Inside the ruins of Bleak Falls Barrow, Brim fell back into her old habits like a hand fits into a tailored glove. Crypt looting had never been her particular game, but she supposed there was little enough difference between padding around a house in the dark and creeping through a disused catacomb. Except for the bones and the general musty smell of centuries old dust and decay, of course.
Already, the job was proving to be lucrative. She had gleaned a fair bit of gold, gemstones, and other valuable from the funerary urns, not to mention from the pockets of the bandits that had set up housekeeping in the cavernous foyer of the ruin. They don't need it anymore, she thought cheerfully as she moved carefully along the tunnels. What use had old bones for gold? And the bandits . . . well, Brim had permanently relieved all of their needs with a swift arrow between the shoulder blades apiece. She had never liked bandits. They lacked finesse, a disgrace to proper thieves everywhere.
Still, they were useful from time to time. The good thing about bandits was that you could usually get them to do the hard, dangerous work themselves, and then take the prize right out from under their noses. Most could be counted on to seriously overestimate their own cleverness, Brim knew from experience. Take their leader, for instance, that Dunmer fellow Arvel that she had killed a few chambers back. What sort of ninny wanders unprepared into a giant spider's lair and gets himself stuck in the webs? It was unprofessional. Furthermore, had he actually thought she would believe him . . . him, a bandit and a Dark Elf, of all people . . . when he had said he could help her find what she was looking for if she would just cut him down? If he had not been blocking the exact passageway she needed to get through, she would have cut his belt pouch and rucksack off of him and left him for the next giant spider to find on principle.
As it was, Brim had been merciful enough to cut his throat quickly before hacking him down and digging through his gear for the first of her two objectives in the Barrow: a curving claw-shaped gold ornament that looked like it had been modeled off of a bird of prey's talons or perhaps a dragon's. When she had stopped over at the local general store in Riverwood to pick up a bow and see if she could get good directions up to the Barrow, the Imperial trader that ran the place had practically fallen over himself to convince her to bring back a golden claw that had recently been stolen from him by the bandits that were hiding out up there. This job keeps getting better and better, she thought, pocketing the ornament. If the Riverwood trader didn't make it worth her while after all, she could always pinch it back when he wasn't looking and find a more generous trader to take it off of her hands.
The deeper she delved into the ruin, though, the more dangerous it became. The dead didn't sleep peacefully in Skyrim it seemed, for more than once Brim entered a catacomb chamber just in time to see the half-mummified corpse of a dead warrior rise from its crypt and turn an eerie, cold gaze on her, blue pin-points of fire where the eyes should have been. Stendarr, Mara, aid me, she prayed as she hacked at the bones, scattering them into the dust, the hairs on the back of her neck standing on end with fright and revulsion. There's more riding on this than lining my pockets this time.
Finally, she arrived in a long hall, the walls intricately carved with pictures and writing that Brim could not make out clearly. At the end was a stone door of sorts, nearly round and bearing what appeared to be a series of three concentric, sliding stone rings around a central depression. The rings each had a series of symbols on them, and the depression was, itself, oddly shaped, with contours and pits that seemed somewhat familiar. Suddenly, a thought occurred to her and she pulled out the golden claw. It was a perfect match.
So, that's what you were after, she thought, remembering that Arvel's dying words had made reference to knowing how the claw "worked". It was then that she noticed the symbols carved into the palm side of the claw. Within a few seconds, she had aligned the concentric rings in the same pattern and placed the claw, giving it a swift turn in place like a key. Ancient tumblers clicked and released and the door groaned and grated as it slid down into the floor, revealing a large cavern beyond. The sound of running water was nearby, and she could see sunlight ahead, streaming down in shafts from the ceiling. Finally.
