Fahiil
Thera
I had abandoned the Stormcloaks ages ago, confident in the knowledge that they were completely doomed. Lucius was, despite the best efforts of both Elenwen and Ulfric, demolishing the rebellion. Whiterun – the city I had taken! – had even fallen back to the Imperial legion. Honestly, it was as if the dirty humans couldn't even prevent a coup within a single city's walls. The strength of Lucius and his allies did not bode well for the Dominion, either. I did not fear the man – I was Dragonborn after all. No, but I was... I was apprehensive. No fight had given me even the slightest challenge in the past year, save the one with Lucius Atmoran.
But that was not the task that occupied my attention at that moment. I was sitting with the Graybeards, who had decided I was deserving of meeting their leader. "This Paarthurnax? He is the leader of the Greybeards?"
"For millennia," Arngeir said, confusing me further. The Greybeards were a human group, and even the oldest human could only live for a century at most.
"How is that possible, though, Master Arngeir?" I inquired, still hungry for relevant information to place into my reports. Reports that I now handed off directly to a courier to the Dominion. Elenwen's fate was sealed, and her death would rapidly approach as a result of her ever compounding list of failures. The information that Lucius Atmoran had stolen had been released, revealing the link between Ulfric and my people. The Nord was crippled by the revelation, though he publicly denied it. Before I had left, I had seen Ulfric's pain at the knowledge that he was a pawn. Galmar was the only thing keeping the Jarl from surrendering to the Empire at any moment.
"You will understand when you meet him," Arngeir assured. "Trust in the Clear Skies shout – your Thu'um is strong, Dragonborn."
I smiled humbly, thought I wanted to tear the dirty human's cryptic head off. "Of course, Master," I said with a bow before chanting the words and beginning my trek up the mountain. "Lok-Vah-Koor!" A blue tint overcame the blizzarding sky and the snow around me seemed to suddenly stop, hanging in the air. Sun began to shine through the cloud cover of the sky, and I stared in awe. The power of the Dragon language never ceased to amaze me.
"Good luck, Dragonborn," Arngeir shouted as I continued up the mountain.
Honestly, walking up the mountain was incredibly boring. I killed an Ice Wraith and used the Clear Skies shout so many times I hoped to never use it again. What happened when I reached the summit, however, was surprising and disturbing in turns.
"Greetings, Dovahkiin," the ancient, ragged dragon laughed as I approached the worn word wall. The creature crashed down to the top of the wall and stared down at me. I stood still, wondering when the creature's fire breath would sear the flesh from my bones. Instead, the dragon laughed. "Krosis – Pardon, Dragonborn. I suppose this means my kiibokaar – acolytes – did not tell you the truth. They are sometimes over protective, Dovahkiin."
"Wait... Y-you are Paarthurnax?" I asked of the dragon, backing away slowly but still moving my hands from the twin glass blades at my hips. I glanced at the claws on the dragon's feet and wondered if my glass armor would be able to stand up to the force and pressure that would be behind them if push came to shove.
"Of course," the dragon laughed. He jumped down from the wall, surprisingly agile for a creature of his size, and slid across the snowy peak. "Drem. Patience. There are formalities that must be observed, at the first meeting of two of the dov. By long tradition, the elder speaks first. Hear my Thu'um! Feel it in your bones. Match it, if you are Dovahkiin! "
The dragon turned to the word wall and shrieked in his language, burning a word into the wall. "Toor."
I turned to the dragon as soon as the knowledge of the word flooded into my being. "Yol-Toor!" I shouted, the breath of my lungs igniting with Magick and colliding with the ancient dragon. Despite looking as if it could have killed anything, the fire merely caused the dragon to laugh heartily.
"Ah, it has been too long since I tasted the voice of another Dov!" he laughed. His head rose to the sky. "Bormah nox hi!" Smoke rose from the dragon's nostrils and a loud roar echoed from his throat.
Paarthurnax laughed and returned his gaze to me. "But I doubt you are here for tinvaak with an old Dovah. You really came to learn what your brother already does," Paarthurnax said knowingly.
"M-my what?" I asked, angry that he would suggest I was connected to a... a human.
"Ah, you do not see yourself and him as ragnavir – family," Paarthurnax said. His massive neck arched downward to stare me in the eye. "Though, I doubt it is because he is the riil – the monster as you have described him, hm?"
"I – what do you mean?" I asked, my hands returning to the hilts of my blades.
"Krosis, calm yourself, Dovahkiin," the dragon rumbled. He leaped lithely back onto the word wall and turned his head to the sky. "I doubt that he does not feel it, as well."
