Summary: Why would you destroy my planet? I mean, village...

Chapter Thirteen : Snow, White; Blood, Red

James sauntered down the mountain, even though Spock had been lecturing him on-and-off on the importance of being Dragonborn. He really had no idea what "fun" was, did he? James couldn't help but wonder… of course, if everything he'd said about Sarek's teaching was true, then perhaps he really did have no idea what fun was.

That was impossible.

"Maybe…" he wondered when they were almost to Ivarstead, but not quite within the village limits, he noticed that the mountain was not quite so steep as to die from a fall. If they were sure-footed enough, they could make it down and skip out on Ivarstead altogether.

He didn't get a chance to finish because Bones thought that prime time to say something. "Maybe we can go back home to Whiterun now," he wondered. "I'm sure Danica will be happy to have my head whenever we arrive, actually…"

James laughed. "If she could figure out a way to arrange it."

Bones grunted, his best attempt at hiding a laugh.

James decided to try again since Bones didn't seem to be saying anything else about going back to Whiterun. Spock had been talking all day about what they had to do next and, to be totally honest, James hadn't been paying all that much attention to it. He just wasn't looking forward to going back to Whiterun… it was so… dull there. "Maybe we could duck into your family's place before heading off—wherever it is we're going now," James suggested.

Spock seemed to consider this. And, for a moment, he was considering so hard that he even stopped walking. James stopped, turned around, and grinned at him. But, for once, Spock wasn't glowering at him. He was glowering off into the distance. Or maybe it wasn't a glower.

"Gods—gods, no," Spock whispered and suddenly was bolting down the mountain with no regard for the cobbled roads and almost none for the trees between him and his goal. His shout was punctuated by a scream—the scream of a dragon.

Bones stood just as still as Spock had, but he managed to remain rooted much longer. But, James thought, finally a place to use a shout and not just for fun. He drew his sword and took off after Spock, focusing ahead to the spot he wanted. They weren't very far from the burning community now—so close they could pick out individuals discarding their shovels and hoes in exchange for swords and axes. James thought he saw Sarek among them, but couldn't be sure.

"Wuld!" James shouted, and surged ahead of Spock in the chariot of his own voice. The dragon wheeling about over the town quickly took notice of that and turned his attention on James. Hopefully, this would turn out better than the last time he'd faced off with a dragon…

The scene they came upon at the settlement was utter and complete chaos—Spock had never seen such. It seemed as if the whole world was being destroyed… in a way, it was. As the dragon soared overhead, shacks were burning. He hadn't been able to ignore the Dragonborn jumping past him at the speed of a windstorm, but now he looked up at the dragon because there was nothing that he could do.

The dragon spat fire down on them and then roared before landing before James, rearing back, and snapping with his huge jaws—narrowly missing thanks to a timely shout of power. "Fus ro!" The Dragonborn brandished his sword and rushed forward to the dragon's wing.

Since it was somewhat disinterested in the village for the moment, and only in the opponent who could speak its own language, Spock turned to the village. All the shacks, even the one he'd had the audacity to call "home" for the past eighteen years, were burning, disintegrating to the ground like crumbs off a poor man's sweetroll. He ran to the house and found it blessedly empty.

"Spock!"

He turned at Sarek's voice and saw him. It was an unfamiliar sight, the usually unperturbed Altmer in black robes, face black with soot, a shining iron sword which he doubtless intended to bloody before day's end. Spock called back as he ran to his side. "Are you hurt?"

"No," Sarek answered, his voice pale but out-of-breath. "No, but Amanda—" He gestured weakly in some direction before he saw a few of the other Breton townspeople running haphazardly across the road. "Into the woods!" he shouted to them, pointing toward Ivarstead. "Do not turn back; send help from the guards in Ivarstead!"

"Sarek, what about Amanda?" Spock demanded, suddenly feeling unbidden flame curling about his fingernails.

