A cool compress on my forehead stirred me from chaotic dreams filled with vivid images that left a cloying aftertaste even as they faded from memory. I blinked, turned my head. A woman sat beside my bed, one hand held out, adjusting the compress. She looked familiar, but somehow not. I frowned, digging through rusty memories until I came up with the closest match I could find.

 

"Delphine?"

 

She jumped as I spoke, then leaned forward with an air of relief. "Yes! Thank the Divines, you're finally back to yourself!"

 

I frowned. She didn't look right. Her hair was mostly gray, not the sunwashed auburn I remembered. Her face was creased, seemed older by years. Only her eyes, bright and intent, looked the same.

 

"Are you okay? You look..." Hmm. Don't want to say 'old.' "...tired."

 

She laughed, and for a moment she was herself again. "I'm sure I do! It has been a long four years."

 

 "Four..." A dark wave rolled over me, and I struggled to resist its tide. "Four...years?" My voice squeaked on the last word and I coughed. Once started, I could not stop – it was as if my lungs decided to try to clean themselves out all at once. Each cough brought out black phlegm that soon dribbled to the floor. I tried to apologize between fits, but Delphine just shushed me as she wrapped her arms around me and patted my back.

 

When at last the coughs subsided, Delphine nodded, all signs of laughter gone. "Just over four, yes. I'm sorry. It was exceedingly difficult to find you, and nearly as hard to get you out."

 

"I..." There were no words for this situation. Well, there were two. "Thank you."

 

She shrugged. "No thanks necessary. It is my fault you were taken. I'm just glad you're alive."

 

Four years. I was nineteen when I got sucked into Skyrim. Two and a half years, give or take, had passed before my arrest in Falkreath. Add four in the mine and I had spent a solid quarter of my life here, almost all of it as a slave or one sort or another.

 

I was already (yet only) twenty-five. Maybe twenty-six. Still young, yet I felt so old. Every breath was a painful wheeze – I could only imagine the damage four years of mine dust had wreaked on my lungs.

 

"Do you have a mirror?"

 

Delphine took the small mirror from the dresser beside her and handed it to me without a word. I took it in shaky hands, gathered as deep a breath as my shattered lungs could handle, and looked into it. A gaunt, haunted face stared back at me. Wrinkles marked the forehead along with the ugly black “SLAVE” still seared into the skin, which appeared permanently blackened from the years of dirt. The physical pain of the brand was long gone but I still remembered the absolute searing heat of its application and could not suppress a shudder.

 

“I’m sorry. If this was…before, we would have found someone to remove that. And your other brands.” Delphine shook her head. “Such cruelty.”

 

I had nothing to say to that, so I just nodded as I ran my hand over my head. They had shaved our heads occasionally in the mine. My last time had been…well, it was impossible to know. The days had blurred together. Recently, though - my hair was short, soft dark stems like a field of burned wheat. Occasional glints of gray were speckled throughout.

 

"If I had known they were going to throw you in there, I would not have allowed you to go," Delphine said.

 

I looked at her, saw the pain in her eyes. She blamed herself. "No. Dengeir's adviser recognized you. If you had taken my place, you would have been sent to the Thalmor. And I would not have been able to protect Esbern - they would have caught us, eventually, and my fate would probably have been the same. Except you wouldn't have been there to rescue me." Tears, unbidden, rolled down my cheeks. "Thank you so much."

 

"The Thalmor could not have held me," Delphine responded, but I heard the note of doubt in her voice. "But even had it meant the end to me, it is a trade I would gladly have made. You were the only one who could have prevented what happened.” A sigh. “I suppose it doesn’t matter now. I failed you and I failed Skyrim and I failed Tamriel. A new age of dragons has begun.”

 

She had made similar allusions in our conversation but it was only then that they began to make a dent in my terminally softened brain. “Wait, what? What do you mean?”

 

She shrugged. “The dragons have overrun Skyrim. Solitude is no more. Neither are any of the other cities. Or towns. Or villages. I think the College of Winterhold may still stand, but other than them, only we handful of survivors are left. The rest of Tamriel will soon fall as well.”

 

“But…”

 

Delphine didn’t say anything as my mind wheeled through the implications of what she was saying. The dragons had won. Humanity, at least on this planet, would soon be made up of a few pockets of cowering leftovers, doomed to eke out what living they could. The fucking apocalypse had happened and I, the only one who could have stopped it, had spent six and a half years dicking around. Or being dicked around, more accurately. But still.

 

I looked around, taking in my surroundings for the first time. It was a giant cavern, carved out of a mountain, at a guess. “Where are we?”

 

“This is Sky Haven, the former secret headquarters for the Blades, in times past. It’s where we were headed after we rescued Esbern.”

 

“Oh, right.” It was painfully difficult to think back on those times, four-ish years and a lifetime ago. “Did you find anything of use? I mean, had I been…not enslaved?” For the umpteenth time, I didn’t add.

 

“We think so. There is a large wall that has carvings that depict how the ancients defeated the dragons. Esbern was able to make out that they used a man-made Shout called Dragonrend. Have you heard of it?”

 

I shook my head. “No. Did you ask the Greybeards?”

 

“They…wouldn’t speak to us. They are not fond of the Blades. There is some…historic bad blood.”

