Hey all you readers, lurkers, and reviewers! :) Have some ass-kicking :3
And you non-PM folk:
Aledis: No worries, glad you could rejoin the party! So sorry to hear about your laptop :(
Panda babii: So much shiznit, so little time.
Onward!
-)
I smashed into the ranks of Ulfric's men in full-on bestial form, and by Molag Bal's bloody mace, did it feel good. There was just nothing like a clash of the titans to get things rolling again. My claws eviscerated soldier after soldier, my powerful jaws snapping neck after neck. And yet they just kept coming.
Their lines were breaking, though; the men were terrified of the wolves. There were five of us—Aela's russet brown, my mahogany, Farkas and Vilkas' burnt umber, and Arnbjorn's platinum blond. The pack more or less brought the outlander into our fold, at least for the remainder of our time as wolves.
One thing that hadn't changed about my relationship with Vilkas was our battle-bond. Even (or perhaps especially) as wolves, our styles were perfect, harmonious savagery. I snapped forward as he held back. He lashed out while I guarded our flanks. I let out a blood-chilling howl as he smashed into our shell-shocked assailants. He loosed a mighty, guttural roar, and I would snap the neck of anyone who came near. Perfect, chaotic harmony.
Our men hadn't known what to expect of the Pack, not really. They knew how wolves were, they knew how we were, but that didn't mean they were really prepared to fight alongside werewolves. We were vicious as dovah, powerful as beasts, terrifying as Daedra, and intelligent as men. Not to mention, they'd never seen any of us in our beast forms and probably couldn't even tell who was who. But they managed well enough, and there was very little initial shock. Not like what came from Ulfric's men.
Their lines were holding better now, though still bowing and breaking under the Circle's onslaught. Farkas and Aela were just as terrifying a team as Vilkas and I—perhaps even more so since they could practically read each other's minds by this point in their marriage. Farkas would rush in headlong, taking the brunt of any counterattacks, while Aela would pick off any and all survivors. She would draw prey out of hiding, and he would decimate it. Perfect, chaotic harmony.
Vilkas and I kept up a more vicious onslaught. The old Companions adage thrummed through my half-lupine brain: Anything that moves is a target. Anything that doesn't move is dead. We'd always been the more vengeful warriors in the company anyway, though that had gotten us into trouble on more than one occasion. (And especially when it came to each other.)
So we snapped necks, eviscerated men with razor-sharp claws. We slammed headfirst into knots of soldiers, cracked bones between our teeth, rammed into shield-bearers with reckless abandon. We scattered men under our paws, under our howling. We impaled soldiers by means of our claws, twisted heads and limbs clean off.
And still, they kept coming.
The day wore on, the sun rising higher and higher in the sky until it reached its zenith. The battle too wore on, and after the initial shock of the werewolves wore off, the Stormcloaks dug their heels in and began fighting as soldiers instead of a rabble. We wolves were beginning to tire at a rate no amount of feeding could sate.
All around us, the Guilds were holding their own—every last one of them. At one point, I saw Njada and Athis standing back-to-back, each with a sword and shield in hand, lashing out and taking names as a duo, their usual petty arguments forgotten. Across the way, Vex was a blinding flash of silvery steel, decapitating her enemies and hacking and slashing at any one of them who came too near, bashing heads in with her Imperial shield, never hesitating. She was as steadfast and strong as if she'd left the legion yesterday.
Standing at the crest of the hill to our backs stood Cynric, Niruin and Tonilia, firing volley after volley of every sort of arrow they'd had time to make, filch, or buy. It was a testament to their marksmanship that none hit any ally. Down the hill a little ways was Ingun Black-Briar, dressed in borrowed Guild armor and passing out potions and poisons as needed. I had been amazed that Maven had allowed an heir into the fray, then had been more impressed that the Lady Black-Briar had done no such thing. Ingun had come to Brynjolf of her own volition, and asked how she could be of use to the war effort. Mercer had inducted her on the spot.
