Chapter I:

-''Vernhelm''-

-Vernhelm, Skyrim-

-18 May 2016-

-1600 Hours-

The cold, crisp air smelled freshly of pine as a mare, as black as night, trotted across the winding dirt road through the surrounding, icy taiga. A faint snow drifted lazily from the heavens with little wind to blow it around, and the silence in the world was calm and serene. In the cloudy skies above, the sun made its slow descent into the horizon, casting the mountainous land before the horseman, clad in a dark blue cloak with the hood pulled over his head, in a soft, golden glow. Upon emerging from the pine forest, the horseman briefly stopped to observe his surroundings, spying rolling foothills stretching for miles and miles ahead, with the silhouettes of dozens of gray peaks lining the horizon. At the bottom of the hill, he could see his destination, a small settlement enclosed by walls crafted from sharpened logs half-buried into the ground. From here could see countless bodies moving around, constructing new buildings, or new towers to encircle the perimeter and protect the walls from the deadly wild. Snapping his reins, the horseman took off down the hill, followed by a small group of people tailed by a second horseman sitting upon a mottled brown stallion. This second horseman was taller, a teenage boy with bright, brown eyes, long, brown hair down to his shoulders, and finely tanned skin. He wore a hardened leather tunic over a dingy white undershirt, with hardened leather pants and dented, battle-worn greaves fashioned from hand-forged steel. At his waist upon a hand-made belt lay a leather sheathe, with the black leather-wrapped hilt and crystalline blue pommel of a sword jutting out from within. The boy's eyes scanned the horizon fiercely, and he shook his head to loose the snow from his hair, keeping close watch over the group he was guarding.

Arriving at the gates, the leading horseman raised a white, furry, goat-like paw in greeting towards the armored guards patrolling the towers to either side of the wooden gate, and without so much as a single word, the gate itself slowly opened to reveal. Once inside the compound, the first horseman lowered his hood, revealing a small child with a white-furred, goat-like face, tiny, demonic horns upon his head, bright, innocent, almost glowing orange eyes, and two floppy ears that slapped his cheeks as he moved. The boy guided his mare to the stable, hopping down from his mount and patting the creature's flank tenderly before slipping back out into the central plaza of the compound. The second horseman did likewise, patting the goat boy affectionately on the back and staring over the events going on past them. Armored knights and guards took turns sparring or batting towards straw dummies, with a few archers near the back of the plaza testing their skill against bales of hay upon which targets had been crudely painted upon. "So, Zaz," the second, human boy began, "Where did your dad want us to take the rescued soldiers?"

The goat boy, named Azazel after the goat demon of Biblical lore but preferring to go by 'Zaz' due to evil stigma surrounding his full name, replied in a distracted tone, "I'm not sure, Nick...he didn't say."

Nicholas Swiftsword V, not a stranger to these medieval lands, only sighed in exasperation and waved for the newly-rescued prisoners to follow him towards the large house upon the hill near the back of the settlement, the home of the compound's founder and adopted father of Azazel. The goat boy himself began to navigate his way through the crowd, passing into the market district and scanning for any familiar faces. At last he saw Terrias, a Pokemon,called a servine, who was part of his father's army, currently training a small group of new recruits.

"Terrias!" Azazel called, moving his way through the group to where the servine was standing.

His attention attracted, Terrias excused himself and walked towards Azazel, bracing himself as the goat boy leaped into his arms and hugged him, "You're back! Alex was getting worried."

"We ran into some difficulties...nothing that Nick and I couldn't handle though."

"Did you get found out by Vergil's forces?"

"No, but Filios Diaboli is still crawling all over New Alexandria...and it only seems to be getting worse."

"Shit..." Terrias breathed, "So it's probably a bad idea to try launching a counterattack to take the city back, huh?"

"Unfortunately..." then, "Hey, have you seen daddy?"

"Last I saw him, he Avery, Kira, and Eli went out to go hunt...they should be back before dark."

"How's mama?"

"She's doing well enough..." the servine replied, "Haven't checked up on her recently though."

