"Beware the Third Eye Gem, red in hue and surrounded by gold feathers. It is a window into the soul of the poor creature that dons it. The Eye peels away the layers of doubt, the lies we tell each other and ourselves, and lays bare the truth of the individual. Ten times that which the Eye finds on the inside, it makes on the outside of they who wear it."
Chapter 51: Eye of the Storm.
There was a hidden temple built into the Karthspire, a jagged mountain that marked the turning point of the Karth River to the east. Marcurio spotted it from the air, while Kipgolsik made a show and disturbed the Forsworn that scurried about the 'spire's base. The Nord Blade they'd retrieved from the Ratway suspected it to be an old Blade fortress and insisted that the temple be reopened for the Blades' use.
He found it odd, that people who were sworn to 'serve the Dragonborn' they gave a lot of orders. Yagraz was hesitant to bash the old man, Esbern, for his tone, but the younger woman who had organized their infiltration of the Thalmor Embassy caught the Orc's hands many a time. Once upon a time, the Blades were the epitome of secretive warrior-spies on behalf of the Dragonborn emperors of Cyrodiil—but decades of being hunted by the Thalmor had rendered them down to two members.
It irked the both of them profoundly that while Yagraz, backed up by Kipgolsik and the former Forsworn volunteers from Volskygge all attempted peace, Marcurio would sneak into the temple via the sizable aerie near the Karthspire's summit. As the thief-mage had found, no one seemed to consider the possibility of burglars being able to fly, and the doors from the Akaviri-inspired aerie into the temple itself were unlocked. Only hundreds of years of weathering barred the doors, and with a clever application of Alteration magic, that was undone.
Once upon a time, the ruined building Marcurio skulked through had been a place of power, authority, a fortress from which the Akaviri invaded Tamriel. Time had destroyed nearly everything of wood or paper, only stone and metal seemed to endure. Among the ruins of the temple's barracks, Marcurio found a complete set of the Blades' unique style of armor, including the sizable round shield. Additionally, he found an enchanted sword forged in the curved, thin one-sided blade style of the Blades—dai-katana he remembered the name was. The weapon was imbued with lightning, weaker than normal, but he could feel some other magic sleeping within.
Once all the valuables were gathered in one place, Marcurio bagged them up and looked for the front door. He found it but found the passageway that it led too blocked by statuary of all things. While he sharpened the Blades blade he'd rightfully pillaged, Marcurio listened for any movement from the other side.
Peace talks, it seemed, didn't go quite as well. In only a few short minutes, he could feel the ground quake with Volendrung's impact, hear two distinct uses of the Thu'um, and enjoyed the sound of dying religious extremist. Most of the Forsworn, he noted, seemed to scream at a sharp A as they died. Later, he could hear Esbern gush about the architecture and the influences of the Reman dynasty. As a fully licensed and accredited asshole, Marcurio, of course, had to trick the old man into nearly having a heart attack by pretending to be the enormous head of Reman Cyrodiil that blocked the doorway. To do otherwise would be unethical.
Naturally, the first thing the Blades took umbrage with was the loot sack.
"Those items rightfully belong to the Blades!"
"We need every asset we can get to rebuild."
"Dragonborn, you can't let this… this tomb robber to make off with his loot."
Yagraz, visibly done with their whining, sighed and addressed Marcurio. "Let me see the stuff." She lent her critical eye to the armor, and Blades sword, passing over the trinkets wholesale. "Alright, the years have not been kind to this stuff. Uneven thickness in the metal, what looks to be some type of fungal growth, and even then it was probably sub-standard stuff when it was new. This sword is neat, but ancient. They're museum pieces, nothing I'd send people to fight and die in." Over the protests of the Blades, she handed the stuff back to Marcurio. "I know a smith over in Whiterun, she can make something in this style but actually worth the metal, it's made of. We'll give her some work once we get these dragons under control."
"...Fine. I guess we'd just put it on a display anyway if it's that bad," Delphine bitterly relented. "We should go inside, there might be some clues to-"
The Breton warrior was cut off by the sound of dragon roars and frightened screaming. Marcurio, naturally, assumed Kipgolsik had made his move and was attempting to betray his way to freedom. When the party emerged from the Karthspire's interior, instead they were met with the rare sight of two dragons locked in aerial combat.
