When Kat woke up again, her first thought was that she had to pull out those metal splinters in her head. They seriously hurt. Especially, considering that her head bobbed painfully, as she was dragged behind a cluster of four horses.

She didn't move a muscle, just tried to observe and plan from her current perspective. It was a damn mess, but Kat thought the situation was salvageable.

The electric attacks had been a nasty surprise, but revealed an interesting bit of information. Somehow the Goldies could produce enough bio-electric energy, roughly equal to five car-batteries, to shoot lightning from their bare hands and somehow guide it at specific targets. Because screw physics and biology. Kat didn't believe it was Magic in a classical sense. Somehow it had to be scientifically explainable, even if it seemed to contradict everything she knew about Biology. And electronic currents.

She was dragged behind a bunch of horses and it was a tad hilarious how big the furrow she left was. The grin on her face immediately vanished, when she remembered, that sooner or later she had to get the dirt out of her armor. Manually.

In the cart in the middle of the weird convoy, she spotted the captured people. The Blues, the gagged boss and one guy in a potato sack. Nothing of note, exept that they were all human.

At this point, Kat could start to speculate about the nature of the Alien-Human relations and her assumptions were not pretty. The Goldies and Romans seemed to cooperate, but the way the Aliens behaved implied a tilted power dynamic. They didn't seem to be one national structure, their languages and equipment were different, but they sure had a unified command-structure as indicated by the well executed ambush. Based on the fact that the rebels were all human, it seemed that their motivations maybe had a nationalistic or racist background.

Kat's temporary cynical assumption was a Vichy-Situation. It could be the case that the 'Romans' were a sort of puppet government, collaborating with the Aliens. However, the officer seemed far from submissive. Maybe the goldies were the involuntary vassal state? At least the Romans seemed more capable of being an actual Empire, judging from the standartised could be other options, but Kat decided to stick to her plan. She had to initiate contact, simply to have intel that goes beyond observations and speculation. Escape was a possibility any time, so she could take the risk.

From the angle her head was in, she could see a guard of arab ancestry staring at her visor, from the front of the next cart behind her. He was trying to tell if she was awake, that much was clear. Kat knew they'd try to put her down if she made a move, but she needed to lift her head in the direction of the other cart to maybe get her long range sound-amplifier working. Maybe she could eavesdrop the other prisoners, because the guards were silent.

She subtly tried to roll her head and kept an eye on the guard watching her.

Of course, he noticed and put a finger in front of his mouth. The universal sign to be silent.

That was interesting. He knew she was awake and wanted her to pretent he wasn't. A rebel-spy? Possible. Just an empathic man? More likely. But the way he specifically eyed the goldies with suspicion, gave away from whom he wanted to keep her safe. So there was definitively an antagonism between the two groups. Maybe he had orders from the officer, Kat speculated.

A little theory formed in her head. The way she was respectlessly dragged behind those horses, suggested that they assumed she was dead, or pretended like she was. Or they simply couldn't find a way to get her on a carriage. Likely the latter.

The Goldies and Romans were different states, hence they both had interest in her. It seemed like she was conceded to the Romans. Likely because she appeared dead and they couldn't remove her armor. So most likely she was given to the faction that owned the land she was on.

However, the Legionaires knew she was alive, otherwise they would have freaked out. Furthermore, they tried to hide that from he Goldies.

Conclusion: They wanted to initiate contact with her in private.

While that lowered the chance of a Vichy-Situation, it was still very strange that Aliens helped in a human counter-insurgency operation.

Taking advantage, she activated the lomg-range microphone of her helmet to listen to the conversation of the prisoners.

"You damned Stormcloaks. Why did you have to run straight into an Imperial ambush, on cyrodiilic soil at that? If it weren't for you, I'd have stolen that horse and escaped home to Skyrim without anyone getting harmed."

"We needed to do this, the future of Skyrim could have been decided, if we had been able to eliminate General Tullius and the Thalmor Ambassador. I regret nothing.", the blonde one answered.

"What?! You tried to assasinate the military governor? By the Gods, where are they taking us?", the miserable looking guy in the potato sack asked, panicking.

So the officer she saw, was probably the General and Governor. That meant she was known to high authorities already.

