Title Translation - "Understanding the Past"

In your tongue, the Word simply means 'Fire.' It is change given form. Power at its most primal. That is the true meaning of 'Yol.' Suleyk. Power. You have it, as do all dov. But power is inert without action and choice. Think of this as the fire builds in your su'um, in your breath. Su'um ahrk morah. What will you burn? What will you spare?

Power. Fire. Change. The thoughts flowed through him and filled his being as he sat in the snow. All other thoughts and worldly sensations faded away until all that remained was the Thu'um. The coldness of the snow? Gone. The tightness of the chest from the thin air? Little more than an annoyance. The solid sensation of stone and rock at this spine? A hindrance, if it was felt at all.

Kaius could feel the word resonating through his bones, permeating deep into his flesh like he immersing himself into a stream filled with the winter's snow melt. It gnawed at him, twisting through and threading its way through muscles in an all too familiar way and his grasped it with his mind, feeling the coiling strength of simple meaning.

This was the key to the Thu'um, the difference between a student and a master and dovahkiin and over the past weeks Kaius had learned the difference between knowing and understanding. He could speak the tongues of the dov, bend it to his will and use it like the sword at his hip or a tool, but there was a significant difference between using it and using it.

And so he found himself mediating, listening, feeling and seeking that understanding. Yol was power. Yol was change. Yol was…

Pain…

Unbidden, a new meaning pushed into his brain and he whimpered at its caress. Pain was something that he was all too familiar with but he concentrated, pushing aside the sensation of blades slicing though his flesh, of bones breaking, arrows and bolts punching through muscle and meat and returned to the meaning, seeking understanding instead.

He had a taste of power, power that was so tangible that he could almost reach out and grasp it. Every time he used the Thu'um he tasted it on his tongue, felt it in his soul and when the Greybeards had assembled and recognised him as Dovahsebrom; the Dragon of the North he had felt it physically. When they spoke the world stopped to listen and the power of their tongues shook the very Throat of the World itself. That was true power;not the strength of his body, not the skill of his sword arm, not his ability with magicka…

Pain…

Again unbidden, the sensation returned and this time it was with far greater force. He couldn't resist it this time and he felt the agony of his wounds once more, compounded more by the fact that one of the draconic presences within him was also reacting to the meaning. It writhed and coiled around itself and he could feel the magicka flowing through his arm, spreading out from his fingertips and wrapping protectively around him. The magicka locked into place as a physical thing, quivering, rippling and shuddering as the yol pushed down so hard onto it that blood began to drip from his nose.

It was too powerful, too mighty. The dragon's breath was swirling and rippling as a physical force and despite the sheer willpower that he pushed into the ward and despite the might of vampire lending its aid it still cracked and a sliver splintered away. No bigger than the shaft of an arrow, the tiny chink in the magical ward was enough to allow the passage of the yol… of the fire… of the pain…

The dragon's breath spurted through the tiniest of gaps in the ward and splattered about in tiny droplets as though it was a liquid… thing instead of fire. Like a geyser pressurised from the depths, or the terrible majesty of Red Mountain opening its throat and roaring, the hole's effects were immediate. The fire splattered over his chest and leg, taking to the armour and clothing like a ravenous swarm of slaughterfish and leaving nothing behind. Daedroth scales were seared away, the enchantments binding them in Nirn evaporating and boiling into nothingness. Moonstone chainlinks turned to liquid and soaked through clothes even as it burned the fabric, boiling skin and muscle and stripping the flesh away until the whiteness of bones were revealed. From chest to knee the dragonfire rippled and sprayed, forcing him to kneel smelling his burnt flesh and roasted marrow, feeling the way the metal began solidifying into his body even as it burned into steam from the heat.

If it wasn't for the rock he was sitting against, Kaius would have fallen backward and pitched himself into the snow. Instead he writhed, twisting for a moment and opening his eyes even as he began sucking in the thin mountaintop air in a vain attempt to regain control over himself. Both hands were clutching at his side and even though he could feel nothing under the layers of furs and armour he wore, there was still the residual sensation of burning flesh crawling up his side.