An underground river wound its way through the cavern, and Brim skirted it carefully, her sword and dagger drawn. The appearance of the restless dead had unnerved her more than she wanted to admit, and she was certain now that they could be hiding around any corner. Better safe than sorry. A tall stone dais stood at the back of the cave, and as she crept warily up and crested the top of the stone steps leading up to it, a bright glow caught the corner of her eye.
A portion of the cave wall had been carved into a roughly uniform, smooth semi-circle. Inscriptions in a language she could not even begin to understand spidered across the stone, but one set of symbols in particular glowed with an unearthly blue light, growing stronger as she approached. Brim gaped at it, unable to tear her eyes away though she had no idea what she was seeing, and felt something in the back of her mind stir in response to the symbols. It was as if she had seen them before somewhere, in a dream perhaps, but the meaning was just beyond the wall of her memory.
Fus, she sounded out in her mind, unable to account for how she knew that was what the symbol said, shaking her head as the glow brightened intensely and then went out suddenly like a snuffed out candle-flame. At the same moment, a crash erupted behind her and Brim whirled, coming on guard just in time to see a skeletal form rise from a decorative iron sarcophagus at the other end of the platform, clutching a sword that was longer than Brim was tall and bearing armor that looked like it had not seen the outside world in a thousand years. It surveyed her for a hair-raising moment, its ice-blue eyes as cold as Oblivion, and then rushed towards her, fleshless jaws open in an unearthly growl.
Brim ducked frantically to the side, slashing at the monstrosity's legs as it charged past her. She whirled to deliver a cut to its exposed vertebrae, sending a spray of bone fragments and rusty iron flying. The creature turned on her and brought its sword down in a diagonal arc, missing her head by a hair's breadth as she jumped back. The blade sang past her face with a deadly hiss and she could feel the unnatural, burning cold that radiated from the weapon on her skin. Even one blow from that would be death, Brim knew, and she threw herself desperately forward while the dead warrior was recovering momentum from the swing, knocking it further off balance. She stabbed her own short sword through an exposed gap in its armor, feeling it sink disturbingly into the open air between the creature's ribs. With every bit of strength she could muster, she twisted her body and wrenched the sword down as if it were a lever, hearing the chilling crack and snap of dry bones and the complaining screech of old metal as the dead warrior's chest and spine exploded inside its armor. The thing collapsed onto the ground, back facing her, and she dropped her blade long enough to frantically grasp the skull and fiendish horned helmet that adored it and twist. It snapped completely free of the neck and she threw it as far away from her as she could, shivering with revulsion and fear.
Silence fell over the cavern, as Brim stood, heaving for breath, among the dust motes that danced frenetically in the rays of daylight from the rift in the ground overhead. The skeletal warrior did not move, and she could see that the fire had gone out of its empty eye sockets from where the head lay, having rolled into the alcove of the inscribed wall. Her eyes searched cavern for any other attackers, but nothing moved. Hells and damnation, she thought, shakily, that reward had better be worth it. And she would not be doing any more grave-robbing jobs anytime soon, of that she was absolutely certain.
A quick examination of the sarcophagus revealed a stone tablet that perfectly fit the description she had received from the Jarl's wizard, as well as a small collection of grave goods that Brim appraised as being valuable and light enough to make it worth her while to cart them back. As an afterthought, she cautiously removed the greatsword from its owner's skeletal grasp as well. The blade seemed to radiate a powerful aura of cold and magic sold well everywhere. By her estimation, she had already collected more wealth from this one job than she would have from a week of pickpocketing, but then she had come very close to losing her head for the second time in one week, too. As soon as this is over, I'm going back to proper thieving, she thought, as she retraced her steps back out into the light of late afternoon. It's safer.
~~0~~
Whiterun was winding down for the evening by the time Brim arrived back at its gates. Men and women flooded through the market place towards their respective homes, the merchants taking advantage of the crowd to hawk the last wares of the day. Tired from the fight and slightly footsore from the walk down the mountain, Brim considered checking herself into an inn for the night and reporting in to the Jarl in the morning. There was enough daylight left, though, to see to the end of her contract and then she could, perhaps, splurge on a hot bath for herself as well. Even she was aware that she was beginning to smell rather ripe after the ordeal of the day.
