Chapter Two

Fierce Contending Nations

From hence, let fierce contending nations know

What dire effects from civil discord flow.

- Cato, A Tragedy by Joseph Addison (Act 5, Scene 1).

Smoke was stinging my eyes by the time I plucked up my courage enough to continue. Faltering before I made the jump down from the upper floor of the house I'd landed in to ground level (wishing my hands were free to steady myself), I skirted the rubble of broken buildings closely. Crouching, I kept low with my eyes trained on the sky, rather than where I was putting my feet.

"-you need to get over here, now!" The father I had heard talking to his son earlier cried out. The boy was staring up at the sky, bemused, in shock and completely exposed where he was standing. Finally he listened, stumbling towards what little protection broken stone could afford him. My heart steadied a little when he did, though I couldn't help but think children aren't immortal outside of video games.

I retreated with the two of them, just in time for Alduin to land like a mountain falls and roar a pillar of fire down the smoke choked street. In Skyrim's tutorial period, Alduin's breath did less harm than a weak Flames spell, but now I could feel intense heat rolling off him, causing my skin to prickle with sweat.

The air smelled like cooked pork and I forced down a wave of nausea.

"Still alive, prisoner?" Hadvar, who had been crouched previously unseen (as I was busy keeping my attention on the fire-breathing dragon), was suddenly at my elbow and I fought the urge to hit him for startling me. "Stay close to me if you want to stay that way."

I barely resisted laughing in his face, because really? He didn't even have a shield and Alduin had already toppled towers and melted solid rock. All the same, I gave the soldier a silent nod before he turned his attention to the townspeople.

Blood was rushing in my head, which still felt heavy and hot and swollen. I planted my feet so not to sway. Keep it together, play the role, if you faint you will die here!

"I'm going to find General Tullius and join the defence." Hadvar broke through my morbid train of thought, gesturing for me to follow him through the burning rubble as Alduin took to wing, making our cover obsolete. Now all we could do was move quickly and hope for the best.

"Stay close to the wall!" The soldier shouted, although I was walking in his shadow between an outer wall and a burning house. Knowing that Alduin would alight the stone barrier at any moment, I gripped Hadvar's tunic and pulled him down before he could protest.

Seconds later, Alduin landed right above our heads and burned a cluster of terrified town guards to a crisp right in front of us. Black wings were our canopy, I could hear the sound of scales whispering against each other as the dragon shifted, feel the heat of his belly as he expelled his flame before taking to the sky once more, sending a flurry of dirt and ash into the air.

"Follow me," Hadvar said, very quietly, and it was all I could do to nod. I was still gripping his tunic when we emerged from between the walls, but I was forced to let it go as we wove our way through buildings still smouldering from dragon fire. Fumbling with my bound hands, I pulled up the collar of my T-shirt and tried not to breathe until I was out of the smoke.

A courtyard next, full of soldiers and mages (mages! With magic!) firing arrows and throwing up spells. "That isn't going to work!" I coughed around the lump in my throat, "please, you have to get underground!"

I was ignored by all but Hadvar, who gripped me by the arm and pulled me away. "Don't block the archers, they know what they're doing."

"No, they don't." I replied mournfully and I saw Hadvar's expression falter before he drew himself up again.

"We have to find General Tullius." He said, like a man grasping for a plan concocted during drills and strategy meetings, but never with this scenario in mind.

"He'll live," I said with dismal certainty. "But they won't if they don't get underground."

"...They're better equipped than we are to deal with this. Follow me, prisoner."

"My name is- Lyra. It's Lyra."

"Lyra then, come on."

We ran and I stumbled once on the leg of a corpse I hadn't seen for the stinging of my eyes. Hadvar dragged me up, his free arm around my waist in case I faltered again. We hid behind a newly formed outcropping as Alduin winged like a scythe over our heads. I didn't need to look back to see that the soldiers and spellcasters behind us were already dead; We had both heard the screams, abruptly cut short. The smell of crisping meat was everywhere and I didn't think I could ever eat pork again.

Distracting myself and taking advantage of the momentary lack of movement, I started rubbing the ropes tying my hands against Hadvar's sword edge.

