[A/N:] Much like the event at the Ancestor Glade, this one got too chunky to stay as a single chapter, so split it is!

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

~ WHEN SWARMED BY FLIES… ~

PART ONE

The Vale deer was nothing like the great elk of the Whiterun plains. It was small as a Heartlands deer if not smaller, almost delicate in its design, with a fur dark as sable marked with iridescent stripes and spots that seemed to change colour in the light – a delicate silver-grey in sunlight, white in the darkness of the caverns or night, sometimes tinted purple or green. Solen had never pursued such enchanting quarry. He often spent hours just watching one wander, strolling, grazing, pricking up for danger, appreciating the sheer beauty of its life, before reluctantly raising his bow.

After the kill was made, Solen drained it, slung it over his shoulders, shook out the cramp, and in the dark, still quiet of the predawn made his way back to the clearing by the stream where they'd agreed to reconvene after their nocturnal wanderings. Solen arranged the undressed kill on the frost-crusted grass and put a fresh edge on his dagger, pausing intermittently to listen – chirring insects, the rustling of small rodents, a nightjar's shriek, wind murmuring through conifer needles. Somewhere beyond a deer brayed, a haunting, eldritch sound that made his heart sing with longing. Even in Sun's Dusk the forest valleys of the snowy Forgotten Vale ached with life, an intoxicating change from how barren Skyrim's plains and forests had become.

It was both a saddening and wonderful thing, finding nature flourishing in the ruins of what had surely once been a majestic Chantry. The wayshrine that had taken them from the crushing blackness of the Darkfall caverns to the hidden world of the Vale above had opened upon these forested canyons hidden somewhere deep within the Haafingar mountains, lost from all memory and seemingly time itself. From conifer forests to glacial wonders, mountain passes and the vestiges of impossibly ancient Falmeri ruins; the path of the Initiate had seen them explore corner after corner of this forgotten world.

Not that it hadn't been fraught with its own dangers. The cold was intense, day and night; Solen puffed on his hands and readjusted his cloak around his ears before he got started on the field-dressing. Their food had run low, but that was less of a danger as an excuse. Strange creatures almost otherworldly in their primal design – frost giants, sabre cats marked like the Vale deer, trolls, spiders, and most unfortunately yet more Falmer – had kept their spells and sword arms sharp.

The real danger, Solen thought, was losing their sense of urgency. Days had come and gone since they'd first entered the Vale, and surely days more had passed in the depths below. But we're making good progress, he consoled himself, and we all need to eat.

Aela found him halfway through the skinning, almost noiseless on her paws. For a hulk of a werewolf, she could move quiet as a shadow when she wished to in the forest; Solen didn't even sense her until the wind shifted. "Good thing I'm not a goat, or I'd be soundly dead," he greeted, as he slipped the deer out of its skin.

Aela padded past him and rinsed off her bloody muzzle in the stream, huffing at its chill. "The Huntsman smiles on this place. You didn't change?"

"I wanted to do it the old-fashioned way." Solen switched his dagger's grip and started the slice down from the deer's throat to its nethers. "The me part of me enjoys hunting again, too. Besides, we can't have the resident vampire getting thirsty."

"Mmm." Aela rejoiced in the opportunity, just like him. She rocked back on her haunches and stretched luxuriously. "Sensible. I feel like we'll need to run today. Those wayshrines are getting further to find."

"That's just an excuse to steal half my breakfast, isn't it?"

"Unless you plan on carrying both of us on your back."

"Gods forbid. You've probably got a whole troll stuffed in there." Solen scooped out the innards and set them aside. "We'll have to make a proper roast of this, then. You carve, I'll find firewood."

"Did you drain it first?"

"Course I drained it. Who d'you take me for, Vilkas?"

Aela shrank back into her Nordic skin and took up Solen's dagger, and they slipped seamlessly into their old hunter's rhythm. In a quarter of an hour he had a firepit blazing and Aela had carved the deer so expertly that she left not a sinew of waste. They'd just spitted the first tenders across the flames to sear when the wolves within brindled and bared their teeth, the usual signal for Serana's return. "Any luck?" Solen asked, as he whittled a fresh spit.

Serana swung down out of the sky and landed delicately upon the leaves, barely stirring them as she descended out of flight. The vampire lord still made a deeply disconcerting sight, but it was perhaps not as disconcerting as watching it melt back into her friendlier, more human shape as she strode towards the fire. "You could say that. I'm certain I found another wayshrine. Give me the map?"

Between their daytime excursions over the ground and Serana's aerial wanderings under starlight, they'd assembled a crude map of the Forgotten Vale. Serana frowned over it, charcoal stylus in hand, as they sprawled the increasingly battered sheet of parchment out in the light of the flames. "It was up here, I think, near the frozen lake. We've covered all the lower valleys pretty thoroughly, so it'd make sense the last ones are on the plateau."

