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Camilla hated it when her brother left her behind and went out adventuring. It wasn't something he did much, anymore, not after they had settled down in Riverwood, but she still hated it. She hated knowing that he was in danger, but she hated being left behind 'in safety' even more. She was strong, and she knew how to fight! Constantine had seen to that a long time ago, and Camilla was the second-best swordswoman in Riverwood thanks to him and that damn 'boot camp' he had put her and Lucia, her twin, through!
Sure, Lucia was shit with a sword and worse with a bow, with her only real talent being healing magic, but at least she could run a mile in fifteen minutes! They both could! They weren't little girls that needed to be coddled and protected anymore, Divines damn it!
Oh, sure, part of her heart throbbed and brought a huge smile to her face whenever she saw her brother being stern and protective of the two of them, but so what? Just because she liked it when he was her fierce, loving big brother didn't mean that she didn't want to live life a little! She could have both! She wanted to have both, and by the gods she intended to have both! She wasn't sure how yet, but she would!
The heavy wooden door creaked open behind her, interrupting her brooding thoughts. Camilla didn't need to turn around to know it was Lucia. Her twin's footsteps had always had a particularly hesitant quality to them, as if she were perpetually avoiding some invisible obstacle. Always the cautious and careful one, was Lucia, which is why she didn't get chastised by their brother nearly as often as Camilla did.
"Still sulking by the window?" Lucia's voice carried that infuriating note of gentle amusement that made Camilla want to throttle her sometimes. Stupid five-minutes-older big sister, acting like she was so much more mature than Camilla was. "You know that glaring at the road won't make him return any faster. Won't make him any more likely to take you to fight the bandits, either."
Camilla pressed her forehead against the cool glass, watching the neighbors come and go, following the same routes and the same times for the same reasons that they did nearly every day, and had ever since she had moved here. Probably before then, too. "I'm not sulking," she muttered, though even she could hear the petulance in her own voice. "I'm strategizing."
"Ah." The floorboards groaned as Lucia settled herself against the side of the counter behind her, and there was a moment of contemplative silence before Lucia continued. "You know its not because he thinks you're helpless, right?"
"Then why doesn't he let me live a little!" Camilla snapped, her head turning sharply as she glared at her slightly-older-twin, who had an infuriatingly sympathetic look on her face.
"Because he has lived a little, Camilla. He's lived a lot, actually. And he knows that you don't have to be helpless to go through things that…that really shouldn't be experienced." Which was as close as Lucia could get to acknowledging the fact that women, especially women that -and this was thought with all due humility- looked like them, tended to suffer unpleasant fates when they lost a fight in the wilder places of the world.
Not that men didn't also suffer such fates, the world was rather egalitarian in that way, but…well, in many ways the circumstances were different, and that was all the thought either of them could bare to put into the idea.
Camilla's shoulders slumped slightly. The fight drained from her, replaced by a weary resignation that settled uncomfortably in her chest. "I know," she admitted, her voice softer now. "But I can't just... exist here forever, Lucia. I can't just be the sister who stays behind, who watches the world from behind glass." She gestured toward the window with a frustrated wave. "There has to be more than this. More than sitting here and wondering if this is the time that he won't come home, if this is the time we'll receive a letter and a small sackful of gold. I can't do it, Lucy. I can't lose him and spend the rest of my life wondering if I could have stopped it from happening."
Lucia's expression softened, her eyes —so very like Camilla's own— reflecting the same fear and love that they both carried. She pushed away from the counter and crossed the room, settling beside her sister at the window.
"You think I don't feel it too?" she whispered, her fingers finding Camilla's and intertwining with them. "Every time he walks out that door, I wonder if we'll ever see him again. But our big brother has survived worse things than a group of bandits, you know that. He killed three of them last night and they didn't even touch him. Divines, we never even heard the fighting. If he can do that, than he can handle the rest of their friends with a dozen Legionnaires supporting him. He'll be home in no time, safe and sound. He's not easy to hurt, and even harder to kill."
"That doesn't mean it can't happen, Lucy." Camilla countered, watching as Alvor's daughter skipped past their window, carefree in a way she herself hadn't been in years, and in that moment she pitied and envied the girl for that oblivious happiness. That unawareness of the darkness in the world, that blissful, childish ignorance. "Nobody's invincible. Not even him."
