The Dragonborn's Apprentice

Saraan Deyto

He laughed before he charged me. He always did that. Laughed. Cackled, really. Maybe because he knew how much less of a target I was than a dragon. He could shout me to death if he really wanted and he reminded me of that fact often.

I sidestepped the blade. Just about my only advantage was how much faster I was than him, smaller too. Sanguine knew that. He never brought it up, though. At least not in a good way.

"You're too skinny," Sanguine would scoff at me across the large oak table. He slid me a fat slice of horker meat. I tried not to smell it. "Put some meat on your bones."

I leaped towards the framing of the house and climbed. By the time he had regained his footing, I had made it to the balcony, swaying my sword over him. "Looking for someone?"

"Innocence," he boomed, "Get down here and face me like a man!"

"But, Dragonborn, I am not a man." I twirled my blade in my hand, as one would do a staff.

"What have I told you about sass, Innocence?" Sanguine grunted with a fire in his eyes, slamming his shoulder into the supportive wooden beam.

"Sanguine?" I asked when the veranda shook. "What are you doing?"

"And don't." Slam.

"Ever." Slam.

"Call me." Slam.

I fell as the balcony collapsed beneath me. When I opened my eyes, Sanguine was holding the tip of his Skyforge sword to my armored chest, only barely out of breath. "Don't ever call me by my name, my Innocence, or this blade will be in the dirt underneath you, painted in your blood." He got up and brushed himself off. Then, like the hero he was, Sanguine said, "I am to be addressed as Dragonborn, nothing less."

...

"I hate Windhelm," Sanguine, or should I say the Dragonborn, said as we rode past a local farm house. The man and woman, both tending to their cabbages, waved at us, or should I say waved at Sanguine. They never waved at me.

"But sir," I chuckled passively, "We've only just past Whiterun." He scowled. Whenever Sanguine would reprimand me in public, most people wouldn't say a thing. That or they would join in. But occasionally someone would show me compassion. They would always tell me the same thing. They would tell me that some people had been through so much in their lifetime that they couldn't take much more. I could believe that. When it came to the Dragonborn, he had lived enough life for 30 men. Probably more. Sanguine had fought more dragons than I had ever had the pleasure to see. But, Talos, how I loved seeing them. Giants. Wingspans the size of the solitude gates. Scales as bright as the Dawnstar bay. They were beautiful, really. Until they were trying to shout your head off your shoulders, that is. But still, in those moments, dragons had a terrifying loveliness about them. I had told him this once.

"That's a rather odd way of thinking," he scoffed, then smiled, "Especially for a mutt girl whose parents were both slaughtered by a dragon." That was the end of that.

He grunted again, "I hate Windhelm. I hate the Stormcloaks," and so began another one of the Dragonborn's famous monologues. "Always messing with the Emperor's law. If you hate Skyrim so much, go to Elsweyr. Drink Skooma and get drunk off your asses, that's about the only thing you're good for. Why, I'd say that I hate Stormcloaks almost as much as I hate the Thieves Guild. And I hate the Thieves Guild almost as much as I hate that Stendarr forsaken Dark Brotherhood." These types of conversations were always the same. Complain about evil. Fight evil. Kill evil. Yes, nothing mattered more to Sanguine than the destruction of all un-good. But still, he was bound to be a soldier of the law. And according to his oath, he was swore to help and protect any citizen of Skyrim, no matter what organization, at least while representing the part. Which is why he scoffed when he saw a broken-down carriage in the middle of the road.