Once he realised what I was doing, Hadvar drew the blade back with a rebuking frown.

"Oh, don't be an idiot," I said, using my elbow to draw his sword arm closer and continue the process. "I hit with the force of a wet rag, let's focus on the dragon, shall we?"

He grinned perhaps a little too widely, too wildly, at my attempt at humour, and helped me to my feet when the rough rope fell from my wrists, leaving marks where they'd scratched my skin pink.

An archer on the wall aimed high and let the string go, causing it to twang nosily against the flaps of his helm. Despite his shaking hands the projectile struck true, but as Hadvar and I ducked under the arch we heard the rush of wings followed by screams. We did not look back.

"It won't die, it just keeps coming!" An Imperial soldier screamed as the remaining forces took aim with arrows and magic. Hadvar and I stumbled onward into the courtyard with circular straw targets which hadn't yet been singed, showing that Alduin hadn't turned his sights to this area yet.

The place looked so different when it wasn't pixelated, with all it's little details and rich textures that even the best of graphics mods couldn't achieve, that I didn't realise what was coming until I was right in the middle of it.

"Ralof!" Hadvar snarled, unconsciously taking position in front of me so all I caught was a flash of blue cloth and corn-blonde hair. "You damned traitor, get out of my way!"

"We're escaping, Hadvar." I could hear the desperation in his voice. "You're not stopping us this time."

"'We', 'us'?" I stepped out from behind Hadvar. "You're alone, Ralof."

The Stormcloak blinked slowly, his sword hand shaking. "They- they're right- they were right behind me."

"Ralof..." I softly intoned, keeping my bare hands up in front of me, "I think we should all get inside, don't you?"

"Lyra!" Hadvar sounded positively scandalised. "He's a Stormcloak!"

"Yes, and proud to defend my country from the likes of you!" Ralof recovered enough to scream back.

Alduin winged overhead and swooped down upon a group on the other side of the high wall ahead of us. Mage fire lit the sky for a brief moment before it was drowned out by a roar mingled with words I remembered a computer generated high elf Shouting, once upon a itme. "YOL TOOR SHUL!"

My whole body shook with a bone rattling shudder. "We have to get inside." Where there would be people killing other people, not to mention the giant spiders and even the sleeping cave bear which might decide to not be sleeping because why not, everything was horrible here. I could hear Alduin Shouting, which meant he was too close. "We have to get inside!"

Hadvar used his free hand to try and steer me away, keeping his sword pointed at Ralof like he was a skeever about to leap at his face. "Lyra, get in the keep."

His own sword likewise drawn, Ralof stalked forward. "She is not going with you!"

Alduin swooped down through the cloud cover he had just recently disappeared into, scorching the earth beneath his flight path. Why is Alduin doing that? He could just call meteors down to crush us all so why is he burning everyone? With a sick weight in my stomach, I wondered if this was Alduin's version of stress relief: to pick humans off one by one and roast them alive. From his point of view, Alduin had been staring down the Tongues what, half an hour ago? This rampage... it's just one big tantrum, isn't it?

As if by its own accord, with one hand curled around Hadvar's, I reached out and gripped the length of blue scarf trailing down Ralof's chest, clenching it tight and immovably. Looking Ralof in the eye and cutting short whatever he had been saying (my ears were ringing and I felt faint, I could barely hear myself, much less him) I said one last time: "We have to get inside."

"This Imperial bastard would have seen both our heads in a basket! Lyra, you freed Jarl Ulfric's tongue, you cannot go with him." The Stormcloak tried to reason with me.

"He saved my life." I said, although really, who could be sure at this point? "And you got me out of the tower. I don't want either of you to die."

Hadvar kept tugging me closer to the shadow of the wall, but with my grip on Ralof as well he followed us, albeit warily. "We have to get underground." Hadvar insisted. "You told me that, remember? Well I believe you. Come on-"

What came out of my mouth next was completely unplanned. "I'm one of Tamriel's leading scholars in draconic lore." Oh look, that got their attention. "More dragons are coming and I know the only thing that can put an end to them for good. Also, I'm not moving from this spot unless you both come inside the keep with me."