As she made her way up through the city, she paused for a moment in a circular roundabout in the road, the center of which was dominated by the skeletal frame of an enormous half-dead tree. A temple to Kynareth, tidy and well-maintained, stood on the northwestern side next to the stairs that began the long ascent up to the Jarl's hall, but what caught Brim's attention was a man in golden robes standing in front of a large statue on the other side of the stairs, clockwise from the temple. He paced along the narrow alcove between the statue and the shallow water channel that bordered the roundabout, delivering a sermon at high volume that most of the passersby's seemed obliged to ignore, as if he were just another merchant crying his wares. Intrigued by the spectacle, and thinking that perhaps a short rest was not out of the question after all, Brim hopped the channel and took a seat on one of the benches.
"'Ere you ascended and the Eight became Nine, you walked among us, great Talos, not as god, but as man! But you were once man . . ." the priest shouted, his eyes lighting on Brim for an instant, shining with zealous eagerness. She gathered that it was not often that someone stopped to take notice.
Talos. Brim knew the name by mythology only, the Ninth God That Never Was, something that old folks whose youth had been spent before the Great War and the few Nords that had made their way through the Guild spoke about in hushed tones. Eagill had sworn by the name often enough, though she had not been curious enough at the time to ask why. She leaned forward, resting her elbows on her knees, and her chin on her palms, and listened.
"Even as man, great Talos cherished us. For he saw in us, in each of us, the future of Skyrim! The future of Tamriel! And there it is, friends! The ugly truth! We are the children of man! Talos is the true god of man!"
The priest was working himself up into a proper thunderous delivery now, and no mistake. Brim was aware of several guards stopping nearby to watch, warily, though no one got too close. God of man, eh? She cast an appraising eye over the statue. It depicted a man in his middle years, obviously a warrior, wearing a winged helm. His expression was serene, almost meditative, though the sculptor had posed him with his foot crushing the throat of what appeared to be a snake-like monster. There was something in the face that seemed hauntingly familiar to Brim, but she could not quite place it. All these sodding Nords look the same, she thought, though the uneasy feeling persisted.
Still, she liked the idea of a man turned god. Someone's got to stand up for us up there. Maybe that's why they chucked you out, for causing too much of a ruckus as us mortals are wont to do. Brim smiled and stood, walking forward past the striding priest to drop a coin in the bowl in front of the statue without taking her eyes from the Divine's face. What did one ask for from the god of man? The small things, she thought. The things that only a mortal would appreciate. The needed last coin found in the bottom of the satchel. The dagger just within reach. The one right thing to say. Send me those, she asked, before turning to make the climb up to Dragonsreach. The rest I can cope with on my own.
~~0~~
The servants in Dragonsreach were just setting up for the evening meal when Brim arrived, the Jarl and his advisors nowhere in evidence. Quickly, eager to retrieve her money and go, she hurried to the wizard's study, but slowed again as she heard voices within.
"The Jarl himself has finally taken an interest, so I'm now able to devote most of my time to this research," the mage was saying, cheerfully. Brim waited outside of his line of sight and peered in. She could just catch the figure of a woman in a brown hooded cloak and breeches bending over some papers and books on a desk. Nothing of her face was visible except well-formed lips and chin.
"Time is running out, Farengar, don't forget. This isn't some theoretical question. Dragons have come back," the woman replied, her voice low and smooth, and looked up. Her eyes were still hidden by the hood, but Brim watched her flick the book in front of her closed and stand upright. "You have a visitor."
Taking her cue, Brim stepped into the study and turned to the mage, though she kept a wary eye on his guest, like one cat spotting another from afar. This isn't shady at all, she thought sardonically, but kept her mouth shut.
