There's never two of anything.
"And so a sentence must be passed. For your crimes and your humiliation of the gods, my son, you will be banished to the beyond, powerless and stripped of your Thu'um." At the order of this powerful resounding voice, the stage of judgement that the black-scaled dragon stood on begun to tremble erratically. His tattered burned wings, riddled with mortal arrows, shivering in fear, the one being judged, a black scaled dragon, watched as the ground he was standing on began to disappear bit by bit.
Eventually he found himself standing on a nothing more than a piece of land no larger than his body and its foundation narrowed further down, ending in an extremely thin tip precariously balancing below on a spike. He desperately tried to curl up his massive body in a desperate attempt to stay on the piece of land. Blood from his multiple wounds flowed down in streams and fell over the edge, descending into what looked like a bottomless pit, filled with murderous black. For a moment, the dragon looked over the edge and he witnessed the dark pit slowly rising towards him and realised that in reality, the land he was standing on was beginning to descend into the pit, intending to bring him down as well. To escape that fate, the dragon begun to beat his wings to fly, only to be stopped by excrutiating bolts of plasma just wrecking through his nerves.
"ARGGHHHHH!" With incredible torturous pain, the dragon felt his wings began to burn away flake by flake. His night-black eyes widened in shock when his whole body followed suit, much like his dragon comrades when they are destroyed by the Dragonborn. However, unlike them, his body was not truly disintegrating into fleshless bones. It was reforming itself. In the midst of the panic-induced confusion, the black dragon stumbled to the edge and with a horrified roar, he fell into the darkness.
And begun his eternal descent.
At the way the fall was going, it felt like he was to fall for an eternity or two. His body spinning wildly and his voice screaming in its deep bass, the dense murk around him passed by in wispy shrieking globes, as the air smacked against his glowing weak skin. His increasingly smaller claws reaching out anywhere they could reach, the desperate dragon tried to find something to grab onto. There was nothing. Nothing in this infernal pit of screaming shadows.
As he plummeted down, he realized that he was now feeling less heavier. Glancing at his body, he immediately realized, with much appal, that it was beginning to shrink. He could even hear the sickening cracks of moving bones as his dragon form changed shape. "No….no…..no...NO!" The pain now reaching numbing levels, the transforming dragon gasped for air as he felt his strength ebbing away. His wings flapped in a second desperate try to take flight but soon they too were swallowed in the transforming glow. Even his voice, as it cried in failing defiance, was losing its draconic deepness, becoming more high-pitched.
This is it. He had ventured forth to bring matters into his own hands. And now look what he gets in return. Closing his eyes, the once-a-dragon ended his useless attempts to fly and allowed his transforming body to go limp. "Damn it…" He lamented in sad anger. "Damn it! DAMN ITTTTT!"
As he kept on cursing and lamenting on his failure, the endless fall through the midnight air continued on and on. And ended.
"OOOOFFFFFFF!" As his body finally hit ground for the first time in what had felt like a billion years or so, the wind was knocked out of him by the massive impact. His muscles aching like crap and his heart beating as if it was on steroids, he struggled to get up in the crater that his meteor of a falling body had created in the sand. Said sand was also in the air, blurring his vision in a stinging mist of airborne grains. Trying to get out, he tried to flap his wings. "What?" Instead of the familiar draft of gales and the feel of flight, he felt the unusual wild movement of stubs - arms. And when he tried to get to his feet, he felt unable to support himself from his usual bent-knee position. And when he tried to get into his main four-legged position, his spine refuse to comply and he was forced to straighten his back. In fact, his legs had now become longer in proportion with his body. What has happened to him?
As he looked at his hands, the usual small black palm with large fingers that had skin between them for flight were now replaced by pale palms with simple stubby fingers, much smaller compared to his original hands. And his feet, instead of the scaley sharp claws that has assisted him time and again in battle, were ugly mammal feet, with atrocious nails that had replaced his talons that had scooped up a warrior many a times. He found himself having a pale smooth chest that had none of his black mighty scales, just like the rest of his body.
As he flexed his new fingers, a motion unusual to him, realization came and disbelief and agony washed over him.
He was human.