And speaking of the Clansman, he and Delvin were steadily cleaving through Ulfric's men with axe and spell. Gods, watching Delvin work was like being a child on New Life again. The spells he could cast that he just came up with on the spot made me feel downright guilty for holding the title of Arch-Mage of the College of Winterhold. Brynjolf was little more than an indigo blur, accompanied by twin red-and-black blurs that cut through sinew and bone like Molag Bal himself. I remembered then, in my half-aware state, that his axes were Daedric and that he had Mehrunes' Razor in his boot. So many Daedra surrounding a man who believed in the Divines—the opposite of me, the Daedra worshipper with the Divines' blessing.
Speaking of Daedra worshippers, Avalon and Cicero were having a grand old time surrounded by so much death. Cicero was happily stabbing and casting destruction spells, completely in his element. Funny, how perfectly sane he seemed with a battle-sneer on his face and an ebony dagger in his hand. Avalon had a long sword in one hand and ice spikes in the other, and was dancing through and around clusters of Stormcloaks, taunting them as though she had not a care in the world.
Still, they kept coming.
Mercer Frey, his Dwarven sword in one hand, a steel dagger in the other, was a swordsman from hell. His style, so brutal, so intense, reflected the man in spades. Nothing but his eyes and his fingertips was visible in the perplexing armor he wore, and at times he seemed to flat-out disappear—only to reappear moments later with his sword in someone's ribcage, or his dagger through their throat. Dangerous was a word people often used to describe Mercer Frey, right next to deadly, decisive, and deranged.
Fire and frost rained from the skies, courtesy of Odahviing. He was careful to swoop down and tear limb-from-limb only men and women who were dressed in Stormcloak blue. His prediction of the coming storm had also been proven accurate—by early afternoon, it had begun to rain in earnest. We werewolves had no trouble keeping up with the fight in the mud, but soon the humans were having all sorts of issues. Heavy armor and falling in mud tended to be a deadly combination.
Thrynn was working side by side with Veezara, and the two of them had everything worked out to a system. Veezara would rush forward, catching the enemy unawares, and Thrynn would come flying in right behind the Shadowscale and send the soldier to Oblivion. Stranger yet was watching Mjoll the Lioness cleave through Stormcloak after Stormcloak, and still pause long enough to jerk Rune to his feet after he'd fallen.
Etienne was blasting holes in their lines with bursts of elemental magic, in varying degrees of power. Some men he merely had to set on fire; others required that he blast a knot of them into Oblivion with an ice storm. Vekel though, I had never seen doing much of anything other than tending bar. Seeing him decked out in steel armor and wielding a glass warhammer crushing breastplate and skull alike was one of the most bizarre things of the whole battle. Not good or bad, just bizarre.
And still, they kept coming.
The first of us to fall was a young Nord of the city guard. I'd seen him around the Bee and Barb on multiple occasions, drinking and breaking bread with his buddies. After that, we seemed to snap back to attention, and keep at it. The next of us to fall was Shadr, the Redguard who worked at the stables. He was cut down, even as he raised his own axe to strike the man before him. Classic case of why you should always fight with a Shield-Brother.
Speaking of which, Vilkas' warning howl sounded from somewhere behind me, and I immediately whirled to face whatever stood behind me. As it turned out, a rather large Breton was coming at me with the sort of Greatsword that would have no trouble lopping off a werewolf's head. Instinctively, I rushed him, slamming my thick skull into his unprotected gut (Stormcloak cuirasses, not the strongest of armors). He was sent flying back with a whoosh, and Vilkas descended upon him, eyes blazing, claws glinting in the late afternoon sun.
Late afternoon... we'd been werewolves for the better part of the day, and I was starting to feel it. My mind was losing itself to the wolf. I was losing control of language, of my thoughts, of myself. Sooner or later (and probably sooner) I was going to start attacking everything in sight when I fully lost myself to the wolf. Time to make the change.
