Here at the peak of the Beginning Place, the only element more unbearable than the thin, glacial air was the silence. Hatches 'neath rushes had always considered the fabled Throat of the World a mere extension of High Hrothgar's stoic durability and calm. Now, with the snow about her tinted pink with her blood and that of Paarthurnax's, she saw differently, craving the comforting familiarity of the lowlands with a strength that in other circumstances, might have surprised her.

Really, what counted as low in Skyrim? Should one linger at the foot of Tamriel's tallest mountain, you felt as significant as a mote of dust. Beyond the monastery's thick walls and the freezing mists, to stand at the summit was to proclaim oneself almost… divine.

Had she not felt so damnably cold, warmth eking away in small rivulets running down her mangled armour, Rush might have pondered the seeming arrogance of all dragon-kind. They who so often stowed away atop the high places of the world, distanced from it and the tiny ant-nests of life so short-lived, it seemed a waste of breath to call them Joor, let alone equals. Ha!

Oh yes, the silence of the Throat scalded her. It positively screamed. Distantly, she could still hear the echoes of Gormlaith's dying cries, interwoven with her brother's awful, grief-ridden howl.

Alduin was gone; fled in a storm of jet talons, teeth and wings. Gone to lick his wounds, and to brood. She was destined to follow…

to Oblivion and back…

"No… NO! Damn you, hear me!" The human woman's accent deepened strongly under duress. Her throat being grabbed so violently certainly wasn't helping.

Rush realised who was doing the grabbing and shrieked, high and shrill, scrabbling away only to blunder into an immovable obstacle.

The obstacle was clad head to toe in glowing armour, gloriously impure in that it was infused with a strain of magic existing only beyond the barriers guarding Mundus.

The obstacle's name was Gór. In Dremora tongue, guttural even to the ears of Argonians, 'Gór' translated roughly into devours meat whilst living. She knew the title to be apt.

Having burnt up every ounce of her magic atop the chilly remits of her College, Rush had once called the daedra to her unbound. Such a sorcerous feat, almost beyond her skill, paled compared to the bloody battle of wills that followed. Rush however was not a woman easily quelled, particularly when her soul-twin Qahnaarin's blood was up.

Qahnaarin…

Impossibly gentle for a creature so devoted to murder and bloodshed, Gór's heavy gauntlets descended to rest upon her ebony pauldrons, a gesture not of restraint, she was sure, but comfort. What insanity had overwhelmed her?

The great chamber they stood within stank beyond her nose's ability to catalogue. The still air of the tomb, aggravated by the spitting fire pits, carried upon it the fine mist of blood. Cultists, dead and dying, carpeted stone tiles pitted by weapons ancient and new, unfeeling witness to the decimation of this horde of blank-eyed puppets, strings cut.

"Well, that takes care of that," Gór rumbled with satisfaction.

Struggling to her feet, their companion stared about her in slack-jawed horror before turning to Rush.

In three long-legged strides Frea rounded upon the Argonian, drawing back her fist and smashing it into the dense, interlocked plates of the lizard's cuirass. Rush swayed before the blow, mostly kept standing beneath the dremora's strong grip.

Breathing slowly, Frea met her gaze, bringing her other fist to bear in an upwards hook intended to capitulate upon her first swing. Without apparent effort, Gór swung his dazed charge to the side and in the next moment struck out a retaliatory blow with the back of one hand, sending the Nord woman flying.

Crashing back to the stone tiles, Frea's cry of pain was accentuated by the moans and sobs of those not quite dead, and Rush fought to keep her mind out of the past, out of ancient history.

"Gór!" her voice carried with it the barest glimmer of Thu'um, causing several funerary urns to come crashing down from their stone perches. The daedra paused mid-step towards Frea, turning to face her.

"Def'nar karukan," she spoke the words with learned precision, "Begone!"

Behind them, Frea sucked in a surprised breath as Gór's hulking form abruptly vanished with a displaced crack of air. In the split second it took for the daedra to return to Oblivion, the waft of searing heat and sulphur hazed the air. Somewhere, beyond the very fabric of Nirn, Gór would be standing upon the blasted rock of his beloved Deadlands, probably furious with her for thwarting his kill-urges.

Rush sagged against a nearby pillar.