Lucia fell silent, her fingers tightening around Camilla's. The truth of those words hung between them, heavy and dark like the clouds of a mountain-born thunderstorm.
"I know, Cammy." she finally admitted, her mouth twisting bitterly as honesty compelled her words. "But we can't live our lives in fear of what might happen. Constantine wouldn't want that for us."
"What Constantine wants," Camilla said, pulling her hand away, "is for us to be perpetual children. Safe. Protected. Sheltered from everything real. He wants us to survive, not to live."
"He wants us to not end up like our parents. He wants us to never have to flee a sacking again, to never live on scraps and rats and raw potatoes. He wants us warm, and safe, and well-fed, without rags for clothes and bare-feet. He wants to make sure he never gets a letter, telling him we're gone. He wants to make sure he never finds our bodies broken and bloody, after r-." Lucia starts to snap, her own temper finally starting to rouse itself in response to what she saw as her younger twins selfish, short-sighted complaints with the frankly wonderful life their brother had created for them, but the sound of shouts and screams from near the north gate had her falling silent. An instant later, as people started to rush past the window in that direction, she and her sister were both on their feat and tearing the door open in their haste to follow.
They found the town gathering around Faendal, the bosmer hunter and part-time wood-cutter (not to mention one of the two men that just couldn't help themselves from pursuing Camilla and ignoring Lucia, despite the fact that any reasonable person would agree each sister was as beautiful as the other. Assholes), standing in the middle of the street and babbling in near-hysteria, waving a hand in the direction of the Falkreath border. After a full minute of trying to calm him down and get some sensible words out of him, to no avail, Gerdur settled for slapping him sharply across the face and -rather thunderously, it must be said- commanding him to speak sense and tell everyone what happened.
"F-fire! Smoke and flames, enough that I could see it through the forest, towards Helgen! Bigger than any forest fire I've ever seen! You'll be able to smell it on the wind in a moment, if not already!" he finally screeched, and Camilla took a horrified step back as the crowd erupted in murmurs. Helgen was a good few miles away, for Faendal to be able to see a fire there from this distance…
Alvor's arms went around her waist as she darted, with speed that she hadn't quite believed she could ever be capable of, towards the Helgen Road. She snarled something at him, probably something quite horrible that she would need to apologize for, if she had even managed to use words at all, but it didn't do her any good. Nor did the same thing do Lucia any good, when Gerdur and Delphine grabbed and held her just as firmly as Alvor was holding Camilla.
"Lemmegolemmegolemmego!" Camilla shrieked, elbowing Alvor in the face and clawing at his arms as she tried to break free, but the blacksmith was unmoved and his grip unwavering.
"I can't do that, lass…" he said, only to grunt and slacked his grip as her heel planted itself between his legs, only just missing hitting something that would have made Sigrid very, very annoyed with her. "Lass! I know your brother is up there, you want to find him! I understand! But if you go charging off up there and get caught in the woods if the fire spreads, it will just put him in more danger when he comes to save you!"
"I can't do nothing! That's my brother! I can't…let me go!"
"Camilla, we can't do that! Constantine wouldn't want us to let you put yourselves in danger to help him, and Alvor's right! You'd just put him in more danger if you tried!" Gerdur snapped, shifting her grip on Lucia and redirecting the blast of golden light -a harmless sleeping spell, even like this Lucia wouldn't dream of hurting her friends and neighbors- that leapt from the elder twin's right hand.
"They're right, girls! Constantine is a smart lad, he knows how to handle things like this, he'll be fine! Worse comes to worse, he heads into Falkreath and waits for the fire to die down, wherever it is! Now calm down, before I knock you both out and tie you to a bed in the inn!" Delphine supported the other two, sounding more than willing to do it, before adding. "Besides, do you have any idea what that brother of yours would do to us if we let you run off into danger? We'd be lucky to live, so by the Nine, would you please calm down and wait here while we investigate?"
Both Valerii paused in their animalistic attempts to break free at that, both turning to look at the scarred blonde inn-keep.
"You…investigate? Are you saying that you'll see what's going on?" Camilla barely managed to voice the question, the plea, but managed it she did, and Delphine nodded sharply.
"I promise to try. I'm not as good in the woods as your brother or Faendal is, but at the very least I can figure out where the fire is and how large it is. So, promise me that you'll stay here with Gerdur and Alvor while I check things out?" she bargained, and the Valerii were silent for a long, long moment as they met each other's eyes and spoke without words, before they nodded together in unison.
