Arnsmyth Bulgoar stared wide eyed in disbelief as two imperial guards were incinerated only twenty feet from where he kneeled in the mud.

He had just managed to slice through his bindings using the Axe man's discarded Great Axe that merely moments before was going to be used to behead Arnsmyth, or at least, they were going to try.

Arn had tried reasoning and remonstrating with the Prelate woman who seemed in charge. He couldn't get the attention of a General Tullius who seemed entirely preoccupied with the execution of some other prisoner named Stormcloak.

They didn't believe he was just a traveler coming back home after years away in Cyrodiil. They seemed recklessly convince he was a spy for some rebellion they were rounding up. They didn't believe he had formerly served the legion with distinction in the Great War despite being only a lad in his teens at the time.

The only one to listen to any of his entreaties had been one of the guards who asked the Prelate if they could really justify executing a man not on the list. But just like Arn's entreaties, the Prelate didn't listen.

After getting a few vicious backhands from the guards when he tried to continue reasoning, he'd started plotting how to escape on his own, taking careful stock of how many guards there were, where they were at, and how they were armed.

He'd been dragged from the line of prisoners and thrust onto the Axman's block. He had been about to roll to the side and kick the guard behind him into the Ax man when the unthinkable happened.

An earth shaking roar erupted from overhead and large shadow swooped by, the gush of air shaking the trees.

Everyone froze and looked up to behold a dragon..yes...truly it was a dragon. It could be no other. Like something out of a bad dream, Arnsmyth found himself about to be beheaded only to look up at a monstrosity that shouldn't exist.

Another roar echoed so loudly, most of the people in the courtyard were covering their ears, and the dragon appeared suddenly, crashing to a perch atop one of the guard towers and spewing forth flame and death for the first of many times.

Years spent in combat and harrowing situations allowed Arnsmyth to react almost without thinking, immediately rolling to the side, knocking down the stupified Ax man who dropped his Ax.

Slitting loose his bound hands, he immediately beelined across the chaos of the courtyard toward one of the towers. He needed to get out of sight of the distracted guards and some cover from that beast.

He was met part way by the previously sympathetic guardsman and thought for a moment he was going to try to detain him, but the guard, who introduced himself as Hadvar, motioned him to follow inside if he wanted to escape.

Once inside, Arn felt a wave of relief partly flood over him.

Nothing like escaping your own execution to start the morning..

Hadvar immediately found a chest and handed him some imperial armor to wear and a steel sword.

"What happened to my own?" Arn asked angrily.

"They're in the tower the dragon's currently sitting on"...Hadvar answered a little sheepishly.

The tower they were in shook and rafter beams broke loose, falling to the floor as Arn and Hadvar ducked into a hallway down further into the structure.

"We really should get moving!" shouted Hadvar as the tower continued to shake.

They made their way through the barracks, out and in a few buildings toward what Hadvar said was a tunnel escape out of the keep into the mountains.

As they made their way, the carnage outside was unmistakable.

More and more flames sprouted everywhere. Several places in the towers were already crumbling. Corpses littered what could be seen of the courtyard. The sickening stench of burnt flesh filled the air.

They rounded a corner and stopped in their tracks as they confronted a group of prisoners arming themselves with the weapons and armor of the imperial guards who lay freshly slain at their feet.

Arn recognized one of them as having been in line with him...Ralof he thought his name was.

The one named Ralof opened his mouth to apparently address Arn, but before he could get much out, a woman next to Ralof and another of his comrades yelled "More Imperials!" and attacked Hadvar and Arn.

"I remem- Wait!" Ralof cried in vain as his fellow "stormcloaks" as Arn saw they fancied calling themselves attacked.

The battle gave Arn a familiar feeling as he wielded sword and shield against a frenzied opponent.

He angled himself into a fighting stance and waited a second or two for the charging woman to commit to her rash overhead attack with a Battleaxe, then side stepped slightly, avoided the blow, brought his sword lightly down on the ax wielding hand, cutting enough for the woman to screech and drop the ax. Then he brought his sword back up, arcing across just under the woman's chin, easily beheading her, the twitching face unnerving the other attackers as it rolled across the floor.

"Come, this is a waste of time!" cried Ralof to the others as he and another prisoner in rags ran from the room as the foundations quaked again with whatever the dragon was doing outside.