"Ah, yes!" Farengar said, pleased, and hurried forward. "I was wondering if you had died after all. Did you find it?"
If you're going to be like that, then I might have just dropped it down a well by accident, Brim thought, dryly, but dug in her satchel to produce the stone tablet. Coin was coin, even if it came from a wet-behind-the-ears uppity mage. Farengar took it from her as carefully as if it had been made of glass and hurried it over to the table. He and the hooded woman bent over it and the wizard clapped his hands in excitement.
"This is it! It's a sort of map of all the dragon burials in this area," he crowed, and looked at the woman with a grin. "Your employers should be very pleased, as well."
"Indeed," the hooded figure said, and looked up at Brim again. "It must have taken skill to get this. I'm impressed."
"Aye. That being the case, as to my . . ." Brim started but heard a shout behind her. She turned quickly, her sharp eyes noticing the cloaked woman step back into the shadows to one side, and saw the Jarl's Dunmer swordswoman . . .Irileth, wasn't it? . . . run up.
"Farengar . " the Dunmer panted, trying to catch her breath. "The dragon has attacked the Western Watchtower. The Jarl needs us immediately. You, mercenary. You should come, as well."
"How exciting!" the mage exclaimed practically bouncing with glee as he hurried from behind his desk to fall in behind the swordswoman and Brim scowled. You're mad if you think I'm going anywhere near that dragon again, she thought. But she could feel the cloaked figure watching her carefully and she hadn't been paid yet, so she cursed inwardly and turned, jogging after the mage. As she hurried along, she tried to compose a sufficiently polite way to tell the Jarl to give her the bloody payment so she could piss off out of this city before the dragon burnt it to cinders, as well.
Jarl Balgruuf was waiting in a large, open study behind the main hall, along with his steward and several other people, all of whom looked immensely agitated. Feeling agitated herself, Brim waited while Irileth shoved a younger guardsman forward to explain what he had seen. The dragon had come on them unawares, it seemed, and destroyed most of the tower. Not very watchful, those watchtower guards, then, she thought, but Irileth was already asking to be sent down there to find out the truth of the matter herself.
"Very well," the Jarl replied. He frowned, concerned, and added, "But remember that this is not a death or glory mission, Irileth. We need to find out what we're dealing with."
"Of course, my lord. I am the soul of discretion," the Dunmer replied, almost gently. Brim's eyes narrowed as she glanced between them, noticing their expressions, the subtle shift in their voices. Oh, I see. Well, it wasn't any of her business which of his servants the Jarl was boffing on the side, though the information could be useful later. Brim just wanted her well-earned gold. The Jarl turned back to her before she could find a moment to interject.
"As for you," he said, resuming his lordly tone, "I assume since you have returned that your errand was successful. You have done us a great service. I haven't forgotten your reward. But I'm afraid I have to ask one more thing of you, my friend. Go with Irileth and see about this dragon. You're the only one here who has seen one before and knows what to expect."
"Begging your pardon, m'lord, but I wouldn't know how to fight a dragon if one fell on me," she replied, trying to be tactful. A dragon had already very nearly fallen on her, and she had only barely managed to make it out of that alive, and then only by luck.
"I don't expect you to kill it. We simply need to know what the thing is capable of," the Jarl replied. "Do this, and your reward will be substantially increased."
And how am I supposed to spend it from inside of a dragon? Brim thought, venomously, but pressed her lips together tightly to keep the words from leaking out. Clearly, she was not going to be paid until this was over. Hells, she had worked hard for that gold, she wasn't going to . . . couldn't, really . . . leave Whiterun without it.
"As you wish," she replied, tightly, and the Jarl smiled. Turning on her heel, Brim stalked after the waiting Dunmer, who gave her a hard look before hurrying back through the hall. Glare all you want, sweetroll. You can have all the honor of dying for Jarl and city and I'll be pleased to relieve you of your pocket-change afterwards.