Great Commander Alex Vaughn of the Terminator Militia laid prone in a small dug out beneath a bush, peering out through the wall of snow around him at his target up ahead. An elk casually strolled about, feasting from the frozen grass. With a smirk, the Commander adjusted his position, reaching to grab his hand-crafted bow and nock a black-feathered, flint arrow from the hard leather quiver laying beside him. He blew the long, shoulder-length dark brown hair out of his cold, blue, killer's eyes, closing one to get a rough aim at his target. When at last he had it lined up, he released the tension on his bow, listening to the whistle of his homemade arrow rocket forward. It whizzed past the elk, scattering the beast, and with a swear, the Commander crawled out of his foxhole, raising the hood of his black bear-fur cloak and chasing and chasing after the creature, withdrawing his spear from its sheathe around his back. He took aim with the weapon, crafted from fine, cherry-stained oak, with an obsidian head, thick enough to survive impact with objects but thin enough to cut through anything with relative ease, and tied in place with a piece of hand-woven red thread. Two sleek black feathers poked through the thread, the weapon being a gift from his friend, a harpy named Kira.

As he neared the beast he was pursuing, he heard the thunk of a crossbow and a bolt tore through the back of the creature's head, sending it down. Bearing his teeth, white squares shining from beneath his goatee, the twenty-three year old swore, "For fuck's sake! ELI! That was my kill!"

"Sorry, Commander," Elijah Blake—the only other human, aside from Alex, in the predominantly animalian Alpha Company of the Terminator Militia—replied, stepping out of the treeline, "That's what you get for waiting so long," and he smirked, "By the way, you're arrow's in that tree...might wanna watch where you're aiming next time, almost took my head off!" and the man, roughly mid-to-late thirties, average height and build, with black hair plastered against his head by sweat, brown, almond-shaped eyes, a five o'clock shadow walked towards his kill, replacing his crossbow at the holster on his waist and tearing the bolt free, readying the kill for transport. He wore a fur coat, leather pants, combat boots, and a cross necklace around his neck, with various tools for hunting at his waist, and talked in a soft southern drawl.

Alex walked over to the tree Eli had pointed him to, tearing his arrow free and examining the head to ensure it was still intact. Sliding it back into his quiver, Eli called to him, "Y'know, if you want to learn how to use a bow and arrow, all you gotta do is ask."

The Commander said nothing, ignoring him and walking deeper into the taiga. He next fell upon Kira, the harpy herself dragging three freshly-killed bucks across the snow upon a crudely-made sled. The harpy was a little taller than Alex's average height, wearing little more than crude leather clothes to cover herself. She had obsidian-black, feathered wings, wild, fire-red hair, light brown skin, and fierce, brown eyes. Only her stomach, chest, face, lower legs and arms were human in appearance, the rest of her was covered in those obsidian feathers and clearly avian in appearing, although she looked less like an amalgamation of man and bird, but an evolutionary achievement. "You gonna help, dumbass, or you just gonna stand around staring?"

Alex broke from his trance with a shake of the head, jogging over to her and taking one of the reins, helping her drag the sled uphill, "Sorry, just not used to seeing you in something other than that flimsy cloth bra and loin cloth."

"It's cold as hell out here, you really think I'm gonna walk around, bare-ass naked in this shit? I'll start doing that when you run around out here in nothing but your birthday suit!"

"Love you, too."

"No you don't, don't lie."

"I seem to recall we're mates so...gotta be some kinda love in there, right?"

"Yeah...but you didn't really have a choice..."

"Point is?"

She shrugged, "Okay, you win, dumbass. Let's just get this shit back to Vernhelm before it gets any darker. Need to unload and come back here, causes three bucks ain't gonna feed the whole settlement."

"Especially considering Zaz and Nick were supposed to come back with those prisoners..." Alex frowned, "I really hope they got Zinnia..." and he sighed at memory of the young woman and old friend he had to leave behind when the multiversal Vergil, a borderline eldritch abomination, older than time itself, that had laid siege to the Terminator capital of New Alexandria, Montana over six months earlier.

"Sure she's fine, Alex."

"Yeah...we'll see..." and he grinned, "Aww...you didn't call me 'dumbass' that time."

"Fuck you."

"I thought we agreed we weren't doing that again?"

She rolled her eyes, "Jeez, you're an asshole."

"Yeah? What's new...if you ain't used to that now, might wanna get on that," then, "So where's your girlfriend at? Haven't seen her."

"First off, fuck you, she's not my girlfriend, she's just a friend, second of all, I have no idea where Avery's at."

Alex chuckled, "Jesus, why do you get so bitchy over being called Avery's girlfriend?"

"Cause she's the bitchiest harpy I've ever met, for one."

"Yet you're still besties."

"Yeah, well...I've learned to tolerate it."

Just as the skies darkened to a deep indigo, the hunting party arrived at the gates of Vernhelm, where after a brief exchange with the guards, they were allowed entrance into the fortified settlement. "Right, thanks for the help, dumbass," Kira replied, taking a break to catch her breath, "I'm gonna go see to it that our kills go to the mess hall, then I'm heading back out there, see if I can bag anything else before dark."

