Virusborn
He had done it. The bomb was a safe enough distance from the city and soon he would be too. Just a little bit more.
*BOOM*
No! Just a bit more time and he might make it. Just a bit more time!
*FWOOSH*
Even to him, the pain was excruciating but it didn't last long. Longer for him than most but not enough to matter in the end. As his helicopter quickly fell towards the ocean, falling apart as it did, so too did Alex.
'You better take good care of my sister Ragland.' Alex, of course, knew that Dana wasn't technically his sister but like he gave a fuck. She was more family to him than any of the infected, or rather the viral strains that created them, the viral strains he had been derived from.
As soon as he finished that thought he had lost the ability to think at all, most of his biomass simply being incinerated from the close proximity to the nuclear explosion. He sensed more than felt his decent into the ocean and he knew that not even he would comeback from this. The virus was weak to large bodies of water and he would soon dissolve into nothingness.
Into Oblivion.
"What in Oblivion is that!?" The man asking this was a Nord mage by the name of Onmund. His fellow mage, a dark elf named Brelyna, had summoned a strange looking troll. Strange in that it had two mouths.
"Quick, kill it with fire!" Cried Arngrim. The strange troll was quickly loping towards the closest living creature, which happened to be its summoner, and everyone knew what would happen if it reached her.
"J'zargo will deal with this monstrosity," said the cat-man as he pulled out a scroll.
"No, wait!" Arngrim, familiar with the scroll J'zargo was planning to use, quickly tackled him to the floor and looked up at the 'troll'. "Yol Toor Shul!"
With those three words, the universe itself caved in to his demands, not summoning fire but creating it.
"NNNGH!" With that strangled moan the troll flew backwards and into the wall behind it, dead before it hit the floor.
"*cough* *cough*. Is everyone alright?" Inquired an aging alteration instructor.
"We're all good here, Tolfdir," Arngrim answered.
"Get off of J'zargo, you oaf!" J'zargo hissed as he scratched and clawed at the Dragonborn.
"Alright, kitty-cat, don't get your fur in a bunch," Arngrim quickly got up and dusted himself off.
"Why did you stop J'zargo?" Asked the Khajiit. "Did you want all of the glory for yourself?"
"No," Arngrim replied patronizingly. "I actually wanted all of us to survive and not end up like him," he said, pointing his thumb at the squirming, burning corpse.
Wait, squirming?
"By the Nine, it's still-"
*BZZZT*
"Still what?" A smug looking high elf held his hand out as lightning crackled between his fingers.
"…Never mind," Arngrim muttered grouchily, giving Ancano a dark look.
"Hmmm… A strange specimen indeed," Tolfdir murmured to nobody in particular. "Brelyna, get Mirabelle, I'm sure the Arch-mage would love to take a look at this creature." Brelyna hurried to carry out the man's instructions. "And Ancano," he continued, turning to face the high elf. "Thank you for contribution."
"Think nothing of it, I simply did what I had to. After all, it wouldn't do if the entire college population got itself killed now, would it?"
"Quite," Tolfdir replied sullenly.
"This was a conjuration mishap, I presume?" Ancano asked.
"Yes."
"You should have had the proper procedures and protections in place," Ancano said haughtily. "This is why the Arch-mage should consult me before undertaking such dangerous tasks whilst I am still here."
"We did have the proper precautions in place, whatever went wrong wasn't any fault of the students or faculty."
"Hmph," Ancano hmphed, crossing his arms. "I'm sure. Well, regardless of your lacklustre abilities, I think I shall be overseeing the rest of the class. We can't be too careful now can we?"
"As you wish," Tolfdir allowed. "But we have only one student left to go, so I wouldn't get too comfortable." Then, turning to Phinis, he said, "Phinis, continue with your lesson. With Ancano here, I'm sure you are in safe enough hands for me to consult with the Arch-mage about that creature Brelyna summoned."
"Right. Of course." Tolfdir left, likely heading towards the Midden and Phinis turned his attention back towards his students. "So, who's left? Arngrim, if you will."
"Of course. Everyone, get ready for the greatest Dremora Lord you've ever seen." With that, Arngrim strolled up in front peers and conjured up a black and purple light into the palm of his hands. His fingers curled around it and the light grew steadily brighter as he channelled more and more power into and then, when the power reached its zenith, he thrust his arm out and the light flew from his palm and onto the floor, another light re-igniting itself in his palm.
