The crude door slamming shut is her first signal of bad news, and she wastes no time jumping from bed. Her father never slams doors. Unlike his young daughter, he is a gentle soul seemingly devoid of temper, one of the many reasons he is such an excellent peacekeeper. Nonetheless she goes to him, more out of naïve hope than any solid expectation now the full wrath of the mountain weather has descended upon their village.
Trotting barefoot up to the man slumped still in the entrance, she halts a pace or so away, abruptly realising she'd never doubted for a second…
Storn looks up at her slowly, almost as if even this gesture taxed his body to the limits. His eyes are dry, but in them lurks a pain she can barely stand to look at, and as with all things this makes her angry.
"Where is Mother?" she demands, and observes with dismay when her father flinches as if she had dealt him a physical blow.
His silence tells her everything her heart already knew, and she suddenly hates the All-Maker for not sparing her mother from the death-cold freeze of a Solstheim winter.
In the following weeks, Storn's grief becomes inter-mingled with savage arguments as time and again, he prevents his child from running off into the snow in search of the missing half of their lives.
The voracious elements never did give up their secrets. No body was ever found.
"Ysra!" Frea's voice cuts through the din of construction; the swing of hammers, the chipping of stone.
"Ysra, I'm here to help you!" Her words are an unheeded addition to the unholy mantra these thralls mumble with every passing breath.
"And when the world shall listen…."
"Please!" she cries. "Fight this control! FIGHT IT!" In desperation, she grabs her friend's collar, rimmed in fur, tries to drag her away from the overlapping pillars of the Temple, closer to the centre of the edifice whereupon the corrupted Tree Stone stands.
Ysra mouths the chant soundlessly as she exerts herself to struggle against Frea's grip. Storn's daughter is strong, far stronger than the other woman, but when she thrashes, turning her head to bite down into the thick hide of her opponent's gauntlets, Frea lets go before they both get hurt.
Staggering back, she watches Ysra sway on her feet for a few moments before slowly walking back to her place with the others. Her movements are that of a sleepwalker.
Pointless. Hopeless. She had already tried this before, but… these were her people. She was doomed to try, and try again.
Surrounded by Nord and Dunmer alike, somehow Frea knew she stood alone atop this carved up mountain.
Glancing up, past the nauseating fretwork of stone like a spider's web, she blanched to see how close the gathering storm had crept since last she looked.
Outside, exposed like this, those thick, grey clouds swamping the sky could well be a death sentence.
A blizzard of that proportion presented a whole new species of hindrance to her efforts. Even if the howling winds and their bounty of stinging ice battered only against the foundations of this huge, sprawling ruin, everything in it and beyond would be effectively marooned until the weather eased. A storm like this - indeed, very similar to the conditions that slew her long-lost mother - might take days to blow over.
Time was her enemy.
Even as she watched from the stone supports above, the gusts of snow whirling far below took on greater purpose, their muted whistling rising slowly to a howl.
Ice flakes catching in her eyelashes so that she blinked away frozen tears, Frea started when she caught sight of something by and large out of place in the forsaken wilderness.
At the base of the great stone staircase spiralling up to the Temple proper, a tiny figure emerged from the deadly white mists, sprinting up the steps without apparent pause or thought.
Slowly closing on Frea's position, the figure climbed with the tireless energy of one pursued by all the daemons of Oblivion, escaping the jaws of the tempest through speed and determination.
Certainly no humble villager, Frea conceded, as the glint of steel and ebony came into focus, but this only served to deepen her confusion. From mercenaries and adventurers to Raven Rock's elite Redoran Guard, folk avoided Miraak's Temple, with good reason. She almost cried out when she saw the stranger additionally sported a tail.
The grating of stone rumbled behind her and she spun, ducking low in the hope her armoured profile remained undetected. Raised voices reached her ears.
"I am telling you, Brother, this is unnecessary," the gravely tones of a dark elf filtered past the clamour of work. "The Unawoken will continue to toil under any conditions… such is the nature of their devotion."
Close by, another voice scoffed, "And do you suppose they will be of any use when their hands blacken and their hearts stop? Help me rein them in, Brother, before we lose them like the batch lost at the Beast Stone!"
Silently, Frea unhooked her Stalhrim axe.
"Swift progress has been resumed there," the dark elf continued to protest. "The Master's influence spreads further each day. In wake of the other's deaths our Sister snared a mob of Rieklings, forced them to touch the Stone… She sends word that the creatures are most industrious in their efforts to further His cause."
"Praise be to Miraak," the second voice immediately intoned.
Scowling at the grim portents of these words, Frea peered cautiously past worked stone and crates of tools, using the oblivious slaves as living cover as she crept closer. The two masked men stood casually among the hubbub, overseeing the Temple from one of the high balustrades.
