Blood of the Dragon Part I

Jordis ducked behind a slab of stone, just seconds before a blast of ice struck it. It showered her in frost and the unnatural cold burned in her lungs as she struggled to catch her breath. She could not wait. She threw herself back out of cover and charged the Khajiit; shield up, angled down, the fiercest battlecry she could still manage on her lips.

She needed to keep her attention. Gregor had taken a cut to his temple and it bled profusely, as even the shallowest temple cuts did. He needed time to wipe away the blood blinding him and Jordis needed to give him that time.

The Khajiit wasn't strong but she was fast, tough and skilled. She leapt and dashed, running circles around the both of them. Jordis has long since lost track of how many killing blows would have landed on her eyes or throat if Gregor had not been there to watch her back. Four eyes against one Khajiit. They were still losing this fight.

With a roar, Gregor reentered the fray. Jordis pushed away from where she had locked weapons with the Khajiit as he came barrelling past. She had Shouted recently and unlike their Thane, there was a space of time before she could do it again. Gregor caught her on the side with his shield, knocking the wind from her lungs and pushed her away.

The Khajiit held onto his shield to maintain her balance and dug into the dirt, leaving tracks as she tried to stop his charge. She dug in harder, gritting her teeth with the effort until he began to slow down. Then she threw her head upwards, catching Gregor directly in the mouth. He reeled, staggering.

Then buzzing erupted along the skin and suddenly, he was flying. Jordis, prepared this time, dropped her sword and jumped forward. She caught him and dug her heels in to keep his greater weight from bowling her over. The fireball came next. Gregor just barely had time to plant his feet on the ground and shove himself and Jordis away. The impact left a smoking crater where they had been standing just a moment earlier.

There was distance between them and the Khajiit now. Jordis was huffing. Her hair had come loose of the tie she had held it back with. Beside her, she heard Gregor spit and saw blood spatter in the dirt. "No teeth?" she mused, despite everything.

"Heh. I'm still pretty."

"You sound like…" she paused and had to keep herself from looking back at the temple. But Gregor's weary, wry grin fell away and he turned his attention back to the Khajiit. She was not advancing but pacing, back and forth, seemingly content to wait and see what they would do next. They were bruised, bloodied and exhausted. She'd outlast them and they all knew it.

No further. Nothing had changed.

Gregor held his hand out. In it was Jordis' sword, retrieved just before they dodged the blast of fire. Jordis took it up and frowned just slightly at the nicks and notches it had developed. Then she banged it twice against her shield and together, she and Gregor began to close the gap. Lockstep, they advanced and with more buzzing in the air, the Khajiit rushed to meet them.

Frea pushed her way through the door she had found earlier that day, knowing it would take her into the temple though not where. It was her only chance to find Felwinter, who had disappeared from the surface where he had landed. The enthralled worked on, as they always did.

She opened it to a long, narrow corridor and at the end of it, a dark room. Dimly torchlit, a green haze filled the air along with the stomach-turning smell of ink and rot. It set every sense she had aflame. The room had nothing but a door on the other side, likely going deeper in, an empty pedestal and a wall with strange writing on it.

And on the ground, near the pedestal, was the Dragonborn.

Frea ran and dropped to her knees before his body. The man's face was a battered mess, his nose in worse shape than anything else, blackened and leaking. His face and neck had subtle grooves etched into the skin, as if from fingers. His mouth was slightly drawn open but his eyes, however, were blown wide and locked, unblinking, onto the wall and the writing.

She called his name, shook him gently. She refused to jostle him harder or to slap him, afraid of what kind of damage had been done to his head. He doesn't respond at all to her attempts to wake him and it was only the small puffs of heated air on the back of her hand that told her he was breathing.

His armor looked heavy and she knew it would have been a bad idea to move him but she had to. So she took one of his arms with a heave and was just about to haul him up onto her shoulders when the door on the opposite side of the chamber burst open. Two masked cultists pushed their way through. New ones, Frea thought. They couldn't have come with the original group.