Kipgolsik threw a torrent of frost upon a brown dragon, who returned the favor with fire and force. Any doubt that the event wasn't a surprise attack ended when the brown dragon flipped in the air and used a Shout of raw kinetic force to drive Kipgolsik into the Karth River.
Marcurio set his bag of loot down, and filled his hands with lightning, while Yagraz plotted the dragon's path for a hammer toss. All those preparations ended when a third dragon's shadow filled the air, and Yagraz gave the unambiguous order to 'get the fuck down'.
The new dragon was black, his scales warped like they had been splashed with acid. His eyes burned like coals. And as if the small force of former Forsworn, Blades and assorted 'adventurers' were beneath his notice, he landed on the shores of the Karth River to speak to the frost dragon.
"That's the World Eater," the Dragonborn told the hiding Blades and Marcurio. "Don't say his name. He's pissed about Kipgolsik not obeying him anymore-demanding to know whose Thu'um has the Mastery in Kip's reckoning."
"And we're hiding instead of fighting him because…?" Marcurio casually said in response while Esbern fought off a panic attack.
"Because we need to plan out how to hit him hard enough to actually do damage." Yagraz whapped the thief-mage like he should have known better. "Esbern, you distract him with an atronach, slick, you drain his magicka so he can't Shout, I'll go for the webbing on his wings so he can't fly away, Delphine, you keep Esbern safe if the other dragon comes for him."
"You can not-to fight Alduin-" Esbern sputtered, but was harshly hushed by Yagraz.
Too late. The black dragon paused and arched his neck to look back at them. "Screw it," Yagraz said and stood. She lept high into the air, unnaturally so, trailing red sparks from her greaves.
Marcurio vanished from the world after blowing a note on his whistle. He slipped down the Karthspire unseen while Yagraz eventually came down with the force of gravity. This gave him a front-row seat to watch the dragon, Alduin, casually spin and strike her horizontally in the torso as she descended on him. Her momentum promptly shifted ninety degrees and almost saw her strike the Karthspire-fortunately, Volendrung's many spikes allowed her to slow her movement to avoid death by mountain impact.
Kipgolsik looked ready to return to the fight but was forced down into the water once more by the brown dragon. This agitated Marcurio who in turn conveyed this to the brown dragon with multiple expert-tier lightning spells applied to his nervous system. The brown dragon, ungrateful brat that he was, did not enjoy being corrected in such a socially acceptable, for mages, way.
Marcurio's dragon minion had the electrified corpse of his brother land upon him, the brown dragon's flesh burned away to leave behind his bones as he fell. Kipgolsik was the center of a light show as the other dragon's soul was absorbed. Alduin beheld this, inscrutable.
"Disgusting joore," the Nord's Akatosh rumbled in the common tongue. "It shames me that my brothers could not maintain their lordship over you while I was away." Alduin turned his attention from them to the sky and spread his wings to take off. "Kipgolsik, if you will not return as my brother, I will see you return as charr!"
Marcurio didn't fully remember the fight, he was too busy trying to stay alive. Alduin's thu'um shattered the sides of the Karthspire, cracked the road that ran on the opposite side of the Karth River like a whip, bade rocks to fall from the sky, and other cataclysmic things. The thief-mage's main concern was staying alive through the fight.
The single most annoying part of the battle, however, was that Alduin seemed to be invulnerable. Literally nothing they did hurt him—even Yagraz using the thu'um upon him seemed more insulting for the black dragon than a threat. All of that added up to an unpleasant experience. This was worsened when Alduin finally managed to track down the invisible Marcurio.
"I smell that damned mortal's magic on you," the black dragon growled as he pursued the thief-mage across the shattered terrain. "I will have my vengeance upon him, with your death as my instrument!" Alduin snapped his maws after Marcurio as the Imperial ran on the air away from certain death.
In order to escape death, Marcurio ended up making a terrible mistake. Alduin had snapped at him at an upward angle, and Marcurio had flipped to avoid it. But as he flipped, he felt the weight shift and watched in horror as the oiled leather pouch containing the Eye of Mohamara fall into Alduin's maw. The World Eater spasmed violently and stopped in the air which allowed Marcurio to escape to a safe distance.