Where the light hit the floor, a portal opened and as everyone braced themselves for what he might summon, a little pile of sludge oozed out of it.
The first to comment was Onmund. "Well, it's the first Dremora lord I've ever seen so that has to count for something, right?" He said, trying to console the underperforming Dragonborn
"Shut up Onumnd, don't patronize me," After finishing with Onmund Arngrim tuned towards Faralda. "I swear, this never happens to me."
"I'm sure," Faralda said with a smirk. "And if I ever wish to know for sure, I can just ask that housecarl of yours."
"She'll back me up," Arngrim said with a smirk of his own.
"Ahem." Faralda and Arngrim turned towards the person who interrupted them. "If you two lovebirds are done, perhaps we shall deal with that?" Ancano said, jerking his thumb towards the slime.
"Right." Arngrim clenched his hand into a fist, snuffing out the light in his palm but that did not dispel the thing he had summoned. "Uhhh…"
"Never happens, hmmm?" Faralda jibed.
"Third time's the charm?" Arngrim replied, once again calling forth the light and snuffing it out again.
"It's still there," Ancano taunted.
"Shut up! It must be some sort of demon slime," Arngrim explained.
He had no idea how close to the truth he was.
"It's moving," Onmund pointed out, cautiously making to move towards it.
"Wait," J'zargo said, bringing his arm up to stop him. "J'zargo has a bad feeling about this."
"What is there to afraid of, you ninnies. It's just slime, the worst it can do is stain your clothes." As if to prove a point Ancano sauntered up to the slime and hit it with a firebolt, likely hoping to just vaporise it.
This did not have the effect he was hoping for. Instead of leaving an empty floor and a nasty burn mark, the slime simply took the spell as if Ancano had done nothing more than toss a torch into the sea and reached up to ensnare him.
"GAAAH!" Ancano started tossing out spells like candy but it was all for nothing. The spells and screams were silenced when the slime engulfed him completely and the standers-by could do nothing but stand by and watch.
Some were silently cheering for the slime. Arngrim was not.
"Whoa, that's amazing. If all it took to shut him up was a bit of ooze, I'd have taken him to Morthal ages ago." As Arngrim broke the silence everyone else came out of their stupor.
"What was that thing?"
"What happened to Ancano?"
"Screw that guy, what'll happen to us?"
"J'zargo is going to be sick."
"Wait," Faralda said, cautiously approaching the now-writhing ooze, a ward in one hand and a frost spell in the other. "It's changing."
True to her words the ooze was changing, shifting its form into that of a vaguely humanoid shaped hand and then an arm and before anyone knew it an entire body was kneeling there, on all fours, where the ooze and Ancano had been.
The man, and they had seen that it was a man as it slowly regrew its body, pushed itself onto his feet and Alex Mercer took in his new surroundings for the first time.
Eight people were staring at him with a mixture of fear, confusion, curiosity and repulsion in their eyes. A mixture he was used to.
However, what caught his attention was not what they held in their eyes but what they were holding in their hands.
Every single one of them appeared to be holding what looked like various lights of an unknown source and origin.
Half of them actually looked like they were holding honest to goodness lightning.
Where was he?
"Where am I?" he asked, his typical deep and hoarse voice making it sound more threatening than he had probably intended.
The first to speak up was, of course, Arngrim. "Uhhh, the College of Winterhold."
"Winterhold?"
"Yeah. Winterhold. As in, y'know, Skyrim?"
"Skyrim?" Alex asked, the memories of his last meal still a little jumbled but slowly coming together. "Ahh, yes, Skyrim. The land of the Nords."
"There ya go," Arngrim said cheerfully. "Now that you're all caught up, how about answering some of our questions?" At this, Alex narrowed his eyes.
"I don't think so." He made to walk out of the room but suddenly eight different spells blasted themselves at his feet.
"That was not a request," said one of the females. A high-elf, named Faralda if his recently stolen memories were to be trusted.
Somehow narrowing his eyes further, Alex took another step forward and Faralda fired another spell at him.
