Kahluthkrii flew high, very nearly enjoying himself, as he sought out one of Skyrim's mountaintop altars. Though he had been as deep into the mysteries of the Dragon Cult's magic as anyone, it was both delightful and perplexing that he was able to fly thus even in his undead state. The wings worked, though he had never taken on fuel to power them – nor was he capable of doing so. Where did the power come from? Was the energy of some star in a far-distant universe being plundered to keep him aloft?
He had to admit, reluctantly, that there were advantages to being undead. No need to stop and rest, no need to eat or drink, no need even to breath. On the other hand he would have traded it in a heartbeat for the chance to truly live again. It didn't appear to be an option. As he approached the altar from the air he saw it was one with a Word Wall. The central perch, which would have been occupied by a dragon in his time (receiving obeisance and tribute from pilgrims, and on the lookout for any who might arrive showing the spark that meant they were dragonborn) was empty.
Dragons were few indeed in this modern world, if – despite the existence of a new generation and a remnant of elder dragons resurrected by Alduin more than a decade past – this prime location had not been claimed. Tattered wings flapping, Kahluthkrii came in for a landing atop the wall, facing outward to the altar's approach so he could survey the scene.
The steps and the hillside around them were strewn with bones. Some seemed to be those of mammoths, suggesting that a very big dragon indeed must once have held sway here. There were also the bones of cattle, and of men. Kahluthkrii's memories of his life before awakening in that tomb were riddled with holes, and he could not recall which lord held sway here, in the years before his presumed death.
One large skeleton far down the slope was of a dragon, but the undead shape-shifter felt no echo of a soul within it. This must be the remains of one of Alduin's resurrected dragons, later killed by the Dragonborn. The idea of there being only one dragonborn in the world was so odd – it made Kahluthkrii feel like a member of a nearly-extinct species, a relic of a forgotten time. He was both.
His glowing eyes continued to cast about, searching for clues. Then he spotted it – a contour of the snow-covered ground that looked unnatural. And he sensed a soul there, calling to him. It was one he knew: Vithtoornos, serpent-inferno-strike, one of the most skilled with Fire Breath of the dragons who had ruled during Kahluthkrii's lifetime. Yet he had been brought down by ordinary men with ordinary weapons, lacking even the power of the Voice!
Creaking, the undead dragon launched himself from his perch, gliding downslope to the spot where the corpse of Vithtoornos lay covered in snow. "YOL-TOOR-SHUL!" he shouted, flames shooting from his mouth and melting away the snow cover. The corpse was mummified – but in far better condition than his own, he saw. Dead fewer than ten years, he judged. Only dead Alduin could return a dead dragon to full life, but Kahluthkrii had a power of resurrection – of a sort – at his command. He used it.
As the withered, frozen heap of leather and bone that was once the mighty Vithtoornos came to life, Kahluthkrii uttered the spell that would command his aid: "VITH-TOOR-NOS, I bind you! Follow me and live again, until the moment of my fall!" For a natural-born dragon who had died thousands of years in the past, been resurrected for a few years, and then died again at the hands of mortal men and their puny but sadly effective weapons, Vithtoornos was surprisingly quick to assess the situation.
"Kahluthkrii!" he croaked in Dragon tongue, the first word spoken since his most recent death, "What happened to you?" At that, he glanced down at his withered body and added, "What happened to me?" "I have but recently awakened from a very long sleep," Kahluthkrii said stiffly. His situation was a sore point, and he didn't need any crap from recently dead dragons, lords or not.
For the next several minutes, the undead Dragon priest-turned-undead-dragon brought his recently-revived undead minion up to speed on the current state of affairs. Vithtoornos was not any more delighted to learn of it than Kahluthkrii had been. "What now, Master?" the undead dragon asked.
Natural-born dragons grew for as long as they were alive, and stopped growing at death. Vithtoornos had continued to grow after Alduin had resurrected him, but had enjoyed less than a decade of life before being killed again. He was now far smaller than the transformed Dragon priest who had revived him, whose dragon form had somehow continued to increase in size during the millennia he had been in stasis in his human form.