"We'll wait for you to get back." Lucia promised for the two of them, sincere and honest.
"And then we'll decide what to do after that." Camilla's words were a sincere promise as well, but there was a distinctly dark threat of violence in that honesty, and several people swallowed heavily. It seemed that Constantine wasn't the only scary member of the family Valerius after all.
"Alright then, I'll hold you to that. I'm going to get into something a little more comfortable than this damn dress, and then I'll head out." Delphine grunted, stepping back as Alvor and Gerdur loosened their own grips, though she eyed the two siblings suspiciously before glancing at the rest of the twin. "You lot make sure the girls don't do anything crazy. I wasn't joking earlier. If Constantine gets back and finds out we let his little sisters go running off into a forest fire after him, it's all our asses. So make sure they. Stay. Here."
Even more people swallowed this time, because each and every one of them knew that she wasn't exaggerating. Constantine was a good man, a kind and loving man, if a stern one. But he also adored his sisters, and no one wanted to imagine how he would react if he found out that the town let them get themselves hurt or killed while he was gone.
Ten minutes later, Camilla, Lucia, and a half-dozen minders watching as Delphine, now clad in leather armor and carrying a longsword, jogged around the corner down the Helgen Road.
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A choked cry and the sickening thud of a freshly-made corpse collapsing to the ground heralded the death of the final Stormcloak in the room, and I took a moment to clean my blade on the cleanest part of his tunic before sheathing it and looking around. There had been an even dozen of them, and two of the Legionnaires accompanying me -Marcus and Octavius- were dead, while Luvia had taken a glancing blow to her left arm that had it uselessly self-splinting against her ribs. Worse still, none of them had been the men and women captured with Ulfric, which means my assumption had been correct: that a group of sympathizers had known Ulfirc was captured, and been in the midst of infiltrating the keep to try and rescue him when things had gone sideways. That, or Helgen had held quite a few prisoners that someone had set free and smuggled arms and armor to. Neither was a great option, and worse still, Ulfric had to be long gone already.
I'd been hoping to kill him off sooner rather than later, cut the Civil War storyline sharply short while he was injured and mostly-gagged, but it looked like I would have to do this the hard way and fight him at a time where he was just a little bit more capable than I would prefer.
"Trajan, Gaius, help Luvia back to the rest, have Rikke pick someone to replace the five of you and send them forward. I'm going to scout ahead. Make sure your replacements know to keep quiet, I don't want them drawing attention from anything I manage to find." I order the three survivors briskly, and it was a sign of how much they respected me -or, at least, the Tone of Command that I had brought to bear- that all three simply saluted, murmured a 'Yes, Sir!' and started limping their way back towards the proverbial wagon train behind us.
The moment they were out of sight, I quickly set about looting the bodies of what little gold, and anything else valuable, that they had on them. Which wasn't much, but the dead were gone and the living were hungry. Not to mention the fact that if I was going to be the hero I apparently was -and I had to be the Dragonborn, because there had been no 'extra prisoner' in the carts, only the Stormcloaks and Lokil- I needed all the money I could get. Heroism was bloody expensive, and I wasn't willing to break the Riverwood Trader and leave the girls with nothing in pursuit of it.
I finished rifling through the Stormcloaks' belongings and pressed onward, my boots silent against the ancient stone floors. The keep was a labyrinth of shadows and flickering torchlight, every corner potentially hiding another rebel or worse. The air carried the acrid tang of smoke, and I had to wonder how many people were dead in spite of my best efforts.
Ahead, voices echoed, harsh and emotional and reflecting sharply off of the stone walls. I pressed myself against the cold stone, straining to hear, sword partially-drawn. Allies or enemies, I wondered? Enemies, most likely, but I'm sure there were side-passages and such down here that would let an enterprising soldier or two avoid their enemies until help arrived.
"...dragon took half the bloody keep down!"
"Keep your voice down, you fool! There could still be Imperials about."
"Then let's leave! The High King has already made it to safety, we've no reason to stay here any longer and hope the bloody beast doesn't collapse the ceiling here too!"
