Chapter 3: Akatosh's Curse
Sooty columns of charcoal grey blotted out the sky. Flames licked tall trees, blazed through dry undergrowth and has turned an entire grass field to ash, with it spreading quickly with gusts of wings beating down from the hell above Serana. Grit and acrid ash coated her tongue. She coughed and held onto the sash wrapped around her head to keep her mouth covered, while she ran for the first piece of land that hadn't been set aflame.
Ash fell like snow and painful heat blistered her skin. Every breath in her lungs felt like they were wilting and charring on the inside. The roar and snap of flame, the crackle of burning wood that split under the pressure, the crash of timbers as they collapsed when the foundation crumbled beneath, it was hell.
"Ashes!" Serana yelled out weakly, followed by a series of coughs. She heard no one else apart from the rallying cry of a wounded and vengeful beast.
She tried to look past the haze of grey and brown as dust kicked up, circling in a cyclone as a dragon thrashed it's wings at the earth. What grass and weeds hadn't been anchored were kicked up with the debris. She was overcome with dizziness and the hair stood on the back of her arms and neck as she tried to find her footing in the heart of the vortex, falling to her knees. The ground quivered and she slapped her hands over her ears when the dragon belted out a deafening guttural gale of what she swore sounded like an actual language of some sort, but that would be insane. Had she somehow contracted brain rot?
Vibrations rumbled beneath her. Disoriented, she continued to rush towards the direction where the sky was still blue and uncovered. The enigma behind her raged it's destruction and torched the once-beautiful nature, transforming it into a wasteland. Her eyes stung and teared up with the dust thickening around her. It drove forth with another gust and sandblasted what skin was bare, at the mercy of whiplash from pebbles and slivers of broken bark.
"Ashes!" Serana shouted again. No answer.
Her dizziness became worse and her strength was depleting rapidly. The dust storm and maelstroms of flames blocked the sun, but the dry heat was worse and it was trapped in by the smoke. She stole sparing glances behind her to watch where the dragon was, and it appeared to be terrorizing a troll. Her eyes widened at what she saw come out of the dragon's mouth.
Ice.
All this destruction was that fire mage's fault. Had she gone mad? She did more damage than the beast!
Birds shrieked and forest animals yipped in their frantic bid to escape. Serana yelped when an elk whipped past her and ducked in time before she was impaled by it's antlers. She was suddenly grabbed and dragged, catching glimpse of a large amount of bare skin. Ashes. The scorching heat of the fire mage's hands seeped through the fabric of Serana's tunic in no time. She hissed and jerked her arm free.
"We have to run!" Ashes wheezed breathlessly.
She tried to grab Serana again, but her hand was warded away when the vampire cast a chilling aura to keep the madwoman intoxicated by flame-brain away. Serana scrambled up on her hands and knees and ran, more so for fresh air and shade instead of safety.
The fire mage was more threatening to her than the dragon.
They sought cover behind a boulder. Serana peeked around it, and she became incredibly aggravated with each jet of frost breath that erupted in the distance.
"Are you insane?! You did all of this, and that dragon is still flying!" Serana growled at the fire mage.
Ashes' chest rose and fell sharply, her palms and forehead connected to the cold stone. Sweat poured off of her as if she had gone for a run through the rain. Serana's eyes widened at the dried blood that ran down the fire mage's arms. She had burned off her bandages, but that wasn't the worst of it.
"What did you do to yourself?"
Serana yanked on Ashes' wrist, and bit back her growl when the intense heat seared off the skin of her fingertips, blistering immediately. She thrummed with the coldest energy she could summon to run like the current of her blood, turning her fingers into ice. The fire mage chuckled breathlessly, head tilted with a crooked smirk drenched with exhaustion.
"Now you can't yell at me for doing it yourself. I did that too, but with fire."
Serana wanted to groan. She frowned when Ashes held up her palm in front of her face, inspecting what she had done to herself. Her hand trembled immensely. The gaping hole was smaller, thank the gods, but it's chance to heal properly was robbed now. It was cauterized.
"I need to take that dragon down, or lure it away before it gets too close to Morthal and terrorize the townspeople."