"You don't quite seem to be understanding me, so I'll spell it out for you," She said as if she were speaking to a small, petulant child. "I. Am ordering you. To Stay. Where you are."
"I don't take orders from you," Alex growled.
"Whilst you remain in this college, you will."
"Then I'll just have to leave." At that Alex took off sprinting, the ancient stone floor cracking apart as his feet made contact. Everyone made to get out of his way as he leaped up and over the strange, floating orb in the centre of the room.
"Wait, don't shoot, you might damage the orb!" Someone cried from the other side.
"Dammit!" Alex didn't know who said what but it didn't matter to him. As they made their way around the orb he was already barrelling through the steel gates and effortlessly warping and twisting the metal in such a way that they wouldn't be able to open it.
After accomplishing that he turned around again and barrelled through the main doors, once again dodging fire, ice and lightning as he charged outside. Once he had made it, he threw up an arm to block some of the sharp winds and moved to slam the doors shut.
"Get out of the way!" Came the muffled voice of someone from the other side. Knowing that these people were practitioners of magic, Alex quickly looked through his memories to see if any of them would be capable of mustering the force necessary to actually force the doors open.
A name came to him a moment too late.
"Fus Roh Dah!"
Alex was blown backwards and into a statue as the doors flew open and the previously trapped mages came marching out, various lights dancing between their fingertips.
Alex kipped up and turned around, racing down the bridge, even as they fired their spells. Quickly racing down Alex once again scanned 'his' memories for a layout of the surrounding area.
And, once again, his memories came a moment too late.
In this case, it was the memories of the broken and dilapidated bridge. The harsh winds combined with the ice and snow made for an already slippery surface. Add that to the fact that, at some points there was no surface at all, it was no surprise Alex found himself falling into the ocean depths beneath him.
It was no biggie though. He just would stick his fingers into one of the stone load-bearers and…
*CRACK* *RUMBLE*
'Shit.' Alex had forgotten to take into account the fact that, as magical as the college was, the bridges support columns were a little less so. Hell they were barely there at all. As a result, when he swung his hand into the incomplete load-bearer, an entire section of the bridge collapsed and broken sections came tumbling down after him.
"That crazy bastard!" Cried Onmund. "Did he really collapse the bridge just so we wouldn't follow him?"
"By the Nine, that guy really didn't want to be followed," Arngrim said, offering his two Septims. "Perhaps you shouldn't have been so forward with him Faralda."
"That thing killed Ancano!"
"And I want to thank him for that too but I don't think I would have done it in the same way you were going to."
"And how, pray tell," Faralda said, grinding her teeth together. "Were you thinking I was going to repay him?"
"Uhhh…" Arngrim uhhhed as he tried to think of a way to dig himself out of this one. "I think I should be telling Lydia that we're going to be stuck here for a while." With that he dashed away with a "Wuld Nah Kest!" and Faralda was left yelling at thin air.
"Get back here you foul-mouthed, gutter-brained, weak-minded, little-"
"What is going on here?" Came the voice of the Savos Aren. "We felt a tremor from the Midden, what has Arngrim done now?"
"Arch-mage, what happened to you?" Asked Phinis. The dark elf was covered head to toe in blood that was quickly freezing in the harsh Winterhold weather.
"It appears that our esteemed guest Ancano is not as thorough as he would make himself out to be," Said Tolfdir, also drenched in rapidly freezing blood. "Remind me to thank him profusely for that."
The mages that had faced off against Arngrim's summoned thing all looked at each other. "Uhhh… about that…"
'What the hell have I gotten myself into this time?' Alex thought to himself as he stuck his fingers into the sheer cliff wall.
Alex had decided to climb up the cliff face rather than run up it as it minimized the risk of falling from a patch of ice or loose stones.
It also gave him some time to think and collect his bearings.
He was in a world called Nirn, more specifically, on the continent of Tamriel, in the country of Skyrim and the province of Winterhold.
Here magic was real, creatures he, or rather the people he'd consumed, had only heard about in fantasy stories were real. And there were two fucking moons. How did that even make sense?
Deciding to forgo the logistics of having two moons orbiting the planet, 'or perhaps one moon orbited the other and the primary moon orbited the planet?', Alex instead brought his mind to more pressing concerns.
