ForeverFictional: Glad to see you're excited! I've always been more partial to the Imperial side (if you couldn't tell). Might explain more later, but for now I'm just focusing on the Winterhold and Main quests.

Jackrabbit55: Okay, confession time: no the misspelling of Ancano's name was not intentional on my part. I guess I somehow got it into my head that his name was a pun on the word "arcane" (and in my defense n's and r's do look kind of similar)

J'zargo:

After Hadvar secured the door, everyone took a long, steadying breath. Minerva's brother was the first to speak. "What in the name of all Aedra and Daedra was that?"

Hadvar, the scribe, gulped. "That..that was a dragon. The bringers of the End Times. Right out of the children's stories. A real dragon..." He shook his head and looked at Gildas. "Come on, let's get those bindings off of you."

J'zargo gave a sideways glance at Minerva. "Would you like to tell J'zargo how your brother ended up with the Stormcloaks, Madam 'my grandfather's a legionnaire?'"

"First of all, that's not how I put it-"

"Secondly," sighed Gildas as Hadvar cut his bonds with a dagger, "I was in the wrong place at the wrong time."

J'zargo smirked. Right. "Ah. J'zargo has said the same thing before. 'Wrong place at the wrong time.'"

"I'm serious!"

Uh huh. "Don't worry, your secret is safe with J'zargo."

J'zargo jumped as the tower shook again, and more screams came from outside. Hadvar tossed Gildas a sword and looked at the two apprentices. "We should keep moving. You all can fight, right?"

Minerva grinned and pulled out her axe. She'd replaced it since Fellglow Keep, and she held a proper steel axe instead of the cobbled-together one that the Draugr had been holding. J'zargo, for his part, snapped his fingers to summon a ball of fire and smirked at the others. "J'zargo is able to defend himself well, yes."

Minerva groaned. "Not the time to be smug, buddy."

J'zargo shrugged and extinguished the fire for the moment. What better time to show his skills then when he was in peril? Minerva really was crazy.

Hadvar sighed. "Let's keep moving before that dragon brings down the whole keep on our heads." He walked over to the other side of the room and unlocked the door. He opened it and gestured for the others to follow him. "There's some caves under the keep for use in emergencies. If this doesn't count as an emergency, I don't know what does."

That's when talking came from the other side of the door. "Keep moving!" came a gruff male voice. "This dragon is tearing up the whole keep!"

"Just give me a moment," came a female voice. "I'm out of breath."

J'zargo peeked through the door and winced as he saw two Nords in blue armor. "Those appear to be Stormcloaks."

Hadvar nodded. "Maybe we can reason with them." Given they were with a man in Imperial wear, J'zargo was not optimistic.

Hadavr opened the door and stepped through, and the Stormcloaks immediately drew their weapons. "Hold on!" yelped Hadvar, "We only want to-" He swiftly got a warhammer to the gut, courtesy of one of the blue-clad Nords. Hadvar bent over, wheezing.

"This is what happens when you walk in dressed in enemy colors!" J'zargo shook his head. How naive. He summoned fire again and chucked it at one of the Stormcloaks. Normally J'zargo was more partial to lightning, but given these guys probably didn't have any magicka to drain, fire was probably better in this case.

The Stormcloak screamed as the fire hit her square in the stomach. "You'll make a fine rug, cat!" she yelled, pulling out her axe. However, her swing was blocked by Minerva's axe. Looked like the others had come in as well.

As Minerva and the lady Stormcloak exchanged axe blows back and forth, J'zargo saw a line of flames fly past him to hit the other Stormcloak. J'zargo followed up with his own fire attack and the male Stormcloak soon fell over, howling. J'zargo heard a wet thunking sound, and turned to see that Minerva had bested the lady, and now had her axe buried in her chest. Minerva pulled it out with some effort, bracing herself on the floor as she did so.

Gildas sighed. "Well that was a bust." He looked over at Minerva. "You okay?"

Minerva nodded. "I'm alright. How's..." she looked over at the scribe, who seemed to have got his breath back. "You said your name was Hadvar, right?"

Hadvar nodded. "Ugh...that's right. Gods, that was dumb of me." He took a deep breath. "You all looked like you handled yourselves well enough, though. Just my luck to run into a group of mages, I suppose."

Gildas shrugged. "Two of us are Bretons, what did you expect?"

Hadvar laughed. "A fair enough point." He moved across the room to another door and took out a pair of keys. He unlocked the door and peeked through. Once he did, he nodded back to the others. "Coast is clear. Let's get moving."

