"You two are from the same village? Doesn't that mean you grew up together? And now you're prepared to kill each other over… what again? If that isn't proof of how stupid this war is, I just don't know what else you need."

"You obviously do not worship Talos."

"Actually, I don't worship anything. Except maybe coin. And staying alive."

"The Empire had no choice—"

"Excuses meant to—!"

"Oh, both of you shut up. Gods, I'm sorry I ever asked."

With the barrow behind them, they ended up making camp somewhere outside of Riverrun. A few hours of sleep, they had decided, would do them well before they attempted to the long run back to Whiterun.

"Are you going to tell us what happened in there?"

Sabrin watched the colors of the auroras dance along the distant mountaintops, forming bright belts and streams of light that played against the endless field of stars above them. She hated the cold, but this really was something to see.

"Sabrin."

She looked, finally, to Hadvar.

What was she supposed to say? They didn't trust each other as it was, so what good would it do to tell them that she had heard voices and seen lights that clearly weren't there?

And that word.

Ralof had been all aglow with childish excitement as he examined that wall, going on about the history of such things and the language that was carved into its face. It was the ancient tongue of the dragons or some such nonsense and there were few alive, save for the monks that lived at the Throat of the World, that could read it.

And Sabrin.

Sabrin, who had never seen the script in her life, but who had taken one look at it and knew it like she knew her own face and flesh.

Force. Fus. It felt fused into her bones, like it was more than a word.

"Nothing happened. That draugr hit like a runaway horse cart. I was just dazed."

The men shared another look and neither obviously believed her, but their attentions turned to the rabbit meat they were roasting.

"Then let us talk of something else. You know of us, tell us where you hail from."

Sabrin glanced at Ralof. If this was his way of lightening the mood, he was doing a terrible job. "My mother was from the Imperial City, but I've never been there. She worked as a mercenary, so I spent my childhood with caravans she guarded. She died when I was still a girl and I was taken in by a Khajiit named Shagh." She shrugged. "She taught me to fight and Shagh taught me to survive."

"The lockpicking?" Hadvar guessed.

"Among other things."

"So, this Shagh, where is he now?"

"Dead."

Hadvar hesitated a second and then nodded. "I'm sorry."

"So am I."

"What brought you to Skyrim?" Ralof asked.

She looked at him again. "I needed to leave Cyrodiil and north was as valid an option as anything. I was hoping to use the war here as cover. Granted, I didn't intend to end up in the middle of it."

Hadvar's brows furrowed in concern. "For what? Why were you running?"

"I owed some very bad people a great deal of money."

"And you didn't have it, I take?"

"I did, I just wasn't going to give it to them." She glanced around the camp and then upwards at the sky. "We should get started back toward Whiterun before morning. One of you can take first watch, just don't argue about it all night."

The dragon was terrifying.

And beautiful.

And also the wrong dragon.

Sabrin wasn't very smart, but she was never going to forget the dragon that had landed on the Keep in Helgen. Those inky, black scales like finely cut ebony and those eyes like hearth fires. She had stared into them herself, had had the best view in Tamriel of the monster before it had begun its rampage, and she would never ever forget it.

And this dragon was not that dragon.

Granted, she still wanted it to die.

"I have forgotten what good sport you mortals can be!"

Because apparently even dragons could be assholes.

But the battle was almost secondary. She was burning alive and she hadn't gotten anywhere near the flames pouring from the beast's daggered maw. It was the words again. The dragon was speaking, but it wasn't Common.

And she understood. They hummed inside of her and echoed in her bones, throbbing in some deep and hidden part.

"Fight courageously! Good! Your defeat brings me honor!"

What in the Void was happening?

She wasn't even afraid and that was insanity itself. This was a more certain and painful death than the headsman's axe had been. But she felt… insulted? Defensive? Whiterun wasn't even her home, she didn't care about it, but how dare another…?

"Ralof, stay away from its tail! Get the wings! Force it aground!"

The beast turned then on her. With arrows littering its hide like quills and blood pouring from a handful of wounds just deep enough to pierce its armored flesh, the dragon was a mess but no less ferocious to look upon.

And then it opened its mouth and knowing what would come next—fire—Sabrin sprang forward and just managed to get her footing on the beast's head.

Instinct. She grabbed at one of its horns for balance and then drove her blade repeatedly into the back of its skull, finding that the scales and bone there yielded quickly under her assault.

The beast thrashed and she managed to deliver a final blow that seemed to sink deeper than the others before she was thrown.

More blood, pouring out like a river. The dragon took a rattling breath and she met its eyes as she rolled onto her hands and knees. For a moment, she saw in them genuine surprise and then terror.

"Dovahkiin?! Niid!"

The first scale that flaked off and lifted up into the air like an errant ash from a campfire surprised her and she followed its progress upward with her eyes. Then the dragon's body, as a whole and all at once, burst into flame and threw herself backward in an attempt to get away. But even as she backed up, she felt a pull in her gut. A wind surrounded her and filled her ears with a deafening roar, there was warmth, and something… something…

She couldn't hear Irileth or the others anymore. The Housecarl was shouting for the guards to get back and distantly she could make out other voices among the cacophony, but they were so far away.

Ecstatic euphoria and completion. A wholeness she had never known, like a forlorn and unknown part of her had been awakened and set afire. Her eyes stung with tears as she was overwhelmed with the feeling and she struggled to breathe around the fullness in her chest.

Then it was gone. She could hear the deathly stillness of the clearing again and frantic approach of heavy footsteps.

But the newness lingered, like she had just awoken from a long sleep and had just opened her eyes.

A pair of hands was suddenly on her and forcing her head back. Hadvar. She stared at him blankly, still too stunned and confused by what had just transpired to respond to his frantic questions as he felt along her ribs for broken bones.

"You didn't hit your head, I don't think. Sabrin, talk. What were you thinking? What just—what did you just do? Ralof, bring me the water!"

The Stormcloak soldier was standing stunned still like the others, staring at the skeletal remains of the dragon like it might leap up and attack them again.

It was one of the guards that eventually broke the silence. In a voice that was filled with equal measures of awe and disbelief, he breathed: "I can't believe it. You're… you're Dragonborn."