Skies of Green

Pain. Pain was everything Felwinter knew in the seconds after his awakening. Every muscle in his body, every strand of sinew, seized and clenched, expelling what little air he had been able to pull into his lungs and leaving him gasping.

The agony never faded away but did so enough that Felwinter forced his clenched eyes to open. Darkness greeted his vision. Deep shadows made from very low light. He took in the sky above where his head lay, through gaps in the ceiling and saw what appeared to be swirling green past the black. Everything, from the color of the sky to the smell of the air, made his stomach turn.

He tests his hand at the wrist, then elbow. Then he moved his entire arm, still slowed by lingering pain. With it, he forced his body to turn over, off his back and onto his chest. It was only then he noticed that he was still in his armor and that Zazikel was missing.

Then, it all starts coming back. Zazikel knocked from his hand. The Khajiit had Shouted; Marked for Death, he was sure of it. Felwinter remembered the Shout ripping the strength from his limbs, the spell she had used to knock him back into...wherever he was, he assumed the inside the Temple of Miraak. Though, if so, why could he see the sky? And why was it green?

Then he remembered…a book? That particular memory made his head sting. Shaking it only made it worse.

He couldn't hear anything from the outside world and panic made his stomach twist. He had left Jordis and Gregor and Frea alone with that monster. That Shouting monster.

He had been so very wrong. About all of this. It terrified him to imagine to what extent he was. More so, the consequences.

Felwinter grits his teeth and with no small amount of effort, he pushed himself to stand. His legs failed and crumpled beneath him. When he tries again, he remains still for a few seconds, fearing to fall. His eyes stared down the long corridor before him, deep and shadowed. Conjuring a candlelight above his head, which took more effort than was reasonable, Felwinter began to trudge forward.

The shadows retreat, almost crawl away as he moves through them. The hallway felt endless though sense told him he hadn't walked further than a few feet. He reaches out to find the wall and rests against it anyway. His armor feels like a mammoth riding along on his back but he does not dare take it off.

After a minute, Felwinter pushes off the wall and starts moving again, though one hand remains pressed against it. He goes longer this time, and longer and longer. He thought it was the shadows making the hall seem endless but even after some time, he still wasn't seeing an end.

Felwinter reaches up and takes the candlelight in hand. The shadows around his head move back in almost immediately. To see how much longer his trek would have to continue, he takes the ball of light and tosses it forward, resting against the wall as he watches it fly slowly down the shadowed path.

It stopped, no...something stopped it. Brown, gnarled appendages reached out from the blackness and grabbed the light, halting its journey. Felwinter pushes off the wall and moves towards the center of the corridor, his heart pounding in his ears.

The hand pulled the candlelight closer, letting it shine upon its face. A face that was far from human. Felwinter could only tell it was a face due to the two small, black openings that were placed above a narrow, vertical slit; eyes and a mouth. All of it wrapped in a writhing mess of brown tentacles, extending from everywhere along its head. Its body was hunched, its back a hump, all of it covered in black and green tattered materials that resembled old cloth. Felwinter saw no feet; just more tentacles, waving in the air just above the ground. Felwinter stumbled back in surprise at the sight and nearly lost his balance. The monster's hand around the candlelight squeezed and popped it out of existence, leaving Felwinter in darkness again and the monster, invisible.

The markings along his arm shone through Felwinter's armor. The magic he used to call his weapons had only begun to spark when he heard wet gurgling his ear. Then he felt buzzing. An invisible wind struck Felwinter in the back, not only knocking him forward but sapping what little energy he had managed to regain as well. He fell to his knees and then forward onto his chest, no strength to even breathe.

From where his head lay, he could hear more of the deep, wet gurgling and could see those floating tentacles move past his head. Then two sets of hands, thin but strong, wrapped around his arms and lifted him until only his knees dragged along the floor. He hadn't even noticed the second one.

Too weak to resist, the two creatures carried him forward, the shadowed hall a blur in his vision. Through the fog, Felwinter felt the world shift and move around him. They were suddenly out of the dark hallway. He could feel the draft of moving air. The smell of rot was stronger here and wafted up into his nose.

Felwinter noticed the slope before him too late. The hands released him and he fell. Felwinter rolled down the hill, feeling every protruding bump and sharp rock through his armor and kicking up dust in his wake. When he finally reached the bottom, he could feel the scratches on his face and arms stinging. He was on his back again and with no walls to hide behind, he saw the sky bright and clear, green and swirling. Despite everything, with the way his mind drifted, untethered by exhaustion, the sky reminded him of Sovngarde. What a time to start thinking about Kodlak.

"So he arrives. The lady played her part well."

Someone had spoken and it wasn't to him. The voice was masculine, a humorous and smooth lilt to it. It angered him. He didn't know why.

"You're gonna wish they kept me out there," Felwinter muttered, more to the sky than to the voice. His words were threatening, his tone made it clear he would have little ability to back it up. The voice huffed out a small, condescending laugh. With no small amount of exertion, Felwinter twisted himself over onto his stomach once again. His eyes, screwed shut by the effort, fluttered open as he tried to push himself to his feet on trembling arms. The first thing his eyes took in wasn't the face of his captor, as he had hoped. Instead, his sight was filled with something large and dark flying towards it.