It was a bluff, albeit a good one.

The two men shared a long look and Ralof was the first to break the silence. "What you were saying before, in the tower, you truly know more?"

"There are more of these things?" Hadvar enunciated the words carefully, like he couldn't believe was he was saying. I supposed that the existence of one dragon was enough to break anyone's brain, it was certainly doing a number on mine.

I nodded, having gone back to keeping Alduin in my line of sight, so I could make a break for inside as soon as I saw him coming this way (I was stubborn, not suicidal).

"Then let's go." Ralof fumbled to get his blade into his opposite hand, pressing his free one to the small of my back and steering me. His sweat leached through the fabric of my shirt. "I can stand to walk beside an oppressor for the good of Skyrim."

Hadvar bared his teeth, an expression that could not be misconstrued as a smile. "You don't know what you're talking about-"

"GET IN THE FUCKING KEEP!" I screamed at them for posturing when we should have been running towards the nearest door. Shocked by my profanity, volume, or all of the above, they finally picked up the pace and we all ducked inside the forbidding grey structure.

The door slammed shut behind us, but it didn't do much to block out the sound of the dragon outside.

The room we all but stumbled into was cold stone, with little added warmth from the woven rag rug or the half-dozen animal heads mounted around the room. A large cast iron candelabra scattered shadows like a segmented clock face on the floor, as well as the man lying still in a pool of his own blood in the far corner.

"Gunjar." Ralof murmured, ceasing his hovering to go to his comrade's side. Brokenly, the blond knelt, and closed his friend's eyes with a shaking hand. "Another one, I thought he had escaped..." I could hear him swallowing from where I stood near the door and I bit my cheek to keep my anxiety silenced, the dead deserved a moment of quiet. "We'll meet again in Sovngarde, brother."

Then Ralof rose, now gripping Gunjar's iron war axe in a white-knuckled grip. He turned his eyes, so cold they burned, in Hadvar's direction.

The Nord of the Imperial Legion pushed me behind him and widened his stance.

The Nord of the Stormcloaks snarled and advanced at the soldier with both weapons drawn.

"No." I said firmly, stepping between them before they were in striking distance of one another, "we are not doing this now."

"It would only take a moment." Ralof snarled and for the first time I saw tears in his eyes. "And it would give my brothers, my sisters, my Jarl peace in Sovngarde!"

The world seemed to freeze around me. "Wait. Ulfric's dead?"

"Jarl Ulfric!" The Stormcloak snapped at me.

I quickly back-peddled. "Yes, Jarl, I know but really- is he?" I killed him, didn't I. Holy shit. Less than a day in and I led to the death of a major character. This is why plotful NPCs are supposed to be indestructible!

Ralof nodded and tears slipped unabashedly down his face.

"Hey," my voice came out low and soothing, like I was approaching a skittish cat, "it wasn't your fault, okay?" It was mine. Moving slowly, warily, with both hands still raised where he could see them, I caught his gaze and held it. "It wasn't your fault, Ralof, but I need you to hold yourself together just a little while longer. We need to warn people about the dragon and get as many survivors out as we can, all right?"

He nodded again and slowly, so not to startle him and get stabbed, I gave him a hug. His chainmail left impressions where my skin pressed against it, the metal rings heavy and slightly oil-slicked, his blue raiment stinking of smoke like the rest of our clothes. I focused on these small details and dutifully ignored Ralof's hitching breaths as he struggled for control. After a few moments he hugged me back, his grip grasping and desperate like a drowning man clinging to flotsam to keep his head above water.

Hadvar held silent vigil as we took that small comfort in one another, but all too soon the moment passed. "We need to keep moving." He informed us gently. "There are tunnels leading out of Helgen underground."

"Yeah," I detached myself from Ralof, his cheeks damp, "let's check the gates."

An iron gate to the left, a wooden one directly across from it. "There's no way to open this one from our side." Hadvar said, trying in vain to reach the pull-chain through the bars of the wooden gate. "And I don't have the key for the other."