The first one through the door speaks. "There he is," he rumbled, "With company."

"The master has no use for the girl," the second says. The first one rips a dagger from its sheath at his side and lunges at her without hesitation. Letting Felwinter's body down as quickly as she could gently manage, Frea ripped her axe from its holster and struck out, its handle catching the blade and forcing the cultist back. Then she ducked, a blast of shock magic just narrowly missing her head, the surprise of it causing her axe to fall from her hand.

Felwinter was too heavy to move in his armor and likely would be out of it. But they were avoiding him and focusing solely on her. They wanted him alive. For what reasons, she could only guess. She was loath to do what her mind was telling her to do but just as another blast of magic cracked the ground where she tried to retrieve her axe and sent it spinning away, Frea was forced to flee. As both hoped for and dreaded, the cultists gave chase. Frea ran down the long hall, hearing the shouts of her pursuers never far behind.

She bursts back into open daylight. She comes to a stop at the wall of dirt dug out by the enthralled to put this entrance into place. Frea did not run for the stairs that would take her back up to the surface. Instead, she turned to face the entrance, calling upon her magic. A rush of wind and a low hum accompanied the curved blade that appeared in her hands, shimmering with ghost light and blue fire. She held it at the temple, shoulders tensed, stance wide.

The cultists emerged slowly from the darkness of the temple interior. She saw the magic user first, hands alive with light and fire. The other emerged from behind him, a second dagger pulled out from behind his back. Frea doesn't take her eyes off of either of them, even to blink. Seconds seem to pass them by in eras as she waited for one of them to make the first move.

Again, it was the blade-wielder who started. He took one step forward, body tensing so he could push off into a leap.

Frea heard it before she saw it; whizzing, whistling. Without warning, something came flying from within the temple. With violent speed, it crashed into the wall above Frea's head, making her flinch deeply and duck away. Her eyes turned immediately back to her opponent as soon as she regained her composure. What she saw nearly broke it completely.

The bladesman's body was stock still, all the way up until its neck. Everything beyond that point was moving. The neck had burst into pieces. The head was flying, straight upwards like an arrow pointed at the sun. It left a trail of crimson in its wake, drenching the ground and the second cultist in dark, viscous blood.

Weapons fell from hands when they went limp. The now headless body pitched forward without a sound, clattering to the ground alongside its blades. The heart was like the rest of them, not yet aware of what had just happened. It continued to pump blood through the new opening, a red lake growing around the freshly made corpse.

Frea dared a look away, to her side, to find what had come out of the temple and caused the horrific sight she saw before her. What she found was an axe. Her axe, embedded in the wall. It had moved so fast and struck so hard, barely any blood stained its hilt or blade. She turned back to the mage cultist, refusing to be caught off guard even now. But the cultist had turned away from her, his eyes aimed into the dark corridor. His magic gone, his shoulders heaving, his eyes staring through his mask, searching for the cause. He found it. He took a shaky step back. Frea could see why.

An outline in the dark. Large, almost hulking, too cloaked in shadow to be discerned. Except for what looked like a pair of eyes, peering right back. Eyes that were pure white.

The cultist saw what Frea saw. Felt what she felt and responded how she wanted to. He twisted on his heels, stumbling as made a desperate attempt to escape, his eyes on the stairs past her.

Like his friend, he only managed one step. The telltale feel of magic burst into the air so pervasive, Frea could feel it in her ears. The cultist was stopped by an invisible hand. Then, he was ripped back into the temple. The man had flown backwards so fast and so forcefully, Frea could feel the wind of it against her skin.

He disappeared from sight and the sounds she heard were the stuff of nightmares. She heard savaging, like a starving wolf coming across a steaming corpse. Savaging and the sounds of a man struggling hopelessly for his life. From the shadows of the hall, blood sprayed forth into the light as well as flesh, muscle and even pale bone. The cultist thrashed against the walls as he was ripped apart. Fighting, then begging and then simply screaming. Screaming that rose, hit a sharp, shrill peak that made her ears ring and her stomach turn and then suddenly cut off, leaving only silence that rang even louder.