Like how he would get home. Thinking with a slightly clearer head, likely thanks to the dip in the icy cold waters of Winterhold, he realised that his best chance had likely been with the very mages he had been running away from.
But they had been about to ask him questions and he knew for sure that they had seen him consume someone, Ancano the last echoes of that poor soul informed him, and he didn't think that they were interested what his favourite colour was.
It was brown.
Alex shook those thoughts out of his head. If he needed to go back to the college he could simply change his face and approach them as someone they didn't associate with the gruesome death of the Thalmor spy.
But first things first, he had to get to the top of this cliff. A feat which was going to be made much easier with the fact that he was now floating to the top.
"Hey! What the fuck!?" Alex tried flailing his arms and legs around to try and see just what the hell was going on.
"Language, young man." Alex was turned around to look face to face with an old man, Tolfdir, he recalled. "Now, I think we need to have a word, wouldn't you agree?" Despite the relative cheer in his voice, Alex knew that this old man was not merely asking.
"You're making this much more difficult than it has to be, you know," said the dark elf.
"Then why don't you make this easier and just answer my questions?" Alex retorted.
"Arch-mage, it is clear he is unwilling to co-operate. Perhaps we should hear him out," Tolfdir reasoned.
"*sigh* Very well," said Savos. Turning back to the prisoner, trapped in a special ward, he said, "Ask your questions then."
"I was summoned here through conjuration," he said. "Can you send me back?"
"If we could have, we would have done so already," Savos explained. "As it stands, we don't know how, or if, we can send you back but there is nothing to say that we can't."
"Hrmm…"
"Is that all you wanted to ask?" Alex nodded in reply.
"Well," Savos said, a little surprised at the simplicity of the request but willing to just ignore it and continue. "Then, if that's all, is it all right if I ask my questions now?" Another nearly imperceptible nod was his answer.
"Good. What are you?"
"A monster."
"What kind of monster?" Savos asked the clearly human-looking creature.
"The worst kind."
"*sigh* These aren't really the sorts of answers I was expecting," Said Savos, massaging the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger. Alex just continued to stare indifferently.
"What did you do to Ancano?"
"Killed him."
"Why?"
"To survive."
"Survive what?"
"Starvation."
"You ate him?" This time it was Tolfdir's incredulous voice that spoke up.
"Consumed."
"That's the same thing," Tolfdir said flatly.
"…"
Clearly this wasn't going anywhere anytime soon. "Look. If we tell you of a lead we may have to sending you back home, would you be a little more forthcoming?"
"You said you didn't know anything," Alex pointed out.
"I said we didn't know anything for sure," Savos rebutted. "That's different to having an educated guess."
"Show me your lead first."
"I can't."
"Why not?"
"It would require taking down this ward."
"Then do it," Alex said as if it were the simplest thing in the world.
"I'm afraid it's not that simple," Savos told Alex. "We can't be sure that you won't kill us as you did Ancano."
"I promise I won't kill you." Savos and Tolfdir exchanged glances and seemed to hold an inaudible conversation. Seeming to come to a decision the nodded and looked back at Alex.
"Very well," Savos said. "But promise us one more thing."
"What?"
"That you shall answer our questions afterwards."
Alex thought for a moment. "Fine."
"Very well," Savos said. "But stay true to your word," he warned. "Or else you will have to face us."
Alex said nothing as he stood up and walked to the edge of the ward, waiting expectantly. Savos waved his hand and the magical barrier dissipated allowing Alex to walk out. "Well?" He asked impatiently. "Are we going or what?"
Savos turned to Tolfdir and he nodded in reply to his silent message. Turning their bodies sideways in a gesture that clearly indicated that they wanted Alex to stay in front of them
"Hrmph." The three men, or rather the man, mer and monster, made their way out of the cell they had been keeping Alex and through the labyrinthine network of tunnels and passageways that made up the Midden.
"Through here," Savos said, directing Alex from behind.
"Grrrr," came the low growl of some monstrosity, hidden within the depths of the Midden.
"What was that?" Alex asked.
"A draugr, most likely," Savos replied. "Don't worry, it won't be a match for us." Alex didn't bother replying to this, already obvious, statement.
As the three made their way further into the Midden they passed by some sort of strange altar.