Ralof hefted his fallen friend's axe, giving it a few practice swings before approaching the gate. "Fat lot of good you are, Imperial." Hadvar wisely stepped back as Ralof went to town on the wooden struts, hitting them with more force and fervour than was safe. I took a cue from Hadvar and kept my distance as splinters went flying.

After turning two slats to kindling, we all heard footsteps along the corridor, even over the noise of Ralof's enthusiastic remodelling.

Hadvar sensibly approached from the left, where Ralof was holding his sword pointed downwards. "Who approaches?"

Then the Imperial Captain who had ordered my execution rounded the corner, marching down the corridor. "Escaped prisoners!" She cried, the soldier beside her drawing his sword in sync with her. "The dungeons are compromised, you know what to do!"

"Wait!" I yelped, holding my hands up in the universal gesture of 'mean no harm'. "We don't want to fight you-"

Ralof snarled: "Speak for yourself!"

"Captain!" Hadvar shouldered past Ralof, inadvertently (or deliberately) shielding him from view. "Helgen has fallen, we cannot fight amongst ourselves and survive a dragon."

The Captain pulled the chain to rise the gate, growling when it stuck halfway due to Ralof's handiwork. "This is insubordination, Sergeant."

"With all due respect, Captain, this is survival. The Lady Aragon has knowledge pertaining to the dragon attack and has made her aid conditional on a temporary truce between ourselves and the Stormcloaks." The soldier rattled that off in one breath before falling into a less than demure parade rest. "Our duty is to the people, first and foremost. That ideal is what the Imperial Legion was founded on-"

"Don't lecture me on history, Sergeant. Or ethics." The Captain exhaled a harried breath. "You- girl, you know what's going on?"

I squeezed my way through the two tall Nords with some difficulty. "I know the dragon's name, history, and motives." I responded succinctly, trying to keep my tone neutral even as my words fell out clipped and frosty. This woman had tried to have me killed after all. "Plus that more of these things are coming, and that one thing that can put them down for good."

The Captain huffed. "Doesn't take a genius to figure out a good sword in the right place, or a few well-aimed siege engines could end this."

"Ma'am," Hadvar protested, "we cannot be sure of that-"

"This is a dragon," Ralof interrupted, "a creature from the old tales, it cannot be defeated by Imperial tools!"

I put a hand on Ralof's arm before the argument could escalate. "We need to get out of Helgen. I'll tell you more when we're deeper into the tunnels."

"You're going the wrong way then, the tunnels are down that way," the Captain jerked her head at the iron gate behind us and I cursed my terrible sense of direction and lacklustre memory for logistics.

Hadvar shrugged when Ralof and I turned to stare at him. "I wasn't issued a key, but they usually keep a spare in the other room." He defended his decision of letting Ralof beat down the door going in the wrong direction.

Gritting her teeth, the Captain kicked at one of the remaining slats even as the three of us stepped away to avoid flying splinters. She made short work of it and coupled with Ralof's earlier destruction, stepped through the gap with ease. "That won't be a concern any more, I have my key with me."

Hadvar grasped my arm like I was a heroine in an Austin novel, guiding me out of his superior's warpath as she marched to the iron gate, the soldier accompanying her dogging her footsteps even as he made a wide berth around Ralof.

"So, talk." The Captain demanded as she pushed the gate open, creaking plaintively on its hinges as she strode past it without pause.

I went over what I knew in my mind, following her briskly down the corridor and ill-lit curving staircase, repeating the mantra in my head of no time no time notimenotime-

"Alduin, the black dragon's name is Alduin. He has many titles: Bane of Kings, World-Eater, he is fire and shadow and death." No, wait, that's Smaug isn't it- "He was supposed to be dead, only I think vanquished is a better term for it-" I was rambling again. "Perhaps frozen, sleeping, trapped in another realm, transported through time and space to the here and now-" I really need to stop giving the plot away! "The unfortunate thing about Alduin being here, aside from his presence spelling the possible end of the world, is that he's supposed to be able to bring back the other dragons. If he's here that means we'll soon have his army to deal with as well."

"Explain." The Captain's boots clicked rhythmically against the stone stairs and it was only by her grace that my short-legged trot managed to up. "The dragons are dead, all the stories say so, are they like this- this Alduin creature? Able to come back like he did?"