That was easier said than done, however. They'd barely made it five feet before the ground shook and the passage in front of them collapsed. Once the dust settled, everyone looked up, breathing heavily. "Damn, that dragon does not give up easily," Gildas remarked.

Hadvar shook his head. "Come on, there's a storeroom right here. Should give us another way out."

Brelyna:

"What are you doing?" asked Onmund as Brelyna rifled through the barrels. "We have to get out of here and find the others!"

Brelyna pulled out some red and blue bottles and stuck them in her pack. "No harm in having a few extra potions, right?" The ground shook again and the ceiling groaned above the two mages. Brelyna looked up. "On second thought..."

Brelyna heard the door creak open behind them and pulled out her staff. She turned around to face the door and saw a group of people coming in: one imperial solider, one man in rags, and two mages.

"Minerva! J'zargo!" yelled Onmund. "You're okay!" He ran over to them and hugged them. "We lost track of you guys and got worried!"

J'zargo sighed. "We are fine, Onmund. We should keep moving. The ceiling in the hallway behind us just collapsed!"

Onmund stepped away and nodded. "Right." He turned to the other two men, who were grabbing some potions and food. "Who are these two?"

Minerva nodded. "Oh, right." She gestured to the prisoner. "Onmund, Brelyna, this is my brother Gildas. And that other guy is Hadvar."

Onmund nodded to them. "Nice to meet you. Wish it was under better circumstances."

Hadvar sighed. "Likewise. Have you seen anyone else? Stormcloak or Imperial?"

Brelyna shook her head. "We were with one of the Stormcloaks for a bit...Ralof was his name I think? But we got separated a while ago."

Hadvar looked down, pensive. "Ralof, huh?"

"You know him?"

Hadvar sighed. "We grew up in the same town. Never really got along with him. But now's not the time for that. We have to keep moving."

After running through several more chambers and a spider-infested cave, the group finally came out the side of the hill that Helgen was built on. Hadvar was the first one out. He raised his hand to stop the others. "Wait!"

They did, and after a moment, they all heard that loud roar again. The great black beast, the dragon, that had been attacking soared over their heads. It turned, flew off to the south, and vanished.

Hadvar waited a few more moments, then lowered his hand and sighed. "Alright, looks like he's gone for good."

Gildas strode up next to Hadvar. "So, what now?"

Brelyna shook her head. "We should probably get moving. We need to tell people what's happened. And to be honest, I don't want to stick around to see if that thing comes back."

Hadvar nodded. "The closest town from here is Riverwood. My aunt and uncle live there. I'm sure they'd be willing to help out. Come on."

With that, he began striding off down the hill. The others followed.

Gildas:

After running about belowground for so long, Gildas was happy to take several lungfuls of fresh air as the group travelled. The air was nippy, but Gildas supposed that was only to be expected in Skyrim. The view was beautiful, though. There was a river flowing along the path they were taking, and fish were jumping in and out. There was an assortment of wildflowers along the road, and occasionally Gildas would hear one of the mages dart off the path to pick them.

Speaking of mages, Gildas was shaking out of his thoughts when Minerva jogged up next to him. Despite being half a head shorter, she looked him in the eye and crossed her arms. "Hey, Min," Gildas greeted.

Minvera groaned. "Don't 'hey Min' me, Gildas Aureum! What in Oblivion are you thinking?" Gildas opened his mouth, but Minerva put a hand up. "No, wait. I know exactly what you're thinking."

Gildas smiled. "Hey, don't act like you didn't know I was coming."

Minerva sighed. "I know, I know. You want to fight, you want to do something."

"Yep."

"Papi's going to kill you once he finds out where you are, you know that, right?"

Gildas shrugged. "Maybe."

"Definitely."

Gildas shook his head. Despite his professor, their grandfather had explicitly forbidden either him or Minevra from joining the Legion. "I've seen what they do to people...the Thalmor," he had said. "That will happen to you over my dead body."

Probably time for a change of subject. Gildas nodded back to the other figures in robes. "So, are those friends of yours?"

Minerva gave him a deadpan look, clearly not impressed by the attempted subject change. Then she smiled. "Yeah. They're students at Winterhold, too."

"You getting along with them then?"

Minerva rolled her eyes, but she was still smiling. "Who are you, my mother? Yeah, it's going okay. Pretty good, actually."

"So, what are you guys doing down here?"

