Turdas, 12:33 PM, 15th of Morning Star, 4E 202

Silent City

It had been five days since the attack on Labyrinthian. Everything since then was one big blur.

Things had changed down here. The Dragonborn was making regular appearances in the debate hall. By the sounds of things, everything before now had just been getting their feet wet. With the 14th Unit out of the picture, they were going to get to really dive in.

This meant training. Lots and lots of training. Exercises. Sparring. Grappling. War games. Really, whole elaborate role-played skirmishes outside the city, with different squads pitted against each other and nonlethal weapons and… It resembled scouting tactics more than regular legionnaire tactics, sort of. It was all so stealthy.

More importantly, it was all so draining. Thorald didn't even want to think about it right then.

It was lunchtime. He'd spent all morning doing stuff with swords. He was done. No more swords for now. He just wanted to sit here and enjoy his plate of… Vegetable… Stuff. The food down here was really miserable. Healthy, supposedly, but… Miserable. They needed a new work team to just focus on making the food tastier.

Actually, the Dragonborn had publicly pointed out that problem. Supposedly, they'd be getting better stuff to eat at some point. Thorald hoped so. This couldn't be helping troop morale.

He'd also publicly said that he was going to be doing something or other with dragons after lunch. Thorald and his squadmates had even received some special instructions on what they'd be doing for it. That would be fun.

No it wouldn't. It would not be fun.

"Thorald, you all right?" Ralof said, snapping Thorald back to reality. "You've hardly touched your food."

The Nord looked up, then back down at his plate, then dutifully started putting its contents in his mouth. This stuff was so bland. He didn't even care what it did with his hunger.

How was he supposed to focus on anything, with so much going on? How was anyone supposed to cope? Thorald didn't think much of those folks who wore their hearts on their sleeves and fell apart at the slightest touch. He was made of tougher stuff than that. But… Still.

First it'd been Whiterun where his home was, then Northwatch where he was prisoner, then Solitude where he was half-prisoner half-advisor, then Alftand, and now this. Now he was a soldier in a crazy new special army. And still kind of a prisoner! He wasn't allowed back into Alftand, none of them were. For as long as the war was going on, this would be his home. This, the Silent City. Sitting here, eating tasteless plant stuff between training sessions. This was his life now.

He got the feeling his life was getting more unstable every week. This was out of control. It'd been out of control ever since the Thalmor took him, actually, but… The past couple months had just been one big crazy adventure.

This was why Thorald had never decided to go become an adventurer. It wore on the mind.

Ralof brought him back to the present again. "You know, Gray-Mane, you're allowed to talk."

Thorald looked around the others at the table. Ralof, Tarkhor, Valjar and Alensi. The lunch crowd was starting to peel off by now. Not too much background noise to distract him. Just these four lovely squadmates.

Tarkhor was sullenly scraping at his plate. The others were just looking at him curiously. Thorald had to remind himself that this was a conversation, not an interrogation.

He also had to think about how he'd say this. Didn't want to hurt the morale around here any more than the plant-stuff already had. "How do you guys feel about being down here?"

"Just… In general?" asked Alensi. "Being in Blackreach?"

"Aye. Being in Blackreach, in our little army, that sort of thing."

"I take it you're not all too happy with it," Ralof said.

"I like—" Alensi realized Ralof was giving Thorald a chance to speak. "Oh, right, you can go first."

Thorald sighed and rubbed his eyes He hadn't planned this very well. "Uh… Well. Now that I'm here, it'd be a great dishonor to do anything but fight. But, uh… Hmm."

"But you didn't want to be here to begin with?" Ralof offered.

"That. Exactly that. I just wanted to go home, but I keep getting bounced from place to place. There are all these things I need to be doing. I don't have anything like a normal life anymore, I haven't in ages." This was only a tiny sliver of Thorald's thoughts. He felt little better by sharing them, but… It was something, he supposed.

"Well, you have my sympathy, Gray-Mane. I long for my home, too. You'd know about Riverwood, it's not so far from Whiterun, is it?"

"Few days' ride," Thorald muttered.

"Aye," Ralof nodded. "It's not much to look at, just a little logging village, really. But it's home, and if we don't stop the Thalmor, it'll be in grave danger indeed."

