No matter how much Daniel pried, Arlen wouldn't tell him how he survived being thrown by the giant. Every time Daniel asked, he was stared at for several seconds before Arlen replied, "Magic," as if Daniel should have figured that out by now. It wasn't fair, according to Daniel. He had spent an hour trying to get Arlen to grasp the concepts of sarcasm and irony, but he couldn't get an in-depth answer out of Arlen. Finally, after the fifth time he heard the word magic, Daniel switched to a different topic.

"What's a Dragonborn?" He asked. This seemed to be a topic that finally got Arlen's interest. His face became animated as he described everything about himself to Daniel. As Arlen's excitement grew, Daniel's eyes widened, almost in direct proportions.

"So, lemme get this straight. You, the Dragonborn, have the ability to yell words in a different language that create magical results. You are the one and only hope for the world against the dragons, because you share their blood and can absorb their souls. You killed the great dragon Alduin, who, according to destiny and fate and whatever, was supposed to eat the world. Right?" Arlen nodded, as if the information was no big deal. "Can-" Daniel was a bit nervous about what the results of what he was asking might be. "Can you show me a Holler?"

"A Shout, you mean?" Arlen smiled. Daniel nodded, a bit embarrassed. Arlen nodded. He drew breath, and Daniel unconsciously held his. "Yol toor shul!" Fire sprang from Arlen's open mouth, charring and burning everything in its path, which was long indeed. By the time the ring of fire died away-fifty meters ahead-there was a clear strip in the grass of hard, black, crunchy ground. Before the fire could spread across the long grass like it was made of gasoline, Arlen shouted again. "Fo krah diin!" This time it was a ring of ice, and it froze the fire where it was, leaving what appeared to be blue-tinted glass around lava. Daniel gaped at Arlen, waiting for some sort of explanation, before he realized that it had been explained beforehand.

"You're turn. Where do you come from?" Arlen asked.

"Massachusetts, USA, Earth." He could tell that this wasn't any alternate earth. This was a different planet altogether. "It was destroyed by nuclear-" Daniel stopped and tried to figure out how to explain it without using futuristic jargon. "poisonous... fire. It was destroyed by poisonous fire, and it made everything in it some sort of strange creature, with no thought or peace, just violence and death."

"Sounds bad."

"Not as bad as dragons." Daniel challenged.

"Equal." Arlen said, after some thought. "So, can you summon a small version of this poisonous fire?"

"No, of course not. We don't have magic where I come from."

"That's a shame." And with that, Arlen threw a fireball up into the air, and caught it on the way back down, then formed it into a hand, used the fire hand to draw his dagger, then released the magic and snatched his dagger out of the air. Daniel raised his eyebrows.

"That was nothing compared to what I can do!" Daniel joked.

"Really?" Arlen said. "I though that was pretty impressive. I've certainly never done that before just now... Ah. Sarcasm."

"Yes." Daniel smiled. "So, could you teach me how to smith?" He was planning on making some spare bullets for his weapons, and doubted that he could find anywhere to buy them around here.

"Sure."

They reached the city, and Arlen wanted to get straight to smithing. He taught Daniel how to make daggers, swords, arrows, and even bows, but in the end Daniel convinced him to make bullets for him. Arlen knew what they were for, and knew that Daniel wouldn't be able to make them himself. In the end, Daniel came out with more bullets that he had started with. He then went to a trader to get rid of some of the things he knew would be useless here. He dropped a gold pocket watch, a silver pocket watch, his box of caps, and all of his clothes on the desk the first trader he found. He was wearing shorts and a t-shirt, of course, but decided to sell his suit for some armor.

The trader took apart the watches, weighed and bit the caps, and tried to rip the suit. In the end, he gave Daniel a hefty bag of gold in return. Daniel went back to the blacksmith, and bought himself some armor that Arlen said he had sold to the man a few week earlier. The blacksmith gave him, for all of his gold, dark gray scaly armor, including greaves and bracers, with a black cloak and hood, attached to which was an armored facemask. Arlen found that together it was much lighter that in seemed, and he knew it would help him hide at night. Based on Arlen's equipment, Daniel guessed that they would be spending a lot of time hiding at night.

Finally, after all of their selling a buying and making, Daniel had a thought. "Where did you get that great sword on the plains, and where did it go?"

"What do you mean? I have a Sack of Collecting, like everyone else." Arlen untied a pouch from his belt and held it up for Daniel to see. Daniel still looked confused, so Arlen explained. "This will stay this size no matter what I put in it. It completely cancels the size of the object, and cuts the weight in half. The great sword is ten pounds, but I'm only hefting five pounds of it, and it's all contained in this bag." With that, he drew the sword out of the bag, which was only about four by four inches. Arlen kept going, though, pulling out arrows, potions, and a few scrolls. "Do you want one?" He asked.

Daniel nodded enthusiastically.

"Good, because I have an extra." Arlen handed another pouch to Daniel, who piled all of his ammunition into the bag. When he was finished, Arlen spoke again. "There's a dragon coming." Daniel wanted to ask how he knew that, but before he could, a mighty roar echoed through the city. "No," Arlen said, still calm. "Four dragons."