I pushed my sweaty, soot-stained hair off my forehead. "The other dragons were killed, but so long as their souls are alive, Alduin can bring them back."

We came out into another corridor but it was decimated- already blocked by a cave in of stone and mortar. Shit, I thought, so we are behind schedule...

The Captain growled as the rest of the company caught up with us. "Ma'am?" Her... Private? Deputy? Secretary? Subordinate, certainly, piped up. "Could we dig it out?"

"No, it would take too much time. This damned dragon is bringing down the whole building- centuries this keep has stood for!" She turned on her heel, shouldering open the wooden door to her left with her sword drawn. When I proceeded to follow, Hadvar pulled me back, letting the subordinate go through next.

"Easy, we don't know who else is in there."

"Admand, Laeca!" I heard the Captain call, "good to see you two alive. Did any others make it down?"

"Not that we saw," another woman answered after Hadvar finally let me go through. "There may be others further in, we were gathering supplies- the tunnels, they could have anything in them, giant spiders, trolls, goblins-"

"There aren't any goblins this far north, Laeca." The second soldier, this one a man, told his blonde companion. He was willowier than she, pale where she was olive skinned, with dark hair peeking from out under his leather helmet. "All we have to worry about is- Stormcloak!" He shouted, his hands suddenly flickering with conjured fire.

This wasn't like stepping between Ralof and Hadvar, but still I instinctively turned to shield the blond Nord from attack. It was only when I was facing away from the rest of the company, pressed against Ralof's frankly rank smelling chest while simultaneously trying to pull him down to my height and make him a smaller target, did I realise how stupid I was being. Frozen, shaking, my eyes screwed shut, I didn't move until I was sure no one was killing Ralof.

"Stand down," the Captain's voice snapped whip-like across the tense silence, "the prisoners are coming with us."

"Prisoners? We will not go back to the block!" Ralof snarled and I planted my feet in case he made a lunge, bracing my hands against his chest. "Never again!"

"Ralof, please." I tried to reason. "That isn't going to happen, I won't let it, please, we just need to get through this-"

"Do you forget what they almost did to us- even you! You who did nothing wrong, these Imperial bastards would slit all our throats if it weren't for the dragon-"

"Well there is a dragon and I am the only one who knows what to do about it!" I snapped, "and we are all going to stop fighting and pull together or I'm not telling anyone another thing!" I rubbed my face, suddenly feeling so bone-weary tired that no amount of adrenaline could make up for it. "Imperials, Stormcloaks, Thalmor- Alduin doesn't care, he just wants us all dead!"

"A truce." Hadvar broached soothingly, "until we get out of here-"

"What stops her-" Ralof gestured to the Captain, "from killing us as soon as she gets what she wants?"

The Imperial officer drew herself up, "how dare you question my honour-"

"You signed away your honour on the White-Gold Concordat!"

"We had no choice! Skyrim was little help during the damn war and now it's over-"

"ENOUGH!" I shouted, immediately regretting it as my head gave a protesting throb. "Helgen is done for and everywhere else is going to follow if we don't do something about it. Now I couldn't give a damn about political factions and neither should you right now, because as far as Alduin's concerned we're all just lunch on legs." I glared at everyone who would meet my gaze. "That means no arguing, no fighting, no aggression whatsoever until further notice. I am calling a complete ceasefire as of this moment."

The Commander's underling muttered 'you don't have the authority to call a ceasefire' yet looked away first when I glowered at him with twice the usual intensity.

It was a small victory, but with the day I'd been having, I'd take what I could get.

A.N.: Well, since I had already posted an earlier version of the first chapter to The Drawing Board, I thought it was only fair to get the next one up as quickly as possible. The schedule will now continue with single updates as normal- look at my profile for progress and publishing order (please stop reviewing/PMing me about when such-and-such will update).

I'd love to hear from everyone (both Skyrim players and old readers who are giving this story a shot) about the characterisation of Ralof and Hadvar. One is passion, the other restraint, but I tried very hard to make both of them as human as possible in a short space of time. What do you think of them?

Finally: Your thoughts on Ulfric?