"By His grace!" the second voice suddenly exclaimed. "Is that who I think it is?" Evidently these servants of evil had also spotted the newcomer.
"It might well be," growled the dark elf. "Our spies from the Redoran Stronghold report of the arrival of such an animal… One daring to desecrate the Earth Stone with her own paltry Thu'um, no less!"
"The nerve of that abomination… to think our revered Siblings died by her hands!"
Silently, Frea looked on as the second man angrily shoved aside two thralls to catch a better glimpse of the approaching stranger. Rage so hot it felt cold trickled into her limbs when she saw that one of these people was Oslaf, Finna's lost husband.
Having heard enough, Frea stood up straight, disdaining the steel of her second axe in favour of keeping one hand free for magic… and throttling.
The masks exclaimed in surprise at the sight of her, a heavily armed and armoured conscious soul amidst a sea of blank-eyed subservience. Her own blazed with murder.
Already the cultists' palms were crackling with unspent power, frost and fire writhing and spitting in anticipation. Frea charged.
Feet pumping, heart hammering, their first spells sailed harmlessly over her head as she closed with them. Wincing, Frea knew one of these had struck and downed a helpless worker. Under any circumstances, the concept of collateral damage was utterly removed from a Skaal's vocabulary. Through Storn's tutelage, she would never have cast such powerful ranged attacks from the beginning. Undisciplined. Sloppy.
The meaty thunk of four inches of granite hard enchanted ice burying itself past mask into skull felt like a well-earned reprimand.
Spitting curses at her, the second cultist narrowly dodged the instinctive spike of ice propelled from her free hand, sending a gout of flame her way that smouldered against the fabric of her dead enemy's robes but did little more than discolour the smooth contours of her armour.
Savagely kicking the first man's corpse to the ground, freeing her axe in a gush of blood and brain matter, Frea twisted aside from a retaliatory spear of ice screaming past her side and readied her aim.
For such a deadly weapon, most of the weight came from the metal grip itself, not the eerie blue edge. Thrown through the air it spun perfectly, shedding its coating of blood only to send forth a fresh spray as it met with her opponent's chest, downing him in a tangle of spasming limbs.
Surrounding her, the tiles soaked in the sanguine liquid were already freezing, tiny plumes of steam rapidly dissipating in the rising wind.
The scrape of an unsheathed blade resounded behind her and she spun, almost but not quite flinching at how closely the stranger from the stairs stood, seemingly passive and content to observe.
Taking in the short, stocky figure, bearing an exquisite daedric sword whose tip did not quite touch the ground, it occurred to Frea she might seem uncouth, staring at this lizard-woman's snout, scales and long, bumpy tail with a child's fascination in novelty.
The stranger must have caught her general train of thought, because in the next moment she smiled wanly, quite an odd expression upon such outlandish features. "It's okay," she spoke in a low, scratchy accent, shrugging slightly so that her blade gently caressed stone. "I figured folk on the island wouldn't have seen too many children of the Marsh passing through. Northwards, most people call me Rush," she extended a palm, that seemingly universal gesture which in these conditions clearly said, I'm not your enemy.
Despite the situation, she found herself smiling in concert as she enclosed the lizard's strong grip in her own. "Frea of the Skaal," she replied automatically. "What do your people call you, then?"
This earned her a short laugh. "You mean in my own tongue?" The woman - Rush - ducked her head, bare save for a forest of stubby horns, and uttered a string of sibilant, hissing noises that meant nothing to Frea.
At her look, she grinned, displaying fangs. "Ah, forgive me. I miss speech in my birth tongue, but few land-striders…" she coughed apologetically, "which is to say non-Argonians can pronounce a name housing twenty-six Nedic syllables… So, I'm just Rush hereabouts."
The lizard glanced aside at the broken bodies of the two cultists, then the crowd of mindless thralls toiling away despite the threat of the storm. "I take it we have a mutual enemy?"
Frea paused, almost suspicious of the slow kindling of renewed hope in her chest. She looks capable of defending herself…
"I am here in defiance of my father's advice," she informed her. "These people," she indicated the corpses, "and those bewitched to work upon the Temple and Stones… well, Storn tells me it is because Miraak has returned, as prophesised by the old tales."
Upon her utterance of the name, Rush scowled malignantly. "Miraak, eh? Some of his people tried to kill me, back in Skyrim. I shipped over here to repay him in full," her scaly knuckles tightened upon the dark hilt of the sword.
Striding over to the body of the second cultist, Frea watched as Rush stooped to retrieve the axe from the man's sucking flesh, for a moment admiring the edge before handing it over. "Need some help?"
Unsheathing her second axe, she nodded her thanks towards the Argonian. "By all means… let us go."
