Alduin roared in agony as his body disintegrated. His frantic attempts to escape his doom never reached fruition. The realm that he had claimed as his hunting grounds actively fought against him, Shor dispelling his last attempts to leave Sovngarde and escape to Nirn, where he could recover from the grievous wounds he had been dealt and prepare to destroy the insolent Dovahkiin.
He continued to voice his pain as the long-dead jul abused the power of the Thu'um – a power the pathetic mortals had no right to wield – against he, the lone master of the Thu'um. Alduin's roars degraded into a scream of pain as his ebony, spiny scales began to slip off of his massive body and disintegrate into nothingness.
His soul was laid bare for the Dovahkiin to see. Alduin – half-mad from pain and rage – almost feared that the Dovahkiin would be powerful enough to take his soul and devour it, treating Alduin the World-Eater, the Devourer of Souls, to the same fate as Alduin had consigned the denizens of Sovngarde to.
And for a moment he felt the Dovahkiin begin to siphon his soul away. His very essence began to pull away. Alduin felt fear for the first time in untold millennia. Not since he had faced Akatosh himself had the World-Eater felt fear. Pain and rage at those that had hurt him or used that abomination – the Dragonrend, the bastardized and twisted Thu'um that had driven into him the concept of mortality – yes, but never fear. Never fear.
But something infinitely more powerful than himself saved him. The link the Dovahkiin had established between the God of Destruction and small mortal was severed the moment before his divinity and being was torn away, imparting the rest upon the Dovahkiin.
Alduin roared one last time as his essence was torn away from Sovngarde, the realm of Shor gladly lending its strength to aid in his banishment. He saw one last glimpse of the triumphant Dovahkiin and the swirling, vibrant sky of Sovngarde before he was yanked away.
XX
Alduin awoke soon. He felt…what was the word for it? Weak. Like one of the puny mortals that he had hunted and ravaged since their conception.
Weakness was not a familiar concept to him. He was the First-Born of Akatosh and had been molded from the divine Et'Ada in the perfect form of the Dovah. Alduin had ravaged armies and dominated the Dov for time immemorial. Never had he been weak.
It was disturbing.
Nothing was noticeably different. He was in his form. His ebony scales had been replaced, the mortal shell concealing his divine essence once more. Nothing indicated that he was any weaker than he had been as he devoured souls in Sovngarde. Alduin was perfect once more, no longer ruined and ravaged by the spells and Thu'um of the Dovahkiin.
The World-Eater stood, teetering on unsteady limbs. His perfection was tarnished. That unnatural weakness continued to prevail over his powerful, perfectly formed body. He could stand, but could not find the strength within him to walk.
As he stood he felt the weight of his scales and body for the first time. His scales were so heavy – like the metal prisons the jul put themselves into in their fruitless attempts to protect themselves. They were no longer part of him. They were a prison now, binds that he held him to the earth as though he were one of the apes.
Alduin felt another cord of fear. His jagged, ebony scales had never weighed him down before. He hadn't even noticed their light weight – the divine strength coursing through his blood and soul had made it inconsequential.
That strength had vanished. He could feel weariness suffusing his proud body, weighing upon him like tons of stone. No longer was he the powerful god that was blessed with the strength of ten of the Dov. Alduin had been humbled through some trickery of the Dovahkiin's.
He tried to roar his fury, reaching for the Thu'um that had always been the greatest of his powers. It had never failed him, always reacting to his will and twisting reality to suit his desires.
Nothing came out but a roar. Reality did not shift and bend and break for him. A mundane roar was the result of his fury, a sound he had never made. His displeasure was voiced in the Thu'um, not the weak cries and roars of lesser Dov. Alduin's roars brought storms of fire and lightning in their wake, his growls summoned thunder, his snorts brought infernos into being.
Alduin the World-Eater was powerless. He could not move. He could not summon the power so integral to his being and history.
He was nothing. Only a spark of the divine power that fuelled him remained, leaving him a powerless shell of his former glory and majesty.
The World-Eater laid his heavy body down and reflected upon his lost power, already nostalgic for the times in which he had been able to summon the wrath of the heavens upon his meager opponents.
XX
He did not know how much time – a meaningless concept to the immortal, unchanging Dov, a mortal construct used to determine how long they had before their fragile bodies withered and died – had passed when the presence manifested itself in this forsaken plane of Aetherius or Oblivion.
But he lifted his impossibly heavy head, resisting the unfamiliar pain that came with the action. The blank white sky of the realm he was trapped in erupted into an inferno of golden, twisting flame as another entity entered Alduin's prison.
Alduin felt unfamiliar chills race up his great spine as the presence became more familiar, the great golden flame morphing and shifting into a draconic figure hundreds of time larger than even the First-Born.
The World-Eater looked away from the bared soul of Akatosh, a strange sense of shame that he did not understand welling up inside of him. His spirit struggled to escape the golden flames of the God of Time.
He recovered his courage – it was strange needing courage instead of the love of carnage and battle that had dominated his life – and looked back at the Aedra from which he had been spawned before time had begun, when Nirn was nothing more than an unstable, primal mass of rapidly mutating concepts and matter.
Akatosh had lowered himself to look the World-Eater in the eye. The Aedra's eye was several times larger than Alduin's entire body.
"You have forgotten me." Akatosh said, the words hanging in the air for a few moments before dissipating. He spoke in the past, present, and future. All were meaningless to the one from whom time was birthed.
Alduin looked away, unable to bear the power that unintentionally flowed through every word. He was weakened – reduced to little more than a jul trapped in the unyielding body of black scale and fang – and could not bear the words of the most powerful of the Aedra.
