Though Alduin's Eyes
A Dovahkiin Fahliil Companion Piece
Chapter 1: Return to Keizaal
Synopsis: There is more than one side to every story, even the story of the Dragonborn and the World Eater. A companion piece to "Dovahkiin Fahliil" written from Alduin's perspective.
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Disclaimer: I do not own Skyrim, the Elder Scrolls franchise, or any of its characters. The only character I own is Lina or the Elven Dragonborn/Dovahkiin Fahliil.
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A/N: This was a piece I started and submitted to my Deviantart account a while ago. I had wanted to try writing from Alduin's perspective because I thought it would be fun and it was. There will be more to come eventually.
The first thing I registered was blinding light. I growled in annoyance and waited for my eyes to adjust. But as my surroundings came into focus, I realized it was sunlight—something I had not seen during my banishment—but that would mean I was free. I roared in triumph. Those Nords were fools to believe they could banish me for all eternity. They should have known I would return to Nirn. And so I have.
But I was no longer at the Monahven where my final battle occurred. Nor was I in any familiar location. I was almost certain that I was still in Keizaal (or Skyrim in the mortal common tongue), but the land had changed. How long had my banishment lasted? I have flown over Keizaal and the rest of Taazokaan often enough that I should have been able to identify my location without any effort. The fact that I couldn't was frustrating to say the least.
And what of the Dov? Had any of my kind survived the war? And what was the outcome of the war? The Joor most likely won, thanks to my treacherous brother, but I still needed answers. Now.
I flew for short period of time in an attempt to find something even vaguely familiar and orient myself to the now unfamiliar land. I could not find anything that I recognized, not even the ruins of my cities. And to make things more frustrating, there were no signs that other Dovah were here. I could not hear their roars or their Voices. And the Dov were not creatures of subtlety. Concealing our presence was all but impossible, so I found it unlikely that there were any Dovah in the area.
But even then, I tried to sense the Dovah-Sil of my kind. I failed to locate another Dovah, but I could sense the presence of two Joor capable of using the Thu'um. One was a Tongue—unworthy of such power—but the other was a Dovahkiin.
The presence of a Dovahkiin was enough to convince me that the Dov were still in Keizaal. My father Akatosh would only grant a mortal creature Dovah-Sos when there were Dovah to battle. After all, Dovahkiin were meant to be dragonslayers and the existence of one would be meaningless if there were not dragons to kill. So I would gladly provide this Dovahkiin—and the Tongue—with the battle their kind desired. I would summon my armies to crush both of them, along with the rest of the Joor.
I roared to summon the Dov. There might not have been any that I could detect, but few would miss my call. None answered. Frustrated, I roared again. Perhaps none had heard the first call or those who had just failed to realize it was a summoning. But when none answered the second time, I realized there truly were no Dovah in the area—or no living ones.
At that moment, I flew over a burial mound where I could sense a slain dragon's soul and I doubted this was the only one that had fallen. I could resurrect them. All of them. And then it would be easy to reclaim the land. But I would need to be completely focused to do so and concentrating on a difficult task such as this one was all but impossible with my rising anger. I needed to find something to kill and unleash my anger on. The Dovahkiin or Tongue would be ideal, but I had not desire to waste my time hunting them down just to satisfy my bloodlust.
Then I caught sight of a Joor village and within said village were the ones I wished to kill. I could not sense their exact locations among the Joor, but this was still perfect. I could satisfy my desire to kill and rid myself of the Dov's greatest enemies.
I dove at the village, summoning a storm of meteors as only I, the World Eater, could. As predicted, the Joor panicked and most of the ones that were not instantly killed ran, but a few foolishly stood their ground and drew their weapons. I doubted they could harm me, but the ones who wanted to fight needed to be disposed of first.
"YOL TOOR SHUL!"
I watched with cruel satisfaction as the Joor who were caught in my fire screamed in agony. And even more so as my meteors crashed into the stone and wooden buildings of the village. Human villages were always so fragile compared to the great cities of the Dov. Even the cities of the elves would be crushed in my storm.
My thoughts were interrupted when I saw a human male—almost certainly a Nord—dragging an Elven woman towards a tower I had not destroyed yet. Ordinarily I would disregard them in favor of stronger targets such as the soldiers and it did not usually concern me if two Joor managed to escape my wrath. But I could sense that one of them possessed a Dovah-sil. In other words, one of them (most likely the Nord) was the Dovahkiin. And they needed to be dealt with.
