Stones exploded into powder, raining down yet another hapless soldier’s shattered remains as little more than jellified flesh encased in metal. Half a second later a shadow passed over yet again with all the speed and power of Skyrim’s ‘world storms’. Words of ancient power rippled through the air as the giant winged serpent wrote the song of reality into new choruses, turning air to fire and stone to liquid in enormous sweeping breaths. Another armoured figure died, followed quickly by a second, and then a third in the roiling chaos to a snapping maw and razored claws the length of broadswords.

  Mere minutes had passed since the first trio of powerful words rippled through the land and sky, announcing the presence and approach of a being beyond all of their worst nightmares, and yet the soldiers of Whiterun were dying in droves. There had been no time to comprehend what was happening, let alone process the shock of seeing and hearing something that only that morning had been little more than bedtime stories told to them as children. There wasn’t even any time to react before the first of them died, weapons still clasped to their sides and arrows un-nocked from their bows.

  For a creature as large and as powerful as it was, it seemed supremely unfair to Sofia that it could also move as quickly as it did, falling upon the ruined fort with the speed of a hurricane and the power of a volcanic eruption. Ruined walls became piles of stones from earth rending impacts, rock and masonry melted and became lava under dragonfire, and all around any semblance of order had long since vanished.

  Her sword was in her hand, but forgotten in the chaos as the dragon swooped out of the sky to the south to ravage the ruined fort. It was too big, too overwhelming even with the half-glimpsed impression of a scale and winged monster dozens of metres in length whose shadow blotted out the sun.

  But, as he had done over the week previous in Bleak Falls Barrow, Kaius had been there. Without pause or hesitation he had moved almost as quickly as the dragon above them, practically picking her up and carrying her to cover. Somehow among all the panic and confusion, the shock and fear he even managed to push and shove a handful of the others along with him as they took cover against the broken outer walls. Many of the guards, the ones that hadn’t been immediately killed, were following suit or scattering in whatever direction their legs could carry them, and only a rare few were doing what little they could to fight back with their bows or crossbows.

  "Gods be damned!" A roaring buffeted them all as the winged shadow passed over them once more, the scream of terror from its latest victim being cut away in mid breath. A second of absolute, soul destroying terror, a crunch of metal and bone and the scream ended, yet eliciting nothing more than a scowl from Kaius as he huddled with the small group. "This will be the last time I am without a bow!"

  Over the roars and the deep, drumbeats of wings there were words, words of a language not spoken since the dark days of the Merethic Era thousands of years before. They were guttural and powerful, rocking the ground with their sheer potency, as the enormous dovah circled the fort, watching and hunting.

  "KRIF KRIN. PRUZAH!"

  It was toying with them, Sofia realised with horror, watching it circle close enough through the sky to draw a handful of arrows and bolts before wheeling about with a deceptive, serpentine grace. Every so often it would swoop overhead, plucking another hapless soldier like a monstrous hawk hunting a snow hare or consuming them with fire, ice, lightning or other, more esoteric abilities that spewed forth from its mouth. Each time the words, the terrible, world rending words that it spoke would rip reality apart in front of its fanged maw, and murder more men and women as easily as she would squash ants.

  Many broke and ran, or tried their best to hide, but those who attempted to flee from the watchtower and the ruined fort had nowhere to go. The great rolling plains of Whiterun Hold were a vast sea of grass, surrounding the city and spreading almost horizon to horizon. Only the towering Throat of the World dozens of kilometres to the south, or the city a mere five kilometres to the east were the hints of salvation. But, those few brave or terrified enough to make the attempt would soon discover that such safety was merely bait.

  All those who attempted to flee didn’t get any further than three hundred metres, let alone the several or more kilometres between them and Whiterun or the mountains. Sofia could only watch in horror as a handful of the soldiers attempted to flee towards Whiterun, only for the creature to fall upon them with all the force of an avalanche and using its terrible powers once more. A heat pulse rippled through the air as it flew over the band of retreating men and women, crisping every blade of grass within a hundred meters and knocking the air out of Sofia and the others hiding within the fort.

  If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

  Those within the path of the dragonfire ceased to exist, others being reduced to shrieking embers that flailed about, flickering and vanishing in the rolling inferno. Flesh was stripped from bones. Bones were blasted into powder. Then finally, when the echoes of the words spoken by the dragon faded away across the plains, all that was left was a scorched and bubbling path of soil transformed into molten rock and glass glittering in the afternoon sun.