What a thought. Thorald had to stop and take another look at himself. "I… Can't say I've been thinking much about fighting for my home, to be honest. It feels so far away. The Thalmor had me for a year. I haven't seen my family since before they took me. And I suppose I should be fighting for revenge, right? But…"

"Revenge may not be the most noble cause to fight, but a year in the Thalmor's clutches? I think that's more than fair. I cannot imagine what that must have been like for you."

Tarkhor finally spoke. He just suddenly snapped. "At least you lot all still have homes!"

Everyone went silent. Tarkhor winced and looked away. It didn't take much figuring out. Thorald realized it right away. Tarkhor was a Breton, from High Rock. From the west end of Skyrim.

"Tarkhor… What do you mean?" Ralof asked.

The Breton composed himself quickly, and addressed Ralof with as straight a face as he could. "I come from a little mining village called Karthwasten. It was actually a pretty nice place. It just had the bad luck of being in the Reach. Do any of you even know what's been happening in the Reach?"

Everyone just looked at each other in confusion. The answer seemed to be no. Thorald knew the elves were fighting the locals there, but that was about it. Except that Tarkhor had just said that Karthwasten was a nice place. Not is. Was.

"The Aldmeri Dominion has been destroying… Everything." Tarkhor buried his face in his hands, but kept talking. "The Forsworn have done a great job resisting them, slowing them down, buying us time, but the whole Reach is paying for it. You know, I've heard of scorched earth as a war strategy, but I'd never seen anyone before take it literally."

Thorald almost didn't want to ask. "… Literally?"

"The Forsworn live off the land, so that's what the Dominion's destroying, the land. Whole expanses of countryside, reduced to smoking cinders. When I fled Karthwasten, I had to ride through a whole lot of land that'd been ruined that way. You can guess what happened to my village after I left."

There was an awkward pause. Ralof swallowed uneasily. "Well…" Tarkhor looked up at him. He continued gingerly. "I hope the Thalmor never get the chance to do that to Riverwood. I'm very sorry they had the chance to do it to Karthwasten."

Thorald tried to imagine what it'd be like. What if the Thalmor had destroyed Whiterun? Burned the whole city to the ground, killed his family, killed the Battle-Borns, killed the Jarl and the Companions and all the rest of them? Would he even feel anything about it now? His life didn't have anything to do with home anymore.

"I wonder why we haven't heard about this before now," Alensi said. "It seems like pretty big news."

"Well, we did hear about the Legion's staging area," Ralof murmured.

Thorald chipped in. He couldn't get back into his thoughts while everyone was still talking. Might as well try and get the conversation done with. "You have to remember, our news has to come all the way to Alftand. The Dragonborn seems to have the dragons telling us about things that strategically matter, so like the attack on the staging area and Solitude, and the 14th Unit being at Labyrinthian. But I think… Correct me if I'm wrong, Tarkhor, but you only got here pretty recently, right? You're number 142, that's only three numbers below me."

"Only been here a couple weeks or so," Tarkhor shrugged.

Thorald nodded. "Hm. No one asked you about home?"

Valjar finally spoke up. "We should have priests down here," he said.

Ralof looked at him oddly. Thorald already knew where this was going, so he tried to just go back to pondering things. It wasn't working well.

"Back in Windhelm, I spent a lot of time in the Temple of Talos. It was a lot of help, getting to talk to the priestess there. I bet she's got her hands full these days, with the war."

"I think someone may have actually brought that up already with the Dragonborn," Ralof said. "We're not getting a lot of priests coming to Alftand, but he's working on it."

"I'm just glad he's listening to what we have to say," Alensi said.

Tarkhor had gone back to silently glaring at his plate. Thorald wanted to help him, but he honestly didn't even know. He figured Valjar probably had a point. Getting some priests or something was better than trying to just rely on other soldiers. Thorald had been a prisoner for over a year. Tarkhor's home had been destroyed. How could anyone so hurt try and heal each other? That wasn't how that worked.

Someone in full Black Machine armor appeared at the doors to the debate hall. "The Dragonborn's here!" he called out.