Night was rapidly descending as Irileth gathered a contingent of guards and sallied forth. Brim watched the skies with more than a little anxiety as she trotted along the western road with the guardsmen. They seemed hesitant as well, but this is what they earned their pay for. Poor fools.
A column of black smoke could barely be made out billowing across the darkening sky and Irileth stopped behind an outcropping of rock as the ruins of the watchtower came into view.
"Shor's bones . . ." one of the guardsmen cursed, gawking. The tower had been almost entirely destroyed, as if a huge hand had snapped it in half and crumbled the pieces all around the landscape. Parts of it were still on fire and Brim wasn't certain that all of the blackened shapes strewn across the ground at the base of the tower were just pieces of debris.
"We need to look for survivors," Irileth said, her crimson eyes scanning the sky critically. "It looks like the dragon's gone, but be careful. It could come back at any time. Spread out."
Reluctantly, Brim did as she was bid, creeping carefully towards the ruins. It was a relief that they appeared to have missed the monster. Maybe she would still have time to get her pay and that bath tonight after all. Might as well look to business while I'm here, she thought and hauled herself up the over the broken stones and into the base of the tower to poke around for anything she could pocket that might be worth something.
"No, go back!" a strained male voice cried. Brim looked up in alarm to find herself staring back into a pair of wide, frightened eyes. The guardsman's face was streaked with blood and soot and he flung a hand out at her, though she could see he was badly wounded enough that he probably could not manage to move far from where he was propped against the wall. "It's still around here somewhere!"
As if on cue, a low roar shattered the air outside the tower and Brim felt her heart drop into her stomach and the blood drain from her face in cold fear. Daedra take me, not again. The tower quaked dangerously as something huge impacted the ground nearby and she pressed herself back against the wall as several stones fell from above and crashed into the floor.
"Get out of here!" the injured guard screamed at her, and Brim needed no second bidding. She flung herself back through the doorway, crouching and covering her head with her arms as she hit the dirt, seconds before part of the sidewall crumbled inward. The other guards were shouting nearby and she could hear the thrashing of the dragon and feel the massive movement of air from its wings move across her far too close for comfort. Pushing herself back up, she darted for cover behind a larger piece of rubble.
The dragon launched itself skyward again and Brim got her first glance at it. To her surprise, it was not the same one that had attacked at Helgen. That dragon had filled the sky like a black hole in the world itself. This one was smaller, its thorny hide a mottled green. Bloody hell, there's two of these things? The beast swooped overhead in a curving arc and sped back towards the tower, a long jet of flame erupting from its mouth to cut a swathe of fire across the ruins. Brim looked around, desperately, but the city was too far away to make a run for it and there was no other cover in sight.
"Arrows bounce right off of that thing!" she heard a guardsman shout, panicked, nearby. "What are we going to do?"
"I don't know!" another responded, and Brim felt a sense of dreadful resignation creep over her. She couldn't run. It would just attract attention to herself and, even if she made it to the city, how long before the dragon followed her? There was nowhere unexposed to hide until it was over. There's only one way out of this, she thought, grimly, and turned to climb up the jagged chunk of tower she had taken refuge behind. Someone had to put that dragon on the ground somehow, or it would just fly circles around them and roast them all like chestnuts before flying merrily away for seconds. And she could think of only one way to do that.
The dragon had circled high again and was coming in for another flyby attack on the guards below. Brim watched its trajectory carefully, drawing her sword and dagger, as she leapt across a narrow divide between her piece of rubble and the next. If she had the angle right, the cockamamie idea that had just occurred to her would work. If she had it wrong . . .well, there were worse ways to die. I'm not going to die, she told herself. I haven't come this far to let a flying lizard take me down.
The dragon exhaled its flame again, the suck and rush of the downdraft from its wings wafting the fire out across the field, sending the guards fleeing for cover. Brim waited until the absolute last moment, when the dragon was lowest in its shallow dive, and jumped.
