Chapter 2: Dragon's Calling
The silence outside Windhelm’s walls was a lie. It wasn’t empty; it was full of aftermath. The crunch of Sabrina’s boots on frost-heaved earth gave way to the softer, disturbing give of ash. The scent hit her first—not just smoke, but the acrid, greasy smell of things that shouldn’t burn. Wood, stone, flesh.
The watchtower was a broken tooth against the sky. One side was completely gone, blasted into a scatter of blackened rubble that spilled down the hillside. The remaining structure leaned precariously, its interior guts exposed to the blood moon’s glow. Small fires still clung to beams, pulsing like ugly orange hearts.
She stepped over a shattered shield, the blue paint blistered away. A hint of movement made her hand fly to the dagger at her belt. It was just a rag of a banner, smoldering at the edge. The wind caught it, and it flapped once, a final, tired gasp.
“Hello?” Her own voice sounded too small, swallowed by the vast, scarred quiet.
No answer. Just the crackle of dying embers and the moan of wind through stone.
She picked her way inside. The heat coming off the stone was palpable, a blistering breath against the chill night. Her eyes adjusted. Shadows danced, thrown by the flickering flames. She saw the shapes then, huddled in the corners, slumped against walls. They weren’t sleeping.
Most were charcoal sketches of men, fused to their armor. One, near the stairs that now led to open sky, was slightly more intact. His leather jerkin was still smoking. Sabrina approached, her stomach a tight knot. This wasn’t the thrilling unknown. This was just endings.
His eyes were open, staring at the hole in the ceiling. His breath came in wet, shuddery rasps. A bubble of blood formed and burst on his lips. He was young, maybe her age, a Nord with a scraggly attempt at a beard.
He blinked, slowly, and his gaze slid toward her. Confusion, then a faint, terrible hope. “Reinforcements…?” he croaked.
“No,” Sabrina said, kneeling beside him. She saw the damage now. His legs were gone from the knees down, the ends cauterized into a black, melted mess. The smell was thick and sweetly rotten.
The hope died. “Oh.” He coughed, a spray of crimson. “Just… my luck. An elf.” He tried to smile. It was a ghastly thing. “You here to loot me, pretty thing?”
“I’m following the dragon,” she said, her voice flat. She pulled her waterskin free, trickled some onto his cracked lips.
He swallowed greedily, choked. “Should’ve… run the other way.” His eyes focused on her, really seeing her for the first time. The silver hair, the pale eyes that seemed to gather the low light. “You’re not… scared.”
“What was it like?” The question left her before she could think.
A wheezing laugh shook his broken body. “Like the sky fell on us. One minute, Alleron was bitching about the stew… next, the roof was gone. And it was… looking at me.” His voice dropped to a whisper. “It spoke. Not words. Meanings. In my head. Burn. Break. Die.”
A shiver that had nothing to do with the cold traced Sabrina’s spine. The word in her mind, Fus, hummed in recognition.
“It landed. After.” He was fading, his words slurring. “Right… there.” He managed to lift a trembling finger, pointing to the center of the tower floor, a clearer space amidst the debris. “Stared right at me. I pissed myself. Then it… it scratched the ground. Like it was writing a fucking letter. Flew off.” His arm fell. “Wanted a survivor to see, I guess. A message.”
His breathing hitched, stalled. His eyes lost their focus, fixing on something beyond her, beyond the broken tower. “It was… beautiful,” he whispered. And then he wasn’t breathing at all.
Sabrina stayed kneeling for a long moment. The heat of the stones seared through her trousers. The casual, monstrous artistry of it—the destruction, the pause to leave a note, the abandonment of a witness to die slowly—should have filled her with terror. Instead, it felt like a key turning in a lock deep inside her. This wasn’t mindless animal rage. This was cruelty with purpose.
She stood, her legs stiff, and walked to the center of the floor he’d indicated. The stone here was not just scorched; it was scored. She brushed away a layer of fine ash with her boot.
Beneath, the stone was seared with grooves as deep as her hand was wide. Three parallel slashes, then a sweeping curve. Not random scratches. Script. Each line glowed with a faint, sullen orange light, like embers buried in the rock. The heat radiating from them was intense, magical.
She didn’t read it. She felt it. The shapes pulled at the thing inside her, the same way the dragon’s roar had. This was the same language. The first symbol screamed of Force, of Push, of an unstoppable beginning. Fus. But the others… they were concepts, not just words. Ro. A sense of balance, of a fulcrum, but also of betrayal. Dah. The finality of an ending, a push into the abyss.