About two seconds later, that bell rang again. Time to assemble in the courtyard.

Thorald strapped his gauntlets back on as he walked. And put his helmet back on, too. He'd taken that all off while he was eating. It looked like everyone else was already mostly in their places. Thorald and his squadmates just stood at the very end of it all.

And it looked like the Dragonborn had joined them. He was all the way down at the end of the courtyard, standing on his balcony-ramp-thing.

"I have some very interesting news for you all," the Dragonborn called out. "It turns out, I'm told, that there's a dragon in Blackreach."

He paused to let that sink in. Thorald didn't even know what to make of it. No one made a sound.

"It's been dormant for thousands of years. Hidden somewhere in these caverns. Which are far, far too large for us to search normally. So we are going to draw the dragon to us, and then we are going to capture it. Alive. For those of you who don't know, I already did this in Whiterun, it works."

Another pause. "This shouldn't take very long, and I'll be doing all I can to get the dragon's attention. Those of you who already have specific instructions, report to your stations. The rest of you, stay inside the hall. Even if the dragon somehow manages to land in the courtyard, you'll be safe in there."

Thorald's assignment had been very simple. Take up a protected position up on top of the debate hall's walls, and take the dragon on with a bow and arrow if things started to get out of control. It turned out that he and Alensi were the only ones in the squad who could even use a bow, so the other three squadmates just went on back to their table, or something.

Hitting the dragon with arrows seemed like a really stupid idea to Thorald, but of course, the Dragonborn had thought of this. Instead of a quiver of normal arrows, when Thorald went to the armory to retrieve a bow, the supervisor gave him something new.

Dwarven-metal-headed arrows, with wickedly barbed tips, fluted holes on the wide faces, and spring-loaded syringes taking up a good third of the shaft. Apparently, they were made to deliver a huge amount of paralysis poison, enough to drop a dragon if he hit it in a good spot. Which was nice. They'd even let him practice earlier, by filling the syringes with water. The weight took a little adjusting to, but the balance of the arrow was good. It worked fine against a target.

There was only one little catch with this whole thing. The poison was really hard to make, so Thorald only got three arrows to fight the dragon with. Three.

Maybe Alensi was a good shot.

Thorald's position on the wall actually wasn't that far from the Dragonborn. He was nestled into a spot just above the main entrance to the debate hall, and the Dragonborn was standing right there on the staircase, sword in one hand. A sword? Really? At least this might just be fun to watch.

In the other hand, the Dragonborn had what looked like half a cage. Big, thick bars of dwarven metal. It must have weighed as much as his whole suit of armor, but he carried it like a nice little tree branch. No idea about that.

Alensi was on the other side of the entrance, up against a tower. She was unrecognizable with the full suit of armor on—if Thorald hadn't known better, he might've mistaken her for a man. But besides that he knew it was Alensi over there, her body language completely gave her away. She already had an arrow nocked, the bow resting comfortably in front of her while she crouched behind her cover. Such a typical wood elf.

Thorald gave her a friendly wave and nocked his own arrow for good measure. Not a bad idea, really. When was the last time he'd used a bow in a fight? Had he ever? Not that using it on men would teach him how to use it on a dragon.

His musing was interrupted by the Dragonborn saying something.

"Lok-vah-koor!"

A clap of thunder rang from the Dragonborn's voice through the cave. Really, it sounded like an actual thunder strike. Thorald flinched. Was this how shouts worked? Making huge amounts of noise?

Then he noticed the wave of magical energy spreading out from the Dragonborn into the air. With it, the cyan fog of the cavern vanished. The air went clear. All of it.

Thorald thought he'd seen it all when he entered Blackreach. He was wrong. With the fog lifted, he could see for miles through the cavern. And there was so much to see! Glowing mushrooms, everywhere, as numerous and elaborate as the lights on the cavern ceiling—a few of them, off in the distance, must have been as massive as entire fortresses. He'd never seen them that big before. He could see the columns and cables of one of the shuttles, making a perfectly straight line off into the distance. A few lone dwarven structures were barely visible way out there, practically just little pinpricks of light gray against all the black and cyan. A team of master artists could paint a mural the size of Dragonsreach, and they'd still fail to capture all this detail.

