"Clear Skies shout! He can't hide behind this fog against the six of us!"
We stood with the ancient dragonborn, deep in the mists of Sovengaurde. I did as she instructed, uttering the words of Clear Skies.
The fog cleared, but then a thunderous sound shook the ground, and the fog closed back in around us. It was time to give this overgrown salamander what he had coming.
"One more time!" she said.
Again, I shouted the three words.
"Alduin!" Jonah shouted. "Are you so frightened by mere mortals that you need to hide yourself in this fog?"
He spoke only in dragon tongue. Kelsey translated for us.
"Watch you tongue, boy. Or I'll rip it out of your gullet. You wish to challenge the mighty Alduin? First born of Akatosh? So be it."
A red glow made it's way through the fog, and stopped infront of us. The fog crept back, revealing Alduin in his truest form.
It was like he was on fire. Red lines showed his veins, though they were burning. Even his eyes were a blaze. He looked menacing.
As if without thinking, all six of us cast dragonrend, following it up in succession by a different elemental shout.
I cast Fire Breath. Kelsey cast Frost Breath. Jonah had somehow managed to slip in an Ice Form, hitting Alduin in the maw. The heroes displayed equal skill, though their words were foreign to me, weaving in what seemed like lightning after their dragonrend.
Down he descended, and it was time to go to work.
I cast my Ironflesh, summoning Gjor and Autumn-fire to assist our fight. Jonah walked ever forward, shouting simple Fus every few steps, keeping Alduin staggered as he made his approach with the dragonborn heroes. Kelsey had begun shooting fast and from afar. Our job would be to make sure he remained grounded.
Gjor blitzed up to Alduin, hammering him in the throat, while Autum-fire shot three Firebolts from by my side.
I looked for an opening between the fighters, casting Wall of Storms, keeping our fighters from his more deadly end, while keeping Alduin locked in his place.
I shouted the dragonrend shout, just as it was about to wear off. Alduin was getting impatient. Gjor fizzled out. I resummoned him, taking a few steps forward, then moving back. He charged Alduin again, shattering his sharpened hand on Alduin's skull.
Kelsey used dragonrend. Alduin protested by rising up a little, only to be forced back down only a second later.
For several minutes this went on, both sides pressing forward, retreating, and repeating. Alduin slashed with his wing, sending the heroes and Jonah flying as a final act of rebellion to his down fall.
"NO. YOU CANNOT DEFEAT ME! I AM ALDUIN, FIRST BORN OF AKATOSH, BORN TO RULE THIS WORLD AS I SEE FIT!" He let loose a mighty roar. Jonah had gotten up, and Alduin took to the sky. I missed my dragonrend, and so did Kelsey.
Alduin swooped back around, and Jonah threw something. It left my view quickly, so I couldn't make out what it was, but whatever it was, it stopped Alduin dead in his tracks.
In almost an instant, his death animation began. Flames erupted from his skin, as soon he was nothing but a floating skeleton, but that too, exploded, then almost evaporated from the plane of existance.
A bright flash in the skies of Sovengaurde. It blinded the six of us, and I for one, waited for the light to end, and to back at Kelsy's apartment.
But nothing. Alduin was dead, and we still had not been sent home.
No one said a word as we walked down the seven thousand steps. A troll had managed to try to attack us, but Jonah bashed it with his shield and kicked it off the mountain. It was eerily quiet.
Across the bridge to Ivarstead, and through the small farming town. We stopped at the inn, silently ordering whatever fish water they served as liquor. We said nothing, and sat at a table in the corner.
Kelsey was crying, her four empty bottles of ale catching up to her. Her head was on the table, eyes puffy and red. Just, silently crying.
Jonah was on his seventh. He just drank, paid for another, and drank it.
I was doing much the same. Though I wasn't paying upfront. I was on my ninth ale. They weren't helping. The fact that I could drink them meant that I wasn't home. And if I wasn't home, I wasn't happy. I started to get angry. Angry at Alduin, angry at myself, angry at whatever forsaken force kept us here, brought us here.
I looked at my sleeve. Dark colored. The color we agreed was to represent us as dragonborn. I wanted it off. I didn't want to be one of the gods damned dragonborn. I wanted to be Aaron, an up and coming engineer for some big company, designing and making the latest products for your home life, or developing ways to make your smartphone better.
I stood, a bit violently. I ripped off the robe and threw it onto the floor, hood, mask, all of it. I set it on fire with a thought, standing there in my trousers, face hot.
I flipped over a table before storming out of the inn, looking for something to punch and or kill. A goat. Perfect. I melted that poor goat to a crisp before the Ivarstead guards tackled and eventually arrested me, sticking my face in the dirt road, swords drawn to my neck.
"Do it!" I yelled at them. "Fucking do it! Give me an eternity's peace for once in my life!" I wanted to die. Anything was better than being trapped here. Anything, if it would get me home. Or atleast someplace like it.
The guards raised their blades, intending to cut my head off. I smiled, a tear falling down my cheek.
"Enough!" The blade was inches away from my neck. It was Jonah's voice.
"No." I told him. "Don't try and stop me. I'm going home."
The guards parted ways as Jonah approached. I never looked at his face. His ebony boots stood before me. And then he kicked me in the head. I flew backwards.
"Fucking coward." He spat out. I was on my back, and he walked up to me, and kicked my ribs. "Who do you think you are? Huh? You were going to kill yourself and take the easy way out, huh, Aaron?"