With the strange dilation of time that impending death produces, the scene around Brim seemed to slow to a crawl. The horned hide of the dragon filled her vision as its great wing fell, pushing off of the air, the great tendons straining as it turned itself upward again, but in that instant, she knew she had judged correctly. The sharp point of her sword made contact first, punching through the thick, leathery webbing of the wing, followed soon after by her dagger, as she landed. The force of the already lifting wing as it met her body drove the breath from her lungs, but she tightened her grip on her weapons, struggling to hang on. There was a terrible, blood-chilling sound like ripping skin and the world pitched wildly around her. The dragon's roar was deafening in her ears. Her forearms burned across the rough surface of the monster's flesh as she slid at an uncontrolled speed down the back of the wing, her blades raking huge open channels all the way down the length of the webbing as neatly as if they had been sail canvas until she was flung back into space again.
Brim hit the ground on her back and skidding several feet, pain shooting down her spine and into her limbs. It had not been as high a fall as it could have been, though, and she could see that her gamble had had the desired effect. Its wing sundered, the dragon spun sideways through the air and crashed, thrashing, into the ground with a sound like an avalanche. Heaving for breath, Brim rolled onto her belly and pushed herself back up to her feet. Her arms and legs tingled numbly with the shock of the fall, but nothing appeared to be broken. Or, at least she would find out later where the bruises and abrasions and breakages were when the fight-rush wore off. The dragon bellowed its rage as it struggled to right itself, snapping and lashing out with its tail at the guards who were bearing down on it with whoops of victory. We're not done yet, she thought, and galvanized her shaky legs back into a sprint.
The guardsmen were already doing a valiant job of hacking at their foe, though as Brim approached, she saw the dragon snatch one in its jaws and throw him like a ragdoll dozens of feet through the air. The creature already looked badly bloodied from the fall, its scales rubbed away in places to reveal raw flesh beneath. Its left wing was in tatters, the bone struts that supported it broken and twisted from the fall. So, you can be injured. And that means you can be killed.
Screaming like a madwoman, she charged into the fray, ducking the flailing strips of the dragon's ruined wing as she headed for the neck. For an instant, the dragon seemed to hesitate, its large, golden eyes dilating suddenly as it turned its serpentine head to focus solely on her. Taking the sudden advantage, Brim did the first thing that occurred to her, which was to leap astride its neck like a horse and clamped her thighs around its throat. This is madness, she thought, clinging desperately as the beast reared and snapped and tried to shake her off. But here she was and so she decided that, if she was going to die, she might as well die with the distinction of being the first woman to ever ride a dragon. One of your mead-swilling Nord bards had better write me a bleeding song after this. A good one!
Long years of practice at clinging to gutters and ceiling beams in the course of her work had gifted Brim with both an extraordinary grip and the ability to maintain it in almost any configuration, right side up, upside down, or otherwise. She clenched hard with her thighs as she stabbed down as hard as she could with her blade, feeling the point meet the dragon's skull and slide across the knobby bone. The second attempt, by chance, found the soft spot of the beast's eye. Hot blood spattered across her face and body as she twisted the blade deep into the wound.
"Dovahkiin! No!" the monster roared in terrified anguish, its language human though its voice was a guttural growl, shocking Brim so much that she let go and tumbled to the ground. She rolled immediately to keep from being trampled or crushed as the dragon shuddered down the length of its long body and collapsed, its limbs still working frantically to stay upright. She scrambled to her feet and stood, gaping, as a fearsome golden eye fixated on her, its expression panicked by the shock of its own mortality, before its head finally sunk slack-jawed to the ground.