He turned his thoughts away from magic and Sarek before he could answer. He sprinted in the direction that Sarek had indicated, hoping to find whatever he would and that it would be in time. In time for what—what, he had no idea. The dragon was no longer occupied by the Dragonborn's challenge and soared around the settlement. Perhaps it was seeking out some considerably easier prey.

Well, he wouldn't find it here…

Just as Spock turned to get a better look at it, the red Blood Dragon landed in the trees a short ways off and roared a breath of flame in his direction. Spock responded in kind. Just as he was wondering whether to move closer or not, the Dragonborn sprang to attack the creature again. Spock looked away from it for a moment, only a moment—

Lying on the ground nearby, covered in blood—Nyota crouched over Amanda like a cornered and frightened wolf. A pair of drawn knives hovered over Amanda protectively and almost turned on Spock before Nyota realized who it was. Maybe she was about to say something, he wasn't sure, but he pushed her away before she could say anything.

"Mother?" He didn't get a chance to say more and she didn't get a chance to answer if even she could. He reached out to touch her, but his hand never reached.

"Spock!" the Dragonborn was shouting. "Help me!"

The next time he looked, the Dragonborn was plunging his sword into the shoulder of the beast between two scales of its natural armor. The creature screamed and tried to turn its head to breathe fire on its adversary, but he was just out of reach. Instead, the creature turned to Spock.

...

"No!" James screamed, but his voice seemed ineffective. In fact… everything seemed ineffective. The world was painted in a light blue, even the frozen fire flying from the beast's mouth toward Spock even while the Altmer raised a hand engulfed in magic. Everything, everything was stuck in time.

James dropped to the ground and looked around. "Spock?" he asked, and saw the familiar old frame of the aged Spock. He was, really, not at all like the one standing frozen only ten feet away. The old one looked at peace, rather placid. The younger one looked angry—no, perhaps wrathful. And, barring a miracle, he would be consumed in flame in a few moments of regularly-moving time. "Spock?" He carefully approached the Psijic-Spock.

"Look," he said, and pointed off into the distant woods.

James glanced but didn't see. He took a few steps closer and then saw it… whatever it was. It looked like an Altmer, but with a smaller forehead and much paler skin. "What is it?" he asked.

Psijic-Spock looked at James with a sigh, and shook his head. "That is a Falmer."

"Falmer?" As far as James knew, those goblin-like creatures never really made it outside. And then he remembered there was more to the Falmer than their blindness, than their dank homes under ground. He didn't have time to explain that he knew that, at one time, the Falmer had been as proud a race as the Altmer, colloquially called "Snow Elves," perhaps for their white skin, or perhaps for their homelands here in the north.

"It pains me that you live in such a time where you do not truly know what that means," Psijic-Spock sighed. "They were hunted like animals, slaughtered, driven into extinction by Ysgramor and the warriors who followed him."

"I know," James said with a nod. "So where did that one come from?"

"I can only guess…" Psijic-Spock answered and then turned to his younger self.

James sighed and also looked at Thalmor-Spock. "That's… a pretty good guess," he agreed quietly.

Psijic-Spock took in the situation quietly, and James did, too. Unless he acted very quickly, Spock could very well die. Perhaps, even if he was able to pull off a shout to distract the dragon, Thalmor-Spock could still die… and who even knew what that meant for Psijic-Spock. "If you are able to save my young counterpart, he may be able to tell you something of this Snow Elf," the elder Spock pointed out.

"Yeah," James sighed. "If I am."

"If anyone can save him, and so myself, it is you, Dragonborn."

James was about to curse Spock for that—not that he knew any particularly effective curses anyway, but it would have made him feel better. Psijic-Spock was suddenly walking away and James knew that, any moment now, time would return to normal. Even a well-placed fus ro directly at the head of the dragon would not save Spock. The flaming breath was already nearly there.

Of course, James realized he had been thinking of it all backwards.