Stormcloaks then, and there was the confirmation Ulfric was in the wind as well. Not surprising, mildly annoying, but I wasn't going to get distracted thinking about that right now. My more immediate goal was waiting to see of the other Stormcloak agreed and they fucked off, or if I would have to kill them. It wasn't like I wanted to wipe the Stormcloaks out, really. By and large, they were good men and women trying to save their homeland and their faith. They just so happened to be entirely wrong about their methods and unknowingly giving their true enemy, the Dominion, exactly what those gold-skinned psychopaths wanted.
I edged closer, keeping my breathing shallow. The second Stormcloak was speaking again, his voice ragged with exhaustion.
"Come on, we're supposed to meet at the rendezvous point by sundown. If we leave now, we might make it in time. I don't want to try and make it back to allied territory, Imperial soldiers crawling all over the place, with just the two of us."
"Fine," the first one muttered. "But if that thing's still out there..."
"It won't matter if we're in here or out there if it decides to bring the mountain down on our heads. If we're damned if we do, and damned if we don't, I'd rather do and hope for the best. Maybe the Legion was good for something and drove it off."
"Aye. Dragons, of all the bloody things, after all this time…it's a bad omen, I tell you!"
Their footsteps receded, and I waited until I could no longer hear them before proceeding. I moved through the corridor with practiced caution, stepping over fallen debris. The death-god's attack had compromised the structural integrity of parts of the keep; dust sifted down from cracks in the ceiling with each distant rumble. God, depending on how much damage Alduin had dealt, he could be long gone by now and the place could still collapse on our heads. All the more reason to emulate those two and get the hell out of here.
By the time the replacements for my first squad arrived, I was standing beside the dead body of a large, old bear that had decided to move in to the final portion of the caves. It hadn't been happy to see me there, when I'd been forced to wake it up, since unlike the Stormcloaks neither I nor the couple of hundred civilians somewhere behind me could all manage to sneak past it successfully. Rikke arrived not long thereafter, and I took a moment to admire her.
Yet another example of 'deviations' from the game, because not only was Rikke more attractive than she was in the game, it wasn't even because of Bijin. Instead she was, by all appearances, Kassandra of Sparta from Assassin's Creed. Whether she had the memories of that particular pseudo demi-goddess, I couldn't say, but she certainly had the looks, and by God I wasn't going to complain. Say what you like about that game, but Kassandra was hot as hell and a damn good fighter. I hadn't intended on trying to get Rikke, but at this point I really rather thought I was going to have to.
Not to mention Elisif, who was…
The thought was cut off as Rikke stepped up next to me and gave me a once over before meeting my eyes and nodding firmly.
"Looks like you're not just a merchant from Riverwood after all, Constantine Valerius. And I'm glad for it. And gladder still for your foresight that an attack might happen during Ulfric's execution. Though I doubt you were expecting a dragon."
"It certainly wasn't my preference." I responded dryly, not technically lying as I neglected to answer the question directly, with an equally dry chuckle. I sobered, glancing back at the civilians and few surviving soldiers that were slowly filling in the space behind us, and my eyes narrowed as they landed on Hadvar, who was being carried by two civilians -a rather burly man that screamed 'blacksmith' to me, and an orcish woman who did so even more than he did- on a makeshift litter. "What happened to Hadvar?"
"Part of the keep ceiling saved in. He managed to get the two children directly underneath it out of the way in time, but took a glancing blow to the head. He should be alright, even without his helm, but he's completely out of it for the time being, and will probably have a hell of a concussion when he wakes up." she explained promptly, and I grunted and nodded in understanding. Absently, I wondered why it was that Nirn knew of the existence of concussions, when it had taken until not long before I had been born in the 'real' world for people to acknowledge they were a thing, and we were still working on the 'caring about them and taking them seriously' thing when I had…left? Died? Whatever had happened to bring me here.
Magic, probably. I'd have to ask at the College, provided I ever made it up there.
"Well, let's get everyone moving, then." I said, gesturing toward the light streaming in from the cave entrance ahead. "If that dragon circles back, I'd rather not have everyone trapped in here."
Rikke nodded sharply, turning to organize the civilians into something resembling an orderly exodus. I stepped toward the cave mouth, squinting against the sudden brightness as I surveyed what lay beyond. The forest stretched before us, mercifully untouched by fire this far from Helgen. In the distance, smoke still billowed upward in great dark plumes, marking where the town had stood just an hour before. I didn't envy the people who would be sent to search the rubble and try to bury the dead…provided there was even anything of them to bury.