I loosed a warning howl, and instantly, the Circle snapped to attention. I tore off the battlefield, back up the hill to where Cynric and Niruin were thinning out Stormcloaks with calculated precision. Tonilia had recently re-joined them, having brought a new supply of arrows from the city. I tore past all three of them and just over the crest of the hill, to the rock formation our gear was hiding behind. I had been shrinking, reforming, all the way up the side of the hill. Farkas, Vilkas, and Aela were right behind me.
I reached the rocks just as my bones began bubbling over, breaking, reforming from the wolf into the human. The force brought me to my knees, the pain excruciating and yet over in less time than it took to walk from one end of Riften to the other. The other three were experiencing the same thing, and we were suddenly all very much human (well, elf in my case) and naked as our name days. But any thoughts of embarrassment, lost modesty, or awkwardness were driven far from our minds because of one simple fact:
We were standing completely exposed on the edge of a battlefield.
"Keep moving!" Cynric shouted, the first real human speech I'd heard all day. "We've got company!"
With a quick ease of one well-accustomed to doing so, each member of the Circle donned his or her armor in moments. On went the underthings, then breastplate, kilt, boots, and bracers. It felt good to be in wolf armor again, all grey-gold steel and fur-lined padding. I loved my Guild Armor for everyday wear, but if I was going into battle, I needed heavy armor. The simple leather favored by thieves just left me too exposed.
Farkas wore his standard steel armor, and his eerie calm in the heat of battle set his face into a stony plane. Aela wore her Ancient Nord armor, and would taunt from afar as she joined Cynric, Tonilia, and Niruin on the hill. Isembard was to be Farkas' Shield-Brother, just as soon as he got the signal.
I was unsteady on my feet as I buckled my swords over my hips. My balance was off, and my head was swimming, but that was a fairly common side effect of staying in the beast form for extended amounts of time. There was a savage, primal joy of the hunt, true, but to stay in Hircine's realm was to lose yourself. Civilized werewolves held a special sympathy for feral ones. Or at least, Farkas and I did. Vilkas and Aela… well, I'm sure you all know their version of mercy.
"Everyone alright?" I asked, my tongue thick and heavy as though I'd been drinking all day, instead of killing Stormcloaks.
The order of the day was a "Yeah, I'll be fine." of varying degrees from the rest of the Circle, and so the four of us pounded back up the hill, just in time to clash with a few Stormcloaks who'd been audacious enough to attempt to get at our archers.
"YOL!" I barked, setting the one closest to me on fire, just as the Twins ran the other two through with their greatswords.
I was alarmed that it had taken so much effort to call on the Thu'um, much less articulate words. Vilkas, reading me accurately as usual, asked, "Having problems?"
"None I don't know how to fix," I slurred. And with that, I charged down the hill to smash into the fray for the second time that day. Only this time, I was singing at the top of my lungs:
"DOVAHKIIN! DOVAHKIIN! NAAL EK ZIN LOS VAHRIIN…!"
There was truly no better way to announce the Dragonborn had arrived on the scene like that song, but that wasn't why I was singing it. I needed something that would bring the Thu'um back to the forefront of my mind, and subjugate the beast. Nothing like the song that reminded you of your civic duty, eh? To keep evil forever at bay.
By the time he joined me in on the field, Vilkas had joined in singing:
"WAH DEIN, VOKUL, MAHFAERAAK AHST VAAL!"
Soon most of the ragtag army that had been sleeping in the Cistern was singing along, and I think that was almost more terrifying than the werewolves had been (well, Arnbjorn was still going at it, but he was a lost cause). Uniting under one banner gives people something to fight for that was greater than themselves. It gives them a purpose, a sense of honor, duty, and pride.
And that's about when they stopped coming.
Vilkas and I cut our way through soldier after soldier, too stubborn to die. Even when he took an arrow to the shoulder and I got stabbed in the hip, we refused to fall. I augmented our blades with Thu'um, and we held our line. We'd gotten pretty beat-up as wolves, and our human bodies were starting to show it. Our swings were getting slower, our battle cries quieter. And if our ferocity was waning, I shuddered to think about what was happening to everyone else.