Minerva sighed. "Well, to make a long story short, we're trying to get back something from our school's resident magic merchant, but he won't let us out of the trade unless we get something back for him."

"That 'something' being..."

"A staff of Calm, I think he said. Apparently he sold it to some vampires and realized after 'oh, maybe that wasn't such a good idea'." Minerva shook her head. "Idiot."

"So, you're going to fight vampires, but got caught at Helgen?"

Minerva nodded. "The place we were supposed to go is south of here, so we stayed at Helgen overnight, and...well you know how that turned out." She shrugged.

Gildas sighed. "You know Papi would kill you too, if he knew you were off fighting vampires and whatnot."

Minerva shrugged. "Maybe. But unlike you, I can at least say 'well, you didn't tell me not to go vampire hunting.'"

Gildas laughed. "Okay, that's fair."

"Hey, what's that thing up there?" Gildas heard one of the mages ask. Brelyna, he had heard Minerva call her. She was pointing to the top of a nearby mountain, where a large structure stood, several bone-like archways towering above it.

Hadvar turned to look where she was pointing, then he shuddered. "Bleak Falls Barrow," he explained. "That place gave me nightmares when I was a boy. Dragur creeping down the mountain and into my window..." He shuddered again.

Gildas looked at Minerva, confused. "Draugr?"

"They're like the Norse equivalent of zombies, except they're supposed to guard the barrows or something? Right, Onmund?"

She looked over to the Nord mage, who nodded. "Basically. Though there's a few other differences, like the fact that they're more preserved than regular zombies..."

"Ah, here we are!" Hadvar interrupted. Apparently he hadn't been thrilled with the topic of conversation. They had entered under a simple arch into a simple-looking village. There couldn't have been more than twenty buildings lining a dirt street. There was an inn, what looked to be a shop, a lumber mill, and a small smithy with a man hammering away at the anvil.

Hadvar walked towards the smithing man. "Uncle Alvor! Hello!"

The man looked up. He had blondish hair and a bushy beard, more or less looking like the stereotypical Nord. "Hadvar! Are you on leave from..." He trailed off as he took in the group's battered appearance. "Shor's bones, boy! What happened to you? And who are they?" He gestured to the rest of the group.

Hadvar smiled. "They're friends. I'd be dead without them, in fact. Can we come inside? I'll explain everything in there."

Alvor nodded, wiping his hands on his apron before taking it off and hanging it on a hook next to the anvil. He walked around to the front door of the house and opened it. "Sigrid! We have company!" he called. He then gestured for the others to enter the house.

It was cozy, bordering on cramped with the whole six-member group inside. Along with Alvor, there was a woman with long hair the same shade as Hadvar's. She was washing her hands and looked up as the group entered. "Hadvar! We've been worried! You all must be hungry! Come in, sit down!"

They all did, squeezing in around the long table. The woman, Sigrid, took out a few bowls and ladled in some soup. She passed them around, and Gildas saw Minerva start chowing down immediately.

Alvor took a seat at the head of the table, leaning forward. "Alright, what's the story boy? Why do you all look like you lost an argument with a cave bear?"

Hadvar looked at the others. "It's your family," J'zargo pointed out.

Hadvar nodded and took a breath. "I'm not sure where to start. I told you I was assigned to General Tulius' guard, right?" Alvor nodded. "We were stopped in Helgen, but we were attacked...by a dragon!"

Alvor stared at Hadvar. "You haven't been drinking, have you boy?"

"It's true," Gildas put in. "All of us here saw and heard it."

Brelyna shook her head. "It was kind of hard not to, given it was as big as a tower."

Sigrid shivered as she refilled Minerva's bowl again. "That sounds awful! What happened then?"

Hadvar shook his head. "Well, there's not much to tell. The dragon flew over and just wrecked the whole place. We barely got out alive. I was hoping we could rest in town for a day or two. Get our bearings, and see if anyone else made it out. If they did, they'd probably come this way."

Alvor nodded. "Of course! I'm happy to help however I can." He looked pensive. "But if there really is a dragon about, the Jarl needs to know about it. Riverwood's defenseless against something like that."

"We can go to Whiterun and tell him for you," Onmund offered. "It's the least we can do to repay your hospitality."

The Khajit opened his mouth. "But didn't he just say-"

Minerva moved her leg under the table and the Khajit let out a pained yelp. "Not to mention the food," Minerva interrupted, guzzling down what must've been her fourth bowl of soup.

Next chapter: The group heads to Whiterun and does some dungeon-diving, and Minerva gets very confused.