'The Atroncah Forge,' Alex thought. Ancano had apparently been doing his research. As the thought came to him, Alex promptly realised that he might also have other memories of the Midden, and thus, an idea of who they might be taking him to.
As he searched through his mind, he slowed down a bit, nearly to a standstill, and the man and elf slowed to match his pace. "Is something wrong? Asked Tolfdir.
"You're taking me to see the Augur of Dunlain."
"How did you know?" Tolfdir demanded more than asked. "No one outside the college should know of him." Alex didn't answer and instead walked faster and in the right direction, completely unbidden by the other two.
"Hurry up," he grunted. As Tolfdir and Savos looked at each other the both knew that it would be futile to try and pry answers out of him, so they just shrugged and followed him in silence.
Eventually, they made it to the room that housed the Augur and Alex barged in, damn near tearing the door off its hinges. "Augur! I have questions!"
"You fool!" Savos reprimanded, swatting Alex on the back of the head and immediately regretting it. "You can't just order the Augur around like that," he said, subtly massaging his aching hand.
Then a bright light sprung to life in the idle of the room.
"Greeting, Alex Mercer," it said. "I have been expecting you."
"Yeah, cut the crap," Alex said, not feeling particularly patient. "How do I get home?"
"From the city of flesh and blood
And to the hold of snow and mud
Comes a man of viral nature
To fulfil the Daedras wager
And see if he will save the world
Or devour it, as is foretold."
And with that, the light faded away. "Hey, wait! I've still got questions, you little asshole!" As Alex stood there ranting and yelling obscenities, Savos and Tolfdir discussed what the Augur had just told them.
"What could it mean, Arch-mage?" Tolfdir asked, concern heavy in his voice.
"What else could it mean, old friend?" Savos said solemnly. "We are facing an apocalypse as it is, in the face of Alduin. This man is clearly a part of that prophecy."
"But how could he be?" Tolfdir said, asking the obvious question. "Excluding their descendants, there has only ever been one Dragonborn at one time and the Dragonborn of this era is Arngrim. Unless, they are both, somehow, the Dragonborn?"
"I cannot be sure my friend but I intend to find out."
"No."
"Huh?" Savos and Tolfdir whirled around at the sound of Alex's voice.
"I'm not a Dragonborn." After all, dragons didn't even exist where he was from but these two didn't need to know that. After confirming to the two that he was, in fact, not a Dragonborn, Alex made his way out of the Midden and to the surface.
"Wait," Savos called out. Alex ignored him so he jogged to catch up. "Where do you think you're going?"
"Where do you think?" Alex asked as if he were stupid. "The giant lightbulb said that the Daedra brought me here so they can send me back."
"What about our agreement? You said you would answer our questions." Alex let out a loud sigh but continued walking.
"You have until we leave this dungeon to ask, then I'm outta here."
"What are you?" Savos asked.
"A virus."
Remembering that the Augur had said as much, Savos asked asked "What do you mean?"
"Literally."
"How can you 'literally' be a virus?" Tolfdir asked, confused.
"By invading and adversely affecting a host body."
"Is that what you do?"
"Yes. Anymore questions?" If Alex recalled correctly, most of their question consisted of 'who are you', 'what are you?', 'where are you from?' and other such nonsense. But since the Augur more or less answered those in the time they had spent with him he didn't think he had to answer them anymore.
"Just one," Savos said. "Will I have to consider you a threat to this college?" At that, a dangerous light sparked to life in Savos' eyes and Alex didn't think magic had anything to do with it.
"Not in the immediate future."
"That's not-"
"Time's up." True to his word, Alex had given them until they had left the Midden and Alex had just opened the door that led to the courtyard and upon setting foot outside a large crash resounded throughout the school.
"Dragon!" Nirya screamed in panic. A heavy gust of wind and a primal roar confirmed that, yes, a dragon had indeed landed in the courtyard of their very own college.
"Nirya, get inside, find Arngrim, hurry!" Savos ordered.
"Yes, Arch-mage," she complied, nodding and hurrying into the Hall of Attainment.
"Tolfdir!" He called, turning to face the old mage.
"One step ahead of you Arch-mage." Sure enough old Nord had already cast Ebonyflesh and equipped a ward in one hand and a lightning spell in the other.