"Talos' balls." He swore, twisting and resting his head against the rock at his spine and trying hard not to shake. The memory of the pain would be with him for the rest of his existence, but it had been close to two hundred years since he had experienced such agony.

Nearby, the enormous being watching his reaction shifted slightly, with all the strength and power of a tectonic plate. "Your understanding is… different, Dovahkiin."

Out of the corner of his eye, Kaius watched his companion wearily and sighed loud enough to be heard over the wind whipping over the mountain. "You could say that."

"What did you feel?"

"Pain." Kaius said simply, one hand still unconsciously pressed into his side. "Agony."

Rumbling both with amusement and with his sheer size, Paarthurnax shifted over the ground with all the strength and might of a storm. His clawtips, their lengths similar to the broadsword in its scabbard on Kaius' hip sunk into the ground as the dragon came to rest a few meters in front of Kaius.

"Faaz is not something I would expect from Yol."

"Trust me, it wasn't something I was expecting either."

"Was it emotion? Or Vahrukt… Memory?"

Kaius fell silent for a moment and closed his eyes. There was a flash of light, the slight shimmering of a ward in his mind's eye before it was drowned in fire.

"A memory. Of a long time ago."

Paarthurnax shifted his weight, folding his wings back and both sets of claws under his serpentine neck. Somehow, another understanding within him allowed Kaius to simply know that this was the dragon's equivalent way of sitting cross legged like Kaius was.

"A lingrah time for you is not the same as a lingrah time for me Dovahkiin. You are old for a joor, a mortal… but then, you aren't really joor… are you?"

The chuckle from the great wyrm was so deep that it was ultrasonic, causing the snow under its enormous chest to shudder slightly. For most men and mer it would have been inaudible, impossible to hear but all too easy to feel instead. In normal beings it would have invoked involuntary feelings of dread but Kaius, with his vampiric hearing was able to hear it for what it was.

"There are days I don't really know what I am."

Shaking his head, the ancient dragon looked at Kaius with both eyes. "Have you experienced power before? True suleyk?"

"Yes. When I fed upon one of your siblings."

"Our sibling. You are dovah now whether you were born as one or not."

Nodding, Kaius took a deep breath, taking great effort to place both hands on his knees rather than keeping them pressed into his side from the memories. "Hahdrimrii was a dragon of the deep, living in the Underdark… what you would know as the Mingolt…"

Receiving a rumble of acknowledgement in return, Kaius continued, trying to keep the memory of the burns away from the pain that was attached to them. "Viconia and I had travelled back to the Underdark with the intention of defeating Lloth; the Spider Goddess but we couldn't simply face her down and hope to win. We had to remove her allies first."

"And Hahdrimrii was one of them?"

Kaius nodded again. "Yes. Her key ally. Hahdrimrii wasn't the only deep dragon affiliated with the Drow and Menzoberranzan but he was the most important. It was he who had taught Lloth how to claim the power of souls and blood to empower herself. While she was no longer truly in need of assistance from him we couldn't take the chance."

"But you slew him."

"Not before he nearly killed me."

The agony returned and Kaius couldn't help but close his eyes. The thoughts, the memories and the sensation of burning and charred flesh returned with full force and he groaned. Shifting towards the front of his mind, the draconic presence pushed the sensations further into him and he remembered.

Rich, roasted pork, bitter burnt marrow and the metallic tang of molten steel and metal caught in the back of the throat and Kaius knew that not all of the air entering his lungs was via his nose and mouth. The entire right side of his body from armpit to knee was laid bare and he struggle to walk, let alone stand with a portion of his body ruined by the fire. The ward had finally cracked but had thankfully only done so once the last dying breath of the dragon had ceased. Any sooner and he would have been nothing more than powder and dust, perhaps noting more than a shadow burned into the rocky floor.

