was a blur of motion, faster than perception, but the world slowed around him. Then it sped back up, and Harry shoved the blood-soaked sword at Aela.

He collapsed and. took a deep breath, hands on his face. "I'm bleeding eleven."

"I noticed," Aela said, putting her hand on his shoulder and sitting beside him.

"I'm bleeding eleven, and I was kidnapped and I woke up naked and I just killed a dragon. I'm not even past my first term and I killed a dragon," he repeated.

"I helped?" Aela offered. Harry just looked at her. The tone was light, but tension had carved deep lines into her face.

"What's wrong?" Harry asked.

"You nearly died. Twice." She laughed, but it was a dark thing. "I may have been a little too hard on Stenvar. The gods have it out for you, whelp."

"I didn't, though."

"But it was a close thing."

"You said twice. Clearly the dragon, but…" Harry tilted his head to the side. "What happened?"

"What do you remember?"

He frowned. "People came, in hoods. I was in the tower when I saw a burly man come through it."

Aela nodded. "Go on."

"I woke up in a bag, burned my way out and ran. And then—Uthgerd!" Harry straightened up, eyes wide. "They have Uthgerd!" He sagged a little. "But she just let them take me," he said in a small voice. "I tried to free her, but she wouldn't come with me. I don't remember much after that but pain."

"I feared as such. First the Silver Hand start moving against us, and now this." Aela knelt down to his level. She put her hands on his shoulders and met his eyes. "They were vampires, Harry."

"Vampires?" he repeated dumbly. "But—"

"There was an attack on Whiterun about two weeks ago. I don't know what or who they were after, but they nearly killed the Avenicci woman before the guard drove them off. Dragons, Vampires, Skyrim tearing itself apart…It truly is the end of days."

"But the dragonborn wins, right?" Harry asked so earnestly that Aela searched to come up with an answer.

"So the legends say. I've routed small enclaves of vampires on assignment from the Companions, but I've never seen them this organized."

"Will we be able to save her?"

"They've enthralled her. Sometimes killing the vampire helps, but not always." She stood, rifling through her rucksack and tossed Harry a bundle that hit him in the chest. "Get dressed. We've got a long way to go, and what you're wearing looks like it lets in the cold."

Harry looked down and flushed scarlet from his neck to the tips of his ears as the shirt had torn from mid-chest to the hem. It was one thing to bathe but another thing to display without meaning to. He struggled to clothe himself as fast as possible.

Aela laughed. "It's nothing I haven't seen before, whelp. Now come on. We can talk as we go." Harry followed her strident steps. "So you don't remember anything else?"

"I already said I didn't."

"You've still got a lot to learn then. I don't know what's taking Ven so long, but like it or not, you're a member of the Companions now, and you need to be aware of a few things."

"What? I don't have a choice in this?"

"You've got the beast blood now, whelp."

"What does that mean?"

"You truly don't recall nearly dying? You're a werewolf, Harry."

Yer a wizard, Harry. "I heard a howl, louder than those things after me. And a huge wolf. I thought that was a dream," Harry said, stopping in the middle of the path. "My eyesight. My sense of smell." No! Why do these things keep happening to me? He shook it off. He would not whine.

"Now you get it. You're already changing, adapting to the beast blood. It was no dream. I did it to save your life, and I have no regrets, though the Harbinger will not be happy with me. But my mother was a Companion, and her mother before her, and even if it's not what you wanted, it is not such a bad thing, Shield-brother."

"What'll happen to me?"

"I am your forebear. I will take responsibility for you. Farkas and Vilkas were both younger than you were, and it will work out. I have a good reason to believe you'll adapt to the change well. I wish it hadn't been necessary, that I had been able to give you a choice. But there are worse things than death, and even if you had survived the way the deathhound ravaged you without losing your arm, you might turned into a vampire yourself. I am no healer. I have no regrets," Aela repeated.

Harry had his doubts about her regrets. The familiar numbness crept over him. He took a steadying breath. It helped me survive. "Anything else I should know about?"

"Nightmares. Insomnia is common. Restlessness. The need to kill, to hunt. Things I'm told a dragonborn already suffers in some fashion. But sickness will not touch you."

Harry smiled crookedly. "Well. There is that."

"And you do not have to change into one of the moonborn if you do not wish to, Harry."

"I think I need some time to process this," Harry said.

"Fair enough," said Aela. "But we cannot linger here. And if we are to find Uthgerd, we must go before the trail runs cold to even our senses. I will tell you more as we go, Harry."

"No rest for the weary," Harry said. "Let's go."