Picking her way carefully through the bloody carnage, Frea approached her with a caution she had seen many times in the eyes of civilians who witnessed her devouring a dragon's soul. Awe was really the shallowest component of their reactions. Only thinly did it disguise the underlying dread and rejection, as if until such instances Rush had been a predator walking undetected in their midst.

Perhaps in some respects, she was.

Frea stopped less than a foot or so away. For a time it seemed she struggled to speak, no doubt too full of questions and accusations to know which to voice out loud first. What did eventually come out was unexpected.

"I pity you," she said.

Without another word, the Nord jerked her head towards the heaped cadavers and dying cultists. Her meaning was clear.

Some time later, the women descended down the large, spiralling staircase at the chamber's centre. Grim of face since Gór's departure, Rush guessed that Frea's sheltered, isolationist upbringing severely aggravated the sudden rise in tension between the two, particularly now they'd been forced to perform so many mercy killings. Abstractly, Rush wondered whether this All-Maker was the forgiving sort for such transgressions.

She snorted at the thought, habitually fingering her sword harness, and quite suddenly found herself slammed against the carved stone of a wall.

This close, the height difference between the lofty Nord and Rush was far more distinguished. The woman's eyes burned with a fury that was almost unintentional. Her face was twisted into an oddly ill-fitting expression.

"Frea…" she began, but was cut off by the gauntlet crushing her throat.

"The tides have changed, haven't they… Miraak?" Frea's voice deepened until it seemed more reverberation than sound. Her grip tightened.

"After all these years," Frea ducked her head and grinned, "you and I are to continue our dance. Perhaps this time the whole damn province will sink, eh?" She laughed.

Rush felt her blood run to a stand-still. Was the woman insane? She could certainly understand Frea's anger at her earlier actions, puppeted by a force outside her direct control, but this was different.

This was not Frea.

Her prior exchange of words with the cultists had proven too much. In that ill-conceived moment of weakness, all the untapped rage she kept so deeply concealed inside poured forth, providing an open door for her unscrupulous dragon soul.

Only dimly did she recall the fight. Small details stood out. Ebony fists smashing into the side of a cultist's mask, her Thu'um ripping past foes like a blade through parchment. Frea losing consciousness. The mad giggling emerging from her own throat.

Clearly Gór had arrived at some point to lend assistance, forever fixed in the belief that Rush would always continue to need him. She almost wished the unbound had gone home of his own volition rather than track her inside these ruins. Her affiliation with the forces of Oblivion was only ever going to sit poorly with the Skaal.

Even as the other glared into her eyes as if determined to dredge up something frustratingly elusive, Rush could feel her dragon blood seething. Satiated or not, even she with her truncated knowledge of dragon ways knew it was a dread insult for any dovah to be so openly misnamed. Anger.

Wriggling, Rush interposed her own arms past Frea's, applying enough pressure to the woman's elbows until her grip no longer hampered her voice. "I'm sorry," she said.

"GAAN!"

Staggering as Frea's hold ceased, Rush winced as her companion leapt backwards. Warily she observed as a mixture of fury, condescension and betrayal flashed past her face, to be replaced by mild confusion.

"What… what?" the Skaal mumbled, disorientated.

The green mist conjured by her utterance softly outlined Frea's whole body like a trick of the light. Slowly the light strengthened and with a barely-there sigh, Frea collapsed bonelessly to the ground.

"Bloody wonderful," Rush commented to no one in particular, rubbing her jaw. Mentally she promised to come back and see to the human as soon as possible.

Shaking her head, the Argonian knew this was not the time to save face and rescue the proverbial damsel in distress. She was here to find answers.

Breaking into a jog, the type she mostly reserved for cross-country and scouting purposes, Rush left her companion sprawled on the tiles, heading down an adjacent passageway further into the Temple. Blade in one hand, she summoned a cusp of flames to the other in the expectation of trouble.

She was not disappointed.

Had it been mere hours… or days… since she and Frea set foot into the ruin? Deep underground time entered a purely physical medium, measured not by the sun's passage across the sky but in one's shortness of breath, the slow burn of tired muscles.

Palm flat for leverage against the ravaged chest of another undead soldier, Rush removed her sword from the creature's concave abdomen, dropping it instantly to the floor.