As we neared twilight and the rain let up, my Soul-Shield and I found ourselves fighting alongside Delvin and Brynjolf. "How many more of these you think 'e's got?" Delvin asked as he sucked down yet another magicka potion. His mouth was turning blue, after all the ones he'd drunk today.
"My hope is not many," I replied, slightly breathless as I hacked off someone else's head.
"Aye!" agreed the Clansman and the Wolf.
And that's when I felt the concussive blast of the Unrelenting Force shout knock me off my feet.
Luckily, I slammed into a rather sturdy Nord nearby and was able to keep my footing. "Ulfric," I growled through my teeth as Vilkas set me upright again.
"In the flesh," mocked the Jarl of Windhelm, breathing heavily from his Shout. "You, dear Dragonborn, are one hell of a thorn in my side."
"It's what I do best," I replied. "FUS RO DAH!"
Ulfric was not so lucky, as my shout sent him crashing backwards into the underbrush. "You three!" I called to my current Shield-Siblings. "Look after each other!"
"And where are you going!?" Vilkas called after me as I broke out into a run.
"I've got a bear to skin!" I shouted over my shoulder.
I followed the trail of (admittedly impressive) curses deep into the Autumnal Forest. I was hardly stealthy in my heavy Wolf armor, but he still seemed surrpirsed to see me. So surprised that he barked, "YOL!"
I easily sidestepped the fire, barking back, "FO KRAH DIIN!" Ice shot from my throat, catching Ulfric squarely in the chest.
Unfortunately for me, he's a Nord and they can practically run barefoot in the snow in the middle of Morning Star (ever done that? it's freakin' painful!). So the frost did little to stop him from crashing into my swords with his trusty steel war axe. "What is your problem?" I grunted over our blades.
"You!" he snarled back, disentangling and attempting to decapitate me from another angle.
I stopped the blade and feinted to the left. "I caught that!" Then attacked to the right. "The question is why?"
He caught it, again. "You're a traitor, a liar, a thief, and a disgusting half-breed. You deserve nothing less than death."
Funny, I thought as I rolled around his blade and snapped to my feet behind him. That sounds exactly like Neva… And then it hit me.
"MERCIFUL TALOS, YOU'RE WORKING WITH THE THALMOR!?"
Ulfric's eyes widened, realizing he'd said too much. "FUS!"
I crossed my arms in front of me, the swords blocking the brunt of the concussive blast. What reached me did little more than knock my braids about. "Holy Azura, it all makes so much sense! My incarceration, Cyrano's sudden promotion in the country directly south, why you never sent me to do any real damage…" I shook my head, absurd laughter bubbling up from my core. "You bloody traitor…"
"They just want you," he growled, slamming into my guard again. "And they'll leave Skyrim alone."
"For now," I quipped, returning the attack with my characteristic viciousness.
"I'll cross that bridge when I get to it." He suddenly disengaged and took off running.
I followed, sprinting through the trees. I ducked under hanging branches, wove around underbrush, and almost did realize I'd reached a cliff until I nearly went crashing headlong over it. Ulfric stood a few feet to my left, on the edge as well. "Is this how it ends, daughter? Or how it begins?"
"It ends with you dead, father." I practically spat the word. "Zu'u Dovahkiin, ahrk zu fen ni kos nahlot!" I could feel something rising within me—something hot-blooded and angry. Something beautiful and savage, alien and immortal.
Ulfric snorted, as though amused. "I think not, little Stormcloak." and he stepped sideways off the cliff.
I rushed to the spot where he'd been, and upon looking over the ledge, found that it dropped off to a river below. No guarantee the fall or the rapids would kill him, but I was too exhausted to give chase. Growling in frustration, I pounded on the earth with one metal-encased hand, then stalked back through the trees to the battlefield.
