"…it was this lack of understanding that formed the basis of what became, ironically, their most impressive creative achievement—"Alduin," the World Eater, phantom of bedtime stories and justification for ancient (if imagined) deeds."

-The Alduin/Akatosh Dichotomy, Alexandre Simon

4E 201

17th of Last Seed

Fredas

Location: Skyrim, near Helgen

Weather: Clear

I said I wanted to keep a record of this trip in case something amazing happened. Well, something did, but this particular something is so ridiculous that I'm not sure it's even worth documenting.

Centuries from now, would people even believe me?

All right. Here goes.

I thought I saw a dragon on the way to Skyrim. Now I know I did. How?

Because that dragon—at least, I'm praying it was the same one—just attacked and destroyed the town of Helgen.

I suppose I should explain in more detail. After I crossed the border, I walked into a skirmish between Imperial troops and Stormcloak rebels and got myself arrested.

For whatever reason—I imagine the amulet in the bottom of my bag had something to do with this—they put me in a cart with the rebels they captured and sent me to be executed in Helgen.

I was about two seconds from being short a head when the dragon landed on the roof of the keep and started systematically tearing the town apart.

I don't know how many people survived. I made it out with only minimal injuries, and in the process, I acquired a traveling companion, at least in the short term: Ralof, a Stormcloak soldier who has family nearby.

A place to hide out for a while could be extremely useful. I'm probably a wanted fugitive in Skyrim right now.

To top it off, I have no supplies, aside from a bow and a handful of arrows, and I'm wearing Stormcloak armor I stole off a dead body.

The rest of my trip could be very difficult.


The dragon had black scales, and I mean solid black. No markings, no variations. Its eyes were red. I know because it spent a disturbingly long moment looking straight at me. There were dozens of people below the keep when it landed, and it gave each of them only a brief look. Except me. When it looked at me, its eyes lingered.

What could it have found so interesting about me?

I did notice one other thing about it. It had no front legs, only rear ones. It had to use its wings as front legs, like a bat, when on the ground. The books I've read about dragons never bothered discussing their anatomy, so this was an interesting detail. Dragons. Majestic and powerful in the air. Slow and unwieldy on the ground. Obviously, then, the dragonslayer's first task would be getting one on the ground…


I was also wrong about the political situation in Skyrim. There's this ancient form of magic called the Voice, which the heroes who defeated the dragons all those years ago could apparently use. The books made it sound like the power was extinct, but Ulfric Stormcloak, the rebel leader, can apparently use it. He allegedly murdered Skyrim's king with it.

I also heard no mention of Talos whatsoever…


Maggie was grateful to finally be walking on a firm surface. The ground beneath her feet was firm dirt, not sand, so she finally got to enjoy walking without sinking an inch into the ground with every step.

Skyrim was beautiful. The sky was clear and blue. Pine trees lined the road on both sides, filling the air with the smell of evergreen. Small plants with flowers of red and purple were scattered anywhere sunlight could reach the ground through the trees.

"Enjoying the scenery?" Ralof asked.

"It's beautiful. I almost wish I was staying."

Ralof stopped walking and turned to face her. "You're not?"

"I mean, I feel like I have a responsibility to help deal with that dragon, but once that's done and I've done what I originally came to do, I'm going home. I've got family in High Rock waiting for me."

"I saw how close you came to putting an arrow in that monster's eye. We could really use you in Windhelm."

"The Imperials said the same thing," she said.

"You're not…"

"Why would I side with the people who tried to kill me?"

"Just so long as you know what side you're on."

That was the question, though. Did Maggie even want to be on a side?


Maggie had ignored the cut on her arm. It was only when they stopped for the night that she realized that dry blood covered the outside of her upper arm. The small cut had continued to bleed as they walked.

"Hmm," Maggie muttered. "Deeper than I thought."

"Are you all right?" Ralof asked.

"I'm fine."

Maggie grabbed her stolen quiver and started looking around the outside of it. Finding nothing, she turned it upside-down and dumped out all the arrows, along with what she'd been looking for.

A white rag and a small vial of oil.

"How did you know?" Ralof asked.

"There's a fort not too far from where I grew up. I got a few pointers from the soldiers stationed there, but the biggest thing I learned was that a military archer always carries the equipment for making fire arrows."

Maggie took the cap off the oil and sniffed it. It didn't smell like alcohol. That was a problem. She'd hoped to find alcohol that could be used to sterilize the cut, but she probably shouldn't have expected there to be any in the quiver. If you give soldiers alcohol, they're probably going to drink it, after all.

"Do you have any water?" she asked.

"It won't be..."

"Sterile, I know. But we can…No, we can't. Because we're screwed on supplies."

"We are," Ralof agreed.

"How far is Riverwood?"

"Another day, maybe."

"Then I guess all we can do is keep going and hope it doesn't get infected."