"How many are left now?" Aela frowned. "Three?"

"Two," said Solen. They had five wayshrines to find, but at least four of them were aboveground; the first wayshrine on the Initiates' path had thoroughly expired Solen of his desire to wander the Darkfall caverns ever again. His fingers wandered over Serana's sketches of mountains and valleys. "If that's the Inner Sanctum up there, it'd make sense for a shrine to be somewhere around the lake... maybe one here... then the other there, among those southern mountains. The more annoyingly well-hidden the better. We'll have to look for a path." And pray it's not another chasm swarming with the Betrayed, he thought, shuddering. Facing those things was even harder after meeting Gelebor.

"Thought so. It's far." Aela sniffed and snatched up the nearest hunk of spitted meat. "Best start eating, brother. We've got a long way to run."

"Hey, I'm not the one who needs to turn again so soon." Which reminded Solen – he passed Serana the skin of blood they'd reserved with a flourish. "M'lady."

Serana rolled her eyes but took it. Partly why she transformed so rarely, she'd admitted, was because it left her with a wicked thirst afterwards. "I told you not to call me that."

"Only a courtesy, m'lady. Drink up before it congeals." Solen smirked more sympathetically as he snatched up a sizzling cut of flank. "I pity you, though. It's got to be wretched, resigned to blood and blood with a side of blood. If I couldn't have slices of warm crusty bread with some fresh goat's cheese, I don't know what I'd do with myself."

"It's an acquired taste." Serana pulled a face as she drank. "Ughh. Beast blood is horrible, though. It's like drinking dirt."

"Well, at least Gendolin won't be so enthusiastic to bite me again." Solen flicked Serana a grin, which she returned. She really wasn't so bad after all, he thought. The wolf still made its usual fusses deep within, but the fresh air, enticing wilderness and bountiful hunting had kept it almost amiably sated. Both his head and his judgement felt wonderfully clear without it always gnawing on his ears. "You know, since we're on that topic," Solen began, as Serana supped from her skin of blood again, "there's something a bit morbid I've been wondering for a while…"

"You're wondering what your blood tastes like, don't you?"

"Not just me! Oh, Morwha, that just sounds worse, doesn't it? Also, you figured that out way too quickly."

"Hey, you've clearly been thinking about it ever since I first mentioned I was getting hungry. Anyway, wouldn't you already know? I mean, surely you've…"

"Oh – I mean, yes. I have, um. Eaten. In that skin. But wolves aren't, er, fussy eaters. Deer blood would not have tasted like dirt to me."

Serana actually chuckled. "So, what I'm hearing is that werewolves have no palette."

"And vampires have way too much of it," Solen retorted. "Your kind go on and on about flavour and texture and aging their victims in cellars like they're wine. Which is downright horrific, by the way."

"But you're still curious."

"Absolutely."

"And I'll add this to the list of conversations I never thought I'd be having with the Dragonborn… Right. Honestly… elves are pretty watery."

"Watery? So that buck-eared bastard bit me and didn't even have the good grace to enjoy it?"

"He wasn't biting you for taste. Are you sure you should be joking about it?"

"Course he's sure," said Aela. Bloodcursed humour resonated unusually well with the Huntress, enough to toss the still-uncertain Serana an encouraging smirk. "It's better than pulling faces over that fouled old hunt. You can't assume you'd taste better just because you're special, Solen."

"Why not? Just look at me. Rayya always tells me I'm an exotic feast."

"Elves take… a while to build flavour," said Serana awkwardly, as Aela's smirk widened. "Anyway, you'll taste awful to any vampire now. We can't stand the taste of other bloodcursed. Even other vampires. Probably what puts us off cannibalizing each other, actually."

"What about my lot?" asked Aela.

"Oh, Nords are very filling."

"That's true. They do line the stomach well."

"And with that, I hereby rescind my morbid curiosity," said Solen, wiping grease off his mouth. "I'm not having breakfast reminded of how quickly Aela can eat a dead brigand."

Before sunlight filled the vale again they'd reduced the deer to a heap of chewed and well-licked bones. Werewolves had formidable appetites; it took a lot of energy to make the change. "And we are changing," said Aela, hungrily breathing the cold air in. "It's too fine of a morning not to run."

"Wonderful. So I'm back on pitcher duty," said Serana, unenthusiastically. They took turns lugging around the ceremonial ewer Gelebor had given them for their holy pilgrimage. "I'm not flying around under that, though," she muttered, raising her hood against the first rays of sun creeping over the mountaintops. "I get enough of a headache under the sun."

Solen unearthed the pitcher from behind the old stump where they'd hidden it and plonked it between them. "I'll backpack, you pathfind."

"If your highness can bear the ignobility of a werewolf's back," Aela remarked dryly, as her eyes flushed black.

"I'll manage," said Serana, no less wryly. "Just sniff out a way up the glacier, there's a good hound."