I dove towards the tower and tore out as many parts of the wall as possible. But to my frustration, the two Joor were nowhere in sight. I could still sense the Dovahkiin's presence, so he could not have left the tower. I tore out more of the tower wall after finding a few weak places that I missed, but before I could find them, some archers started getting rather bold (or more foolish) and fired at me. A few arrows struck my scales. They failed to hit any weak points and did little other than irritate me, but the archers still needed to be eliminated. I had no patience for nuisances like them.
"YOL TOOR SHUL!"
The archers were burned alive like the last Joor I unleashed my fire on and since my meteor storm had not ceased, more humans were killed from being struck by the meteors or falling remains of buildings. That was enough to convince even the boldest of them to back down. With so much chaos, survival would have to become their top priority.
Besides, these Joor might have been pathetic fools, but they must have known they could not defeat me—not without that accursed Shout, Dragonrend, and the aid of a Dovahkiin. And since the Dovahkiin was hiding in the tower, he must have been inexperienced with the Thu'um. Or perhaps he was still ignorant to his true nature. As for the Tongue, he couldn't be more than a coward. Otherwise, both he and the Dovahkiin would have joined the rest of the Joor in their pathetic battle against me.
I watched the survivors run in desperate attempts to avoid falling meteors and buildings and grinned in a manner that would be considered sadistic. I had forgotten what it was like to watch the Joor flee in terror and how satisfying it could be.
Within a short period of time, the rest of the village was completely destroyed and most of its inhabitants were dead, although a few must have escaped. The ground was covered with the (mostly burned) bodies of the fallen Joor and I could not be bothered to hunt down the survivors. The worst they could do was warn the other villages that I had been here, which was hardly a problem for me. If anyone was foolish enough to hunt me down, they would die like the Joor who stood against me in this village.
For now, my bloodlust had been satisfied and I could start to think more clearly. But then I saw a Nord male running through the destroyed village. More specifically, he was the same man that escaped me by hiding in the tower—the one I had believed was Dovahkiin. But unlike before, I could not sense the presence of a Dovah-Sil within him.
Strange. Earlier when I saw this human, the Dovah-Sil was easy to sense, but since it was gone, that would mean this man was not Dovahkiin and I had been mistaken. But I could not be blamed for such a mistake. After all, this man was a Nord and every previous Dovahkiin had been a member of his race, so I had no reason to guess that this Dovahkiin would be anything else.
I should have chased the human, but I needed to find the real Dovahkiin first. I could still sense a Dovah-Sil in the destroyed village, so they couldn't have escaped yet. But I didn't see her until it was too late.
I saw an Elven woman running towards one of the buildings that was still vaguely intact—the same woman who had been with that Nord. She reached the building before I could react properly, but for some unknown reason, she paused when she was standing in the doorway and spun around to face me. She was a fool for stopping and the only reason I did not attack her right way was because I was just as off-guard as she was. And in that moment, I realized something I should have before.
This Elf was Dovahkiin.
It was ironic that an Elf—a High Elf no less—would become Dovahkiin when the humans never had a positive relationship with her kind and all past Dovahkiin were practically worshipped by the race of man.
But now was not the time to be thinking about the irony in my father's decision to give an Elf a Dovah-Sil. Now I needed to act quickly. The Elf had come to her senses already and realized how foolish she had been. She was turning around, clearly planning to run. I knew I would not have enough time to unleash my fire at full force. I would have time for one word at most.
"YOL!"
In the amount of time it took me to speak the single Word of Power, the Elf had run into the building and vanished long before my fire could reach her. I cursed myself for not reacting fast enough before I roared in frustration and lunged at the building, tearing through the walls. But when I had cleared enough of the walls to see into the building, she was gone.
I turned towards the sky and roared again. I had been given a chance to eliminate a Dovahkiin and I missed it because I had allowed myself to be caught off-guard. And to make things more frustrating, the presence of her Dovah-Sil was incredibly weak. It must have still been dormant, meaning she could not have known what she was yet.
A Dovahkiin was always the weakest—and by extension most vulnerable—when it was ignorant of its true nature. In that time, its Dovah-Sil would be dormant and it would have no way of knowing about it. At most, their instincts might be sharper than those of an ordinary mortal. But once they learned to use the Thu'um and battle dragons, they were a threat.
During the ideal time to kill that Elf, I had failed. And I did not know how long I had until she discovered what she was. Then after she did, she would only grow stronger. I would have to find a way to take her life before then.
But not now. She was already gone, but I would find a way to locate her. Or rather, once I had restored my armies, I would send another to go after her for me.
I started at the building she had used for her escape before I took flight.
"We shall meet again, Dovahkiin Fahliil."