Those details were interesting, but Kat quickly redirected her attention at something more important. That big medieval fortress, just down the hill.

It was a solid piece of engineering, but it was clear that there was no modern influence on the estethics at all, thus further reducing the chance of the UNSC being involved somehow. The walls were clearly made with hard physical labour, not machines. Spots where protusions had been manually corrected, were clearly visible.

But Kat couldn't help, still hold on to the theory of everything being some kind of controlled ONI research planet. Even if the locals were oblivious to it. Some very expensive social science study, perhaps? It was ridiculous, but more believable than just shrugging it off as: "Well... Multiverse." That was an actual possibility, but the last one she would believe.

The gates opened well timed and the village came in sight. There were a few civies, but the sight was suddenly blocked when someone threw a blanket over her.

It was really just a cluster of knit-together bloodied blue uniforms, but it served the purpouse of concealing her and blocking her from learning possible routes of escape. Clever bastards.

Kat passively stared at the blood rubbing onto her visor as she was dragged again. She subtly held the blanket in place and waited what the Romans would do next.

General Tullius jumped off his horse, as soon as the prisoners arrived. First he made sure, that Elenwen and the Thalmor were out of sight. They wanted to rest for a moment before watching the execution. Appearently, the combination of using tremendous amounts of Magica, fighting Stormcloaks and riding an entire night, had taken a toll on them. At the moment, they were in the keep.

He hastily motioned Tarek to get over to him.

"Recruit, take the horses and drag the special prisoner into the stable over there. Take all the help you need.", he whispered and nodded in the direction of the mentioned building.

The soldier hurried to execute his orders and Tullius approached the Captain in charge of the Imperial garrison. She saw him coming and immediately stood at attention.

"Captain, round up and take inventory of the prisoners, then get us a little crowd. I want an audience. And keep the elves off my back.", he ordered. When the women started to grin a bit too enthusiastically, he added: "And don't start with the executions until I am back."

He turned to where a lot of horses were dragging the covered metal-behemoth into a stable. Luckily, that early in the morning, not many residents were awake and appearently none had been watching yet. That was good, because he didn't want tp have rumors spreading about the... whatever it was.

Tullius followed the Imperial soldiers, inside the stable and tried to help pull the ropes.

As soon as, the soldiers got the thing somewhat out of the line of sight, Tullius suddenly kicked the behemoth hard in the side with a metallic 'CLANG'. The soldiers flinched nervously.

"Get up. The Elves aren't watching and there is no way, we can pull you all the way in."

The being got the message clearly and the soldiers all laid their hands on their swords, but didn't draw them. It stood up with an impossible balance and pulled the blanket off. How did it move so fluently with this amount of weight?

In a second, it had assumed a cautious stance, ready to either start running or fighting.

The silence was awkward. Especially, when Tullius only saw the reflection of his face in the blue tinted glass of the helmet. It was unsettling.

"So, what is going on here?", he asked with crossed arms.

"I have no clue, Sir.", a feminine voice answered, to the surprise of everyone present. It took the old officer a few seconds of observing her, to finally pick up the clues. The armor was indeed subtly feminine in shape, but it was completely overshadowed by the masculine bulk and angularity of the design. How could a women possibly lift that? She was no Deadra, otherwise she wouldn't have acted so strangely cooperative when she was surrounded. But she had to be an immensely powerful mage to move this amount of metal. Or a record-breakingly strong Orc woman.

"Where am I?", the women asked, after a bit of silence. On the side Tullius noted that the voice sounded a bit off. Artificial in a way.

"Skyrim. In Fortress Helgen. But you don't know what that means, am I right?"

It was rather obvious, that she didn't. She seemed... Lost. And disoriented.

"No, Sir. So I guess you haven't heard of the 'UNSC'. That complicates things. You represent the Government of Skyrim, I presume?"

The General nodded.

"To a degree. The Imperial Province Skyrim is under military protection at the moment, but civil authority is in the hands of the Jarl. I am Military-Governor Tullius. Responsible for the supression of the ongoing Stormcloak Rebellion. I speak for the Empire."

He paused for a moment because the being seemed lost in thought.

"Where do you come from?", he continued.