"Any sign of that thing?" one of the evocati asked quietly, coming up to stand beside me, and I glanced over at him briefly before shaking my head.
"Doesn't look like it. I can't hear it roaring, and I can't hear it's wingbeats either. Which I think we would, if it was looking for us. The best thing we can do is stay in the woods and keep our voices down, either way." I responded just as quietly, mindful of the civilians that were slowly edging towards us, before turning and facing them fully as he nodded. "Alright, ladies and gentlemen. It looks like the dragon has decided to go somewhere else for the time being, so we should be alright to head for Riverwood."
There were a few murmurs at that, and I held up my hand to stem them.
"I understand you might prefer Falkreath, but frankly Riverwood is closer and the road is easier for a group this size. Once we get you onto the Whiterun plains and connect with Balgruuf jarl, we can see about splitting you all up and getting you where you want or need to go, but for now this is the safest and fastest option."
A middle-aged woman clutched her young son -couldn't have been more than five, the poor kid, passed out from the stress-exhaustion it looked like- closer to her chest, her eyes darting nervously toward the smoke-stained sky. "What if it comes back? What if it follows us?"
"Then we deal with it when it happens," I said, keeping my voice steady and reassuring despite the knot of uncertainty in my own gut. "But dragons are hunters, not scavengers. It's gotten what it came for: chaos, destruction, terror, domination. It's probably already moved on to terrorize someone else, somewhere else."
The explanation seemed to calm some of the more agitated civilians, though I caught Rikke's sharp look. Probably wanted to know why I was so confident about that claim, since it probably didn't sound like I was making things up just to make the civies feel better.
A grizzled old woman near the back of the group stepped forward, leaning on a woman that I would guess was her daughter or daughter-in-law, her weathered face etched with worry lines that seemed to have deepened considerably in the past hour. "My grandson," she said, her voice carrying the tremor of barely contained grief. "He was apprenticed to the baker in Helgen, and stayed to watch the executions. I need to know if he..." She trailed off, unable to voice the question that hung in the air like the pall of smoke that now doubt was even now clouding the sky above Helgen.
I felt the weight of her gaze, along with dozens of others who had lost everything they knew in the span of minutes, their emotions high now that someone had finally voiced what they themselves had been too afraid to say aloud. The truth was harsh—anyone who hadn't made it out of Helgen already was almost certainly dead. But sometimes mercy lay in allowing hope to persist a little longer, especially when we still had a good ways to go before they could rest and grieve.
"Once we reach Riverwood and get everyone settled, I'll organize search parties with whomever can be spared." I said carefully, not wanting to promise anything but entirely unwilling to just leave it. "We'll look for survivors who might have escaped into the forest, and we will monitor the fire in Helgen. As of right now, it's likely still too hot and smoky to search. We'd just be creating more victims if we tried. Now please, let us take you to safety. It's going to take a few hours to get there, but we'll have food for everyone and shelter for the most needy."
The old woman's face crumpled slightly, but she nodded with the kind of stoic acceptance that came from a lifetime of hardship. Her companion —daughter, I now saw, given the family resemblance— squeezed her arm gently and murmured something too quiet to hear.
"Right then!" Rikke called out, her voice carrying the authority of someone accustomed to moving groups of people efficiently, and one who was well-aware that this particular group needed firm guidance to keep them stable and functional. "Form up in pairs if you can manage it. Stay close, stay quiet, and if anyone needs help walking, speak up now rather than when we're halfway there. If you're injured, find someone to help you. Make sure to keep the kids together in the center of the group. Elders as well."
I moved to the front of the group as they began organizing themselves, checking my sword one final time before we set out. The weight of leadership sat uncomfortably on my shoulders, very uncomfortably, for all that I had plans to lead a great deal in the future. But this was now, and these people were looking to me for guidance, for safety, for answers I wasn't entirely sure I possessed. But they needed someone to follow, and circumstances had thrust that responsibility in part onto me, so I suppose I had to keep on moving.
"Evocati." I raised my voice slightly, and was gratified when the six of them stepped forward immediately. "There is a mine, just down the road, halfway between here and Riverwood. Embershard. Bandits are known to hole up in there. They'll pose a threat to the refugees, and frankly we can use their camps and supplies to help these people out. Can you handle it?"