Maggie decided to go hunting. She was frustrated. She had no food, water, or supplies. Her amulet was missing. She was probably wanted by Skyrim's Imperial forces, assuming any had survived Helgen. There was a dragon flying around wreaking havoc. And at the rate things were going, she was never going to get to the Hall to see Lini.

She was walking so loudly she was probably scaring away all the game animals, but she didn't care.

As she walked, she realized she wasn't the only one out here. She could hear heavy breathing close by. Heavy canine breathing.

Another hunter's dogs? Probably not. She had yet to see anyone in Skyrim who looked to have both the means to maintain a pack of hunting dogs and a reason to do so.

Three wolves appeared out of the trees and charged her.

Maggie shot the first one between the eyes.

In High Rock, that would have been enough. High Rock wolves didn't go after prey that could fight back.

But this was Skyrim.

The other two wolves split off and started circling behind her. Maggie spun around and fired another arrow. This one struck its target in the side, but the wolf stayed on its feet.

Maggie pulled out another arrow and fired again. This time, her aim was better, and the arrow found the wolf's heart.

There was one left.

Maggie put away her bow and drew her sword. She turned slowly to face her last attacker.

She was met by a snarling mass of fur and claws as the last wolf jumped on top of her. She fell as the wolf lunged toward her face.

"Do I look like prey to you?" she screamed as she plunged her blade into the wolf's stomach.

Maggie pushed the corpse off of herself and rolled over.

"Welcome to Skyrim," she said as she brought her blade down onto the wolf's neck. "Where humans are not the top of the food chain."


Maggie walked back to camp, dragging a wolf carcass behind her the way she would usually be dragging a deer. The way she would be dragging a deer if she was still in High Rock.

Ralof was sitting outside of his tent, trying to start a fire.

"I was expecting venison," he said when he saw what Maggie was hauling.

"Why didn't you warn me that the animals here attack people?" Maggie yelled, dropping her cargo.

"I thought you knew, at least after those skeevers."

"I've never seen wolves as persistent as these. They don't do that in High Rock."

"They don't?"

"Well, they do when food is scarce."

"Food is always scarce here. Welcome to Skyrim," Ralof said, with a distinct sarcastic overtone.

"Welcome to Skyrim," Maggie agreed, echoing his tone. "I'm beginning to wish I never came."

"Why did you come?"

"To visit my sister."

"Does she have ridiculously good aim too?"

"Maybe with spells. She's a mage."

"Doesn't run in the family, huh?"

"Nope. Dad doesn't have it either. I don't know about Mom."

"Oh?"

"She died when I was two."

"I'm…"

"Don't say you're sorry."


Maggie didn't sleep well that night. Her dreams were filled with fire, ominous dragon roars, and crimson eyes staring into her soul. And then there was the flying dream, which once again ended with her watching another dragon lay waist to a town, a town that now looked an awful lot like Helgen.

After that, she couldn't sleep at all.

Maggie found herself sitting awake and thinking about everything she knew about dragons. Which wasn't very much.

They came to Tamriel from another continent well before the beginning of recorded history, took control of the entire continent, ruled for thousands of years, killed thousands of people to safeguard their rule, and were finally overthrown at the end of a lengthy civil war. The means of that overthrow was almost entirely lacking in detail in the single account Maggie had read. Once the war was won, the rebels hunted down and killed every dragon left.

"And then there was that weird detail where they're immortal but can die but can also come back to life. And if they can resurrect whenever, how did the rebels manage to wipe them out?"

"Go to sleep," Ralof muttered.

"Sorry. Thinking out loud," Maggie said.

"About dragons?"

"It's kind of relevant right now, don't you think?"

"Of course, but how do you not know that part?"

"What? About them coming back from the dead. Well, they aren't exactly an integral part of High Rock's history like they are here."

"They're not?" Ralof asked.

"Well, the ruins of those temples are everywhere, but it wasn't Bretons who finally overthrew them. It was Nords."

"We struck the final blow, but the war covered the whole continent."

"Didn't you also start it?"

"True. It started in the mountains near Markarth."

"So how did they come back from the dead?" Maggie asked.

"Well, he did it."

"He who?"

"The World Eater."

"What?"

"Alduin. First and most powerful of the dragons, Akatosh's children."

"No. That can't be right."

"Why not?"

"Isn't Alduin just another name for Akatosh?"

"Who told you that?"

"There's a book called The Alduin/Akatosh Dichotomy. It's pretty popular."

"And it says…" Ralof started.

"Yep. And the author goes on and on about how Nords are stupid, backward barbarians for insisting that they're two different gods."

"What?"

"And it was written by a Breton, meaning that it's pretty popular where I'm from. I read the whole thing."

"How much of our mythology did that book discuss?"