"Not from this continent. My ship crashed. I need shelter and asylum, until I can reestablish contact with my superiors."

Tullius hesitated with his answer. Coming from across the great seas, was a claim that he could dismiss out of hand. She was found deep inside the Tamriel landmass, far away from any coast. However, he could tell that her disorientation was sincere. Her actions just seemed so clueless, that Tullius just knew that they were not acted.

Also, that the continent-lie was so dumb, gave it's main message more weight behind it. She genuinely had no idea at all, otherwise she would have made up a believable lie. But it was suspicious that she lied at all.

How she ended up in that forest was the question. Teleportation magic?

"A wise decision to turn yourself to the authorities on this, soldier. If you represent a nation, that we did not yet establish contact with, you are essentially a diplomat. We will arrange an escort that will smuggle you to the Solditute Garrison for questioning. This place is awfully inconvenient.", he explained to the giant.

"But!", Tullius continued, "Before I spill one word about you to my superiors, I want the whole truth. You are lying about something and if you are just a Nord thug in a looted dwarven artifact..."

"My Space Ship got destroyed and my escape-pod fell from the air.", she interrupted, turning the room completely silent. That was unexpected. And no one understood what any of that meant.

"I didn't think you would comprehend the full truth, if I was completely honest about my situation. My apologies, but being dismissed as mad would not have helped me."

Well... She was right on that. Her claims sounded absolutely ridiculous. Considering her controlled articulation, Tullius took her implication of coming from a flying ship seriously. Even though he sort of had the feeling that 'Space' in this case was a synonym for 'Mundus'. Specifically, the void between planets. Some Imperial Scholars used the term 'space' that way, when consulting the Emperor on arcane matters.

"Then you better bring some very convincing evidence. I will see to it that you get an escort to Solditude later.", Tullius replied, reserving his judgement for later. The claims of the women were so extraordinary, that they could be dismissed as ridiculous. But having seen her do quite a few impossible things, Tullius was willing to at least give her the opportunity to present her case.

"Yes, Sir.", she confirmed, almost making Tullius smile. He recognized naturally talented soldiers when he saw them.

"Good. Stay here and keep a low profile. I have matters to attend.", he explained and pointed at a Nord soldier, who looked in his late twenties. "You, soldier, will guard her. The rest of you, get back to your posts. I want a tight security net and don't let the crowd come too close. This has to go smoothly."

He turned to the door, when the armored women hastily said, "Uhm, General..." behind him, accompanied by a weird hissing sound.

Tullius turned his head and gasped in surprise along the other soldiers.

The women was young. A teenager.

"Just to prove that I am really human.", she shyly said, locking her bright blue eyes on him with a small, reassuring, but insecure smile.

It is diffucult to describe the exact thoughts that crossed Tullius' mind that moment, when he met her icy blue stare. The visual information was smelting two contradicting impressions into a blend, that mentally threw him back for a moment. He hesitated a second, then began to calmly process what he saw.

She was a killer. Tullius could see it in her eyes. The way she was observing his reaction, studying him with what he assumed was an intelligence at least equal to his. However, her eyes sometimes faltered, seemingly loosing focus and getting lost in unknown thoughts, before being brought on track by a soldierly mental discipline.

Tullius did not fancy himself a genius in reading people. He was a fairly rusty old man and the ways of civilian interaction were almost alien to him, but he knew soldiers. And he had his experience with child-soldiers.

A dirty truth about warfare in Tamriel was, that children were not spared the horrors of war. Orphans would ocassionally form temporary Raider bands, that tried to survive in the anarchy of conflict zones. Children were often forced to carry supplies behind the front and teenagers were joining Mercenary or Auxillery formations, to realize their dreams of glory. And almost all of these 'child-soldiers' would loose all of their foolish delusions after the first time they saw combat. You could give children weapons, but almost never, could they be made into proper soldiers. Killers, yes, but not good Legionaires. Teenagers were a different matter, but it was hard work.

What made this girl stick out, was that she was talented. She had skills, intelligence and talent, but she was obviously insecure.

Tullius knew, that this girl could kill all people present in seconds. But she willingly submitted herself, even after being attacked.