As his mind went over everything that had happened, disbelief turned into anger and agony brought forth rage. "DAMN YOU, DOVAHKIN!" He roared towards the sky and beyond but for once, they didn't respond to him. His shout, his Thu'um, was gone too.
"Shit!" His new smallish legs gave way and he fell onto the ground, tears for the first time forming in his eyes, falling down his now awkward and unnaturally smooth face. As they trailed over a scar of battle on his left chin, he felt a sting of pain and once again was devastated by this new vulnerability. There were no scales, shouts, powers, strength, nothing to protect himself with.
Had he continued on like this, he could have drowned in a sea of self-pity. However, just as he was on the berge of breaking down, the ex-dragon remembered who he is.
Alduin, first-born of Akatosh. Skyrim God of Time. Nordic God of Destruction. Black Leader of the Dragons. World Eater.
Bearing all those names on his back, Alduin realised that someone like him should not give up so easily. To give up now was to reject his god status and all those names. Instead, he must stand back up onto his own unfortunately two feet and get back. So he can't. Just. Give. Up.
At this fervent mental reminder, he reprimanded himself for nearly lying down to whine. Getting up slowly, he began to wipe away the tears, a task much easier with his new ungraceful arms. "I swear!" He shouted at the sky again. "I will get back up there, Dad! Even if I had to claw my way up!"
Filled with this new determination, the black dragon of Time, known as Alduin, looked to the distance. A large city was nearby. "Whiterun? Solitude? Riften?" Alduin asked himself as he began to trudge his way expectantly to the city. But as he got closer, he realized almost immediately that he wasn't even in Skyrim, nor was he in Tamriel.
Nor was he in Nirn.
It was a city, no doubt about it. But one he had never known before. It was a city that followed a cone pattern, with its most important building at the highest point. A long flight of stairs led up to it and Alduin looked more closely at the top-most building. It was huge, far bigger than any stronghold that he has seen before. Most distinctive of all, the front of that building was shaped in a large skull. The skull was flanked by two others and two giant lit candle that seemed to have been there for generations, yet remaining completely unburned by the orange flames that stood timelessly on their tips.
Right behind these skulls was a castle like structure, which was for some reason perfectly symmetrical. "What in Chaos…..?" Alduin looked up to the sky, which is bluer than any sky he has ever seen in Skyrim. Even the sun is different. Unlike the normal fiery fireball he knew, the sun had a distinct star-shape and was fitted with eyes and a mouth that seemed to be mocking him. "Go away!" He shouted at it but to no avail. His Thu'um was gone. That was a fact.
"You got to be kidding me…" Alduin sighed as he began to sweat. The temperature here was much warmer than in Skyrim, where there were mountains of ice and snow. Here, he was in a vast desert.
As he neared the city, he saw a skeleton nearby. "Mind if I take that?" Alduin looted the skeleton of its belongings, desperately needing some clothes to cover his naked body. Wearing the clothes, a white shirt in a black trench coat and a matching jeans, Alduin felt the fabric scratch against his new sensitive mortal skin. "Damn human senses…" He glanced towards the now bare skeleton and found an unusual weapon inside its hands.
Whatever the thing was, it had the shape of the English letter L and at the right angle it had a small extension within a small ring, just nice that his finger can rest on it. He looked over it and noticed a little hole at the end of the long-part of the L. In fact, it was extremely similar to what the particular mortals known as the Dawnguard refer to as a crossbow. considerably smaller and it didn't have the usual string-and-bow attachment to it. Furthermore, instead of the usual hardwood most crossbows were made of, this one, crossbow or not, was entirely made out of metal. He grabbed the top of the weapon and he could pull it back. "Mortals these days come up with pathetic-looking weapons….." He groaned as he put it in a unusual-shaped pouch that came with the clothes. The pouch surprisingly had holes and its inner shape was identical to the weapon. Little did he know what he had was a handgun and its holster.
"Now that looks interesting…." His eyes noticed a glowing bloody red orb that floated just above the skeleton. It had a moving flame-like aura that flowed somewhat like a seaweed. "What are you?" Alduin murmured to the orb as he bent down to take it. Grabbing the fist-sized sphere, Alduin admired the orb's unusual aura for a few short moments before stuffing it into his pocket. Realizing he was taking too much time under the laughing desert sun, Alduin hurried on as he continued towards the city.