There was an instantaneous rush of air and blinding flash of golden light that surrounded Brim like an explosion. She screamed in fear, but the light seemed to invade her very body as she drew in the breath, pressing inside of her and around her and over her as if she were drowning. Strange, chaotic images and feelings flashed through her brain . . . a rocky, forbidding landscape flying past far beneath her at an incredible speed; the pleasurable stretch of her wings expanding and contracting on airy currents as she rode windward, master of the sky; the terrified faces and screams of men and women as she roared her dominion over them and crushed living flesh with her jaws and the sweep of her great tail. Brim heard her own shriek morph into a roar of exultation and rage to match it as the light faded around her. She stumbled, heaving for breath, twisting as the guardsmen clustered around her. When her eyes lit on the dragon again, its flesh appeared to have melted from its bones and disappeared. Only the intact skeleton and a small, bunched pile of foreign objects where the gut must have been remained.
"You're . . .you're Dragonborn!" one of the men exclaimed. Brim stared at him without understanding. Her head was ringing, her thoughts racing on conflicting tracts. Something inside of her throbbed, as if she had vastly overeaten but the pain and distention were mental rather than physical. A flood of outrage, utter horror, and wrath that felt distinctly alien to her warred for ascendancy over her internal disarray and confusion.
"Dragonborn . . . " several of the other guards murmured in agreement. They stared at her as if they had just witness a terrible miracle.
"Like in the legends," the first guard continued eagerly at Brim's silence, though she could barely listen as she struggled to contain herself, clenching her claws . . .no, no, hands. As she clenched her hands into fists. "Like Tiber Septim of old."
"Tiber Septim never killed any dragons," one of the others objected, skeptically, and the first rounded on him scornfully.
"There weren't any dragons then, idiot, they had all gone."
"What do you think, Irileth?" the skeptic said, turning to the Dark Elf for confirmation as she stumbled up. The woman stared at Brim for a long moment, warily, and then shook her head.
"Legends are just that. Legends," the Dunmer decided, finally, and the guards murmured uneasily.
"You don't understand, housecarl. You ain't a Nord."
Irileth's dark lip curled in disgust.
"I've seen things stranger than this. Here's a dead dragon. I definitely understand that. Now we know they can be killed. That's enough for me."
Brim pressed her palms to her temples, the size and texture of her own flesh seeming grossly inappropriate as she closed her eyes tight, gritting her teeth and trying to shut out the argument, both internal and external. Too much was happening for her to process it all at once. There seemed to be too many entirely separate trains of thought going on in her mind, fighting for dominance, and the additional task of keeping up with what the others were saying about her was close to sending her over the edge.
"You should try to Shout," the knowledgeable guard urged her, laying a hand on her shoulder. She shook it off roughly and glared ferociously at him, her lips curling in the beginning of a snarl. He stepped back, meekly. "They say that Dragonborns have a natural talent for the Voice, better than the ancient Nord ancestors. If you can Shout, that confirms it."
Fury welled up suddenly within her and Brim had to hold herself back from leaping on the man and throttling him until she either killed him or exhausted herself. I don't know what just happened to me and I don't know what in the Mad God's barking celestial asylum you're talking about and I can't even get a word in edgewise in my own skull right now, she raged internally. Shut up, shut up, shut up, all of you! Let me think!
The undercurrent in her thoughts went silent instantly as her own will reasserted itself with a vengeance. It was as if the thing, whatever it was, had cowered into some deeper internal space. Fully in control once more, Brim's gazed snapped irately around her. The guards were staring at her with a mixture of awe, fear, and fascination. Irileth was watching her with a raised eye, distrustful, yet obviously curious. Shout, she thought, feeling her turbid emotions begin to settle again, slightly. She pondered. She had no idea what he meant. Her thoughts washed briefly across all of the damned strange things that had happened to her since coming to Skyrim, counting them off like tallying marks. The dragon attack. The chance discovery of her niece. The strange optical illusion in Bleak Falls Barrow. How had she known that the symbol meant "force" anyway?