"They won't know what hit them. Though depending on how many there are, we might need help clearing the bodies out for the civilians. We'll take one of the local recruits along, have them play runner if necessary." One of them, a woman that had probably served for the entirety of the Great War, confirmed with an air of casual confidence. Well-deserved confidence, at that, I thought to myself as I nodded in confirmation and they departed. Just like the evocati of the Roman Empire, those six men and women had to have served approximately twenty-five years in the Legions, and then voluntarily reenlisted after being honorably discharged. Without any exaggeration, the six of them could probably clear out a small town entirely by themselves. Especially in a world of magic.
"You've got some explaining to do when we reach Riverwood, 'merchant'." Rikke's voice wasn't cold, but it wasn't exactly warm either, as she spoke up from behind me, and I grimaced to myself even as I stepped out into the sunlight. Something told me that that particular conversation wouldn't be an easy one. Possibly not a fun one either.
Course, it was probably going to be considerably more pleasant than dealing with my sisters when they found out what had happened…
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Camilla had just sat down -been sat down, quite frankly, by Gerdur- for a light meal when the both of them heard shouting and screams from the direction of the Helgen Road gate. Their heads snapped up, and once again Camilla could see people rushing past the windows. Shoving away the stew and bread that she had been about to eat, Camilla shot back to her feet and followed Gerdur through the door and down the road.
She could see the cause of the commotion, quite easily given what it was: dozens, hundreds, of people, and soldiers, were flowing into Riverwood. Bedraggled, soot-stained in many cases, with torn clothing and carrying what seemed to be bags or chests of valuables, many of them injured and all of them exhausted, they looked like…well. Camilla had seen enough refugees in her lifetime to recognize what she was looking at, and she felt her throat tighten in fear even as a bit of tension bled out of her heart. If these people had made it all the way from Helgen, which Delphine had confirmed some hours ago was in flames, than there was a strong chance that her brother had too. She just had to find him.
She pushed through the gathering crowd of Riverwood's residents, ignoring Gerdur's call to wait, her eyes frantically scanning each exhausted face for her brother's familiar features. The refugees parted before her desperate advance, too weary to resist the determined young woman cutting through their ranks, and she thought that she saw more than a bit of sympathetic understanding on several faces.
"Constantine!" she shouted, rising on her tiptoes to see over the sea of heads. A futile gesture, really. She wasn't the tallest woman, even by Imperial standards. And outside of the likes of her brother, Imperials weren't exactly known by their towering heights. "Constantine! Constantine Valerius!"
A firm hand caught her elbow, and she whirled to find Lucia beside her, her twin's face mirroring her own anxiety but tempered with that same infuriatingly calm restraint.
"Camilla, slow down. If he's here, we'll find him. If he's not..." Lucia's voice faltered, but her grip remained steady.
"Don't you dare say it!" Camilla hissed, yanking her arm free and resisting the urge to say something unpleasant, well aware she wouldn't mean it and equally aware how badly it would hurt Lucia all the same. "Don't even think it. If all of these people could survive and get to safety, than Constantine sure as Oblivion did too. Now help me look!"
Together, the twins pressed deeper into the crowd, their voices joining in calling their brother's name. The refugees moved with the shuffling gait of the truly exhausted, many supported by companions or makeshift crutches. Children clung to their parents' hands, wide-eyed and silent in the way that spoke of horrors witnessed at an age far to young, not that there was ever a good age to experience something like this. The acrid smell of smoke clung to everyone, too, and Camilla idly wondered in the back of her mind how many tries it would take to wash the smell out of these poor people.
"Hoh there. You said you're looking for Valerius?" a female voice spoke up from amidts the crowd, which parted before a Nord legionnaire in ornate armor. Her dark eyes held a knowing look as she surveyed the twins, and Camilla felt her heart leap into her throat.
"Constantine Valerius, yes." Lucia said quickly, stepping forward before Camilla could speak. "Our big brother. He was supposed to be at Helgen this morning, looking for help dealing with some bandits in Bleak Falls Barrow."
The soldier's expression shifted, something unreadable flickering across her features, before smiling slightly. "Aye, I know Constantine. Legate Rikke, Legio IX Draconis, out of Solitude." She extended a callused hand, which Lucia shook automatically while Camilla stood frozen. "Your brother saved a lot of lives today, including mine. He's at the back of the column, helping with the wounded. What say we go lend him a hand?"
"No need, Legate, here he comes now." Gerdur chimed in, having followed the girls as best she could, offering a hand. "Gerdur, trovärdig of Riverwood härad. I can guess what happened, but we need to talk all the same, because…oh!"