Pink lightning coursed over the World Eater. With every beat of his wings, they grew longer and wider. A second set of horns grew behind his original pair, as his neck lengthened. Alduin's entire body grew larger, more covered in his warped scales, vicious spikes grew out from his tail at intervals. When his transformation was complete, the World Eater was three times his previous size and covered in a persistent pinkish-red glow. In between his eyes, Marcurio could see Mohamara's Eye, somehow embedded in the dragon's brow.
"What is this power?" Even the World Eater was stunned by his transformation and gave voice to the emotion of the mortals down below. Alduin beat his wings with great force, and kicked up a hurricane-force gale from the effort—everything and one who was not anchored to the ground at the time went flying away. Marcurio, in the air at the time, went positively soaring. He flew over the mountains and didn't' have the power to slow down until he was over the plains of Whiterun.
"Okay. So. That happened."
"Um, the Master can't come to the slate right now, can I take a message?"
Yagraz's expression was one of elemental unamusement. She held up her micro-slate to the side of her face not being healed for burns and processed the information she had just been told. It was annoying enough that short-stuff's slate had been answered by that High Elf follower of his—the Caller. "What is he doing that he can't talk to me?"
Esbern and Yagraz's regeneration ring saw a lot of business in the aftermath of Alduin's rampage. She put off her own healing so that the children who had been burned could get treated first. The Code demanded such under item forty-four: Prioritize the health of the young, for they are the future.
"He's flying the ship."
"Flying the-" Yagraz had to yank her head out of Esbern's healing spell to pinch the bridge of her nose quickly. The Nord man let her express her annoyance before returning to his Restoration. "He does remember that he doesn't have his airship license, right?"
There was a series of frightened screams on the other side of the call, the sound of wood on stone, and a distant Khajiit shout about how being 'too low!' When she spoke again, the Caller was certainly shaken ever so slightly. "I guessed as much."
"Can he land the ship so he can talk? It's an emergency."
"I'll ask him, just a moment."
Yagraz waited, and watched the Reachmen, women, and children explore Sky Haven temple. Some of the kids had been born in the Forsworn camp at the foot of the Karthspire, and had never been past the 'giant head'. On the other end of the call, she heard more screams and an awful crash and sighed at the sound.
At least it wasn't as bad as that time Mohamara had crashed the flyer's-ed airship into a porcelain store. But the concept of ship insurance wouldn't be invented for hundreds, perhaps thousands, of years.
"Okay! I'm here, what's up, who's dead?" Short-stuff's voice came through the call at last. "I'm in the Pale right now, but send me a picture and I can pop over there right away."
"Short-stuff no one's dead. Yet. Slick's still MIA, but he's a slippery eel, he'll be fine." Yagraz came dangerously close to lying, but avoided by clever use of confidence. "But we'll all be dead soon. The World Eater showed up again." Her face was finally healed, and Esbern moved his way to fix her busted arm. "And he got ahold of your artifact thingy. It gave him a huge power boost, also made him like five times edgier."
"...Well, shit."
The Orc nodded at her friend's sentiment, for it was hers as well. "Yeah. Can you like… shut it off, or something?"
"I can try, but that's… that's Champion stuff, Yagraz. I don't have one of those. I'll ask my dad, see if he has any useful advice for stolen artifacts."
The Orc winced as her bones were snapped back into place and fused. "Didn't you get his artifact stolen or something?"
"...Damnit. And I don't think I have Uncle Hircine's number to ask him to give it back. Gah!"
Yagraz snapped her fingers into the micro-slate. "Hey, Nirn to short-stuff. Alduin's out there, supercharged and kicking everybody's ass, including mine. Family drama takes a back-seat to that."
There was a 'new caller added' blip, which surprised both parties on either side of the call. When Yagraz stopped to look at the call servitor's interface, she saw the small picture of a sleeping Mohamara with a teddy bear, and a new photo. A stained glass hourglass, with the attached name 'Bad Dragon Daddy'.
Akatosh, she realized. Dazed, she returned the micro-slate to her ear.
"Um… hi?"
Deep breathing from the other line, not Mohamara's, filled the call for a second before an elderly man's voice spoke through the call. "What. The fuck. Did you do. To my son." Akatosh's voice echoed unnaturally in Sky Haven temple, but no one but Yagraz seemed able to hear it.
"Uncle Akatosh, hi, I didn't do anything, he did it to himself," Mohamara spoke alarmingly quick, all in one breath.