He kicked me again.
"Piss off, Jonah."
"If you think I for one, would ever let my best friend off himself..." He kicked my leg. "You're a fucking loon. Fine, go off yourself, see if Kelsey or I give a shit. And when we're back home, and your stuck, dead as a fucking," he kicked my back. "...doornail. I don't want to hear it. You got that?"
He turned and walked away.
I shouldn't have opened my mouth. I was bruised and bleeding. "Go rot in hell, Jonah..."
He immediatley turned around.
The last thing I saw was a black boot flying for my face.
Bitter cold woke me from my slumber. I tried to open my eyes, only succeeding in opening the right one about a few centimeters. My left eye was bruised shut, I suppose.
A figure, blurred in my veiw. I was not where I was left. I wasn't even on the ground. I was, being carried? By whom, and for what purpose?
I tried to move, and the figure looked down at me. Piercing violet eyes stood out against the black figure. I had no idea who this was. As if telling me to go back to sleep, the violet eyes closed, and my own vision faded.
What was happening?
A raven squacked. I sat up straight, though where I was I had no idea. Nothing was around me. Nothing except long descending shadows and ravens that perched on nothing. I wasn't even sure what I was laying on.
I looked around me. A shadowed version of myself lay still, somehow hovering in the air directly beside me. It jolted up almost at once, following my movements from there on out. I turned, placing my feet out. I was in my birthday suit. What had removed my shoes and my trousers?
I dropped, yet somehow, something formed under my feet as I walked. Was this how the ravens were perched? After a few moments delay, I heard the shadowy version of me follow. It kind of creeped me out.
The nothingness seemed to open up into a larger room of nothingness, shades of light falling every now and again. This place was beautiful, if mysterious. Was this the void?
"Not the void..." The sound came from my shadowy figure. I turned back to look at it, but it somehow had been molding itself into something different. It was not a woman's shadow, and had the same violet eyes that I saw before.
"Who are you?" I asked. "What is this place?"
"Dear boy, I would think that you would remember that I would be keeping an eye on you. You are not like my other charges, which I find refreshing, yet you are just as clueless as they are to what I do for you..."
Keeping an eye on me? Her form was engulfed by raven feathers, and after the morphing had finished, stood a stark naked version of Nocturnal, just like I had met in the Seplecur. She floated around me, inspecting me with her own eyes.
"I do not know what caused you such distress, over you victory with Alduin, but I will not have my Champion murdering himself while I am still endebted to what he has done for me."
"You were the one who was carrying me?"
"I was. Yet a testiment to your strength, you awoke far before we reached my realm of oblivion." She motioned around to the nothingness that surrounded us. "I have tended to your fractured ribs, cracked skull, and broken thigh."
I gazed over my body. The bruises were gone.
"And, I am naked because?"
She chuckled to herself. "Even a daedric prince gets bored, my champion. If you wish, I can show you what you missed." She came in closer, reaching out to touch my forehead, but I took a step back.
"I think that you should keep those memories." I admitted. "More fun in me not knowing what went on."
She glided back. "Fair enough." She waved her hand, and a shroud of light peered into my eyes, blinding me for a moment. When I regained my vision...It was better. I could see each and every distinct detail of Nocturnal's body, though it was far from my close range view.
"What did you just do?" I asked, blinking my eyes.
"Come now, my champion. You're not an idiot. It was the final thing that needed repair, though I wanted you awake when I did it. I have gifted you with my shadow sight, and don't worry. Elven women will still be hypnotized by your gaze."
She floated up next to me, placing my arm between her breasts, placing her hands on my shoulder. "Do you know why that is?" I asked, trying not to think about the flawless female body next to me.
"A gift from another daedric prince, perhaps. Though if that is true, or simply just an effect you have over elven women, it is not in my knowledge or power to know." She rubbed her body up my arm.
"Mistress Nocturnal, please. Can you send me back home?"
She bit her lip, and spoke calmly. "Back to your home? The one you desire to go back to, or the one that I will send you back to?"
"What do you know of where I want to go?"
"I have peered into your mind. Seen strange and wonderful things about where you think you came from. Your mind was, odd, to see into. Yet, I have seen more of Nirn there than other things."
"Where can you send me back?" I asked.
"Ah, the inevitable question has been asked. I will send you back to my shrine, and from there I will continue to watch my champion grow and prosper under the steady hand of my guidance. But should you wish to return, you must go now. You are rather...distracting."
"Hey, if you ever wanna climb on board after I settle down, you need just ask." I joked. Though I think she took it seriously.
"A daedric prince at your beck and call, and in your bed?" she said, flat toned. Serious. Um. Sure? "Perhaps. But you must leave at once, or I won't allow you to leave at all."
I knelt to the ground as she backed away. "With your blessing, Mistress."
I fell through where I knelt, and soon the darkness became light, and I landed flat outside the altar room. Karlia was there, and she threw a hissy fit, claiming I should put some clothes on in the respected space of the Matriarch of Twilight.
"Yeah...I don't think she minds, Karlia..."
Well, hope you guys enjoyed part one. Part two is a little slow, but in the final part, it picks up dramatically. Stay with me through the boring parts, and you'll see how it ends. But thanks for reading and contributing to From Game to Fame. Still having a blast writing the last few chapters, where shit gets real. First two chapters for part two should be out in twelve days.