Dragon. By the Void, this was real. Serana had to mind what her jaw was doing so she wouldn't be caught ogling the magnificent beast. It's white scales were caked in dust and smoke, and the dragon appeared to grow sloppy, tired, flying lower and lower. It's soft and fleshy underbelly had to be a weakpoint. She wisely encased both her hands in ice to be safe when the fire mage circled beside her to look around the boulder with her.
"Bastard's finally starting to move like a pregnant cow," Ashes grumbled. She flexed her good fist and set it ablaze. "I won't miss anymore."
Serana arched a brow at her. It made for an amusing image when she suddenly pictured a pregnant cow breathing frost, then taking off in flight.
"Well, even if you do, everything's already burned anyways." Serana teased. "It's not like you can make this worse than it already is."
Ashes didn't even look at her and kept her gaze fixed on the dragon, but her dry tone said it all. "Not helping, Serana."
"If you feel bad, just think about how all the animals feel, uprooted out of their home."
"Still not helping, Serana."
Serana bit the inside of her lip to stop herself from smirking. It was swept away when the troll lost it's valiant battle against the dragon, and it's pained shrieks echoed in the air. It warred with the predatory instinct inside of her, the one that licked it's lips and salivated at the realization that there was an abundance of blood to be drunk from the troll. She looked down when the troll screamed like a banshee when it was helplessly frozen limb by limb as jets of the frost breath collected on it's fur. It was sad, but she wasn't foolish enough to charge in. A sentiment the fire mage didn't share with her.
"Ashes!" Serana yelled.
No answer.
She groaned as she watched the small brash woman charge ahead, launching fireballs at the dragon. The brown wall and charcoal columns hiked up with renewed vengeance as the dust and smoke swirled again. The once grassy plains looked like snow from afar. She found it witless and foolhardy that Ashes would even go off fighting such a beast with no regard for herself, or the world around her apparently. It would be equally reckless for Serana to storm in in an attempt to help when she was more than likely to be caught in the crossfire and end up as collateral damage, with how the fire mage fought.
Who was she to think she could even take on a dragon? One thing Serana would give her credit for was how fearless she was. She may not be used to working with allies, but she had no choice now. Serana wasn't going to leave her to fight that beast on her own. It was pure lunacy and an unjust delusion on Ashes' part to believe, even if it was a fraction of hope and faith, that she could actually take this dragon down on her own.
Serana adjusted her sash and tightened the fabric over her nose. She sucked in one last lung full of fresh air and braved the coming storm, darting out from cover and relinquishing the ice's hold on her fingers. She gathered all the energy into her palm and held onto the strong thrum until the right moment arose.
Adrenaline soared when the dragon yipped, crashing down on the ground as the flames caught one of it's wings. Ashes narrowly dodged a swipe of the tail as she flipped backwards, nimble and graceful in her movements. It shattered some of the preconceptions the vampire had of her. It was a relief to find that as harebrained as Ashes came off, she thought well on her feet, and Serana fought in near-sync with the fire mage as they both laid a barrage of spells on the downed dragon. Serana moulded the cold energy into large ice spikes and fired at the beast's soft underbelly, where jets of blood sprayed when the spikes impaled and shredded through.
Ashes hurled rudimentary insults at the dragon, things that were unfortunately timeless no matter how many eras Serana would live through. She rolled her eyes when milk drinker and snowback were shouted with typical Nord pride, and she decided to reserve her energy when it became obvious the dragon was on death's door. It's intestines could be seen when the ice spikes melted from the searing heat of the fire mage's flames cracking the thick scales and webbed wings.
Didn't she see the soft underbelly? All she had to do was walk out to the side and she could go for the throat. Instead she expended more energy everywhere else. There was an impressive abundance of it, like a well with no ending. What Serana noticed disturbed her, and she created distance between them out of caution.
Ashes became more aggressive and ruthless. The pitiful sounds the dragon made called out to the predatory instinct inside Serana and she suffocated it immediately, but it seemed to encourage Ashes as she taunted the dying beast and had gone so far as to make it's last moments one of utter misery. She had gone up to the spilled intestines and set one of her hands on fire, sticking it inside the wound. The dragon howled, and it's massive paws whipped uselessly at the dirt in an attempt to push the mage out of there, but she had evaded again.