Into the den of the beast… How many times had Rush experienced the same nervous exhilaration as she felt now, descending into the clammy dark of this colossal ruin? Long before she ever arrived in Skyrim she had followed the warrior's trade, for better or worse - through good and ill.
The latter had eventually turned her wanderer's spirit north, braving the terrible cold of the notorious Jerall moutain range. Bedraggled and skeletal, she had staggered on… only to be clubbed on the head soon after by an overly enthusiastic soldier. The rest as the Imperials said, was history.
Why… why did she choose to hike through that snowy fastness in the first place? A stubborn part of her mind sharing far too many values with Qahnaarin hazarded none of the events to come would have had their chance - had she only changed course, diverged somewhere else.
While fate had cheated her of a normal life, Rush had to concede her dragon soul ensured such trivial concepts were naught but facets of a dream. She was addicted to the madness of battle and danger, craving the heat of conflict and victory above all things.
Conflicts…
Rush snapped out of her fugue, hoping her inattention remained overlooked by her unexpected companion.
For her part, Frea was deep in the midst of explaining the Skaal's affairs upon Solstheim, their simplistic existence based on the age-old honour code of the Nords, governed by a strange, singular deity she called All-Maker.
Clumping companionably down towards a distant flicker of torchlight, she wondered what it must be like to recognise a god from birth onwards; to place all one's faith in such a being. Her people were more… practical, paying homage to the Hist, Sithis and other entities but certainly not considering them divine.
Cutting her short, Rush asked the question that had been eating away at her since meeting that decrepit old bastard, Neloth. "Frea, I've been told our adversary was a Dragon Priest, which is all very well and good… but to betray the dragons? Those bones outside…"
Frea grimaced. "Aye, Miraak the Traitor of old. His tale is ancient, and ultimately one bearing a lesson," she looked askance at Rush. "The thirst for power and knowledge corrupts a vessel to the core."
Fingering the feathered tips of the quiver slung behind her back, she continued, "We of the Skaal do our utmost to preserve the history of our land, so that we do not repeat the mistakes of our ancestors," she sighed. "Miraak ruled here as Priest, yes, but he was far from benevolent. Eventually Herma-Mora snared him, that malignant daemon, bestowing upon him the means to break free from Alduin's rule."
Rush frowned, distracted. Movement ahead? Frea's words made an odd kind of sense, another jigsaw piece to be added to the growing picture, but the mention of Herma-Mora made her spirit quail.
By all that I hold dear, what I'd do to never hear that monster's name again.
Deep in an icy pit nestled in the glaciers north of her College, Rush had encountered the Prince…
"The skeletons surrounding the Temple are all Miraak's doing," Frea's voice became hushed as they stepped out into a dim antechamber housing a number of sarcophagi.
"A battle of massive proportions raised this place, long ago. On one side Miraak and his servants, of which a number were dragons themselves; the opposition, Alduin's loyalists, lead by the Guardian himself," a small smile tugged at Frea's lips.
Rush opened her mouth to voice another question when, with the abruptness of a thread snapping, all hell broke loose.
Who had trod upon the loose tile, an obvious trap if there ever was one? Be it she or Frea, both women should have known better. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
Ducking, Rush narrowly missed the iron head of the massive hammer swinging down from the gloomy ceiling, noting the Skaal had similarly flattened herself to the dusty floor to avoid the hulking mechanism.
Woken by the scream of wheels and counterweights, fists clad in leathery, rotted flesh began hammering within the insides of coffins, lids bursting aside to reveal the draugr, charging the interlopers with the mindless intent of creatures preserved only to kill.
Shoving the first undead to the floor with a well-aimed kick to its shins, Rush used the walking corpse as a base to propel herself backwards from the onrushing tide of dead, animate warriors, summoning firebolt after firebolt at the horde until her magicka waned.
Frea had meanwhile taken the brawler's approach. Harried on all sides by the draugr, she placed blows to gristly, decomposed skulls, crushing wrists and snapping necks around so hard they crunched.
Such manoeuvres that would instantly kill or cripple any living opponent could not dissuade the draugr for long. After all, what need of an intact spine when forces wholly outside the natural order of things were keeping you upright?
Shouting to Rush over the racket of weaponry and guttural war-cries, the Argonian found herself yanked forwards by the Skaal, buoyed along deeper into the ruin in hopes of out-running their foes.
Sprinting in full gear, their progress through mazes of crypts and corridors seemed abominably slow, traps both material and otherwise barring any straightforward dash.
When at last they emerged into a vault so large the ceiling was lost to the gloom, Rush was far-pushed to grab Frea by the pauldrons to prevent her from plummeting past a rickety iron railing to the floor below.