He got an idea. She needed some kind of authority figure to guide her. Soldiers often did not know what to do, when they had no command structure. If he was to gain her trust, he needed to be clear and precise.

"I see.", he began. "Stay with... what's your name, soldier?"

"Hadvar."

"Stay with him and wait until we find a way to smuggle you put of here. Don't go outside and hide if the elves are looking for you. I must go now, or someone might get suspicious. We'll talk later. And don't make trouble."

Those orders had everything sort of covered, so Tullius left the room.

Kat was relieved. This went far better than she expected.

Appearently the General and the Elves were in a state of mutual distrust. It was probably just some little joint military venture to crush Insurrectionists.

The new input of context was helpful and mainly, it by now resolved Kat's doubts if this scenarion was 'real'. She knew it was not a coma-dream. Those look different, as she could testify.

The context regarding the combatants and that the Empire was appearently federal in nature gave her some orientation. Especially, on whose good side she wanted to stay. It wasn't much, but a good point to start. She would have to find out and study this new world herself to familiarize with it, but she had a good foothold.

The question was: To do what? Meeting with the Empire and initiating First Contact was an obvious temporary goalpost, but what was her main objective? Having no one to tell her how to do her job was perfectly fine for Kat, but that was implying that there was a mission. She was stranded, with next to no chance to return. There was nothing she could do. The ship was in orbit and there was no way to reach it or deploy a distress beacon.

'Was that the way left-behind Spartan Headhunters felt?', Kat wondered.

At least that General seemed competent and trusting, so he was an excellent starting point to stabilize the situation. Maybe he was a tad too honest for a high-ranking officer, but he seemed soldierly enough that she could trust him at least temporarily. Not that he had the situation under control anyways.

She sat down in the hay with a metallic 'thud' and stared at the ceiling. Waiting usually didn't bother Kat, but this time she had almost no information left to process. At least there was still the issue with the wreckage of the ship.

She remembered that her pod must have had a steep angle of atmospheric entry. The spectrum of angles at which a Drop Pod can survive reentry is narrow. There was not much time for airbrakes planned into the design and the ablative heatshields could only hold for a limited timespan. The Parashutes were the real method of decelleration. Point is, if she could get some info at what angle her capsule went down, she could make a safe guess, at what angle the ship wreck was in orbit at the time of her drop. Most importantly, if it's remaining accelleration would have been sufficient to make an orbit. Maybe it crashed somewhere or maybe it was still up there, far outside her reach.

However even then, there was the possibility of the orbit slowly decaying and eventually... the ship would very likely crash into the ocean.

But should enough parts, or even the whole thing, go down on her continent, she planned to make the most of it. Maybe activate a distress beacon. Or build one.

Finishing her considerations, she noticed the Guard stared at her nervously. When she turned her head his direction, he immediately reached for his sword.

Her collegue Emile would probably have kept freaking the poor man out for the heck of it, but Kat had the tact not to needlessly antagonize people. She was surely not the most social kind of person, but military personel always deserved a degree of respect.

Outside, a crowd was cheering. Appearently some public event. The prisoners were probably being executed. Kat thought it was barbaric to do it in public, but she couldn't really condemn them. It were less enlightened times, due process wasn't a thing yet and the UNSC did the same thing anyways, just more professional.

The cheer was cut short by an eldritch sounding roar, that made Kat jump up. Something was going on. Hadvar was going for the door, irritated as well. "What was that?", he asked to no one in particular.

"You tell me.", Kat answered, making him spin around and go for his sword on reflex.

The standoff was cut short by the crash of something solid impacting a brick-structure somewhere outside, followed by screams.

Hadvar opened the door to reveal a most intimidating sight. A dragon. The Nord and Kat both recoiled in shock and immediately closed the door, when it began spewing fire into the Imperial soldiers.

"By Talos!", the soldier gasped, hearing the screams outside. Kat saw him pale, but he seemed to quickly get his shit together again. He grabbed a round wooden shield that lay in the corner, to get himself a little additional protection.

He noticed Kat observing him and suddenly remembered his real mission.

"Stay with me prisoner. I will get you out of here."

He opened the door and was about to storm out, when Kat grabbed his shoulder forcefully and held him back.