The Skaal woman was shaking now. Her sword had been dispelled and desperately, she reached to pull her axe from the wall, needing something to hold between her and whatever monster the shadows of Miraak's temple had just unleashed on the world.

The eyes reappeared. Frea had only seconds to gaze onto them before something burst out of the temple, knocking her down as it flew over her head.

The Khajiit knocked Jordis to the ground and for what felt like the hundredth time, only Gregor's reaction stopped the next blow from taking her life. The Khajiit was moved away by the heavier Nord just a bit before she stopped them both, catching his shield with her sword and knocking it away. She struck along his torso with her dagger, dragging a white line along his armor. Above her, Gregor brought his sword arm down over her head. She reached up to stop it, releasing his shield in the process. He used it to knock her back but failed to push her over and before he could recover, she darted in close and brought the dagger down, sinking it into the meat of his arm.

The man roared. Then he clamped down. Fighting through his agony, flecks of bloody spittle flew from his lips as he attempted to push her away. She only pushed the knife in deeper, twisting it for extra measure.

Jordis ran in and got in close before she is heard. With a cry, she took her sword and rakes it down the Khajiit's back, tearing the thick leather armor there and drawing a long red line from shoulder to waist.

She reels. Gregor throws his head forward and catches her. The dagger comes out as she moves back. His large foot finds her stomach, and sends her falling back even further. The Khajiit reached up to her nose and looked at her fingers, seeing them tinged red. Enraged, she ripped her discarded, bloodied weapon off the ground and charged the pair, blades held out.

Without warning, something struck the ground between them, hard, kicking up a cloud of dust and dirt. The impact picked the Khajiit off her feet and sent her backwards. She twisted and rights herself midair, digging her weapons into the ground to come to a skidding halt.

Gregor and Jordis fell back but not nearly as far and weapons remained in their hands. Jordis hacked up dust as her labored breathing brought some of it into her mouth. Then she peered through the cloud in an attempt to find the cause, before it could set its sights on them.

Either by time or with the wind, slowly, the dust cloud fell away. A figure within the cloud began to take shape and the further it dissipated, the more solid the shape became and the more her heart began to rise in her chest.

No further, she had promised. The Khajiit would go no further than them until their thane had returned.

And now, he was here.

"Fel…" It was Gregor who found his voice first. Tight with pain as it was, it was also awestruck and overjoyed. He was pressing his arm against the wound in the other one and blood seeped through his fingers. "Thane!"

She was as elated and relieved as he but within, deep down in her core, something troubled her. Felwinter had said nothing in response to their calls, hadn't even twitched in the hollow his landing had created in the earth. Gregor shifts in his stance, moving as if he means to approach and on instinct, Jordis grabs his shoulder to stop him.

Felwinter's back remained to them. His legs were braced wide, his shoulders tight and low, his back hunched over. His hands, clad in black dragonbone and still sharpened down to claws for his past fight with Mercer Frey, were twitching and coated in blood. She could just barely see his eyes and in them, she saw no pupils.

Jordis forced herself to breathe. "Felwinter..."

Buzzing erupted along her skin, along Gregor's. Even the Khajiit's fangs suddenly bared in a ferocious snarl at the sensation. Orange, fiery light appeared from both of Felwinter's shoulders. They began to trace lines down his arms, following paths and drawing patterns known only to themselves, stopping then they had reached his wrists.

Then, Felwinter, armored in magic Jordis had never seen before, finally moved. His back straightened up, his fists balled, he threw back his head when he opened his mouth, the sound that erupted was like nothing any human could have been capable of. Jordis knew this. Gregor knew this. The battle of Fort Frostmoth had made it a lesson that could never be forgotten.

Felwinter threw back his head and let out not the fearsome warcry of a warrior but the earth-shaking, ear-splitting roar of a dragon.

Uncontrollable Dragon Aspect? In my good Christian Skyrim fic?