As Savos got ready to cast his own spells, he felt more than saw a blur rush past him, accompanied by a steady cadence of cracking cobblestone and suddenly the dragon was reeling back. "Alex, what are you doing?" Savos called out.
"Dealing with this thing," he growled back. Then he leapt up, very high up and came crashing down on top of the dragon his foot lashing out to add some extra force to the impact. The dragon's head was smashed against the ground and cracks webbed out from centre of impact.
'How is he so strong?' Savos thought to himself. 'Is he using some sort of magic? Has he enchanted his clothes perhaps?' Savos hadn't felt any magic coming from him, at least none that indicated that he was actively using it, so he couldn't be sure. But how else could he be going hand-to-face with a dragon?
"Fo Krah Diin!"
"Fus Ro Da!" The dragon's shout was redirected back at it by the Dragonborn, who had come rushing out from the Hall of Attainment. Unfortunately, he had caught Alex in that Shout and sent him flying straight into the jaws of the dragon.
"Nngh!" Besides the grunt of exertion, Alex didn't appear too fazed about being eaten by a dragon, simply continuing to bash the dragon's skull in. And it actually looked like he was making some head way. The dragon's skull looked like it had a few dents in it and one of its eyes was missing, having popped like an overripe grape.
"Shit! The guy who killed Ancano!" Arngrim cried, noticing that he had unwittingly pushed him into the dragon's maw. "I'm comin' buddy!" Arngrim pulled out a giant two-handed broadsword and charged into the fray with a fierce battle cry.
"Argrim!" Tolfdir called out.
"He knows what he's doing," Savos assured him. "He is the Dragonborn, just focus on not getting in his way."
"Right," Tolfdir replied, nodding.
"Arch-mage!" Savos and Tolfdir both turned around to see Mirabelle rushing out, also casting her Mage Armour, though hers was only a Stoneflesh. "Where's Arngrim?"
"Already in the thick of it," Savos informed her. "As is the man we captured, Alex Mercer."
"What's he doing in there?" She asked inquisitively.
"Well… I'm not entirely sure, to be honest."
"Yol Tor Shul!"
"Watch who you're shouting at!" Came Alex's angry cry.
"Sorry!"
"By the Nine, how is he still alive?" Mirabelle asked, equal parts horrified and morbidly curious as the man struggled to pry open the jaws had had been caught in.
"I don't know but hopefully he can stay alive a little longer," Savos said. "So long as the dragon is still chewing him to death it can't shout so Arngrim has a bit of an advantage."
"You're fine having the dragon use him as a chew toy?" Tolfdir asked
"Meh," replied the Arch-mage with a noncommittal shrug.
"Watch out!" Cried Mirabelle, pushing the Arch-mage out of the way of an inbound Alex. "Oof!" Two bodies were sent flying across the courtyard and through one of the many windows that lined the walls.
"Mirabelle!" Savos cried out in panic, rushing to the ledge. There he saw Alex lawing his way back up the cliff face but Mirabelle was nowhere to be seen. "Where's Mirabelle?" He asked, reaching out to help pull Alex over the ledge only to have his hand slapped away.
"She fell. I couldn't catch her." This was, of course, a lie. He had consumed that lady to resupply on biomass like a fat man at a buffet.
"No," Savos whispered in shock.
"We don't have time to mourn," Alex told him. "Either pull yourself together or get out of here." And with that Alex charged back into the fray.
"R- Right, of course," Savos said, more to himself more than anything as he too turned back to the battle.
"Hey, you're still alive," Arngrim said, disproportionately chipper considering the situation he was in.
"Shut up and fight," was Alex's only reply as he shifted his arm into a blade.
"Whoa, how'd you do that?" Asked Arngrim, not stalling in his attack at all.
"Alteration," Alex explained away. It was half true. He was altering himself just not with magic. "Now shut up and fight or get out of my way."
"Yeah, funny thing about that," Arngrim said, chuckling lightly as if leading into a funny joke. "The way I fight is by talking. Or rather Shouting. Su Grah Dun!" With those three words, Arngrim's arms blurred as he hacked at the dragon's neck more times in a second than Alex cared to count. "Dammit! It's still attached!" He bemoaned, as if leaving a three inch cut in a dragon's neck was no big deal.