"Some, but I don't want to take any of it at face value. Bretons are supposed to be half-Elf. Sometimes we have the same faults."

"That was smart."

"What are you getting at?" Maggie asked.

"If the dragons are returning, it can only be because Alduin is bringing them back. And if he has returned, then this is the end of the world."


4E 201

18th of Last Seed

Loredas

Location: En route to Riverwood

Weather: Partly cloudy

So far the trip from Helgen has been uneventful. Well, maybe that's not accurate, but at least we haven't run into any Imperial patrols.

I keep having dragon dreams. They started while I was still in Hammerfell, and they've only gotten more intense. I've dreamed of flying since I was a little girl, but recently it wasn't simply flying. It was dreaming of myself in the body of a dragon. Seeing another dragon destroy a town and feeling both horrified and exultant at the same time.

And last night, the town looked like Helgen.


Ralof keeps talking about Nordic mythology. Here's the basics. In almost every mythology that includes Akatosh, he has a second aspect: Alduin, dragon god of destruction. Akatosh makes worlds, and when the time comes, Alduin destroys them.

Nords teach it differently, apparently. For them, Alduin is a separate entity, the firstborn and strongest of Akatosh's children, the dragons, with the power to resurrect his brethren if they ever died.

According to Ralof, if the dragons have returned to the world, then so has Alduin, and that means the world is going to end.

I don't know what I think about that. I'm sure I should be scared. But even in High Rock's version of the myth, the existence of the Destroyer never made sense to me. Why make a world only to turn around and destroy it?

We've only seen one dragon. Maybe they just missed one when they were hunting them all down after the war.

I'll certainly sleep much better if that's true.


They walked in silence, both lost in thought. Ralof's words about the end of the world kept spinning around in Maggie's head.

It was another beautiful day. The sky was mostly clear, and was that same brilliant blue. But Maggie wasn't able to enjoy it. Images of dragons, burning towns, dead bodies, and, of course, red eyes kept flickering through her mind, punctuated by Ralof's words: "This is the end of the world."

Ralof suddenly grabbed her and pulled her off the road.

"What is it?" she asked.

"Look," Ralof whispered.

He pointed down the road.

Three figures walked toward them, two in gold-colored armor and one in a blue robe. All of them had pointed ears.

"Thalmor," Maggie whispered.

"How about we knock some heads?" Ralof suggested.

He drew his sword. Maggie grabbed his arm.

"What are you doing?" he asked.

"Did you notice the guy in blue? That's a mage. You run out there without a plan, and he'll roast you. Let me handle him."

Maggie notched an arrow in her bow. This was a long shot, not as long as some of the shots she'd made while hunting, but the last shot she'd made at this range had missed.

She let the arrow fly. It was another fantastic shot. Straight, level, and, this time, dead on target. The mage crumpled to the ground, arrow in his forehead.

The two elves in armor drew their weapons. They started to walk forward.

Ralof started to step from the trees. Maggie grabbed his arm.

"What are you doing?" he asked.

"Just because those two have swords doesn't mean they can't use magic. Wait for them to get closer."

The two elves walked slowly down the path, swords out, scanning the trees as well as the road ahead of them.

But they were getting inevitably closer to where Maggie and Ralof—and their deaths—waited.

They were two feet away when Maggie shouted, "Now!"

Ralof charged, ramming his sword into one soldier's gut before the elf had time to react.

As one soldier fell to the ground, the other slashed his sword at Ralof's chest. Ralof caught the blow on his own weapon and shoved the elf backwards.

Maggie watched them fight, and as she did, she found herself reminded of why she hated the Thalmor. She could see it in the way this elf fought. He never made eye contact with his opponent and seemed to be looking over Ralof's head. His left hand, his free hand, was on his hip, giving himself the air of a man faced with a disobedient child rather than an armed fellow soldier. Maggie had watched more than one execution of a so-called heretic in Wayrest. There were always Thalmor there, and they always made a speech. They didn't talk about the worship of Talos as heresy or treason but rather as ignorance.

Maggie stepped out of the trees.

"Hey, Pointy," she called.

The elf turned to look at her.

And Maggie shot him between the eyes.

"Pointy?" Ralof asked.

"I could have come up with something better," Maggie said.

"You really hate them, don't you?"

"I've heard them go on and on about how they're freeing us from ignorance by banning Talos."

"You…"

"I do. I had the amulet in my backpack when I was captured."

"So that's…"

"I think so. That's why I ended up in Helgen."


AN: Ralof tells Maggie the Nordic legends about dragons, and what their return may mean for the world.

I'm not particularly happy with the choice of quote for this chapter. I wish I could have made it shorter, but I couldn't find any way to do that and still get the point across. And considering that The Alduin/Akatosh Dichotomy was explicitly mentioned in this chapter, that was the most logical choice for where to look for a quote.