Even when he had been a true god, a true member of the Et'Ada from which he had been torn from by the Dovahkiin, he could not bear his progenitor's voice. He was a god, a spirit of great power and purpose, but he was less than a fragment of Akatosh's essence.
"You have abandoned your purpose." Akatosh stated, louder this time. The plane trembled with every word the great dragon spoke. "You have gone against your fate, instead following your own desire. Alduin, you were not created to destroy the mortals. You were created to be the herald of the end of times, to devour the world when Nirn had run its course."
Alduin did not respond to that. "What have you done to me?" He demanded. "What abomination have you turned me into?"
Akatosh stared at him with the inferno that was his slit-like pupil. Alduin snarled at the god, no longer caring about self-preservation. He would have the answer as to why he had been violated in this manner, why he had been left with nothing.
"You have received your punishment." Akatosh stated, although Alduin could feel the cold fury behind the Progenitor's words. "You were the last of the great Aedric spirits upon Mundus. Your Jill followed your example, acting as the First-Born bid. And you abused your power, misusing it and twisting your purpose to herald the destruction of Mundus in order to fulfill your every need."
"Answer my question!" Alduin roared. It echoed throughout the empty, blank plane of existence. He felt the trace of the Thu'um in his words, although it was pathetically weak. "Why have you torn my very being away from me?"
As impressive as his roar was – it would have spent the puny jul scurrying away in fear and would have cowed the most fearsome of his lieutenants – the one Akatosh returned shook the plane to its core and tore at the remaining divinity in Alduin's soul.
"Do not speak to me as though I am one of your Jill!" Akatosh roared in annoyance, his patience with the First-Born slipping. "I am your Progenitor, your Creator. You are less than the meanest of my aspects, and will remember your station. You are not amongst my favored Children anymore, Alduin."
The World-Eater turned his head away as the air around him heated up and vibrated with the words of Akatosh. He felt the shame rise up again, mixed with indignation.
"Alduin, you are not amongst the ranks of the Aedra any longer." Akatosh said in a far calmer tone. His annoyance had abated. "You desire to know the punishment for your transgressions? It is simple."
Alduin listened attentively to his Progenitor's words, despite his own fury at being spoken to as though he were a shortsighted mortal.
"The Dovahkiin absorbed much of your power." Akatosh stated in a tone that relayed to Alduin the fact that he relished this. "It is a just reward for their service. Your knowledge and mind were spared from assimilation with the Dovahkiin. You remain the World-Eater, Alduin. But until your services are required, you shall remain nothing but a shell of your former self. You remain Alduin, but you are trapped and powerless."
He roared at Akatosh again, protesting the unjust penalty. What right did the Aedra have to reject him, to make a mockery out of him? They had no right to take his power or leave him in this featureless prison. He was not simply one of the Dov. He was Alduin the World-Eater! He would not accept this!
"You should have stayed true to your purpose, Alduin." Akatosh rumbled mournfully, pitying the fallen god. "I do not enjoy your punishment, but you have brought it upon yourself. Perhaps you will be wiser when you are released to fulfill your purpose."
Alduin roared, voicing his rage and apprehension at the untold eons he would spend in this hell. Akatosh looked down upon him with his great, burning pupil with hard pity.
"Reflect upon your sins, Alduin." Akatosh said. "Do not remain as you are, petty and selfish, arrogant and blind to your own failings. Salvation lies in regret."
"You cannot leave me here." Alduin roared. "I demand that I am freed and my divinity restored."
Akatosh shook his head, leaving trails of golden flame burning in the sky. "Learn from this punishment, World-Eater. Remember who you are, who you were born to be."
Alduin weakly raised his great head and ignored the burning ache in his mortal tendons and muscles in favor of one last act of spite towards Akatosh. His courage and recklessness burned strongly as he tried to spit a blast of frost at the one that spawned him.
A slightly cold mouth – he shivered at the mundane pain, unused to feeling anything but the most grievous of wounds and sensations – was his reward.
"Remember." Akatosh said calmly as the God of Time began to fly, beating his burning wings in order to tear a hole in Alduin's hell. "Do not remain stagnant. You remain timeless, but your mind and soul is not."
He looked away from Akatosh as the great dragon dissipated in an inferno, soon leaving nothing but the blankness of the plane. Alduin didn't look back until the last remnants of Akatosh's golden, divine flame winked out of existence, leaving him alone once more.
Alduin looked around for a moment. Much to his chagrin, he found himself missing Akatosh's presence. He felt…alone. It was not a pleasant feeling, nor one that he was used to.
The World-Eater laid his massive head down upon his claws, his mortal shell thanking him as the stress of keeping his head up abated. Alduin snarled in annoyance at his own weakness before closing his eyes.
He had had everything taken from him. His divinity, his power, his Thu'um. The Aedra left nothing but his memories and his pain.
At least that was what they thought.
Alduin kept the one thing he valued most: his pride. It was wounded, he admitted, and would never be as strong as it had when he was still invincible and free, but he would keep it for the eternity he was trapped here.
The Aedra wanted him to abandon it. They wanted him to cast aside one of the last things that was his, and his alone.
He would not give it up. Alduin would not break to the Aedra's demands, even if just to spite the ones that had robbed him of his divinity.
Eternity. That was how long he would hold out for, he knew it. The concept frightened him now, as he found the infinity unthinkable. But it that was how long it took to spite those that believed themselves his betters, than he would remain strong.
Alduin growled and shifted his great mass.
They might have robbed him of his power and placed him into this empty hell, but the Aedra would not rob him of his dignity.
Eternity awaited.