Louise grit her teeth, straightened her spine, threw her shoulders back and raised her chin as she attempted to summon her familiar for the third time, desperately trying both to successfully perform the ritual and ignore the unsubtle jeers and vicious mockery of those around her.
Of the few things her mother had beaten into her that she got the greatest use out of was how to not show weakness. If it wasn't for those lessons, the students of the Tristain's Academy of Magic would have eaten her alive.
So she did it. She endured all of it. The jeers, the vicious mockery, the repeated failures of either casting a spell or identifying the source of the problem, the muttered disappointments of her teachers comparing her to her mother, father and Elenore, none of which could give any advice either.
No matter how much big sister Cattleya's letters were a balm to her soul, they could only help so much. Louise was so tired of it. Sick and tired of being alone. Of being lost with no one that could give her guidance, of a family she couldn't rely on.
At this point, she was realistic enough not to expect something- someone special. She would be more than satisfied to simply have someone else to be alone with, yet she couldn't help but let the bitterness of having no one that she could rely on bleed into the chanting.
"...and bring forth the one I seek from beyond the boundary of oblivion!"
Louise absently noted that she said "oblivion" instead of "void" or "nothingness", but she lets the thought slide as the former seemed to be an older term for the latter in her books, and was distracted by the fabric of reality tearing above the ritual circle.
And "tearing" did not really describe it. Rather than seeing, she was feeling something that her mind could not fully comprehend that could be best described as "tearing".
As soon it came though, the moment passed, as something big enough to cast a shadow over Louise fell through and a great dust cloud enveloped the courtyard.
The balding professor besides Louise overseeing the process, Colbert, raised his staff to cast a spell to clear the area but he was preempted.
"Kalan…kolos…VEN!"
The utterance reverberated through the courtyard as a sudden gust pushed the dust into eyes and mouths and shoved the unsteady onto their posteriors.
The rose-haired girl, desperate to see what she had brought forth, was the first to clear her eyes as well as the first to start gaping.
The dragon was thoroughly massive. Merely its head was longer than Louise was tall. Then it registered that she summoned a dragon, which would have made her jaw slack had she not been gaping already.
The difference between hers and Tabitha's blue dragon was…dramatic to say the least. To say nothing of its size, the fact that it had wings instead of forelegs, the sheer amount of sharp angles, it struck Louise how old it looked. One if its horns was broken off, the membranes of its wings were ragged and many pale scars littered its faded green-gray hide, which made the red of its wounds and blood splatters stand out all the more-
Louise's thoughts skidded to a halt as panic rammed into her.
"Professor! It's injured!" she called out, fear of losing her familiar the moment she got it overriding all else, which seemed to snap her teacher out of unkindly staring at the dragon.
Professor Colbert looked between Louise and the dragon with concern for a long moment before sighing to himself. "Finish the ritual, Miss Valierre. Binding it to yourself as your familiar should help it recover, if not heal the damage immediately with how much magical energy you have at your disposal."
The girl turned to dash towards her summon but found herself halted by a firm hand on your shoulder.
"What-"
"I know how you must feel Miss Valierre, but I urge you to be careful. What you summoned is a great and most of all, injured beast. Injured beasts more often than not lash out."
"Drem. Fret not. I would not hurt my own Saviik," a weary, old voice commented.
Like ungreased hinges, the heads of the professor-student pair slowly turned towards the source, which if they were not wrong, was looking at them with amusement in its eyes.
Then it chuckled at them. "Ah, Zu'u dahmnaan. It is as though I am meeting the Dovahkiin for the first time again."
"You…you speak…"
"Indeed I do," was replied with a reptilian smirk.
Colbert coughed into his fist.
"I apologize. Intelligent, not to mention speaking dragons are unheard of outside of legends. I am Professor Jean-Colbert, and this here is…" he trailed off, looking at his student expectantly, who straightened at the gesture.
In the privacy of his own thoughts, Professor Colbert was more disappointed than he wanted to admit to in the students around him, startled and scandalized at treating the dragon with respect, unaware how he could grossly injure a dozen at once of them with a simple swipe of its tail.
"I-I am Louise le Blanc de la Valierre! I am the one that summoned you!"
The dragon eyed the girl. "Malsaviik…you who called out to me across leineh. Worlds. It took you three attempts, but you succeeded in piercing a hole between here and there to bring me forth. I am Paarthurnax. You have my kogaan, my thanks for saving me from a cruel fate."
"I…I have?"
~Ø~o0o~Ø~
When they first met, Paarthurnax offhandedly lamented how no one ever came to him just to have a little timvaak. Conversation.
Dovahkiin, well, took it upon herself to do just that from that point onwards. Be it weeks or months between, she would unfailingly come to tell him about the adventures she'd gone on, the enemies she fought, the sights she'd seen, the people she had met. Eventually she figured out how to Whirlwind Sprint herself nearly straight upwards so as to bypass climbing the 7000 steps to High Hrothgar entirely and make "dropping by" to see him an entirely trivial endeavor.
Odahviing did the dragon equivalent of pointing and laughing when Dovahkiin called him "Paarthurgramps" and didn't bother to deny it.
Even then, he did not expect the amount of hurt he felt when she came up with glassy eyes and shouted Dragonrend at him, nor the sheer relief when he realized she was under Delphine's control, and neither the guilt he felt about what the Dovahkiin was subjected to just to get to him.
Worse than having the Dovahkiin turned against him against her will, Paarthurnax also had to endure the fact that she radiated rage and anguish, just aware of every action she was commanded to take to make the situation a waking nightmare for both of them.