She cut herself off with a soft gasp, eyes widening sharply, and the Valerius twins turned to look at what had caught her eye. There was their brother, looking tired but unhurt, and they would have thrown themselves into his arms if it wasn't for the woman that was walking beside him.
She was…the most beautiful thing either of the girls had ever seen, with long golden-blond hair that hung past her shoulders, full lips, a face that was simultaneously angular enough to be regal without being so sharp as to be unsightly, and her eyes…like cut jade, strong but soft. She was also, both noticed with a spike of possessive jealousy, standing rather close to their brother. Camilla opened her mouth to ask who she was, only for Gerdur to cut her off with a respectful bow.
"Elisif jarlskona! Be welcome in Riverwood!"
"We thank you for your hospitality, Gerdur trovärdig." The woman, who the twins had to admit, definitely deserved to be called 'The Fair', bowed respectfully in return, before continuing with a smile at their brother. "Helgen was destroyed in it's entirety, by a dragon of all things. Thanks to Constantine's foresight, we were able to evacuate the majority of the citizens, some two-hundred people, perhaps a handful more. I need your help in providing as many as possible, the most vulnerable at the very least, with shelter until Legate Rikke can escort them on to Whiterun in the next day or two."
"Of course, we'll do what we can, but I don't know how many we can take in. Riverwood isn't the largest settlement, I'm afraid, and the homes have little in the way of extra space. Nor do we have any areas that you could set up tents. We're not far enough down the slopes to have flat and grassy areas, and the nearest ones are nearly half a day of travel from here." Gerdur agreed immediately, frowning thoughtfully as she considered the situation. "The children, if nothing else, could be sheltered. What about your soldiers, Legate?"
"Master Valerius informed us about Embershard Mine and the bandits there. My evocati cleared it out, and we'll camp in there with the hardiest of the refugees." the brunette Legionnaire shook her head with a faint smile and a shrug. "My boys and girls have slept in far worse places than that. Speaking of which, I've a man here, injured in the escape, that Constantine tells me you'd want to pay particular care too?"
"Who on earth…?" Gerdur started to ask, before two people carrying a litter with an unconscious man lying on it filtered through the crowd. In an instant, she was standing beside the make-shift hammock and leaning over the conscious but immobile form of Alvor's nephew with a cry of his name.
"…perhaps we should give her a moment to get him settled before we speak with her about what steps we need to take next?" Elisif observed delicately, as she watched the two of them speak to one another, the blonde trovärdig clutching the Optio's right hand to her chest like a lifeline. "…you said she was married to someone else, Constantine?"
"Yes, unfortunately. You'll understand when you meet Hod." the eldest Valerius confirmed, before stepping forward and opening his arms at last, the motion reminding his sisters of their highest priority. A heartbeat later, the three of them were wrapped in each other's arms, the twins crying softly from relief.
"You're okay, thank the Nine, you're alright." Camilla sobbed into his chest, holding him as tightly as she could, uncaring of the hardness of his armor, the soot and sweat and blood that coated it as she reassured herself that he was here and in one piece.
"We were so worried." Lucia whispered against his shoulder, her own tears mingling with Camilla's as Constantine's arms tightened around them both. "When Faendal came running in, screaming about fires and smoke... we thought we might never see you again."
"Shh, it's alright," Constantine murmured, pressing a kiss to each of their heads in turn. "I'm here. I'm safe. Though I'll admit, it was considerably more excitement than I'd hoped for when I set out this morning." His voice carried a note of dark humor that didn't quite mask the exhaustion beneath.
Camilla pulled back just enough to look up at him, her hands moving to frame his face as she searched for any sign of injury. "A dragon, Constantine? A real dragon? We haven't had dragons in Tamriel for..."
"Eras, but yes. It flattened the entire fortress, from what little we could see once we got out of the caves, and it won't be safe to search the area for a day or so yet, the fire was so hot. I'll tell you all about it later. For now, help me lend a hand to the refugees. Lucia, you'll need to do what you can with your healing spells."
Both nodded firmly, voicing their agreement, as they reluctantly separated from him. As much as they just wanted to hold him, people needed help, and he had taught them better than to focus on their own wants when innocents were in need of succor.
And so the Valerii plunged into the midst of the crowd, each one thinking about what might come next.
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