It was carnage; sheer carnage on a scale which I had not been witness to in all of my years as a warrior.

She was cloaked in the spectral armour of the Dragon Aspect. Shout after shout thundered through the air as she roared in unbridled rage at the terrified masses beneath her. Odahviing snatched living soldiers from the battleground in his massive teeth as he flew with The Queen on his back, thrashing them brutally like rag dolls until their bodies tore apart, blood showering down upon the Thalmor forces as they succumbed to the fear and panic; what corpses remained intact were quickly summoned back into horrific unlife to raise their weapons against their own kind in service to the Dragonborn.

Hundreds already lay dead and mutilated, their blood staining the snowy ground like a vast crimson blanket.

I was stunned, desperately trying to keep my grip on Naslaarum as he shrieked in fury and twisted in the air in an attempt to dislodge me. Even as he fought me, he unleashed fire in massive, intense rushes at the Altmer on the battle field, their screams ringing through the air like a symphony from the deepest pits of damnation as the flames engulfed them and their flesh melted and burned away.

Naslaarum was racing toward the ground at impossible speed as the deafening hiss of the wind rushed past my ears.

I could feel my heart pounding in my chest, so fast that I feared it would give out; I had to get off the dragon. It would kill me if I didn't.

As I prepared to leap from Naslaarum's back and roll onto the snow to break my fall, I saw a flare of white flame enter my field of vision, engulfing the galloping skeleton of a long dead horse.

'TELDRYN! JUMP!'

Virdanyis held his hand out as far as he could, his eyes burning with determination and anger as he kicked his mount to urge it forward; a deep cut ran down the side of his face over his left eye, his white hair matted with his own blood.

His gaze burned into me as I pulled my feet free from the stirrups and braced myself to fall; as I released the reins, he shouted and kicked the horse hard, forcing it to jump up so that he could reach me as I fell.

He grunted as his armoured hand gripped my wrist with the strength of an iron band, pulling me up onto the back of the fearsome accursed animal; I fell forward heavily against him, my breath knocked out of me as he sharply turned the horse around and began to gallop back toward the Nord army. 'Yah!'

He thrust his spear through the chest of a fleeing Thalmor mage and brutally withdrew it as he yelled back at me, the horse rapidly running toward the horrified Nords assembled some distance away from the fighting.

'Leave her! She will kill you if you try to stop her! We must protect the human forces!'

I turned my head back in stunned horror to watch her as she butchered the terrified Altmer soldiers.

She had dismounted, all four of her dragons corralling the Thalmor army like sheepdogs, destroying those trying to flee with huge fountains of fire as they released deafening roars; Durnehviir was tearing the very souls from the helpless soldiers, their faces stricken with hysterical fear as their fallen comrades rose up from the bloody snow next to them to run them through.

Nysteris was standing in the middle of the frenzied and frantic multitudes, lighting up the blood-red darkness with the glow of her spectral armour.
As I watched on in horror, she summoned all of her rage; and with an explosion of incomprehensible force, she released a thu'um so deafening and powerful that I felt it push us forward on the back of the horse.
The shock waves levelled every Altmer for meters, their bodies falling like dominoes in a terrible detonation with Nysteris at the epicentre.
No sooner had the moment passed, and she began impaling bodies with her spinning spear, ripping the screaming wounded apart with her bare hands, blood spraying around her like a terrible fountain. Limbs torn away, heads crushed beneath her armoured heel. Her face was twisted with pure rage and power, a vicious, snarling smile contorting her mouth; she licked the blood from her lips as she cut the fleeing men and women to pieces, viscera and bone collapsing around her.

This was not a battle; it was a massacre.

With their own dead rising up to destroy them, with the avatars of Auri-El and the dragons from Monahven and the soul cairn unleashing their full might upon them, with the Dragonborn in an uncontrollable and unbridled blood rage in their very midst; the Thalmor did not stand a chance.

I was shaken to my very core.

I was overwhelmed with horror at the idea that Virdanyis and I had willingly agitated her bloodlust before the battle; that the one whom I loved and cherished, the beautiful woman who slept in my arms and yielded to me in our moments of sweet passion; that this was her true nature.

More earth shattering thu'ums cracked through the air around us as Virdanyis shouted at the top of his lungs to me over the deafening noise.

'We have to get out of here!' He bellowed. 'It's too late to bring her down!'

I was numb as the horse reared and Virdanyis turned his attention to address the Nords, their faces blank with shock and disbelief as they beheld the horrific scene unfolding before them.

'You, men and women of Skyrim! Return to Winterhold! The battle is won, and your lands are safe! But you must flee if you wish to return with your lives!'
He turned his fiery gaze toward me, his teeth clenched and his brow furrowed. 'Snap out of it, brother. We must return to The Vale... Yeargh!'

My mind was a haze as Virdanyis kicked the horse and it sped through the night, away from the rivers of blood and the screams of the dying.

Nysteris; my Nysteris.

I would never be able to see her the same way again.