"What do you mean?!" I asked, becoming frustrated at how the Greybeards and their leader spoke answers without actually clarifying their meaning or intent. The dragon just laughed. "Answer me!"
"Little Dov, do not threaten your elders," the dragon snarled, the image of his terrifying, murderous brethren shining through his dark eyes. Then, it seemed to disappear, replaced by the weary dragon once again. "Dov wahlaan fah rel. We were made to dominate. The will to power is in our blood. You feel it in yourself, no, as you speak to the Fahiil? You have little patience to take the orders of others, of lesser beings. Within you burns a desire to bend all of Bormah's creation to tolaan hin – your will."
"I... how do you know of that?" I asked, fear in my throat. My blades were drawn, now, crossed defensively before my body.
"I am a dragon, little one. I am not limited to this mountaintop. I have maintained a bodein – a vigil here, but I have also been watching you and your brother closely," Paarthurnax explain. "Zun-Haal-Viik!" I felt my two swords fly from my hands and bury themselves in the ground. Fear gripped my heart as I realized I would soon die. "The oceans of Akatosh's time hold even his first children, but its currents can be seen by our kind. You and he, Lucius, are bound to each other. Jokaar. Opposite poles of the Dovah will to power. But that is not why you came, not to know of battles you will soon see. No, you came to understand Alduin."
I barely registered what the dragon was saying. I fought an urge to run as quickly as I could, and decided to bide my time. "W-who is Alduin?"
"Ah, you know nothing that your brother knows. Alduin, the first of first. World-Eater. Or, as he prefers himself, a Dov god-king," Paarthurnax spat angrily. He sighed wistfully and stared up at the sky. "He searches for you and your jokaar, the only threat to him in this world. Bohmar, Father Akatosh, made you with the blood of mine, and the only creature capable of exerting its own tolaan upon a Dov, is a Dov."
"So you are saying that... one of us can conquer – enslave – this Alduin?" I asked, part of myself becoming giddy at the prospect of controlling a nearly invincible dragon. I could have power over the entire world, crush all – Mer and Man and Beast – under heel.
"Hm... No," Paarthurnax stated. "Alduin is the World-Eater, perhaps as close a being of Vus can come to our father. He would never be a slave, but he would be killed. Only the Dovahkiin can prevent Alduin's ascension and the doom of all joore."
"I can... prevent the end of the world?" I echoed with a smile. A savior had a nice ring to it – one to be extorted for greater power.
"Indeed, little Dov," Paarthurnax sighed, fire rushing from his nose and melting the snow under foot. "But, would you? Why?"
I grinned condescendingly. "If I killed a god, then there is none in this world who could stand against me. You said I have the will to power? This would fulfill my will, and prevent the deaths of your little pets," I said, sneering. "What must I do to kill your brother?" I collected my blades and sheathed them, finally understanding how weak the dragon before me was. He was a pacifist, dedicated to the defeat of a being more powerful than him, as he was too weak to dream of victory.
"I know not how he was defeated before," Paarthurnax said with barely contained rage, "but he was cast out by the Zuwuth Dey – Elder Scroll. Take that as you will, Little Dov." With that, the dragon roared and cast off the shackles of Nirn's gravity to simmer in his rage.
"Thank you, little fool," I sneered, then turned around to search for the only place an Elder Scroll could be in this gods-forsaken land – the mage's college.
Dovah
Paarthurnax
The elder dragon, once the favored lieutenant of his bloodthirsty brother, watched from afar as the darker of the two Dovahkiin left his mountain. It was not his duty to decide how the Dragonborn would follow their fate as warrior and savior, so it was also not the duty of the Greybeards to stop advising the woman. They had been tricked into believing lies about Lucius, a fact that saddened Paarthurnax, but he knew was an inevitability. Lucius had failed in the joore's stupid little – the dragon sighed, struggling to bring his emotions back under check. He had struggled for countless millennia to not fall into the darkness of his own lust for power, and he would not fail then. The Greybeards thought themselves wise, but living so far from the people they claimed to watch and – in times of crisis – advise had made them as proud as the Dov.