She had entered yet another towering atrium housing draugr and a number of cultists unaware of the carnage awaiting them closer to the surface. The tomb was large - almost on par with Skuldafn itself - and not even the notorious penchant Nordic barrows held for transmitting echoes could eclipse every hall and corridor. Silence reigned.

Navigating a partially destroyed staircase, some of the steps so broken with age they became traps unto themselves, she wondered if Frea had woken up yet. The magic of the Shout she had used drained an opponent's stamina to the point where it became damn hard not to fall asleep. The women's previous exertions had at least guaranteed the Nord would not be capable of resisting the magic.

Carefully sidestepping a series of loose tiles no doubt linked to the dart mechanism above her head, Rush paused when she heard the music.

A breath of clean, spring air traverses the stillness of the stronghold, sweetening the lilt of flute and string. The chambers are cold, courtesy of the Temple's ingenious vent system, designed by Miraak himself. The young Priest is fastidious and detail-orientated. He despises the smoke and fume of the sacrificial pits, incense to the god, Alduin…

A hard series of blinks brought her back to reality, yet still the sounds and sights lingered in her forebrain.

Within the brief stretch from one second to another, the world had ceased to consist of crumbled stone and rotting banners; gloom and old, bad air.

The hall had filled with light, finery and bustle. Hundreds of servants clad in lapis livery hurried about duties heavy and light, their thoughts humming through her mind like that of a busy hive.

Each was so sure of their place in this great colony. Some were mere labourers: cleaners, cooks, torch-bearers and scribes. Other, more senior minds encroached on her senses, and Rush felt these sharper, crueller intellects cut through the hubbub like hornets intruding upon a nest of bees. These were the adepts of the Temple; highly ranked warriors and monks of the ancient dragon cult.

She shivered.

Continuing her descent, the music grew stronger, in tune with the rapidly coalescing echoes of folk dead for thousands of years.

Entering a cramped, circular room, a mere alcove compared to the vastness left behind her, the Argonian managed her first genuine smile since entering the Temple. Word Wall.

All too aware of the numerous sarcophagi about, Rush gingerly stepped forth, breathing slow and deep.

Word Walls were curious things. Imbued with unseen magic, they transmitted history… events of great impact, bad and good. The jagged etchings that composed the written dragon language conveyed the summation of these deeds to those of mind to hear them.

Distressingly, most Joor were deaf to these immortalised fragments from the Merethic Era. For mortals with some training in the Voice, dovah and indeed Dragonborns, the power of these relics was clear as day.

Awareness rapidly removing all else but the Wall's whispering in her ears, Rush barely acknowledged the sudden changes in the half-there figures of past lives. The ghosts had slowly dwindled in numbers as the strength of the Wall's sendings increased.

Before now, most had come and gone with the air of distraction, intent on their business alone. Here, whole groups had stopped entirely, skirting the very edges of the small chamber or in some cases kneeling, heads bowed.

Blindly Rush stepped past another adept, clad quite splendidly in robes of purest blue and gold, placing one outstretched, ebony gauntlet upon the worked stone. The music had stopped.

"Confluence."

Even as the power of a new Thu'um settled itself deep inside of her, as yet untapped and passive, she spun around in shock.

The adept she'd passed had spoken the word, seemingly right in her ear. Impossible though it was, it felt addressed to her. As she stared, the man had already turned away, casually walking past cowering servants straight through a coffin and out of sight. She moved to follow.

Foolishness. As soon as she'd turned from the Wall the same coffin burst open, accompanied by a disturbing rumble of the supports above and like a bubble popping, all visions of the Temple's former inhabitants vanished.

In place of them, a warrior entombed for the past four thousand years stepped out of it's confinement, drawing a heavy battleaxe. Rush tensed.

Detecting the bracing of one preparing to call upon the Voice, the Argonian performed a neat side tumble that took her out of the path of a blood-freezing discharge of Frost Breath.

Momentarily lowering her sword, she retaliated with a controlled stab of her empty hand, sending a roaring ball of flame towards the draugr.

Unfortunately, those undead bearing the trademark helms tipped with the horns of Skyrim's mountain oryx did not gain their high rank in life by being oblivious.

