Joorre meyye! When would they learn this war of theirs was futility itself? The dov were stronger, braver and smarter than those puny, crawling, helpless mortals would ever be. They couldn't even fly, couldn't feel Kyne's breath under their wings; they would never know the joy of defying the pull of Nirn, bringing them down.
The three who plotted most against him, the ones taught by that grutiik, the betrayer Paarthurnax, would feel his power most of all. He was Alduin, the firstborn of Akatosh, and the strongest of all the dov. He would savor their souls in Sovngarde most especially, just as soon as he killed them, and finished off Paarthurnax for the last time. He growled to himself. His teeth to the grutiik's neck!
There, below him. He spotted the three known as the First Tongues near the ancient vund on which Paarthurnax liked to perch. They were waiting for him. He chuckled evilly to himself. Meyye! he thought again. He would crush this little rebellion here and now, deal with his traitor brother, then savor the sweet taste of victory later at his leisure. He swooped low, hovering over the three pitifully small figures on the snow-covered mountaintop.
"Meyye! Tahrodiis aanne! Him hinde pah liiv! Zu'u hin daan!" he mocked them. Fools! Traitorous slaves! Your wishes have all withered! Meet your doom!
But the female, the she-joor, merely grinned and called out, "Let those that watch from Sovngarde envy us this day!"
And then, the unthinkable happened. The three figures Shouted at him, as if they thought they were dov themselves. And the Words of Power hit him with all the force of a wing to the face.
"JOOR ZAH FRUL!"
He staggered in mid-air, feeling the weight of his body, the drag of age on his skeleton, the sense of mortality in his mind and heart. He felt his body dying around him, weakening, becoming vulnerable. He could no longer sustain flight, and plummeted undignified to the ground. But if the foolish mortals thought he would be an easier target on the ground, they were sadly mistaken.
"Nivahriin joorre!" he cried. "What have you done? What twisted Words have you created?! Tahrodiis Paarthurnax! My teeth to his neck! But first... dir ko maar. You will die in terror, knowing your final fate... To feed my power when I come for you in Sovngarde!"
The she-joor actually had the audacity to sneer at him! "If I die today, it will not be in terror," she challenged him. "You feel fear for the first time, worm. I see it in your eyes. Skyrim will be free!"
Fear? He feared nothing! The fact that mere Words brought him to ground was troubling, but he was not afraid. He would kill them, and they would not be able to pass their knowledge on to others.
While the oldest of the three held back, the she-joor and the younger male hacked away at his sides and head with their woefully ineffective blades. It did not hurt – that he would admit – but it was annoying, and the only satisfaction he received was seeing their worried looks, knowing they could not hurt him as much as he was hurting them. Oh, he enjoyed this part!
He snapped at them with his powerful jaws, razor-sharp teeth just missing the male. He flexed his right wing sharply, brought his heavy tail down with a boom and chuckled to himself as they staggered from the impact.
The she-joor left herself open, and he pounced on her, like a sabre-cat pouncing on its prey. His jaws closed on her form, pinning her arms to her sides. Squeezing tighter, he shook his head from side to side, enjoying hearing her bones crack and snap as he did so. The taste of her blood in his mouth was euphoric, and he felt the life go out of her limp, unresisting body. This…this was what he lived for. This was what he craved. Let Krosis and Vokun and the other Dragon Priests make their useless sacrifices to curry favor. Let the other, lesser dragons pretend they were independent. He was Alduin, and they all bowed before him. If they did not, he gave them the gift of death. It was a boon he granted often, and with great pleasure.
He flung the lifeless body callously to one side and concentrated on the male warrior still hacking away at him, snapping at him and waiting for him to make a mistake. They always did.
"No, damn you!" the man cried. So, the she-joor was important to this one? He would make certain to prolong consuming her soul in this one's presence when they met in Sovngarde.
"It's no use!" the puny joor called to the older one. "Use the Scroll, Felldir! Now!"
Wait. Scroll? He couldn't mean the kel, could he? Now that was troublesome! It was time to finish this one off and advance on the old one before he could dig the Scroll out and use it. But the cursed mey was rallying all his remaining strength, and Alduin realized with impatience that he could not get past the flurry of whirling steel in his face. He heard the old one intoning, and every word seemed to make time slow down.
"Hold, Alduin on the Wing! Sister Hawk, grant us your sacred breath to make this contract heard! Begone, World-Eater! By words with older bones than your own we break your perch on this age and send you out! You are banished! Alduin, we shout you out from all our endings unto the last!"
An undeniable force had hold of him. He couldn't move! Something was drawing him in and away from this moment. He fought, but it was inexorable. The power of the kel was shifting him, moving him along the flow of time from the now to the future.
"Faal Kel...?! Nikriinne..."
The now faded and became lost in the vortex of the winds of time. Helplessly, and afraid for the first time in his long life, he was flung upon the currents, unable to stop himself. He could not go back, he knew; that now was lost to him forever. The dov were so intricately linked to the ebb and flow of time, and thus so terribly vulnerable to its manipulation by the Elder Scrolls, where all of time existed at once. All he could do at this point was to ride the winds of time and see if he could tell where it would throw him out.
All along the temporal maelstrom he could see faces, places, events that might or might not happen. He saw the joore living out their lives in peace and in war. He saw empires rise and fall, whole civilizations prosper and wither. He saw a long stretch of centuries when the dov became nothing more than legend.
It was moments – or perhaps eons – later when he finally saw the way out: an opening in the progression of time, like a raw, open wound. Beyond the opening was the snow-capped top of the Throat of the World. He had traversed time, but had ended up in the same place. The images in the tiid bo showed several possible futures from this point. One in particular made him take note: a hero rising to destroy him. He saw the village, and the cart approaching it, carrying four figures. One of them meant his doom, but only if that one survived the events to follow. One possibility involved the hero being beheaded, but Alduin was never one to trust to a joor what he could do for himself.
The one who could be his doom might escape a beheading by some clever tinvaak, but he would not escape dragonfire. Alduin would make certain of that. He erupted into the skies over Monahven, directing his flight towards the sleepy little hamlet nestled at its base. He did not notice a gray shape among the rocks near the ancient vund, as Paarthurnax roused from his contemplation of the Rotmulaag.
"So," the ancient dragon thought, watching his brother retreat into the distance. "It begins."
[Notes on the Dragon language: all words are canon, except possibly grutiik, "betrayer", and vund, which means "wall". These words were found at translate.]
Dir ko maar- die in terror
Dov – dragons, plural
Dovah – a single dragon
Faal – less common use of the article "the"
Him hinde pah liiv – your wishes (have or are) all withered
Joor(re) – mortal(s)
Joor Zah Frul – the Dragonrend Shout, literally "mortal finite temporary"
Kel – scroll, specifically, an Elder Scroll
Mey(ye) – fool(s)
Monahven – the mountain known as "The Throat of the World"
Nikriin(ne) – coward(s)
Nivahriin – cowardly
Rotmulaag – Word of Power, a Thu'um or Shout
Tahrodiis aanne – traitorous slaves
Tiid bo – time flow
Tinvaak – talk, speech
Zu'u hin daan – (meet) your doom (A.N.: I could find no translation of zu'u, but given the context in which it is used, I have extrapolated that it might mean "meet".)