In the brief pause that followed, they sagged sightlessly to the tiles, gasping for breath. The clamour of pursuit had faded.
"Welcome."
Jerking her head upwards, Rush was met with the sight… damnation…
The chamber was clearly some variation of an audience hall. Vast, curved stone supports suspended myriad rotted banners, alongside dozens of cages hung still upon rusted chains, skeletons clutching the bars.
But the place was far from dead. Rank after rank of uniformly clad cultists stood still upon crumbled parapets, tumbled down stairs and crooked walkways. Some kept every pretence at secrecy, masks concealing eyes Rush somehow knew would be blank. Others went bare-headed, mouths turned downwards or twisted into unpleasant smirks.
They must number at least a hundred… Against two?
Rush tried to tell herself she'd faced worse odds. Skuldafn had been similarly crawling with foes, though she'd had the wrath of her Thu'um placing the storm-ravaged skies at her disposal. Here, they were deep underground.
Glaring up at the closest mask - the speaker - Rush could hear Frea mumbling softly, of a sudden leaps and bounds away from the strong, dedicated personality the Argonian had witnessed top-side.
"He stood here," Frea's husky voice had taken on a higher pitch. "He stood right here, inspiring his people to jump into hell…"
"I must confess…" the cultist menacing them spoke again, "We somehow anticipated a longer struggle, singling you out from the masses of Skyrim, but it seems our lost Siblings succeeded even in death." The Nordic voice behind the disturbing bone exterior grew colder. "For here you are, filth, awaiting judgement before your betters," he gestured widely about him, "Those who revere the true Dragonborn."
Something uncoiled within Rushes' soul at that moment, opening one large green eye in budding resentment.
"There's that term again," Rush called up to him, more in the hopes she could stall the forthcoming attack long enough to conceive a viable escape plan. "I ask you," the Argonian cried to the gathered multitude, "Who has not heard of Alduin's fall? Did I not orchestrate it? Am I not Dragonborn?" Beside her, Frea gasped.
Bedlam ensued, a hundred voices woven from as many accents shouting her down, screaming abuse and summoning magic to the fore.
"ENOUGH!" roared the man, un-cinching an eldritch staff from behind his back. "You," he stabbed a finger at Rush, "are nought but a profane anomaly clinging onto the coat-tails of a legacy so great, your own deeds of valour pale in comparison. You are but a shadow!"
Staff in hand, the cultist opened his arms, gazing to and fro at his followers. "We are His new legacy, the vanguard paving the way for His glorious return!"
Unlikely.
The simple statement dribbled into her consciousness like poison, seeping past the massive surge of adrenaline as to the last soul, the cultists charged. The ring of drawn blades clamoured with the spit-hiss of loosing spells.
Unlikely? Hatches 'neath rushes knew only one thing to be unlikely as she and Frea darted frantically to either side, through luck avoiding the first surge of lightning pouring forth from the lead man's staff. That thing was that the two women were dead.
"SAHLAG LIR! ZU'U LOS QAHNAARIN!"
Rage filled her, and with it fresh horror. Distantly, Rush felt rather than heard these same words pour forth from her throat, bizarrely catalysed by the slow, heavy poison-voice. Something jolted her memory, smelling of glacial winds and old parchment, but all the Argonian's focus rapidly dwindled to a tiny pinprick as her ruthless counterpart howled into the fore.
In an abstract corner of her mind she felt herself receding.
Taking over, Qahnaarin unfurled wings composed of naught but dust and emptiness, clashed steel hard fangs that felt puny. Her shape was different. Her very mind felt odd. Swamped beneath the impossibly brief flesh of her soul-twin, it was agony to even acknowledge how intangible her true form was.
Agony… and rapture.
Such lease to influence reality about her had never happened before, and by the Father of Time, the dragon basked in it.
The freedom. The life.
Shrilling out a war cry, she effortlessly became the very avatar of speed, her whirlwind self hammering straight into the lead cultist's body, sending it flying to break against a distant floor with a terrible, liquid impact.
At the sound, Qahnaarin laughed, filled with a pure, unadulterated joy she had never experienced. Some might find such in an earnest mating, when two dragons bonded for centuries if not eternity, but she was Vanquisher; existing only to crush all challengers.
The blue one would pay.
Above the din of combat, the heavily armoured Joor she'd entered with yelped out in pain, screaming a name over and over. The name meant nothing to her.
Summoning wave after wave of unrelenting force alongside gouts of frost and fire, she fought on, uncaringly heeding how the Frea-woman's irritating noises abruptly cut off into silence. To fill it, she roared her name again, witnessing fear amidst the false-minds of these foes, greedily drinking it all in. Bliss.
The higher you fly, the further you fall, Dragonborn. No matter. Enjoy the moment, and come meet your Brother.