The draugr's lean though rotting anatomy could not hope to exhibit any great amount of dexterity. Bowing it's helm low, the creature thusly allowed the brunt of Rushes' attack to wash over it's armour, scorching the smooth stone behind them but doing little damage otherwise.

Charging forwards it grated out haltingly, "Unslaad krosis!" and despite the conflict, Rush felt a pang of pity in her chest. The draugr had been well and truly cheated by the dovah race's ancient promises of granting 'new life' to their servants. Eternal sorrow, indeed.

As a whole arm span's worth of edged steel came whistling down to cleave her in two, she pivoted on one heel, her opponent's axe passing her face so closely her eyes watered. With a forceful crack, the weapon buried itself between two stone tiles, raising a miniature cloud of dust.

Having committed to the swing, Rush gained the advantage of a moment's respite as the creature hefted the cumbersome battleaxe from the floor.

Quickly the Argonian darted behind the draugr, vaulting the thing's back like some feral beast, unaffected by the heaviness of her garb. More through luck than design she avoided the blunt end of the deathlord's axe swung in a sideways arc, meant to knock her away or preferably skewer her outright. A sharp flare of pain by her hips informed Rush of the nearness of this fate.

Biting down on a snarl, she thrust her sword through the base of the undead's neck, severing sinew and vertebrae. A short, vicious twist of a wrist completed the manoeuvre, learnt from watching the bloodthirsty Gór, and the thing's head rolled clean across the room.

In response to this victory, the stone about her trembled again, followed by a sound not unlike a ship's masts tearing in a gale.

Jerking her gaze upwards, what Rush had somehow failed to see upon entering the chamber stood out in all its macabre glory.

"Oh, Hist!"

The massive, dust-caked bones of the atrophied dragon skeleton suspended above were quaking, applied pressure from the booby-trapped roof snapping tough support chains and raining down a mist of dirt.

She figured she had perhaps ten more seconds before getting crushed or potentially, buried alive. Time enough to sprint back up the stairs away from impending doom? Perhaps. Though if the whole ceiling gave way… Well, she'd best give up on her hunt altogether.

Visibility decreasing as filth and bone powder rained down from above, Rush floundered towards the deathlord's empty sarcophagus, outspread palms meeting with the suspected presence of a hidden door. Only then did she realise too late that the bastard thing was locked. Out of time.

With a deafening roar, the roof of the circular chamber collapsed, bringing with it the mounted dragon. The cacophony was so great, only barely did a terror-driven blurt of Thu'um filter above it, the door within the coffin not merely opening under the onslaught of unrelenting force but blasted clear off its hinges. An ebony figure leapt through.

Lungs burning, Rush staggered away, yelping as a propelled splinter of rock struck the side of her head, drawing blood. Fleeing as best she could, she ploughed onwards into a pokey communal area, losing her footing and blundering over a low stone table like a mead-sodden drunk.

Cautiously raising her head on level with the dusty furniture, she blanched to have her worst fears confirmed.

No going back, now.

Deciding there was no point ruminating over the fact she'd been essentially barricaded inside this hidden section of the ruin, Rush re-fastened her sword and pressed on.

Perhaps twenty or so minutes later, as she stepped out from a passageway into the light of a small reading chamber, she saw the man again.

This time the mysterious adept was poring over a raised pedestal presently housing no more than shreds of cured leather and cloth used to bind tomes.

Despite logic asserting this spectre and all other illusory ghost-images trapped within the Temple could do her no harm, Rush found her heartbeat ramping up as she came closer.

The adept turned and looked at her. Or rather, through her, scanning the room as if he were expecting someone. Someone unwelcome.

To her eyes he was tall, though not overly so for a human of the Nord race. His hair was close cropped and dark, uniform save for a few braids brushing his shoulders. His eyes were blue. Though young, perhaps close to her own thirty years, his face betrayed the beginnings of lines of stress working around the corners of his mouth and eyes, remoulding what might have been a handsome visage into something hard and remote.

The moment ending, Rush watched intently as the man scowled, grimacing to himself before reaching over to pull an ornamented lever, disengaging the heavy bolts barring a cramped stairwell.

Just before the man descended, vanishing from sight, the gleam of burnished gold at his side caught her eye. Rushes' stomach plummeted.

