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It's been about two weeks since that skirmish I told you all about last time, and since then, alot has happened. For one, the detachment I'm with helped another group of Stormcloaks with a raid on a bandit fort. The attack didn't last terribly long. These bandits were children compared to the types that we've fought before. We wiped them all out in fifteen minutes while only sustaining a single casualty: one of the soldiers from the other group took a dagger to the shoulder and had to be placed on a cart for Windhelm so that he could rest at home. We set up a garrison there and my detachment left to go fight elsewhere. However, we were quickly called over to Shor's Stone when word came out that Jarl Ulfric and a single soldier named Ralof had been found alone in The Rift. We got to Ulfric in two days and escorted him back to Windhelm. The whole time, we badgered him with questions as to where he had been and where were the rest of the soldiers that had been with them. Ulfric, however, refused to tell us until we got back to the Palace of the Kings.
The Jarl's palace. Kinda makes the rest of Windhelm seem like a rat hole. Oh wait...
After a few days of escort duty and relatively few incidents along the way, we make it back to Windhelm, where the entire city is fussing about the strange circumstances surrounding the Jarl's return home. Ulfric refuses to see anyone at first, telling myself and the other soldiers in my squad to enjoy our time at home for now and that he will send us out later in the week. So we do just that. Personally, I spent alot of time in Candlehearth Hall, drinking mead and listening to stories of the happenings since I last left. The atmosphere makes me miss my brother back in Solitude, but I try not to think of him, not wanting to get homesick. Four days after arriving in the city, Jarl Ulfric calls us back to the Palace, and we're all hoping to finally hear what in Talos' name happened to him.
He looks a little scared, doesn't he? What in Oblivion happened out there?
The Jarl was sitting on his throne when we entered the Palace. The general of our detachment was the first to speak after we all gathered around him. "What happened to you, my Jarl?" He told us of a fantastical story. One where himself and the group of soldiers he was traveling with were captured by the Empire and sentenced to the chopping block in Helgen. He told us how they had them all lined up and ready to start executing when a huge black dragon swept out of the skies and destroyed the whole village. He continued his story by telling us that he believed himself and Ralof, the Stormcloak who had been with him when they were found in The Rift, were the only ones from their group that escaped the city alive. Silence filled the entrance hall that we stood in. None of us could believe it. Dragons? The harbingers of the end times? How could it be true...?
None of us can believe it... Dragons...
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So I received a letter from my sister a few days ago. She wrote me about how Ulfric Stormcloak had seen a dragon in Skyrim. I didn't want to believe the letter at the time. She was simply playing tricks on me, or perhaps the Jarl had cracked from the stress caused by the war, but I soon changed these thoughts. Now I believe her. I only wish I didn't have to. What caused me to have this change of mind? Well, I'll tell you why. I killed one of those beasts myself. One of them attacked Solitude not even twenty-four hours ago. After having some of the best scholars in Solitude do some research, we decided that the monster that attacked the city was of the blood variety. It had green scales and a fan-like tail. I've never seen a more horrifying sight in my life. The attack began when it was first seen circling above the city. At first, some guards thought it was some rare species of hawk due to how small it looked from how high it was flying. But when it came down and started firing off it's frost breath at everyone, we knew that all of Solitude could be destroyed that day...
If that's a hawk, it's the ugliest bird I've ever laid eyes on.
While the civilians run for their houses (I don't think you'll be seeing any of them lending their daggers in this fight), the guards and the few Imperial soldiers that are positioned in the city all pull out their bows and begin lobbing shots at it, but none of them seem to make contact with the monster. While we all continue shooting, the dragon lands in the middle of the Castle Dour courtyard, causing mass chaos. Several guards take off running out of fear, a few are snatched up in the jaws of the beast and eaten in front of everyone, and one Imperial soldier is crushed under the dragon's weight as it turned to fire its frost breath at another guard (I can't say I'm complaining about the soldier's death, damned Imperials). Finally, it takes off for the skies again, circling around a few times before flying over all of us, shooting us with frost yet again.
With this arrow, I smite thee, oh foul demon!... Damn. Missed it.
The dragon lands on the main road below the blacksmith, just outside the courtyard it just came from. At this point, several guards charge at it with swords raised high, yelling things like "You will die this day, drago- AHHHH!" Yeah.. They didn't last long. Up on the raised walkway near the courtyard, about a dozen of us are filling the beast with arrows. Eventually, it gets too weak to fight back, and a well placed arrow to the eye finishes it. With all of us weary and bloodstained, we watch in amazement as the scales of the dragon catch fire and a sort of gust of wind comes from it and blows off into the sky, off to some unknown destination. After the fire and wind calms, a skeletal corpse is all that's left. The civilians come out and gaze in wonder at the monstrosity. "It may be dead now, but where did it come from?" The question came to my left, from another guard. "I haven't a clue, but I fear there may be more wherever it did come from," I tell him...
I have a feeling that this is just the first of many...
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