Part VI: Destiny Calls

I didn’t know what awaited to the south. I just knew I was drawn to it. Khash kept asking where we were going and I didn’t have an answer. Telling the kid it was a gut feeling didn’t seem like the right call.
We came across a road sign. One arrow pointed to a place called Helgen. That was where we needed to go. No clue why. We just needed to get there.
The feeling got stronger the more we walked. Eventually, I didn’t even need to look where I was going. I just knew when we were on the right path and immediately changed direction when we weren’t.
I saw Helgen in the distance, but something was wrong. There was smoke in the distance. Too much smoke. And it was quiet. Too quiet. Even the birds had gone silent.
Khash said, “Um, should we—”
I said, “Get down!”
I jumped on her, sending us behind a nearby rock. Not long after, there was a roar unlike any creature I had ever heard. Whatever it was, it was big. I could barely grip my bow, my hands shook so bad.
Looking up, I saw the dragon from my nightmares ascend into the sky. A dragon. A real dragon. Alive. There was no way we were taking that on. It would kill us. But we had nowhere to go. The trees wouldn’t save us from dragonfire and we weren’t outrunning it.
The dragon paid us no mind as it flew north towards Riverwood. Khash and I couldn’t move. We stayed down until the dragon disappeared.
I said, “We gotta get out of here.”
Khash said, “But those people in Riverwood, we have to help them!”
“Us? Take on a dragon? Kid, you really think highly of yourself.”
She glared at me, obviously not budging on the subject.
Talos’ balls, this kid is gonna be the death of me. I couldn’t explain it, but I felt like I had to go. We needed to follow.
“Fine, we’ll do what we can but we are not fighting that thing.”
“Wait, shouldn’t we search Helgen for survivors?”
“If they didn’t get out by now, they’re not coming out.”
We didn’t get far before running into a small group of bandits on the road. This country has a really bad problem. Helgen hadn’t even stopped smoking yet and the scavengers were already coming to pick the place clean.
They had numbers but we had skill. They didn’t even reach us before falling to our arrows and my magic.
We moved on until it got dark then set up camp. Khash protested, but then I pointed out that wandering in the dark with a dragon on the loose was suicide. The kid gave up after that. She has a good head on her shoulders.

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Khash the Argonian was created by the talented RabbittWinri. https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/40122