"Alduin accidentally ate short-stuff's artifact, that's it." The surreal nature of talking to Akatosh on a call kept Yagraz subdued.
"He ate my eye?!"
"You are going to be lucky if I deign not to eat you, time-streaming wretch," Akatosh snapped, and produced a sharp note of feedback in response. "Alduin is dangerously off-balance at his current power level, he poses a threat to himself and the Aurbis itself-you did this with your reckless acquisition of power. Fix this, before I do."
Akatosh hung up, and the two friends stayed on the line for a minute in total silence.
"You know what, this actually makes me crashing the galleon into the side of a mountain slightly better by comparison…."
Serana hadn't seen the sun in forever, even though from her memory it had only been hours. It was as it had always been for her—harsh, merciless, blinding. The reflection of the sun's light on the snow around her prison cave made it all the worse. But the company she'd made when she was freed helped a bit.
When Serana, weak from apparently centuries without feeding, had emerged from her coffin to find herself outnumbered by members of some cult, she expected to be taunted and set on fire. Instead, five of the six of them had bowed their heads and begun to pray for her. A chant for the dead, and how they would mourn for her because someone had to. Either they were genuine in their offer to grieve on her behalf, or they were profoundly talented actors.
If she hadn't been about to die, she might have accepted their offer. The sixth of their merry band, in armor at least, had moved in to raise a hammer to finish the weakened Volkihar off. But he was stopped by a High Elf among the pink-robed people.
"Wait! She isn't dead," he'd said.
"She's a vampire," the Nord said back to him.
"But she's not dead. My detect dead magic items aren't picking her up!" The High Elf stepped closer to Serana and knelt down near her. "If she's a vampire but not dead, that means she's a daughter of Coldharbour. One of the original vampires."
He knew, Serana realized. The High Elf knew what that meant. That thought filled her with a palpable horror, almost enough to let her get to her feet.
"That means she's stronger than any the vampires we killed on the way in—and that we should take her out while she's weak!" The Nord seemed frustrated beyond words, considering how he bashed his head into the shaft of his warhammer. "C'mon, I was this close to respecting you, Orthorn!"
Orthorn, the High Elf, offered his hand to Serana. "I can't undo what Molag Bal did, and I don't know if it was something you wanted. But you're still alive, so there is a chance for things to get better for you. We'd like to help you if you want help?"
She expected to see pity in the High Elf's eyes. Serana was ready to spit her last at that pity. But instead, she saw pain. Perhaps the High Elf had some unnatural empathy, perhaps he'd experienced the same horrible situation she had. Serana had been so unprepared for the possibility that she was stunned, at a loss for words. If her snark tutor ever caught wind of this, she'd have to start sarcasm lessons from the very beginning again.
Naturally, she accepted Orthorn's hand and the offer implied therein.
As her new friends, one more surly than the others led the way out, they talked. The ones in pink were servants Llorona, goddess of kindness. At least, she assumed it was a goddess, they avoided gender pronouns when speaking of Llorona, but the name and their pink attire gave off a feminine vibe. The Nord in armor was a warrior-priest of Stendarr and was visibly pissed off that Serana wasn't a pile of ashes the entire way out. None of them even questioned the massive arcane scroll on her back.
While the sun was an unfortunate thing to emerge to find, the sight of a flying ship crashing into a nearby mountain proved refreshing.
"Well, don't see that every day," she'd commented. "So, someone finally figured out how to apply levitation magic to vehicles? Awesome." The Elder Scroll on her back twitched, which alarmed her. Every few seconds it would tug on its own toward the site of the crash. Serana didn't know much about Elder Scrolls, but she surmised that the damn thing moving on its own was a sign from the gods. "We… um, should probably make sure they're okay."
Not even theStendarrian objected to her suggestion.
The sentiment shared by all the disparate groups of mages that were being transported on the Column Fall was that: They didn't want Mohamara flying the ship anymore. How they intended to get a galleon back to sea without flying was still being decided upon by the various factions.
"All the wonder out of making an entire ship, with a heavy load mind, fly seems to have gone away," Mohamara commented to his other self while he held the bottle for Jode's meal. Orchendor rolled his eyes while Jone drank his lunch happily. "I didn't see any of them helping…."
"They're novices, some only know one spell," Orchendor fired back. "None of them even knew about Mysticism before Khajiit told them!"