But there was no dragon.

A whole solid minute passed. No one made a sound. The Dragonborn walked a bit down the stairs, took a look around the city. Nothing.

"Lok-vah-koor!"

Again, the clap of thunder, again, the wave of energy. No fog to lift this time, though. Was the sound supposed to wake the dragon up, or something? Was that the idea?

Actually, that made Thorald realize a more obvious question. Was there even a dragon at all? It didn't make a shred of sense for a dragon to be down here. There weren't even any ways into Blackreach a whole dragon could fit through. The lifts were too small, and so were the doors in the ruins. Who'd told the Dragonborn about this? He'd neglected to say, in his little speech. Maybe he didn't want to embarrass them when the dragon failed to show up.

The Dragonborn was walking back up the stairs, back into the debate hall. That seemed wrong. He couldn't just be giving up. Thorald watched him carefully. He stopped right at the entrance, right in front of the courtyard. His head tilted up to look at the enormous sun-orb hanging over the debate hall.

"Fus-ro-dah!"

Again, the clap of thunder, again, the wave of energy, this wave was bigger, stronger, rushing straight at the sun-orb—

BONG.

The shockwave almost knocked Thorald onto his back. His ears rang, he couldn't hear a thing. The sun-orb was swaying ominously on its cable, but it was intact. Thorald couldn't say as much for his sense of sound.

Then he realized that it wasn't just him. The ringing was echoing every which way through the cavern. It was like Blackreach was one big tuning fork, and the Dragonborn had just struck it. They'd probably be able to hear this all the way back in Alftand.

The ringing carried on for a good thirty seconds or so before it faded too much to hear. It looked like the Dragonborn was satisfied. He was walking back down the stairs, into the city.

It was now or never, Thorald supposed. It was time to get ready for a dragon. He figured his bow would let him—

What he heard next sent a chill through him, head to toe. There was no getting ready for this. It hit him even harder than the orb's ringing. He'd never heard it before in his life.

Somewhere in Blackreach, a dragon roared.

By the Nine.

This was the Dragonborn's time to take center stage. Thorald hoped he wouldn't have to do more than watch the show.

With the fog lifted, they'd be able to see the dragon long before it could arrive. He could see all the way down this tunnel, after all. This one tunnel, one of three, all in completely different directions. And the other two were outside his field of vision. Maybe he could have picked a better vantage point.

Still, the destination was the same. And it wasn't like he had to worry that much. The dragon wanted the guy who'd done that shout, not him. He was hidden up here on the wall. The real fighting was the Dragonborn's business.

The next roar was practically straight down Thorald's ear. He almost screamed.

A massive winged monster swooped right past his field of vision. It was so close that he could count the rows of bony black spikes sticking out of its back. Against the sun-orb's light, its scales looked like they were made of half-cooled lava. He could've put an arrow right in its neck if he'd been more ready. By the time his bow was up, though, he was looking from behind at the creature's tail.

The dragon was circling around towards the Dragonborn, who was just… Standing there. Out in the middle of the street, like he wasn't about to get roasted in a second.

"Joor-zah-frul!"

Another wave of energy. No thunder clap. This one hit the dragon right in its face, just as it was preparing an attack of its own.

This was where things got really strange. The energy clung to the dragon's body, made him look like he was burning with ethereal blue flames. And it completely ruined the dragon's flight, like ten doses of paralysis poison all at once. Those wings stopped flapping pretty fast.

The dragon sailed right over the Dragonborn's head and crashed into the road. Landed on its chin, flipped over onto its back, thudded hard on the stones, skidded to a painful-looking halt.

Thorald was pretty sure he'd just watched the Dragonborn defeat a dragon over the course of ten seconds.

The dragon was struggling to roll back onto its belly, but before it could, the Dragonborn was right on top of it, fixing that big dwarven metal cage-thing onto its snout, locking it in place. He was saying something, but Thorald couldn't hear what.

Revision to the previous thought. Thorald was pretty sure he'd just watched the Dragonborn muzzle a dragon like an unruly dog.

He could already tell he'd be repeating this story to the others for weeks.