"You kidding? It's gonna be dark in like, half an hour at most!"

"Yeah? That's still enough time for me to track and kill, at the very least, a few rabbits or foxes. 'Sides, I'm not scared of the dark like you," and she grinned widely.

"I ain't scared of the dark...dark's my friend. I'm just scared of the shit that runs around in the untamed wilderness after the sun goes down. We're in the middle of unsettled territory, it's dangerous outside these walls."

"I can hold my own in a fight...I mean, I've kicked your ass, haven't I?"

"Cept at the Proving."

"Only cause I let you win, now shut up and go check on your dolphin, like I know you want to do."

"Yo, Alex!" Terrias began, running up to the Commander.

"What's up?"

"Zaz was looking for you, he's checking up on Ruby."

"Will do..." then he halted the servine as the creature was about to run off again, "Hey, Terrias...did you see Zinnia in the rescue party?"

The Pokemon shook his head, "No, I asked about that and they said that they couldn't find her. They did get Fox but...that's about it: Heinrich, Aphrodite, Bleu, and Zinnia are still who the hell knows where."

"Swear to fucking God, if Vergil so much as lays a hand on her!"

"Chill out, Alex, you act like you care about her or something..."

The Commander narrowed his eyes at the servine, "Shut up, Terrias."

"Hey, don't shoot the messenger, man. I'm just telling you what I was told. You want details? Go ask Zaz or Nick."

"Well...thanks anyway."

"No problem."

After seeing the Pokemon back to his hut at the edge of the settlement's plaza, Alex turned his attentions to his longhouse at the top of the hill near the back of Vernhelm, briskly running up the stone steps until he reached his home. Letting himself into the main room, he was greeted by a hot fire burning brightly in the pit within the center of the room, and the smell of food. Azazel, having traded his cloak for a clean, blue t-shirt and shorts, was tending to a pot of soup he was cooking on the fire. Upon seeing the Commander back home, and as Alex took off his cloak to hang and dry by the door, Zaz excitedly ran up to him, leaping into Alex's arms and hugging his adopted father, "Daddy! You're back!"

Alex chuckled, "Yeah, I'm home, finally. Glad to see you made it back...I was getting worried about you..." and he rustled the goat boy's furry head.

"Well...we had to be a little more careful this time around..." then Azazel frowned, "We...we couldn't find Zinnia, I'm sorry."

"That's fine..." the Commander sighed, "I just hope she's okay."

"I'm sure she is! She's tough! We did find Doctor Fox though! He's checking up on mama."

"How's mama doing?"

"She's got a cold but she promises that the baby is okay..." then Azazel's face adopted a stricken look, and he bore his fangs in fear, "I'm still kinda worried about that baby...if my real dad comes back...I'm afraid he'll try to hurt me...to hurt us...again."

"I'm sure it'll be fine," Alex replied, "Gabriel promised that Deitus' soul is purified now, so that baby should be safe."

"Well...you might want to keep Pierre away from him...Piermont thinks mama should abort the baby..."

"You don't mind him..." Alex replied sternly, "He won't do anything...if he does, I'll put a bullet between his eyes."

"Well...soup is almost ready so...I hope you don't mind, I went through the garden earlier...picked a lot of fresh vegetables and stole one of Kira's rabbits. I'm not sure how it'll taste but...I hope it's good."

"I'm sure it'll be fine," Alex replied, kissing the boy's forehead and watching as Azazel ran off back to his post. With a sigh, the Commander entered the house's north wing, to the left of the front door, spying Ruby herself laying in the shallows of a small, heated pool they had dug into the ground.

Upon entering the room, Alex saw Doctor Randall Fox sitting in a chair by the pool, dozing. He was a man of mid-to-late thirties, with thinning black hair, a face rounding with age, and dressed in his classic t-shirt, jeans, and unbuttoned lab coat, only now dust and grimy, appearing as if it hadn't been cleaned in weeks. He was born to an American mother and a Scottish father, having emigrated to the United States at a young age, so that no trace of his accent remained. Although he had a PhD in psychology, his hobby was researching biology and animal anatomy—both real and mythical—and as such served as Alpha Company's primary physician. Smiling widely towards the sleeping doctor, Alex quickly undressed and dove into the pool, joining his mate in the water. Ruby happily swam to her human lover, nuzzling and rubbing herself against him affectionately, and Alex kissed the top of her head, "How are you feeling, Ruby?"