Suffice to say, he had grown attached.
Amidst pain both emotional and physical, Paarthurnax allowed himself to feel only the barest amounts of newfound respect. Delphine's hatred and paranoia of him ran so deep that she had a backup plan for Dovahkiin's refusal to kill him that needed guile, patience, careful forward-planning and execution to put the Dovahkiin under such enthrallment magicks that even the World-Eater's Vanquisher could not resist with all her accumulated blessings and boons.
But for her betrayal and what she subjected his Malgein to, he will kill the hateful little Joore.
The Dovahkiin came at him with that impossible acrobatic fighting style with a glass greatsword that was only possible for her, and Delphine shot explosive bolts at openings from a great contraption, barking orders from behind cover.
And he fought back. Handicapped as he was from the Dragonrend, he was not the oldest of all dov for nothing.
After the loss of a wing's functionality and many wounds of varying severity, Paarthurnax managed to maneuver the fight into mortally wounding the traitor, riddling both her person and her weapon with shards of rock with Unrelenting Force.
Yet, even bleeding out, the Joore kept commanding the Dovahkiin and Paarthurnax spent the last of his strength on his mortal strike. Dov were not merely blood and flesh, he could recover even from this given time, but in this state he was left completely vulnerable to the enthralled hero's killing blow.
It was as he watched the Malgein slowly walk up to him, putting up as much of a fight as she possibly could with every step, when it happened.
As the Child of Akatosh who could arguably possess the most amount of experience, Paarthurnax had keen metaphysical senses, especially when it came to forces meddling with time and space. If he had to describe it to a Joore, he would say it was as if someone tried to push their finger through a piece of taut cloth, with the cloth representing the fabric of reality, which immediately outruled the aedra and daedra who had well established means of interfering in Nirn.
Even so, something, someone was trying to reach him. Paarthurnax dared to hope it was something that would save him and Dovahkiin from their impending cruel fate.
The dovah watched the hero approach with bated breath as the force attempted to push itself through again, weakening the boundary. Then just as the Dovahkiin raised her sword, reality tore, and Paarthurnax saw great relief in her eyes as he was pulled through.
~Ø~o0o~Ø~
"Indeed you did, Malsaviik. Little Savior."
He watched in amusement as the girl's expressions flickered between flattered and offended at the moniker before a throb of pain reminded him of his state.
"You say this Lah of yours can heal me?"
"Er, yes! It would at the very least help you recover from the injuries before you became my familiar."
"Familiar?"
"Familiars are-"
"The ritual would contract you to be her lifelong companion," Professor Colbert explained, cutting off Louise.
The dovah raised a scaly eye ridge at it, but nodded. 'A life for a life, then,' Paarthurnax considered. His Dovahsos rebelled at the thought of being bound to a Joore, but this was the one who had both saved him from true death, as well as the Dovahkiin from the pain of being the one forced to ensure it.
Dovahkiin would obviously be saddened by his departure, but she was no longer as alone as she used to be. Her friends would be there for her. The Greybeards would be distressed at his disappearance, but Odahviing knew more than enough about the Way should they and the other dov need guidance.
'And well…' the girl's eyes reminded him of the Dovahkiin when they first met. So lost, full of uncertainty and loneliness. A mentor was the role he had undertaken as master of those following the Way of the Voice, was it not?
"Geh. I accept."
At that, the mage's expression lit up.
'If Dovahkiin were here, she would jape that I could not resist my grandfatherly instincts,' he thought wryly.
Malsaviik proceeded to walk up to his lowered head, and place her small hands on his snout.
"Pentagram of the five elemental powers, bless this Child of Akatosh, and make him my familiar," she recited.
Paarthurnax only had a moment to be surprised by what Louise called him before the magic slammed into him, and let out a draconic version of a gasp. It was as though he was absorbing the souls of a dozen of his brethren all at once.
The glow of magic washed over him, healing Paarthurnax's wounds but did not stop there. The missing and cracked horns grew back, the tattered wing membranes sewed themselves together, and his hide gained a brass-like sheen.
Dov were immortal and not predisposed to change, yet the old dovah couldn't help but feel a couple thousands of years younger. Scars and wear were their own badges of honor, but having his old luster restored certainly had its appeal.
Once the climax of the magic-induced high passed over, Paarthurnax quickly regained hold over himself, consequence of an untold amount of meditation, which granted him opportunity to observe his so-called bound companion's end of the ritual.
Something new pinged on the dovah's metaphysical senses. It appeared that in the way he sensed other dov and the Dovahkiin because of their Dovahsos, he could also sense what he was sure was Malsaviik's soul.
And what a queer soul it was.
At first, it had a quality that immediately made Paarthurnax think she was blessed by the void- by Sithis, but then to his surprise, it began to take on qualities that made it resemble a Dovahsos instead.
The girl did not go unaffected by the ordeal either, looking like the Dovahkiin when she absorbed a dovah soul if her glazed over eyes and flushed skin were any indication.
"Zu'u halvut faad…" the girl uttered before she fell over, out cold, under Paarthurnax' shocked gaze.
Dovahzul translation
Kalan - what (not in dictionary, I made it up)
Kolos - where
Ven - wind
Goraan - small
Timvaak - conversation
Malgein - little one
Joore - mortal
Dov - dragons as a whole, multiple
Dovah - dragon, singular
Dovahsos - dragon soul
Malsaviik - little savior
Kogaan - thanks
Zu'u halvut faad - I feel warm