After what had seemed to be a very long trek through a merciless desert, Alduin finally found himself at what seems to be a long road that was supported by large concrete archs as the road surprisingly rose up from the ground like a bridge and led to the city's main entrance, which was also decorated by menacing skulls. Taking his steps up what he could not identify as a highway, Alduin noted the unusual flatness of the black-coloured rock -tar- beneath his feet, as well as the weird white stripes that lined the road -street signs. Where the hell is he?
It did not help his confusion when a sudden loud blare sounded behind him and Alduin turned around only to quickly dodge to the right and out of the way of a metallic beast. It was the most artificial thing he had ever seen, running on one pair of rimmed wheels that were attached beneath a large metallic frame that pulled along a massive container, which in turn had three pairs of similar wheels. In truth, when he first saw the wheels, the first thing he thought was Nirn's horse-carriages, but there was no way horse-carriages were made out of pure-metal, were at least 4 metres high, had a giant metal face with a wide glass forehead and small glass eyes and finally were not even using horses in the first place. What in Nirn is that thing? Of course, what Alduin saw was what most of us could be able to identify as a container truck.
"Don't stand in the middle of the road!" Alduin's onyx black eyes widened even further, at the sudden appearance of a mortal human popping out from one of the windows at the side of that behemoth. What was even stranger was when the human suddenly showed his middle finger to him as the truck drove off ahead to the city entrance. Somehow, that rude mortal had probably meant to insult him even more, but Alduin simply could not understand how showing off one's middle finger meant an insult. Most probably, that man was just simply a coward to show such a meaningless gesture. If that man wanted a fight, he should have just get off that clumsy thing of his and come at him. Instead, like every other human, that ruffian was too timid to brawl. Shaking his head with a mocking chuckle at mortal weakness, Alduin decided to ignore the coward's warning and kept on walking in the middle of the road.
It did not take long for Alduin to enter the city as he simply waltzed past the entrance checkpoint in the shadows cast by the inside of the gargantuan skull that was now over his head, posing as a roof over the checkpoints. In a major stroke of luck that Alduin was not aware of, his clothes blended seamlessly into the shadows like as if they belonged in there. As a result, the young man was nigh invisible within the darkness and hence the officers that manned the station, who worked tirelessly between checking passports to scanning vehicles, completely missed the black-clothed boy that brashly bypassed the automatic barrier. By the time any of them thought he saw something, Alduin had long entered into the entrance square that then branched into many other directions into a labyrinthine mess of paths that would comb through every bend of the city. Thankfully though, the path just straight ahead of him and leading directly to the city's centre, already in view, led straight towards a wide flight of many stairs that led up towards the building at the top, his main destination. Grudgingly weaving his way through the throngs of people passing through the area. In his single-mindedness, Alduin paid very little to the Victorian-styled buildings, neither did he bother to check why humans around him seems to be having an unusual fashion sense. Instead, he simply focused entirely on the path ahead and mindlessly began to follow it.
But as he walked and walked, Alduin begin to feel something strange. It was poking in the back of his mind ever since he had entered the city and as he got deeper, the unusual sensation intensified. It was as if he was supposed to be expecting something from human cities. And that something was missing from this particular city. Something he had thought was typical of human cities. There was no stench.
In Skyrim, when he visited the cities, each would be filled to the brim with the stench of conflict, betrayal, destruction and ignorance. It was part of the ridiculous human nature to always bury themselves into such things and refuse most stubbornly to pull themselves out. It made Alduin mad to ever get close to a single human hold. But here...here was different. Indeed these are most definitely humans, with their always clunky body shapes and ungainly posture. Yet as these mortals walked by to and fro, their faces were unusually fresh, free of the dirt that mired the faces of those at Nirn, and the sword-wielding glares of hostility and conflict seem almost non-existent here. Some even had smiles that might never end and others were laughing as they chatted away with what most incredibly seemed to be their friends.