She shrugged, "I've been better...I wish I knew pregnancy made me so sick...I would have reconsidered."

The Commander gently nudged her onto her back, affectionately rubbing and kissing her distended belly, "Everything's fine?"

"Fox says that it is, from what he knows without technology anyway."

"Well that's good to hear..." then, "Has Piermont been giving you trouble?"

"Haven't seen him...glad I haven't, too...he really had me scared for awhile there, talking about how I should kill the baby before it's born."

"Pierre's...got some problems going on, don't worry about him."

"Yeah...easier said than done..." and Alex gently rubbed the dolphin cow's sleek, gray body, paying special attention to the base of her dorsal fin—her favorite spot to be scratched. She squeaked in elation at the contact, and he responded by kissing her head and snout once again. After several moments of silence, she sighed, "I really hope that Gabriel was right...that Deitus' soul is pure...I don't want to give birth to that monster and force us to have to find a way to kill him again."

"I don't see why he would lie. Gabriel seems like an ass but...why would a fucking archangel lie?"

"He seemed really adamant to get us to kill Deitus so he could be reborn...I can't help but feel that the angels don't care about us, they just care about reuniting Messorem's Old Regime so that we can bring about the apocalypse...as if Armageddon needed us anyway...everywhere I look outside it's just...more Beams."

"Everything will be fine, Ruby...don't worry."

Just then, Azazel trotted into the room, humming a tune to himself, "Mama! Daddy! Supper's ready!"

At his exclamation, Fox awoke from his slumber with a jolt, stretching and blinking away the sleep, "Oh! Alex! Hi!"

"What's up, Fox?"

"Better now that I don't have that demonic creep looking over my shoulder 24/7..." and the doctor leaned forward, rubbing his face, "Oi...I feel like shit."

"I don't blame you," Alex chuckled, "I trust you're taking care of my little gemstone here," and Ruby squeaked happily at the pet name.

"Oh yeah...she's fine. Although...how the bloody fuck did you manage to get a dolphin pregnant?"

"It's...a long story, Fox," the Commander sighed, "Please don't ask me to explain it, it won't make any sense to you."

"Okay then..." he sniffed the air, "What's cooking?"

"Zaz made supper for us," Alex replied.

"That's sweet! Glad someone in the family knows how to cook."

"Screw you, Fox," Alex replied with a grin, and he hugged the aging doctor, "But it's good to see you safe and out of harm's way."

"Yeah...well Vergil hasn't necessarily been too terribly cruel to us. We rarely ever see him, honestly. He usually sends his little demon friends to do all the work while he does...whatever it is he does up in that floating castle," then, "So, it looks like you guys are pretty well-off right now."

"Yeah, we've been busting our asses the past few months building ourselves this little sanctuary from the ground up. Been a ride and we're still not done. Having to share houses because we don't have a home for everybody yet."

"Made a lot of progress for so little time you've been working on it. Especially since we're in the middle of the freaking Gothics, so I doubt there's access to pre-processed building materials."

"Nope, had to make everything ourselves: chop down our own trees, quarry our own rock...like I said, it's been a lot of hard work, but damn I'm proud of our little home here. Plus, we're largely safe from outside threat. All we really have to worry about is the occasional bandit or raider, but they never get past our perimeter walls, and we have more than enough guards patrolling everything...Ulfric's been good to us with soldiers and trade."

"I'd hope so...you boys practically won that civil war for him."

"Fair point."

"Now if you'll excuse me, I'm starving!" and Fox stood up, groaning as he popped his back and vanished into the main room.

"Hey, Alex, mine giving me a hand?" Ruby asked, and the Commander helped her out of the pool and onto her tail flukes. She took a few uneasy steps forward and struggled to stand upright, squeaking in surprise when she lost her balance and fell to the ground.

"Not used to the extra weight?"

The dolphin blushed, embarrassed, "Shush...if you were carrying around this...little package...you'd probably have a hard time standing up, too."

While Alex ate with his family, there was a firm knocking on the door. Excusing himself, he stood up, walking around the fire pit and answering the knock. He stepped aside to allow Kira inside, carrying an armful of freshly-chopped meat, "Got dinner for Tiberius and Athena..." she sniffed the air, "What's that smell?"

"Rabbit stew," Azazel replied, "I made it myself."

"Smells good."