Dashing forwards in futile pursuit, the Argonian discovered to her irritation the mechanism bolting shut the staircase was nearly unusable, having had literally thousands of years to degrade into rust. Wrenching the lever to the open position took all her strength, and like her quarry, to do so she had needed to reach inside the cavernous jaws of a sculpted stone monstrosity.

Blindly leering out at her, the shapeless flesh and thin, curved teeth reminded her of a particular cave-dwelling fish her distant clan village sometimes hunted for medicinal purposes. Its flesh tasted disgusting.

Padding down… down into the deepening darkness, Rush marvelled at the sheer scale of the ruin even as some quiet part of her stipulated she was nearing the end of the gauntlet.

Creeping past an increasing number of sunken eyes and toothy maws, she found herself at the bottom of yet another stone stairway, this one by far the grandest yet.

Horrifying, too.

Even by the standards of some of the more despicable sights she'd witnessed during the height of her adventuring days, the dusty carnage of this silent cavern was something else.

Yawning away to some worked effigy at the top, massive granite pillars stood out next to what was certainly the original blast lacerations the ancient Nords used to excavate it. Large, bronze braziers roaring with enchanted flame lit up old stonework, bedraggled in moss.

Lit up too the massive bones of outspread wings.

Ascending slowly, Rush drew her sword, unsuccessfully attempting to snuff out the swell of rage within her soul at this desecration. Qahnaarin and indeed all dovah might be creatures of solitude foremost, rivals for food, territory and mates second, but this bizarre parody of a museum, grounding what by rights should be free and alive was… violation. Ridicule of the fallen.

Reluctantly navigating another outspread, pitiful talon, she swore she could almost hear the laughter of the chamber's architect. Decoded, this laughter clearly aimed at all dragon-kind might have been words for, I am not afraid of you.

She considered the puzzle of the man and frowned. Cinched to his side, Rush knew what she'd seen. Oh yes, she'd invaded enough of Skyrim's barrows to recognise such items. The smooth expressionless features and the familiar eye slits.

Dragon mask.

Striding out onto the landing at the apex of the great hall, she confronted what had from a distance appeared no more than a badly formed blob.

The same could be said of it up close.

Growing cold… colder than the blizzard no doubt still raging outside the tomb, her green eyes narrowed to slits and Rush blinked once, twice. She hissed.

Let us work wonders together…

Another jigsaw piece had fallen into place, unwelcome in the extreme.

Treading on eggshells, she crept past a final isolated coffin, unwilling to initiate any more fights if she could. Her head was sore and her hip might well require stitches, if the wetness beneath her armour was anything to go by. More so than anything else however, she was tired. Dead tired.

Thinking back beyond the destroyed Word Wall, she prayed no foes had been left alive - or animate, in the Draugr's case - to possibly harm Frea if she still slept.

Rush made a bad ally.

Spying the outline of an opening in the hewn rock before her, the Argonian was forced to brush against the immense statue of the daemon, Hermaeous Mora, in order to squeeze by.

Faintly her nose caught the whiff of corruption. That which had little to do with any fleshly vessel but everything with what her former tutor Phinis Gestor referred to as a 'breach'.

Nothing too serious, the Breton had always hurried to explain. Not like what occurred during the Oblivion Crisis. No. Just the faintest traces of protracted contact with an outside Sphere. A taint. As if this was meant to reassure.

Resisting the urge to spit upon the grotesque statue, logic asserting it never did well to pick fights one couldn't win - such a hypocritical thought, that! - Rush wrenched a nearby chain, brushing curls of rust from her gauntlets as she waited for the hidden passage to open.

Almost forced to crawl through the corresponding tunnel, half caved in through the depredations of time, she finally emerged into an alarmingly well lit, well ventilated niche.

She halted, gaping.

Raised high on its own stand sat a large tome, the cover smooth and sinister as a polished span of obsidian.

And it was old. She smelt it, soon after fighting back a rattling cough. Her fingers itched to touch it.

Somewhere within her, Qahnaarin had risen. Her soul-twin stretched, and bristled. Rush ground her teeth. Eyes never leaving the book, the casing rippled like oil, faint traces of an emerald sigil rising to the fore. It was unmistakeable.

Swallowing her apprehension, Hatches 'neath rushes placed two hands solidly upon the cover. Quickly she flipped it over to reveal the crumbling pages within.

And the world fell apart.