  "We can't fight this thing!" One of the retinue Huskarls huddling nearby shrieked at the sight and yet still vanished, turning and running over the crumbling walls as the dragon wheeled about for another pass. The others for the moment seemed content, in following Sofia’s lead of doing her very best rock impersonation, and remaining exactly where they were.

  Thunder rolled and the air and ground heaved again as the dragon roared another trio of world-ending syllables that always seemed to precede its dragonfire. YOL TOOR SHUL crackled like a volcano, the words thundering the sky and air itself apart as they were spat out of a scaled maw lined with fangs. For several moments it hovered in place, almost casually flapping its wings that buffeted the ground and all those nearby, as it purposefully drew out the last word in an effort to sustain the flames. For several seconds that left after images dancing about in her vision, Sofia could only turn her head and feel her flesh burn from the ambient heat until the pressure lessened and the dragon moved on once more. The flames however remained, an all consuming inferno that faded away with no sign of the panicking, terrified soldiers that had been sent to dine with their ancestors in Sovngarde. Only a single lone survivor, her hair and clothing alight, staggered away from the far edges of the firestorm, her chainmail and armoured plates melting into her flesh. For a moment or two she staggered onwards through shock-numbed pain, unable to even scream through seared lungs as she fell flat on her face.

  “Irileth!”

  The word cracked through the air like a whip, jolting through them all in their huddled group as the only figure not frozen in terror lunged forward. Kaius had been watching the dragon every second since he had spotted it, but now his attention was on the dark skinned elf huddling only a few metres away.

  “Irileth!” Whiterun’s marshall shuddered as though she had a bucket of ice water dumped over her, her red eyes turning and looking at the man who had grasped her by the shoulder. There was shock on her features, which strangely enough was almost as terrifying as the dragon to Sofia. Irileth was known in the city for being one of the toughest and most capable women in the entire hold, especially from working her way to the top of Whiterun’s military in spite of her Dunmeri heritage and gender in an extremely racist culture.

  “What!”

  “Gather whoever you can, and get the fuck out of here!” Another roar of world-ending words were almost felt, more than heard, and this time a portion of wall almost ten metres wide exploded into powder a short distance away. Those who had been close to the epicentre of FUS RO DAH simply ceased to exist as their armour, flesh and bones were pulverised into nothingness or were sprayed across a hundred metres of grassy plains.

  “There’s… There’s no way we could escape from this thing! It will run us down as soon as we get into the open.”

  “Our only other option is to stand here and die. If someone distracts this thing long enough some of us will be able to get clear.”

  Through the terror and shock, the handful of hold troops and their marshall didn’t notice the changes, but Sofia did. Kaius’s face was taut, the skin stretching slightly against the bones of his face and the hand grasping his broadsword was twisting and writhing with latent strength. The vampire was surfacing, and somehow it was both comforting and even more terrifying than the dragon, especially when he turned to face her.

  “Sofia, go with them!”

  Without even waiting for a response or indication that any of them were going to follow his instructions, he exploded into activity, twisting across the ground towards one of the many fallen bodies that lay upon it. This particular corpse had been one of the first to die, plucked from the walls by clawed feet that simply gripped, squeezed and released the armoured plated huskarl as easily as Sofia would have crushed a grape between her fingers. Chainmail had burst along with the body underneath, and even the steel of the nordic plate armour had been deformed and cracked by the dragon’s strength. All that was left was the burst and crushed body, splattered wetly across the ground where it had landed.

  But, among the gore streaked ground and liquified flesh, lay the soldier’s weapon, a powerful composite bow and a handful of arrows that were still blessedly intact that were snatched up in passing. Slithering in full sprint across the fort’s ruined inner courtyard, Kaius was moving with a liquid grace that only he could, scaling a portion of the wall with his acquired bow in one hand, and a fistful of arrows in the other.

  Discipline and fear were powerful motivators, and Irileth and the others surprisingly wasted no time, moving out of their meagre protection huddling against shattered walls and scaling over the mound of rubble between them, and the fort’s exterior. Sofia followed close behind, terrified out of her mind but also sparing glances to the man standing on the shattered ramparts in full view of the circling dragon in the sky.

  Everyone else who had stood and fought had died, and easily half of the troops that had sallied out to the watchtower were dead, but such a challenge, or otherwise tempting target, was obviously too much for the dragon to resist. Wings swept back behind itself and it dropped like a hundred tonne boulder through the sky with the sound of a roaring storm and struck.

  Redguard to the newer iterations of Elder Scrolls Online) they are depicted in this manner and described as dragons. For nerds like myself this is a sore point of conjecture but I'll be sticking to the in game representations and lore like I do with all things. haha.