Fus. Ro. Dah.
They weren’t just carved into the stone. They were carved into her. The residual magicka in the grooves resonated with the spark in her blood. It was an insult, a challenge, a teaching. A dragon had incinerated a fort, then paused to give the Dragonborn a grammar lesson in its mother tongue.
Her heartbeat was a drum in her throat. She reached out, not to touch, but to feel the heat on her palm. The power here was old, arrogant, and violently intimate. It knew she would come. It wanted her to see this.
A memory flashed, unbidden: the stable wall, the brute force of a different kind of power, the grunt of a man lost in simple lust. This was the same, but purified, elevated to a cosmic scale. This was desire written in fire and death.
From outside, far in the distance, carried on a wayward wind, came the faintest echo of a roar. Not of attack. Of satisfaction. Of a hunter knowing its prey is on the trail.
Sabrina looked from the dead soldier to the glowing words, then up through the shattered ceiling to the bloody moon. The Jarl’s summons was a crumpled ball in a guarded courtyard. This—this scorched scripture, this dead man’s testimony—was a real summons.
She knelt again, this time by the claw-marked message. She placed her palm flat on the stone an inch above the glowing grooves. The heat was a blistering promise.
“Fus,” she said, and the stone beneath her palm trembled. Ash puffed up from the cracks.
She stood, turning her back on the ruins and the dead. The path north was darker, leading into the pine forests and the jagged mountains. The dragon was out there, a writer of fire, waiting to see if she could read the rest of its poem.
She started walking, the ghost of the word still tingling on her lips, a new and hungrier thrill coursing through her veins. The game was on. And she finally knew the rules.
And she finally knew the rules. The knowledge was a live wire in her gut, crackling with a directionless energy that demanded an outlet. She walked for hours, the ghost-smell of charred flesh clinging to her clothes, the seared glyphs of Fus Ro Dah blinking behind her eyes whenever she blinked.
The forest eventually gave way to cleared land, the jagged mountains softening into rolling tundra bathed in dawn’s weak grey light. A fence appeared, then the outline of a farmstead—a humble house, a barn, a smaller stable. The mundane normalcy of it was an affront.
A man was in the field, shoulders hunched against the morning chill as he heaved a sack of feed from a cart. He was middle-aged, his face worn by wind and work, his arms thick with the kind of strength that came from labor, not war. He didn’t see her at first.
Sabrina leaned against the fence post, watching him. The restless power inside her had nowhere to go, simmering into a different, more familiar kind of heat. She needed to feel something else, something simple and brutal and grounding. She needed to burn this agitated energy out of her veins.
“That looks like hard work,” she called out, her voice cutting the quiet.
The farmer startled, dropping the sack. He squinted at her, his hand going to the wood-axe wedged in the cart. His eyes took in her elven features, her silver hair, the fine but travel-stained clothes. Suspicion hardened his expression. “We don’t get many of your kind out here. What do you want?”
“A moment of your time,” she said, her lips curling into a smile that didn’t touch her pale, glowing eyes. She unlatched the gate and walked toward him, her movements deliberately slow, feline. “You look like a man who carries heavy things all day.”
“I am. So what?” He stood his ground, but his gaze flickered over her body, the automatic reaction of a man too long alone with his animals and his thoughts.
“So you must be very strong,” Sabrina purred, closing the distance. She stopped just within arm’s reach, looking up at him. The scent of him—sweat, soil, hay—was pungent and real. It was nothing like ash or magic. “And probably very tense.”
He let out a short, surprised laugh. “Lady, I don’t know what you’re selling, but I’ve got no coin.”
“I’m not selling.” She reached out and pressed her palm flat against the solid wall of his chest. She could feel his heart thump under her hand. “I’m buying. With something better than coin.”
He stared down at her hand, then back at her face. Confusion warred with a dawning, hungry understanding. His throat worked. “My wife’s in Whiterun for the week. Visiting her sister.”
“Lucky you,” Sabrina whispered. Her hand slid down, over the hard plane of his stomach, her fingers hooking into the rough leather of his belt. She pulled him forward, just an inch. “And lucky me. I need to forget some things. You look like you could help me forget.”
A low groan escaped him. All the suspicion melted, replaced by a raw, almost desperate lust. He’d been tending turnips and thinking about roof repairs. Now this strange, beautiful creature from a storybook was here, touching him, her eyes holding a storm. He didn’t stand a chance.