"Where are we going?", she asked, while sticking her head outside. The village was appearently one ring of buildings along the outer wall, with a big tower in the middle. The Dragon was using that tower as a position to set the entire village ablaze, but was concentrating on clearing out the archers on walls and towers. This beast was intelligent.

"The dungeons. We can get in through the barracks. They're on the other side of the village.", he explained impatiently, while Kat was analysing the chaos in front of her. A plan began to form.

"Behind that gate to the left?", she asked, just to confirm her assumptions. "Yes!", answered Hadvar and Kat sprung into action immediately.

While the Dragon wasn't looking, she sprinted towards the wooden carriage in front of the gate. She reached it in less than two seconds and threw herself onto the ground behind it. When she looked back, Hadvar was barely out of the door.

As soon as he reached the cover of the carriage, Kat jumped into running position and bull-rushed the gate. She impacted it with full force, unhinging it and sending it flying accompanied by the screech of twisting metal.

Kat saw that the Imperials were trying to tell if she was an enemy, but kept their focus on the Dragon. It was clear who was the more immediate danger.

The beast did not notice her, luckily. It's attention was focused on another tower, that it was saturating with it's fire-breath.

Thanks to a little pause that the Spartan spent in cover, Hadvar could catch up again. "This way!", he explained, pointing at a still intact stone structure. It wasn't far.

She not so subtly grabbed his lower arm and dragged him behind her while running.

Eventually the Dragon saw them. He stared at them, as if he didn't know what to think of what he saw. ‚Is that thing sapient?', was Kats first thought when the thing spit a fireball towards her, then moved on to other targets. It had looked like the Dragon equivalent of an annoyed handwave.

The Spartan didn't stop running at any point, even though she was just dragging the Legionaire behind her, after he tripped. Dodging the fireball was easy, but some confused, or really stupid, Archers started firing at her.

Almost none hit. She had to take one to protect Hadvar. It barely scratched the paintjob, but Kat was feeling disappointed that she didn't dodge everything perfectly. If that had been plasma, it could have crippled her.

She didn't waste any time and breached into the wooded door of the barracks, using her armoured shoulder as a ram.

She scanned the room for hostiles like her training demanded. It was clear. The room was the armoury and sleeping hall of the guards.

"Room clear.", she reported, out of reflex. Hadvar fell to the ground, looking very pale. The speed of everything had clearly been too much. To the Roman's credit, he got up again quickly, while the Spartan closed the ruined wooden gate as best as she could.

"Do these Dragon attacks happen frequently around here?", Kat asked with a squeaky voice, high on Adrenaline.

"Gods, no! I thought they were just legends... Through the dungeons, we could reach an old backdoor. When the dragon is done here, he could threaten Riverwood, Falkreath and Whiterun. We must warn Jarl Balgruuf, before it's too late."

The Roman walked over towards a rack of weapons. "You can take a sword here, the guards won't miss it. Costs a fortune eksewhere.", he explained and handed Kat one.

"Thanks. And where are my own weapons?", she asked back, but it came out a bit unpolite. Kat understood that swords were expensive in feudal times.

"They were weapons? We stored them with the normal confiscated goods.", Hadvar told surprised and pointed at a crate. The Spartan mag-locked the sword on her back and cracked the box open.

However, they got company. Their talking had caught attention. "Hey, traitor. Stay where you are!", a woman in blue clothes commanded. "We control the dungeons, don't try to follow us."

She was behind a gate, armed with an axe.

Kat calmly locked the weapons onto her armor, while Hadvar tried to reason with the woman. "I don't care what you think, but that Dragon is a threat to all of Skyrim. If you are a patriot, you must let us warn the Jarls!"

"We will do that ourselves. Have fun with the dragon.", she taunted.

Kat took a magazine and a bullet out of her DMR, then patted the Legionaire on the shoulder.

"You were wondering about my weapons?", she asked, then quietly explained: "In the back of this cylinder is an explosive powder. The tip is solid metal."

Hadvar looked at her confused. "If I load this into the chamber inside this device..." She chambered the bullet and with lightning fast reflexes she aimed at the sentry, then pulled the trigger.