"Not for long," Alex said in his typical guttural voice. He then stuck his fingers right into the cut and wrapped his fingers around the vertebrae. The dragon roared in pain, not even coherent enough to Shout any words of power. Alex then proceeded to tear his hand out of the dragon's neck, taking a few bones out in the process.
The dragon's head then hung limply, the missing bones rendering it unable to properly lift its head upwards and the utter defeat it felt keeping it from continuing the fight. "Woah," Arngrim let out, ever unable to keep his mouth shut. "That was brutal." It wasn't even dead yet. Arngrim couldn't feel the, now familiar, sensation of the dragon's soul being devoured so he made his way to the dragon's front and lifted his great sword to finish it off.
However before he could, tendrils wrapped all around the dragon's length and Arngrim felt himself stepping backwards in reflex. He then looked up to see where those tendrils were coming from as he had never seen a dragon do that before.
He soon realized that the reason for that may have been because they weren't coming from the dragon. They were coming from that guy. "What in Oblivion is going on?" he asked aloud. He didn't receive an answer as the dragon was slowly encased entirely by the tendrils.
"GARGH!" Alex cried, dropping to his knees as hundreds of thousands of years of knowledge and experience coursed through his very being, as well all of the immense magic power the dragon held flooding his body, filling it to breaking point. "RARGH!"
With the savage cry of an animal in extraordinary pain, Alex let loose an innumerable amount of tendrils not caring about what they did or what they would do so long as he could expel some of this excess biomass.
A minute or so later, a minute that felt like eternity to Alex, and all of the tendrils had dropped to the ground and dissolved in the open air, as if they had never existed in the first place.
The only sign that they had were the many trenches and pockmarks they had gouged out of the courtyard and the many stains left behind.
"Talos, that was intense," Arngrim said, peeking his head out from around the statue of Shalidor, whose enchantment had allowed it to stay standing despite the fierce onslaught.
"Oh," Alex said flatly. "You're still alive."
"Try not to sound too excited," Arngrim replied all too cheerfully. He immediately sobered up, just a little, upon seeing the destruction caused in their battle and subsequent… Explosion? Outburst? Sudden-terrifying-outburst-explosion-of-fleshy-tentacles? Whatever.
Arngrim quickly remembered that the Arch-mage and Tolfdir had been out here as well and set out to look for them as Alex stayed put, kneeling in the centre the devastation. "Sooo, I have a lot of questions…" Arngrim started.
"Shut. Up."
"Buuut they can wait," Arngrim said sagely. "By the way, have you seen Tolfdir or Savos?"
"They're dead." Arngrim whirled about at that and stared at the still figure kneeling on the ground.
"How can you be sure?"
"I killed them." There was a bit of a pause as Alex stood and turned to face Arngrim, his posture making it clear that he was prepared to fight but not entire in the mood to.
"Oh," Arngrim said nonchalantly. "That's too bad." Alex quirked an eyebrow at this.
"You seem to be taking this awfully well."
"It's no big whoop," Arngrim shrugged. "I kill people all the time. Just the other week I killed a guy who worked here too and all I had to do was pay 500 Septims to Tolf…dir." Arngrim trailed off as he realised that there was now no one for him to pay. "Ah well, I guess you can just skip that."
"You're one fucked up guy, you know that?"
"Yeah I get that a lot," Arngrim chuckled weakly bringing a hand up to scratch the back of his head. "So what are you going to do now?"
"I'm gonna search for the Daedra who brought me here and do to them what I did to that dragon."
"That sounds like a plan," Arngrim said. "Want some help?"
"No."
"Okay." Arngrim handled rejection pretty well. "Hey, if we ever see each other again-"
"We won't."
"Right," Arngrim said, taking the constant rejections in stride. "But if we do, I'm gonna want answers."
"Go fuck yourself."
"You have a good one too, buddy."
And with that Arngrim and Alex went their separate ways.
Technically the first story in the Elder ScrollsXPrototype category. It bugs me that there aren't any other stories about Alex in the Elder Scrolls, I really like the idea of Alex in a fantasy world setting. Maybe I'll continue this story someday but for now it'll just be a oneshot. Hope you enjoyed.
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