Almost immediately after her announcement for food, the two velociraptor twins, Tiberius and Athena, trudged into the room: Tiberius identifiable by the two blue stripes down his scaly back, Athena by the single bright red, almost pink stripe. The raptors enjoying their meal, Kira poured herself a bowl and sat beside Alex, to the opposite side of Ruby.

You're a fool to think you can stop Armageddon!

Alex opens his eyes, blinking around to find that he's not laying in bed by his mate's side, nor is he even in Vernhelm with the rest of his unit. Instead he's in a strange plane, above he can see an endless cap of white, luminescent clouds, and down beneath him he can the same...as if he's trapped between two layers in the sky. All around him, darkness spans on infinitely, and he can see thousands, no millions, of white beams of light shooting into the sky from the cloudy ground, as if the light are supports to keep the two layers apart. In addition to these beams, he can see the ruins of stone, brick towers, of which he counts only a few.

He hears a distant, inhuman roar, something even more ethereal than this realm he finds himself, it's something that he can't describe, but yet he somehow knows what creature emitted such an alien sound, the Alpha Breaker... he thinks to himself, What is going on here?

You have initiated Armageddon! that alien voice continues, hostile, accusing, and omnipresent, telepathic, You have doomed our realms to oblivion! A crime you will pay dearly for in time!

"Who are you?" Alex asks, "I didn't do anything!" but that ethereal roar sounds again, and Alex turns to watch as an immense, serpentine wyvern slithers through the void, crashing into one of the many beams and shattering it with a violent, earth-shaking crash, like the shatter of glass. The beam falls into shards towards the clouds over the floor, and parts of the sky begin to collapse onto the ground. As the clouded ceiling collapses over his head, he cowers to the ground and...

...his eyes snapped open at the sound of a light rapping on the front door in the adjacent room. With a groan, he quietly climbed out of bed, throwing on his cloak, made from the fur and hide of a black bear, and slipped outside his room towards the door. He quietly opened the door, peering outside to see a small, dark form standing in the doorway. "Cynder?" Alex asked, "Everything okay?"

The she-dragon, standing up to the Commander's chest in height, as black as night with ruby-red belly scales, turned her sad, emerald-sapphire eyes towards her second mate, asking, "Mind if I come in?"

"What's going on?" the Commander asked, handing her a cup of freshly-brewed peppermint tea.

The dragoness shook her head, "Spyro kicked me out of the house."

"What happened now?"

She shrugged, "I don't know...he's been becoming increasingly violent and aggressive since you came back...I think he's afraid that he will lose me to you again..."

"We haven't done anything since before Terrias and I were sent away to prison."

"I know," she frowned, "But he doesn't think that...he treats me like I'm some kind of monster...we haven't been intimate for months, and he hasn't actually shown me love since before the Reapers attacked two years ago. I'm afraid he'll become what Piermont is..."

"I don't think that will happen..." Alex replied, sipping from a bottle of mead, his new favorite drink, "Realm Dragons aren't necessarily known for forging dragon/rider bonds, let alone fatal bonds like Martaanean Dragons are."

"He just seems so different after you and Terrias were captured by the Reapers...it's like he's losing his sanity, just like what became of Piermont."

"I think what sent Pierre over the edge was Cherub's death...even if he had been collapsing prior. I'm sure losing your mate, especially in monogamous species like Martaanean Dragons, is something that is very hard on you."

"Says the human, who's a traditionally monogamous species," Cynder chuckled.

"First of all, the human race is becoming increasingly polygamous...it's not like losing a girlfriend or a wife forbids you from finding a replacement...it's a tad bit different with Martaanean Dragons. Second of all..." he shrugged, "I'm hardly a prime example of monogamy...sure it hurt when I lost Sarah but...eventually I overcame it."

"You weren't really all for her anyway," Cynder chuckled, "First with Zinnia, then me, then Dash, then Ruby...now Kira..."

Alex frowned, "There was far from any real pleasure in Kira..." he replied, "I thought I could do it but...thoughts of Ruby kept haunting me...I didn't want to lose her, too. Zinnia was a childhood crush that...although I wanted to take her as a lover...I slowly overcame when I met Sarah."

"Until she returned."

"Shut up..." the Commander frowned, then, standing up and stretching, "Make yourself comfortable, you can stay as long as you need."

"Thanks..." she replied, "Really...thank you so much for being there for me...you don't know how much that means to me..."

"I love you, Cyn...you know that."

She smiled, eyes shining brilliantly, "I love you, too..."

"Goodnight..." and he smiled towards her before returning to his bedroom, quietly closing the door and climbing back into bed, curling around Ruby's sleeping form.