“Christ,” he muttered, his own big, rough hands coming up to grab her hips. “Alright. Yeah. Okay.”
He didn’t ask questions. He just turned, pulling her by the hand around the side of the small horse stable, away from the house’s windows. The air here was thick with the smell of dung, straw, and animal musk. He pushed her against the weathered wood wall, his mouth coming down on hers. It wasn’t a kiss; it was a devouring, all teeth and tongue and the sourness of morning ale.
Sabrina welcomed it, biting his lower lip until she tasted blood. She needed the violence of it. He yanked at the laces of her trousers, his fingers fumbling. “Fucking things,” he grunted against her neck.
“Just tear them,” she hissed, and he did, the fabric giving way with a rough rip. The cold air hit her skin, followed instantly by the heat of his calloused hand shoving between her legs. He found her slick and ready, her body already singing with anticipation. She’d been wet since the watchtower, a needy throb that had marched in time with her footsteps.
“Turn around,” he growled, his voice thick. “Hands on the wall.”
She obeyed, bracing her palms against the splintering wood. She heard the frantic rustle of his own clothes, the clink of his belt buckle, and then the thick, blunt head of his cock was pressing against her from behind. He didn’t tease. He just shoved himself inside her in one brutal, filling thrust.
“Fuck!” she cried out, her head falling forward. He was bigger than the guard in Windhelm, thicker, stretching her deliciously. It was exactly what she needed—a physical obliteration.
He set a hard, driving pace immediately, his hips slamming into her ass with a rhythmic, meaty slap. Each push drove her rough against the stable wall. One of his hands tangled in her silver hair, yanking her head back. The other gripped the hip he was pounding into, his fingers sure to leave bruises.
“That’s it,” she panted, pushing back against him, meeting every thrust. “Don’t you fucking hold back. Use me.”
He needed no encouragement. He fucked her like he was trying to break through the wall itself, his breath coming in ragged, animal grunts in her ear. “You’re so damn tight,” he snarled. “Like a fucking vice. Take it. Take all of it, you crazy elf bitch.”
The filthy words, the pure carnality of it, ignited her. This was power too, of a different sort. The coil of tension that the dragon’s roar had left in her tightened, but now it was mixed with a raw, searing pleasure. She could feel him, every ridge and vein, pistoning into her core.
“Harder,” she demanded, her voice a broken chant. “Yeah, just like that. Fuck me raw. Make me feel it tomorrow.”
His rhythm became frantic, losing any finesse, just pure, brutal need. The stable wall shuddered with their impact. A horse whinnied inside, disturbed by the noise. Sabrina’s world narrowed to the pounding stretch inside her, the burn of the wood on her palms, the grunting man using her body to forget his own dull life.
The pressure broke. Her climax ripped through her with a silent, shuddering violence, her cunt clamping down around his invading length in rhythmic, pulsing spasms. She saw flashes of light behind her eyes—not magic, just pure, mindless sensation.
It triggered his own end. With a choked shout, he buried himself to the hilt and came, a hot, spurting flood that filled her. He held there, shaking, his weight heavy against her back for several long seconds.
Then, silence, except for their ragged breathing. He pulled out, the sudden emptiness a shock. The sound of him fumbling with his clothes. Sabrina stayed where she was, forearms on the wall, head down, waiting for her pulse to stop hammering in her ears.
“By the Nine,” he whispered, awe and shame mixing in his tone. “That was… I’ve never…”
Sabrina straightened up, pulling her torn trousers back into place as best she could. She turned to look at him. He was flushed, sweating, already looking nervously toward the house as if his wife might have magically returned.
The frantic energy was gone, bled out into the dirt behind the stable. She felt hollowed, clean, and focused. The dragon’s words were still there in her mind, but they were quieter now, tools to be examined, not screams in her blood.
She didn’t kiss him goodbye. She didn’t ask his name. She just adjusted her pack, gave him a last, assessing look, and walked back toward the gate.
“Wait!” he called after her, voice strained. “Who are you?”
Sabrina didn’t turn. “Someone you’ll tell stories about,” she said over her shoulder. “Or maybe you won’t.”
She left him standing there in the mud and the morning light, already receding into a memory. The road to Whiterun lay ahead. A Jarl was waiting for a legend. A dragon was waiting for a reply. She walked toward both, the soreness between her legs a steady, pleasant reminder of the simple, brutal truths of the world.