Hadvar was trading blows with a greatsword wielding ex-prisoner in rags. Arn thought about intervening, but decided against it instead and leaned against the wall for a moment to watch.

But after another sloppy exchange of blows between the two, he got impatient, drew his sword and faked an obvious lunge at the prisoner, who panicked and turned too far to keep his guard up against Hadvar, who promptly ran him through with his longsword.

"Why didn't you help?" Hadvar asked in an annoyed tone as he pried his sword from his opponent's rib cage.

"Don't rutting tell me you wear a legionnaire's colors but can't handle some sot with a big sword?" impatiently returned Arn.

Hadvar didn't reply. He just stared at Arnsmyth with a mixture of unease and consideration. Wiping the blood on his blade off on the corpse's ragged clothes, he motioned further down the keep.

"A short distance from here and we'll be home free into the cave that will get us far enough out into the woods away from the dragon" Hadvar remarked as they made their way more cautiously this time down the passage.

"And then what?" replied Arn, who'd been wondering this whole time why Hadvar was actually helping him. It seemed unlikely to be a gesture of good will since those seemed lacking in the Skyrim he had returned to. More likely Hadvar wanted him to do something, though Arn couldn't surmise what that might be since he himself was still unsettled about the dragon and wasn't able to keep the images and roars completely from his mind.

"Then we need to get the word out that a dragon has attacked. My uncle Alvor lives in Riverwood. He can help us until we figure out where to go" stated Hadvar matter of factly.

Arn was a little surprised by the younger man's openness and considered maybe he spoke truly.

It took them an hour to carefully navigate what was left of the keep and through a not so secret cave system into the green forests and blue sky of Skyrim.

It was such a refreshing sight, Arn wondered if he was somehow enchanted and imagined the whole thing, but a roar in the distance brought him back to reality.

"It's probably better if we split up. I have to go warn the legion encampment east of here. You know how to get to Riverwood from here?" Hadvar asked nervously, still eyeing the sky.

"Should be southeast of here, what, a day's journey?" replied Arn.

"Yah, something like that. If you make it and I'm not there, look up my uncle Alvor. He's the Blacksmith there. He will help you. May the Nine protect you" said Hadvar, giving him a Legion salute and handshake before departing.

Arn began making his way, being a bit more cautious than he probably normally would be, his mind still replaying the scene in the keep courtyard over and over. The roar of the dragon, it's black scaled hide with reddish orange zigzaggy stripes patterning it's entirety, swooping back and for, snapping up a soldier here, belching flame there, the flames, the screams of the soldiers...

Arn was jostled out of his reverie by someone screaming in front of him.

He stumbled in surprise just in time to see an icicle go flying by his head.

In the woods ahead, as a Bosmer woman in a black robe screamed a spell out and hurled more icicles his way.

He got his shield out in time to block these and charged the spellcaster. Painful memories flashed before him, recalling the last time he'd fought a spellcaster and why, making him charge faster and with more determination as the caster tried to cast enough cold spells to freeze Arn's shield and person before he could get to her, but Arn was too quick.

Despite beginning to feel numb in his shield arm, he was able to bash at the same time he collided with the caster, knocking her off her feet and back into a tree. Arn didn't let up. He unleashed a string of slicing attacks to break down the barrier the caster feebly tried to put up.

It didn't last long. The barrier collapsed with a hiss of bluish white color and Arn slashed the caster across the torso, cleaving robe and flesh. The woman collapsed immediately, eyes full of hate at Arn as she tried to gargle out another spell through the blood coming out of her mouth.

Arn stabbed her through the throat to prevent any death throes surprises and spit in disgust on her corpse as he wrenched the blade back out, trying to flex his shield arm to get feeling back into it.

He groaned in sadness, trying to forget the memories the encounter had brought back to the surface.

He'd come back to Skyrim to get away from that.

Thoroughly angry now, he sheathed his sword and began searching the caster, finding nothing much but a few septims and a couple of potions.

As he resumed his trip to Riverwood, He marveled how much things had changed since the last time he was in Skyrim. When he was a boy, it would have been unthinkable that Dragons even existed, or that you would be randomly arrested and executed for being in a particular area, or that some random spellcaster would set upon you in the woods in broad daylight.

Of course, that was thirty years ago. This was certainly not the Skyrim he had been expecting to return to.