"Impossible…." Alduin muttered under his held breath. Humans, mortals, are actually not fighting each other? While of course, humans don't usually fight each other outright in public unless there is war, but there were hints that this was not to the case. Instead, it seemed more like the mortals seem to have found a state of cooperation and cohesion. But once again, Alduin could not believe that. Cooperation? Cohesion? Surely something as dreadful as mankind could never ever excel in diplomacy. Maybe his transformation has made him lose that sense. Now that probably made more sense. "Calm down." Alduin murmured to himself in a low voice. "I'm in a different world, in a different body, in different circumstances. Of course, things will get funny." Assured, Alduin decided to ignore anything else as he continued towards his goal.
Then a girl's wrathful voice rang through the air.
"SOULLL!" All of a sudden, the shattering of glass resounded above Alduin, much to his shock. Curious, Alduin instinctively looked up at the source noise overhead, just as a shadow was being cast over him. "Wha..?"
Bang! In a single instant, Alduin found his vision filled with the dirty ground as he got body-slammed by a white-haired boy with unusually sharp teeth falling from above. This mortal was dressed in what Alduin could probably guess as sleepwear. "Urgh…..?" He moaned as the boy called Soul quickly got up and began to run away in the opposite direction Alduin had intended to go to. At the same time, Alduin remain prone while glass fragments from the window the mortal had jumped through scattered around him.
"Hey! Wait, damn it!" he called angrily to the boy but once he said that, he was run over into a cloud of dust by a roaring and seriously angry girl. She had her ashen brown hair tied in two small horse tails and she was dressed in a chef's apron over what looked like a uniform. Alduin watched from the ground, his body now aching from the stampede, as the girl furiously chased down the boy, brandishing something in her hands. "Is that…..a book…..?" Without any more time to think, Alduin's eyes widened at another shadow being cast over them
"YAHOOO!"Out of nowhere, Alduin's head got flattened into the ground again by a thick black boot. As he looked up with a shaking painful headache, he saw the girl being followed by an energetic laughing boy with blue spikey hair. Apparently a ninja, for he has wearing a black ninja top along with baggy white pants. "Curse you…" he moaned.
"Sorry sir…." Alduin was then taken by surprise as a fairly tall lady apologized to him while she ran past, this time chasing the young ninja speeding away. She had her black hair in a long single pony-tail and also seemed to follow the boy's dress-style, being in a brown kunoichi uniform. Before he could shout at them at all though, Alduin was filled with shock when he felt something impact his stomach.
"You are messing up the SYMMETRY of the road!" This time, Alduin, instead of getting stepped on, was kicked away by a enraged boy in a black tux. In his blurry spinning vision, all Alduin could really notice about the boy was that his hairstyle was unusual with three white bands on the left side of his contrasting black hair. "Ahahahaha!" "Geez, Kid. You could have been a bit more gentle." Mid-flight, Aldous spotted two girls in the same clothes. Red sleeveless sweater and a cowboy gig, along with a cow boy hat. One, who was laughing, had blue short-pants and blonde shoulder-length hair. The other, staring at the kicking boy with disapproval and arms folded together, had blue tight jeans and brown long hair that reached her shoulders and behind her back.
"This…world….is…unreal…." Alduin thought as he shot up into the air. After a brief moment of nostalgic air-time, reminding him much of his flight through Skyrim air as a dragon, the black-haired man landed surprisingly right where he wanted to be. The very doorstep of the large skull building. Whether it was a blessing in disguise or just simply a case of blessed with suck, Alduin did not care. Barely able to keep himself conscious and his muscles screaming at him in horrendous pain, Alduin tried to pull himself towards the building. But when a third and much larger shadow cast over his entire trembling body, Alduin stopped in horror.
"Now what do we have here?" A childish-sounding voice. Is it a kid?
"What?" Alduin's quivering head turned up for a look and then he gawked. Nope, it was the freakiest-looking person in the world.
The being was completely black, as if his entire body was simply constituted of black robes. Even worse, Alduin could swear in his fuzzy vision, the being's body-shape was totally a triangle, with the being standing on what seemed to be one small foot. As for his face, it was a contrastingly white mask in the shape of a skull. A very kiddy-looking skull-mask.
"Wazzup~!"
"Uh…" His slackening jaw dropping to the ground, Alduin gazed on in utter astonishment before proceeding to faint. Where the hell is he again?