As it was his body was ruined, his chest and abdomen roasted and significant portions of his flesh blackened and raw. Several ribs were open to the air, the fire burning through his side so deeply that a kidney had been boiled in his own melted fat and a lung had a hole between two ribs that he could suck air through. His right leg was useless and dragging and despite the agony he somehow managed to hop those few paces forward before falling flat on his face.

Less than a metre away the gigantic beast he had come to slay lay in the broken masonry and dirt of the ancient ruins. Incalculably deep in the earth and within the bounds of what he had been told was the 'Middledark', many of the abandoned and lost cities had been without inhabitants for an incalculable length of time. This ruin had been the dragon's home, and now it was going to be its tomb.

And potentially Kaius' as he rolled to his side with a scream of soul-rending agony. The burns had left him almost entirely crippled and it was only through a combination of will, and a significant amount of vampiric instinct that kept him going. Lesser men and mer would have already fallen comatose or even died from the shock, but the same corrupted will that had kept him going through the Oblivion Crisis drove him further on.

Blood, ankle deep in places flowed sluggishly around the creature as it lay and panted its last breaths away, and Kaius was sitting in a pool of it as he propped himself up against the dragon's side. Pain would flow through him as he was jostled by the ragged breaths it was sucking in, but neither of them was in any condition to do much else. They were both dying, but Hahdrimrii was beating Kaius in that particular race.

The Light of Dawn was stuck in the floor a few meters away, the peerless edge that had allowed Kaius to slice entire hunks of flesh from the dragon had also ensured that when he dropped it, it sunk to the hilt in stone as though it was butter. Where he was sitting, a massive wound was clearly visible in the dragon's side, blood pulsating in a steady stream that was slowly growing weaker.

Shifting and cracking its way to the surface the vampire took over like it had done several times over the previous decades. Jawbone split and elongated, teeth slid out of gums and tapered to points and muscles swelled with unnatural power. If the dragon felt the way that the vampire sunk its claws into its flank to haul itself along it didn't respond, having lost too much blood and suffered too much damage to react. With only one hand the vampire pulled itself upright, digging claws to the knuckle in grey reptilian flesh and dragging itself up. Even as the vampire slumped from exhaustion and weakness it managed to press its face into the open wound and latch onto a leathery vein with a distended jaw, biting down hard and beginning to feed.

Kaius was never certain how much time had passed as he fed on the dragon. Time in the Underdark had no meaning, and unlike the blood of mortals or even animals the blood of the dragon did not seem to fill his belly. He had drunk and drunk and drunk until he thought that he would burst, and yet he didn't. Somehow there had always been more space for the blood to flow and like a human sized leech or parasite he had simply hung on, bit down with his jaw and sucked the creature's life-force down.

By the time that he had finished there was nothing left. He had never been able to understand how he had managed to drink the blood from a creature dozens of times his own size or the fact that by the time he had pulled away from its desiccated husk that even the blood on the floor had disappeared as though it had never existed. All that was left of his success was the skeletal bones of the creature propping up the leathery scales and skin like a crude tent, the flesh withering and turning to dust right before his eyes.

To a vampire all blood was power, but the dragon's blood was something else entirely. It had filled him, sustained him and had even healed him to some degree. While not entirely whole and playing host to a new collection of scars that ran from armpit to knee he felt stronger, faster and more powerful than ever before.

Shaking the thoughts away, Kaius sat uncomfortably in the snow, trying not to meet Paarthurnax's gaze.

"You have tasted yol; tasted true suleyk. In a way you were always dovah, or at least understood what it is to be one." He again shifted his enormous weight and lowered his head down almost to the same height as Kaius. "You have experienced lifetimes of pain. It weighs up on you and you are troubled as a result."

Kaius couldn't help but laugh, smiling bitterly to the giant creature before him. "Troubled? I'm always troubled."

"Geh, but the faaz you feel is not of your mortal injuries, but injuries to your zii… Your spirit. These wounds do not heal as others do."

"They are also a lot more recent." Kaius replied simply.