Wait, Brim thought, backing up a step. When she had first seen it, she had read the symbol as "fus" not "force". But as she thought about it now, she knew unquestioningly that that was exactly what it meant. Fus meant "force", though with a deeper connotation, one that Brim could not quite put into words in her own language. The intruder in her mind shifted slightly and she could hear the word pronounced, feel how the shift in her physical and intangible bodies should take place to produce the sound. A prickly, unpleasant sensation began to start up her spine and she turned and walked a few steps away from the others. She stared hard into the darkness, concentrating, poking and probing at the curled, alien knot that seemed stuck inside of her somehow like a particularly irritating fish bone or some sort of malignant pregnancy. If I'm not mad, if this isn't some local foolishness, she told it, show me.
"Fus!" she Shouted and staggered back as the word expelled itself from her throat like a charging beast. Several pieces of stone rubble tumbled away from her along the ground as if thrown, though no one had touched them.
"She did it! That was a Shout!" the guard exclaimed to his astonished comrades. "What did I tell you? She's Dragonborn!"
Bloody hell, Brim thought, blinking. I've swallowed a dragon.
~~0~~
Hunched over his desk, Ulfric Stormcloak awoke with a gasp and a strangled yelp. Cold sweat dampened his forehead and neck and he looked around, breathing heavily. The candle had burned low in its holder and the pot of ink had spilled, darkening one corner of the parchment he had been making notes on. Quickly, he rescued the book he had been reading before he had fallen asleep, clutching it to his chest as he sat back, blinking, in the semi-darkness of his room.
In his dream, he had been back in Helgen, waiting helplessly as his men were lined up to die, while the Imperial soldiers jeered at him. Not again, he had thought, nauseated and writhing from inside his dream-trapped state. Talos help me. I'm doing the best I can. Why do You torment me so? It had been the Imperial girl's turn next. He watched her, grinding his teeth, as she was led up to the block. She was tall and straight-backed, her dark hair falling around her shoulders more neatly than it had in reality. No beauty, but still attractive in a way that caught the eye and held it. She had been on the cart with him, but she was not one of his. He had no idea who she was. They had found her in the forest during one of the escapes and had slung her limp body into the last seat available. They even kill their own without cause, he thought bitterly.
In a flurry of movement, almost faster than his eye could see, the girl whirled, her bonds snapping as she drew the sword from the captain's sheath and plunged it through the woman's gut. She took out the headsman next and then turned, a broad grin breaking over her aquiline features. Her green eyes met Ulfric's own, pinning him where he stood like cold lances of emerald. There was no malice or even joy in them, but there was something . . . else. Something older and deeper, primitive, and altogether more alarming.
"You've called me, and I've come," she had said, and then stepped back up onto the headsman block. She raised her arms, which grew out into great spreading wings. Her body morphed and swelled, growing a thick shiny coating of bright fiery golden and pure white scales, her head elongating into the serrated muzzle of a dragon. The dragon-woman roared, a terrible sound that seemed as if it would split the very sky, and that had been when he awoke, his heart pounding, his own outcry on his lips.
A crack of thunder, as loud as if the storm was right overhead, boomed outside and Ulfric startled, looking immediately to the windows, though it had not looked like rain today. Even the stones beneath his feet trembled, as if from the blast.
DOV-AH-KIIN!a chorus of distant voices cried on the wind and Ulfric stood, his mouth opening in humbled awe, as the realization hit him. The Greybeards, Shouting their summons from the Throat of the World. Since Alduin's attack on Helgen, he had prayed and studied and waiting for this moment. He had even entertained the notion that he, the most gifted student of the Voice in a generation, might be the one, that all he needed to do was find a way to awaken the power within himself. But this dream . . . now he understood. This summons was not for him. Another Voice, a True Voice, had come to Skyrim to defeat Alduin in these End Times. Talos be praised. The Dragonborn has come.
Thanks for reading! Super long chapter, but hopefully worth it. Thank you to everyone who has reviewed/followed/favourited, etc! I do truly appreciate it. :)