Paarthurnax spat fire from his nostrils and brought himself again towards the wound in time that had cast his brother Eras into the future. The tear in his father's fabric had indeed crafted visions of the future for Paarthurnax to gaze fearfully into. The nature of time's currents was that of intense mutability. A thousand futures might exist until the moment that the future came to pass. Likewise, as soon as a moment passes, a thousand pasts might exist. In too many of the futures did the old, worn dragon see the triumph of Alduin over both Dovahkiin. Perhaps, even more terrifyingly, the dragon saw more futures in which the Fahiil would claim dominion over all the Dov. In so few did Lucius succeed in preventing the terrible destruction that Alduin or Thera would bring with ultimate power. In the ones where the Jul succeeded... great evils were still present, that much Paarthurnax could see. He found that, despite his belief that the Dragonborn were gifted with the right to do as they willed regardless of morality, he was hoping the human would find him soon.
Fahiil
Thera
The moronic Orsimer present in the Mage's College had been unsure of the location of an Elder Scroll. The place claimed to be the center of Magickal knowledge in Skyrim – perhaps even all of Tamriel – but it seemed that they knew nothing. That's what you get for letting humans practice your arts. Still, the Orsimer had directed me to one who did know of the Elder Scrolls. An insane human Wizard living like a hermit in the Oblivion cursed frozen wastes at the farthest northern regions of Skyrim. That insane man had directed me to a Dwemer ruin, begging that I use the Elder Scroll I would find to inscribe information into... a box. Well, it was crazy, but I didn't really have to do anything.
I was walking through the underground world, what the insane Wizard had called "Blackreach," that existed beneath the buried Dwemer ruins. I had to have been miles below the surface of Nirn as I walked through the Falmer infested ruins of what was once, probably, a huge trading center between the countless Dwemer cities that graced the human-infested area of Skyrim. It was all that was left of what was once a powerful, proud race of Mer that challenged the pests that had overtaken the surface.
I pulled one of my blades from the throat of a blind Falmer and laughed as it gurgled helplessly in its high pitched, whining cry. I was standing atop the buildings of Blackreach, killing the ever thinning horde of Falmer and their human slaves that attacked. I buried my blade in the chest of a Redguard woman running towards me then punched my fist straight through the heart of a nearby Breton. I pulled both from the corpses I had just created and watched the remaining Falmer and slaves huddle together at the edge of the roof, in front of a huge, golden light that was hanging from the cave ceiling. I grinned and sheathed my weaponry. "FUS-RO-DAH!" I screamed, the green energy flinging the group of enemies to their grisly deaths.
As the last of the slaves flew from the roof, a clear, ringing pan echoed through the cavern. The noise filled me with a feeling of morbid curiosity and a single pang of dread. A familiar roar echoed through the cavern, and I was suddenly thrown from the building by a huge claw. I barely screamed the Shout in time to turn ethereal and hit the ground unharmed. My body still rolled across the wet stone of the cavern and collided with a large, glowing mushroom moments before the Shout's Magick wore off. "Dammit!" I screamed as the roar came again. I turned my head towards the source of the sound, and almost missed a black shiver run through the air above me. Fire rained down from the cavernous roof and I narrowly jumped out of the way. "A dragon underground!?" I pulled my bow from my back and looked to the sky – or, more literally, ceiling. I began to fire arrows semi-manically at any shimmer I saw in the pitch black of the cavern, each arrow only crashing down to the earth once again. Eventually, however, a single arrow met its mark.
The dragon roared in pain and its massive form crashed downwards to the ground. The entire cavern shuddered from the intense impact, and huge mounds of fractured stone collided with me and sent me stumbling. "Joor, hi krilon!?" the dragon screamed as it extricated itself from the crater that its body had created.
I dropped my glass bow and pulled my blades from my hips. "Oh, indeed. The Dovahkiin dares, dragon," I sneered. Then I rushed forward towards the semi-terrified dragon, who began uselessly flapping its torn wings. I rolled around a fire blast that the dragon unleashed at the last minute and laughed wildly as I copied the deathblow Lucius had inflicted on that dragon more than a year ago. I buried my twin blades through the eyes of the dragon and into its brain, causing the creature to shriek in horrid pain that reverberated off of the stone. The dragon's soul began to leak from its eyes, and the flesh of the creature disintegrated even as the ancient creature screamed in more pain. As its head was left fleshless, the screams of death ceased and an eerie silence came over the cavern.
I pulled my blades from the skull of the dead dragon and turned towards the Tower of Mzark. The dragon's soul flooded like a great warmth into my body and I felt the nebulous energy of its knowledge, as well as the physical strength of the dragon, run through my mind and veins to repair any damage and to unlock the ancient, dead knowledge of the dragon language. Once I absorbed the soul of Alduin Dragon-King, I would be unstoppable. But that dragon's soul was a fine appetizer.