BANG! The unfortunate woman's head was splattered all over the wall behind her. Hadvars jaw dropped.

"When I pull the trigger, here on the grip, a mechanism ignites the powder and the metal is propelled through the barrel. A spring in the magazine immediately pushes the next round in and the spent one is ejected.", she explained and handed him her Magnum.

"Same function with this. Your sword and arrows don't hurt me, so I will engage up close. You stay behind and kill everyone who looks like he uses magic.", she explained. "Aim directly, the projectile only starts dropping at fifty meters range. And be conservative with shots, I want them reserved for dangerous targets."

The soldier didn't question that, while the Dragon was directly behind them. They got moving and opened the gate.

A group of Stormcloak soldiers, armed with simple axes, were waiting for them in the first room. Two enemies ambushed Kat from both sides of the door.

She didn't bother with fancy tactics and decided to do this quick. Two Axes glanced off the shoulder panels Kat kicked one enemy in the knee and bashed the others face in with a punch.

The other three got in defensive formation and the Spartan grabbed her new sword. Lacking any knowledge of sword-fighting, she charged. Her weight broke their formation and killed a Stormcloak. A wide and strong swing of the sword killed one enemy, but the blade got stuck in the spine. So the last enemy got her face kicked in when she tried to get up again. The Imperial caught up, pistol in one hand and sword in the other. He was prepared for a fight, but was visibly surprised by the quick victory.

Kat saw how he was preparing to stab the wounded Stormcloak besides the door and said: "Wait!"

She grabbed the rebel, and propped him up, so she held him in place in front of her.

"You can have one exercise shot, before we go further. Don't worry, Stormcloak, you won't feel it."

Hadvar didn't hesitate at the idea, like UNSC Marines would have. This were less civilized times and Kat was pragmatic.

"Last words?", she asked.

Hadvar started to recite a prayer in a language that sounded like German or Danish and the wounded enemy joined in.

He aimed for the head and shot. She felt the bullet impact harmlessly against her armor, after the head of the guy was splattered over the front of her armor.

Hadvar was caught off Guard by the noise and the recoil, but didn't mind the gore.

"I'm sorry I hit you. I didn't expect this thing to be so powerful."

Kat shrugged. "No problem, I knew it would. You are ready?"

"Yes."

They got moving again.

The tunnels led deeper down and they got to a torture room. There were some more Stormcloaks.

The duo had a bit of practice now. Kat stormed in and killed the enemies in melee. Hadvar was happy to stay back and scan for any sign of magic, while the practically invincible Spartan was absorbing the hits.

The room was cleared quickly, but the two torturers were dead and the prisoners freed. Kat spent a moment to look around the room, to see if there is something valueable. On a table she saw a single silver coin and asked: "Do you mind if I take that?"

Hadvar shrugged. "Better us than real looters. We share that, though. You don't find silver Septims every day."

Kat smiled and flipped the heavy coin over to her new partner. He smiled back.

They moved on and one group of enemies later, they reached a natural cave.

Kat was starting to relax a little, as did the Imperial. They reached a slope, when Hadvar suddenly froze in place.

In there were three gigantic spiders. "Oh, no.", he muttered.

The Spartan agreed fully. "What the fuck. I'm not doing this by hand.", she decided. These things looked terrifying. Kat, having played the videogame X-Com once, had the terrible feeling this might be Chrissalids. They shouldn't, but after getting attacked by magic Elves and a Dragon, she was not about to risk it.

She grabbed her DMR and shot all of them in their ugly heads in quick succession.

Hadvar nodded. "Wise tactic. Frostbite Spiders spit poison. It iches on the skin, but if it gets inside the body it's deadly. My father needed to hire a restoration mage to heal him, after a fight with a spider. That costs a lot.", he explained, while the two were climbing down the slope.

"That's rough. Back home, we have spiders too. But they don't get larger than a fist. Not the size of a ..."

She was interrupted by a roar. The shots had attracted attention.

"Not the size of a bear.", she finished, when a very angry looking bear stood in front of them.

Kat was tempted to see what the animal would do, but Hadvar immediately shot it in the head. A reasonable response for a normal human.

She quickly collected a sample of the spider-poison and moved on.

They had warn people about the Dragon.