It seemed the fighting was over, at least for now. The last remnants of Ulfric's battalion had surrendered; the small group of survivors clustered together a few paces away. My men were wandering about the battlefield, putting an end to a few less fortunate souls with kindly blades. Odahviing swooped overhead, unwilling to leave the fight until he knew I was alright. Vex sidled up alongside me just as I reached the remaining Stormcloaks. "What do you want to do with the survivors, sir?" she asked, sounding very much like a Legate. I glanced to her, realizing she'd sustained a nasty gash just above her eyebrow, and her helmet had been lost somewhere along the line.
"There are no survivors," I said in a voice that sounded like mine, but wasn't. "YOL TOOR SHUL!" They didn't even have the time to scream.
I left Vex there, continuing through the mess of the field. It wasn't too much longer until I came across a weary Mercer. His armor had been torn right around his floating ribs, and it was crusted over with a dark red. "What's the casualty count?" I asked, still with this alien voice.
Mercer's brow furrowed, but he answered, "Less than it should have been, given our numbers. Somewhere around twenty, maybe thirty. I think it was the wolves that did them in."
"Anyone important?" I asked. This voice… it rasped. It growled. It didn't speak.
Mercer shrugged. "Not terribly. Etienne, Shadr, Brand-Shei, Torvar…"
The last two names socked me in the gut, and I heard no more. "Who was his Shield-Sibling?" I barked.
Mercer shrugged. "I think it was the little Imperial girl—Ria, maybe? Nia?"
I filed that away for future reference. "And Brand-Shei… how'd he even…?"
"I don't know, Guildsister," Mercer cut in, world-weary and halfway to apologetic. "I just don't know."
I could feel an alien rage bubbling up from my very core, the place where the Thu'um and the Beast Form came from. "Tiberia!" someone called.
I whipped my head around to find Brynjolf, Vilkas, and Delvin making their way over to where I stood. "What happened to Ulfric?" the voice, Delvin's, elaborated.
I growled in annoyance. "I lost him in a river."
"Damn," Vilkas cursed, then his eyes narrowed, and snapped open just as quickly. "Morwyn… everything alright?" He gingerly laid a hand on my arm.
I yanked it out of his grasp. "How dare you lay a hand on a dovah!"
Vilkas' next, elegant statement summed up everyone's thoughts: "Shit."
"Tiberia…?" Brynjolf's voice held a warning cadence. There was something unnerving in his eyes, not quite fear, not quite horror. Consternation, maybe?
"Snap out of it, Morwyn," Vilkas warned. The sting of a slap accompanied his words.
"How dare you!" I barked, my hand whipping up and across his face to return fire.
Something like that should have at least, embarrassed him, and at most, bruised him. Something like that should not have sent him flying like I'd barked Unrelenting Force. What was happening to me?
I didn't have time to dwell on it. "Tiberia!" Vipir's voice. "What should be done with the bodies?"
I turned to face the pickpocket as Vilkas, a few yards away, picked up himself up off the ground. "Have we collected our dead?" I asked pointedly.
"Aye." Vipir nodded. He was cradling one arm that was probably broken. "The priests of Mara and Arkay came and collected them earlier; they're all on the way back to Riften."
"Legate!" I called to Vex, who had come over to see what all the fuss was about when Vilkas had been sent flying.
She was clearly wary. "Yes, sir?"
"Tell me, what is the official Imperial policy on dealing with the bodies left over from battle?"
Vex shifted uncomfortably on her feet. "Cremation, sir."
I whirled back to face Vipir. "Then burn them," I growled to the appalled Nord. "Set the world on fire, until nothing remains but ashes."
As I strode from the battlefield, my head held high, I heard Odahviing shriek the words for fire breath behind me. The rain had stopped, at least for now, and I could feel the heat from the sudden flames as they engulfed anything that would burn. He loosed one more roar into the atmosphere as he began to journey home.
And I did not look back.