 

“But surely they would have realized…”

 

“You would think! But ignorant men will be ignorant. The stupid war continued right up until the end as well, though the Stormcloaks were about to siege Solitude when the dragons attacked.” Delphine shrugged. “It would have been too little, too late, regardless. All this should have happened years ago.”

 

“Well.” I shifted, siting up. Or trying to – my body felt so weak, a strange paradox considering I had done little but exercise for the past four years. Of course, I hadn’t been given much food. And then there was the dirt that filled my lungs. On second thought, there was no paradox here. “If the ancients were able to defeat the dragons, perhaps we can as well.”

 

A smile. “I like your optimism. But rest, now. You are in no shape to do anything.”

 

I shook my head. “I already wasted six years and it cost probably millions of lives. You say it is your fault but it isn’t – it’s all mine. If I had…”

 

If I had what? If I had taken things seriously from the beginning? I thought back over all that had happened and it was, honestly, difficult to find a place where I may have had a choice. I had been enslaved almost immediately thanks to Lydia deciding to take on an entire bandit fortress by herself. Between Oren and that fuckhead Jordy, I had lost nearly two years right there. Then three months in fucking Markarth, then maybe a three month reprieve (during which I was trying to do what I was supposed to do) before going to prison and then the mine.

 

You know what? Fuck this place. It wasn’t my fucking fault after all – I hadn’t stood a chance.

 

Still, regardless of what had happened, I was still in this stupid world and a lot of innocent lives had been wiped out. I didn’t know what my mine-wrecked body could handle, but I supposed I should do what I could.

 

I cleared my throat and this time I managed to sit up. “Anyway. It doesn’t matter. We need to do what can be done.”

 

Delphine raised an eyebrow. “You have a plan?”
 

“A plan?” I laughed. Or tried to – it turned into another bout of heavy coughing and more dark phlegm. Finally, “Not a plan. We don’t know enough for a plan. Call it reconnaissance.”

 

“All right. Where do you want to start?”

 

“The only place where there might be someone with answers – to the Greybeards.”

*********

The dark things that had teased my vision when I was rescued from the mine turned out to be true – Skyrim had been devastated. The forests were blackened, the towns and cities were nearly unrecognizable as former settlements. We saw few animals and no people.

 

We climbed the seven thousand steps from the crater that had once been Ivarstead to High Hrothgar. It had been destroyed, just like everything else, but at least they had managed to put up a fight - scattered among the brown-robed corpses lay the body of a dragon.

 

It looked oddly fresh, as if it had just died, though the smoke from the burned timbers of High Hrothgar itself had long since dissipated.

 

"Hurry." Delphine nudged me forward after I stopped in surprise. "Could be that it is about to come back to life. Go get its soul before it can."

 

"Hmmm." A deep voice interrupted what I was going to say - which wasn't much, so no harm done - and we froze in place, weapons raised, as we tried to discern the source of the voice. "Get my soul, is it?"

 

Our heads turned as one to face the very-not-dead dragon as it opened one massive eye and stared at us.

 

"Hmmm. I see. You are a bit late, Dovahkiin. My brothers and sisters have long since left."

 

Delphine raised her sword. "We're not too late to kill you!"

 

"I'm afraid you are too late for that as well. My wounds are too great to heal. It is only a matter of time."

 

Delphine paused, her sword arm dropping a little, as the dragon turned its gaze fully upon me. "It is unfortunate that you delayed your visit to me, Dovahkiin. Perhaps we could have found a way to stop them. Now...I'm afraid it is too late. Twelve-thousand-three-hundred-sixty-two dragons are sweeping over the mountains to the south even as we speak. The age of men and mer is finished. Pity."

 

"But..." Delphine's arm dropped to her side, her sword cutting a thin line into the dirt. "That...that can't be. We have the Dragonborn! She can..."

 

The dragon laughed, a low rumble that sounded like thunder. "She can do nothing, now. Three years ago, perhaps. Even then, Alduin had raised nearly enough to make the battle nearly impossible. But no human or elf, khajiit or orc, can withstand the power of the dragons at full force."

 

"We did it before!" Delphine lifted her sword as fire sparked back in her eyes. "Our ancestors stopped them once. We can do it again."

 

"Yes!" All eyes turned to Esbern as he added, "The ancients used Dragonrend. It is written on the wall. All we need is to teach that word to the Dragonborn and..."

 

The dragon shook its huge head. "That word is lost in the annals of time. I cannot know it, and there is no one left to teach it."

 

A long silence, then. "It has to be written down somewhere." Delphine muttered.

 

"Perhaps it was. If so, it is likely lost now. As am I. Step forward, little Dovah. I feel my life ebbing. It will be my gift to you."

 

I paused, then walked forward. The dragon shuddered and closed its eyes then, after a moment, opened them again.

 

"Ah. One speaks to me as if from a dream. Take heart, little Dovah - I will teach you a word that may prove to be our salvation. Heed it well and then use my lifeforce to shout it. Then...hope may spring again."

 

"What?" Delphine sprang forward. "What hope? What do you..."

 

The dragon shuddered and closed its eyes again. With its last breath it whispered a word to me, then it fell silent. The word rolled around in my head as if searching for an exit, but it could not find one until the familiar wind swept from the dragon's body and enveloped me. I felt the pulsing low in my groin as the energy hit, felt it spread throughout my body, teasing every nerve until I burst, shouting, "RAH!" as an orgasm swept me away. 

 

Don't feed the bastards. Let the dragons have them.

 

 

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