Aside from that, the spell Kahluthkrii had used bound Vithtoornos to him – making him the lord instead of the natural-born dragon. "Now," Kahluthkrii said in a rasping voice of doom, "we remind the mortals who their masters are. If Alduin is truly gone we may never live again – but there is no reason we cannot rule forever! Follow me!" The two undead dragons took to the air.
The village of Wolf Crossing was little more than a small inn and a couple of cottages that had arisen where two of Skyrim's half-ruined roads met. The Wolf's Head Inn barely scraped by on the sparse trade from travelers, and the cottagers kept kitchen gardens and some livestock to support them – as well as obtaining a slight income from the sale of produce and handicrafts to the Inn and its customers. There were four adult men and three adult woman in the settlement who were capable of wielding weapons, and they all had something – a bow they also used for hunting, a rusty sword brought back by an ancestor from some forgotten war. There was no need for such things, as who would threaten a place with so little to offer?
The two undead dragons, one of them huge beyond belief and so tattered it scarcely seemed possible it could fly, came in the middle of the afternoon with fire and destruction. There had been only two travelers staying at the inn, a messenger armed only with a dagger and a young adventurer with a longsword. Neither of them were much use.
Kahluthkrii perched on the inn's roof tree, only to have its beams collapse beneath his weight. Though there was little flesh on his bones, he was so large that no building in the tiny settlement could support his weight. The occupants fled, even as he set fire to the roof. Vithtoornos, still getting used to being animate again after years of immobility, came down to the ground at the crossroads and attempted to engage the desperate defenders.
Considering how poorly armed they were, the villagers and the two inn visitors put up a surprisingly fierce fight. One woman who'd emerged from the larger of the two cottages (the roof of which was now aflame, thanks to Kahluthkrii's Fire Breath) proved to be an adept archer with a bow and arrows of quality far beyond what you might expect for a backwater like this.
Vithtoornos was taken by surprise, as she darted around to his side and began firing those arrows at close range into the area where the left wing met the body. With a stab of agony, the undead dragon discovered that his heart had been pierced, and he fell. Damn fool! Kahluthkrii though angrily. Was it not possible to get good help? He repeated the ritual, and the triply-dead Vithtoornos became animate once again. As long as Kahluthkrii himself lived, those he reanimated could rise over and over again – unless their souls were captured by Soul Trap or the Dragonborn.
The smaller undead dragon returned to the fight seriously angry, whirling on the woman archer and seizing her with his jaws. He shook her like a terrier with a rat, breaking her spine, then flung her aside. Another of the villagers strove to pick up her bow, but was knocked down by a wing and raked from collarbone to pelvis with the long claw at its joint.
Kahluthkrii rose again from the conflagration that was the inn before it should catch his own somewhat-flammable body on fire. Now that would be ironic, were he to perish in his own flames. He blasted the roof of the remaining cottage, sending it up in a pillar of fire, then amused himself by toasting individual villagers with neatly focused bursts of flame as they struggled from the wreckage and attempted to flee.
In a few minutes Wolf Crossing was only a trio of bonfires, scorched bodies littering the landscape and mounded at the crossroads. One last living resident, a boy of around 12, attempted to flee from the rear of the second cottage to burn and Vithtoornos was eager to go after him. They could not eat these people or their livestock, but there was a great vengeful satisfaction in destroying them and everything they had wrought.
As the smaller undead dragon rose from the ground to go after the fleeing boy, Kahluthkrii bellowed "Hold! Let him go free!" Hovering in midair, Vithtoornos turned to look at his master. "Tender feelings, Kahluthkrii?" he asked in tones of scorn. Though the spell – and the shape-changing priest's vastly larger size – bound him to obey, it was not a situation he happily accepted. "No, you fool," the larger undead dragon rasped. "We need someone to spread the word. The people of Skyrim must know that their lords have returned."