By the time his brain had processed what he was seeing, the object struck him, full-on in the face. Felwinter's head snapped back and the explosion of pain had him roaring. His arms gave out from under him and he fell, clutching his nose, wet and stinging so terribly, he could feel it behind his eyes. The voice, still further away, chuckled at him again.

Moaning, Felwinter brings out his hands to look at them. Floating as they were, he could see the dark blood running down his fingers. He touched his nose again, gently and still very nearly sobbed at the pain.

"That's enough, my enemy." Felwinter could just barely hear the voice, between his own labored mouth-breathing and the ringing bells in his head, "Let's not knock him out again."

A second voice responded harshly. This one was closer; his attacker. "You do not command me, gray-skin."

"I do. Stand down."

Then, there was a third voice. Calm, low and full of steel. It was so powerful and imperious, Felwinter, for just a moment, forgot his pain. He doesn't see it but hears the kicker spit close to his head before walking away. Felwinter turned, tried to look at him while the world continued to spin but the kicker had already moved back into the shadows. The first voice was only partially hidden by the shadows. His head and most of his face was covered by a hood, only revealing a single bright red eye and part of a dark blue face. Gray-skin. A Dunmer. The Dunmer smiled at him and dread twisted Felwinter's already unstable stomach.

Then, the third voice speaks up again and Felwinter's focus could be nowhere else. "Felwinter Gregory of House Drakon. Bastard son of Delilah Talara of House Drakon, Lady of Dragon's Ascent and the knight, Ser Isran."

Felwinter hung upon every word. It demanded his attention, his submission and every part of his being rejected that.

"Hero of Skyrim," it continued to boom, "Savior of Tamriel. I'm sure if I tried, I could find it in me to be impressed. But I am not."

Felwinter turns his eyes in the direction of the voice. From a rise above him, he could see the outline of a figure, coming down from the top, a large book barely visible behind him, elevated by a podium. The man was of middling height, broad-shouldered but lean. He was smaller in stature than Felwinter but his presence was so commanding, the shadows seemed to retreat at his approach. As if they'd grow legs and run if they could. As if they'd bow if they could.

"The Khajiit woman who sent you here? One of mine. I sent her to test you, Felwinter. And you failed miserably."

Felwinter clenched his teeth again. "Sorry to disappoint," he murmurs, "Wasn't prepared. And I'm so used to cheating." Slowly, Felwinter forced himself upwards, coming to his knees. The sky was still green. He could taste ink and rot on the air. "I'm in Oblivion," he realized.

"Observant." The shadowed figure stepped just a bit closer. Behind Felwinter, the tentacled monsters, the Daedra, moved back and around, coming to stop behind the stranger. "This is Apocrypha. My former prison. My current staging ground."

Felwinter reached up and wiped his nose, the contact making him grind his teeth. More blood stained his gauntlets. "For what?"

The figure moved further from the shadows. His robes were a deep, dark blue, accented with belts and chains of dark gold. The man had no face. In its place was a mask, one of bronze, with narrow slits for eyes and tentacles extending from the bottom like a beard carved from stone. Like the Daedra who shadowed him. Like the cultists...

Felwinter swallowed and refused to blink. "Who are you?"

The masked head cocked slightly. "Is that a question? If it is, it is not one that should be aimed at me." He jerked his head to Felwinter, keeping his hands clasped behind his back. "You tell me. Who am I? What am I?"

His response grated on Felwinter's nerves. "Ugly as sin? I assume it's what the mask is for."

Behind them, the Dunmer's hand darted out and caught someone against their chest. The one who had kicked him, likely coming to do it again. That person shoved the Dunmer's hand away but remained in the darkness.

"Using humor to deal with the very grim reality of your situation. Understandable but pointless. A waste of my time, Felwinter. I want an answer to my question." He asked again, "Who am I? What am I?"

The masked man had drawn closer and now, Felwinter could feel it. A pressure against his skin, radiating off the masked man in roiling waves. Like magic but too strong, too primal, too forceful and it only got worse as he continued to draw closer to where Felwinter kneeled.

He was close enough. Felwinter forces himself past his exhaustion, puts one foot underneath him and tries to rise to his full height, to loom over the masked man. But then something rips through him and it is unmistakably magic. The masked man never moved, never even shifted in his posture but he did something that had Felwinter falling to his knees once again. A gloved hand came from behind the masked man's back and grabbed him by the head, fingers framing his face. Pressure was applied, to ensure he didn't try to stand again.

The power, the presence Felwinter had been feeling since he laid eyes on the man was overwhelming now. He felt it from the top of his head to the soles of his feet, every fiber of his being roaring, screaming, thrashing in a rage he could barely keep contained. It demanded everything of him; that he stand, that he fight, that he killed any who would dare challenge him and that he start with this one, to make an example.

The hand held him tightly. The narrow holes in his mask bored into his eyes and at that moment, he understood. He understood everything.

Dov wahlaan fah rel. Dragons were made to dominate.

The man took in a breath and asked, just one more time, "Who am I?"

Felwinter's voice was little more than a croak. "Miraak."

A smile could be heard in his voice, clear, even if the mask covered it. "And what am I?"

"Dovahkiin."