"Ashes. Stop. We've won. Let it die in peace, with dignity."
There was a sense of pride to be able to defeat this majestic creature, but there was no pride in these cruel games. Serana crossed her arms and did her best not to cough every time each breath in tickled her throat with ash. She needed to be stern. Ashes looked at her, and she had an almost dazed and confused expression.
What was most disturbing was how her eyes appeared feral, pupils in thin slits like the dragon's. The amber eyes, usually bright, were dark in their reflection of the ashes and smoke surrounding them. In one blink, the eyes returned to normal. Ashes stumbled away from the dragon and stared at it, then at the blood on her hands. Serana softened. She dropped her arms and watched the fire mage closely.
Suddenly, the dust kicked up and gusts whipped at the earth. Serana's head shot up to search the blotted and smoky sky, but there wasn't another dragon. When she looked down, she gasped. All that was left were bones. The fire mage was up at what was once the dragon's head, her cauterized hand on the snout. Her head was bowed, her eyes were closed. Strands of her thick raven hair were glued and soaked to her sweaty complexion, until she flicked her head back to whip it out of her face, brushing it back with her fingers. When her eyes opened, there was a second where they glowed intensely bright enough to hurt to look at, slitted again, and then it morphed back normally. There was something about her that was different. The aggression was gone, but there was an air about her that still screamed for caution.
"What just happened?" Serana mumbled.
She didn't dare approach any closer. She hid one hand behind her back and called on chilling energy just in case if she needed to incapacitate the fire mage in self-defence.
"I stole his soul." Ashes explained with a smile wreathed in shame. She rested her forehead against the bony snout and closed her eyes. "Akatosh has cursed me."
Serana tensed. "Cursed you? Why would one of the Aedric pantheon curse you?"
"Not a literal curse, I suppose. Everyone else calls it a blessing. Maybe it's a blessing to them." Ashes sucked in a long breath and sighed. "It's a curse to me."
The puzzle pieces slowly fell together. Nords were extremely proud of their tales and legends. There were some recorded in books of such a gift that Akatosh would bestow on the mortals he favoured, where their blood was imbued with that of a dragon's. The books made it sound so whimsical. The fire mage touted it as a curse rather than a gift.
"You said it yourself," Ashes murmured. She pushed off from the dragon and waved defeatedly at the landscape. "I've burned everything. I've caused more destruction than the dragon, and it's not the first time. Something overtakes me when I see them. I've..."
Ashes trailed off while she watched the smoke in the distance. Long painful seconds stretched between them in the silence, and in it, there were a thousand screams in the fire mage's posture. The atmosphere was thick with something heavier than all the smoke. Serana still practised caution even when she decided to approach and come up to stand beside Ashes. Her presence jilted something out. Something unfavourable.
"Don't you think your vampirism is a curse?"
If that hadn't sounded as an earnest question, Serana would have gone on the defensive. She peeked at the fire mage to clarify it wasn't meant as an attack. She quickly decided she didn't like that reminiscent haunted look in Ashes' eyes.
"I don't," Serana stated with resolution.
Amber eyes homed in on her like a hawk.
"Don't you feel bad when you destroy innocence?"
The vampire shook her head and shrugged. "I don't destroy innocence. I take great care not to."
Ashes stared. It grew tense and uncomfortable, whatever she was thinking, but it became worse when she stopped staring at Serana, and back at the ashen plains. The fire mage's whisper was so frail, and were it not for vampirism's boons to enhancing senses, it would've been missed. Serana wished it would've been. It made her heart sink when the final piece of the puzzle fell into place.
"You never have by accident?"
Serana didn't answer. She didn't need to. Actions spoke louder than words, and silence spoke louder than both. She knew the question wasn't for her. It told her everything when Ashes walked away, slumped in defeat, praying for forgiveness under her breath. Though they haven't known each other for long, it wasn't her. She needed to be loud and bright, offensively so. For once, Serana used their common ground of mistrust, and the hint of rivalry she was beginning to pick up, in hopes to take the fire mage's mind away from her own dug-in trench of toxic snakes.
"When I gave you your nickname, I didn't mean for you to literally live up to it, Ashes."
She smirked when Ashes flipped the finger over her shoulder.
And laughed when that finger was set aflame.