The two halves of the same tojay were in the quarters designated for the minders for each faction of novices, they represented the Pink Coats—naturally. Most of the minders were barely at the apprentice level. Most of the Pink Coats that had joined him for his trip to Winterhold were at high apprentice, low adept level—and represented the faction with the greatest Restoration skill.
None of the novices had taken Mohamara seriously when he'd first introduced himself as the Pink Coats' leader, more than one had even pet him as if he were an overgrown house cat. It had been so long, he'd actually started to get used to people not touching him without permission. Everyone assumed the eight foot tall, ridiculously handsome even while dressed in all-pink J'zargo to be the leader.
But casually lifting every single one of them into the air with Mysticism seemed to prove his claims to their satisfaction.
The kittens' meal was interrupted by a knock on the door. "Master, Orthorn and his team are here," whispered a Pink Coat student through the door. "And they're accompanied by a Vigilant of Stendarr."
Mohamara passed Jode and her bottle over to Orchendor and snapped his fingers as he stood. Chillrend escaped its linen wrap and floated behind the pinker tojay as he left the room. On the deck, the five Friends sent to help the Dawnguard stood. Mohamara could sense no fear, no compulsion, nothing that could indicate they were coerced.
But there, bold as brass, was a Vigilant of Stendarr, standing with his arms crossed and glaring at anyone and everyone who dared approach him. There was a woman in a strange cuirass of light armor—it resembled spider webs almost. She had a hood up and had a hauntingly familiar scroll on her back.
When Orthorn and the others of his acolytes saw Mohamara however, they closed ranks around the new woman. This concerned the tojay but became even worse when he saw the new woman's eyes.
Instinctively, Chillrend whipped around and flew at the vampire's face point-first as if it were an arrow launched from a bow. There was no hesitation. Similarly, there was no hesitation for Orthorn to produce a strange dagger into which his red morpholith fit and deflect the malachite-stahlrim sword before it struck.
Before, there was bickering among the novices about what to do next, but after the clash of metal on glass there was silence. "Orthorn," Mohamara said and forced himself to be patient. "Why did you do that? Do you want me to say the Mourner's Chant for her? You ought to have done that yourself."
"She does not need the Mourner's Chant, Master," Orthorn said back, defiant. "She is not dead."
Chillrend spun around the mizzenmast like a flying circular saw. The Khajiit, less than half Orthorn's height, crossed his arms and only briefly looked at the elf in between meeting the vampire's eyes. "Is she not?"
"She is a daughter of Coldharbour, Master. And has accepted our help." Orthorn held his free hand over his chest. "She hasn't harmed any of us, and even suggested we come here to help if we could."
Mohamara's Merridian instinct to kill undead was stymied by this information. Daughters of Coldharbour were women who had been violated by Molag Bal personally and emerged as the first vampires. Each one was unique, with powers that not even other daughters of Coldharbour would possess. It seemed that the one Orthorn had found had the unique gift of being a living vampire.
The Merridian in him demanded her death, but the Sphere of Kindness in him automatically reached out and found in the vampire frayed bonds. A betrayal that wore the face of someone she knew as 'Mother', a father so distant she no longer remembered what made him happy or why she wanted him to be happy.
Mohamara fought the Sphere's instinct to search her bonds—as a daughter of Coldharbour, she'd seen enough unwanted contact. Chillrend ceased its sawblade spin and gently floated back to Mohamara. The weapon hovered directly behind the tojay, who forced himself to bend at the waist. "My apologies, madam. I acted in ignorance, and ask forgiveness."
"Well… that's not something I thought I'd ever see. A Moon Bishop trained in the Psijic ways, asking me for forgiveness." The vampire placed one hand on her waist and gestured with the other while she spoke. "Frankly, I'm a bit tired of impossible things happening all at once, mind cutting it out?"
As if her request had provoked some spite within it, the scroll on her back tore itself free and sailed through the air to crack Mohamara in the head once he rose from his bow. Everyone on the deck watched, stunned, as the tojay fell over unconscious, bleeding from the nose and the scroll landed on his torso.
All eyes turned to Serana, who looked at them, the unconscious tojay, the scroll, and back to the crowd. With an innocent expression, she pointed her thumb at the Vigilant of Stendarr who was pinching the bridge of his nose. "He did it."
Among the night's children, a dread lord will rise. And then get knocked the fuck out