The werewolves switched their skins – Aela's was the faster, Solen's the bigger. With snow churning from their paws and the misty air streaming between their teeth, they bolted from the forest and up the mountain paths. Serana clung grimly to the shaggy chestnut hair on Solen's broad back, the ewer and her pride tucked snugly in her arms.

The path of the Initiate, Gelebor had told them, was one of enlightenment, that only the most faithful and loyal of Snow Elves dared to follow in their desire to become one with their foremost god. At every wayshrine there would be meditations and mantra, observed and guided by a Prelate. Then the Initiate would dip their ceremonial ewer into the basin and proceed upon the pilgrimage. The filled ewer would open the doors to the Inner Sanctum, and the Initiate would proceed for their reward, an audience with the Arch-Curate, through whom Auri-El Himself was said to speak.

But the mantras were long lost, the Prelates had been slaughtered by the Betrayed, and what Solen and his companions followed now was a pale imitation of that holy pilgrimage. It was still beautiful, he thought, as he bounded up the snowy drifts to where Aela stood pacing around the familiar domed mound of a sunken wayshrine; beautiful, but in a sad sort of way.

"Here we go again," Serana murmured, sliding off his shoulders. "Do the honours, Solen."

Solen grumbled, shook the snow off his fur, and somewhat reluctantly shrunk back into his elven shape. He'd never done well in the cold, and it was freezing up here. Still, they'd all agreed without argument that he ought to be the one doing the actual pilgrim part, as the deeds of Aela's ancestors weighed on her, and Serana was the antithesis of an Auri-El Initiate. And because he was an elf. Not that that helped him terribly much here; Solen tucked the pitcher against his chest and shivering he tottered along to the wayshrine, anxious to get out of the driving wind.

As all the others had done, Auri-El's sun symbol tolled at his approach, and the wayshrine ascended magnificently from the earth, revealing the basin and its arched walls shimmering with the portals to the other activated wayshrines. Only two walls remained blank stone now, Solen noticed. He stepped up towards the basin, and the spectral shadow of the shrine's ghostly Prelate – assigned by his god to continue his duties even after death – manifested to greet him.

There was no recognition within the spirit beyond that of his presence – the priestly ghost thought him no more than another Initiate seeking enlightenment. Solen tried to remind himself that Gelebor had given him his blessing, and to dip the ewer in the basin was not an act of sacrilegious theft, and that if he wanted to save the world he'd better stop overthinking the whole deal. He stepped away from the wayshrine a few minutes later with the ewer a little fuller than before, and joined Serana and Aela, shifted back, at the edge of the vast expanse of the frozen lake. "I don't envy those poor Initiates," Solen muttered by way of greeting, staggering a bit as the blasting wind knocked him askew. "This thing's getting heavy."

"You know it's just water," Serana shrugged. "You could dump it out and fill it all up at the last basin, you know."

"Serana! It's ceremonial!"

"So? The shrine keepers can't even tell what kind of Elf you are."

"Precisely why we have to do this right. Look, it's scandalous enough that werewolves and vampires have to follow this enlightened path, all to make off with one of Auriel's precious relics to stop a power-hungry clan of neck-suckers from corrupting it. We can at least do this part properly, with due reverence!"

"All right, all right," she snapped. "Just a suggestion."

So much for not overthinking it. Solen sighed and glanced back at the wayshrine, beautifully immaculate against its backdrop of mountain and snow. "This is about all that remains of true Falmer society after spending all my life thinking those horrifying husks were all that was left of them," he muttered, half to himself. "I've got to do this right."

An awkward silence persisted until Aela, ever pragmatic, redirected their attention to the sky, the horizon of which was bruising with clusters of cold grey cloud. "Wind's only picking up. The weather might turn soon. We should get going."

"Across the lake?" Solen frowned. The ice looked solid, and it was certainly cold enough to have frozen several feet thick. Still. That was a lot of ice and a lot of lake. "Did you test it?"

"A little. Feels firm enough." Aela stepped off the shore and rammed her boots on the ice several times. The deep thuds of her heel connecting seemed reassuring enough. "We'll make for that island out there. Solen, put your helmet on. Your ears are going blue."

At least the wind was blasting at their backs rather than their faces. It still cut like a knife until even Aela shivered with distaste. She'd taken over pitcher duty so Solen could devote himself to enveloping his cloak around his shoulders, trying to think warm thoughts and not step in slippery patches. The surface of the lake was covered in a crunchy coat of ice crystal, whipped up into flurries by the scouring wind, but every now and then their boots struck a smooth patch and sent them skidding wildly. On one such occasion Solen's foot shot out from under him; he wavered until Serana caught his arm, steadying him. "Easy there. Can't have the saviour of Skyrim go breaking his neck."

"Right. Right. Too inglorious of a way to go." Solen suppressed another shiver and rearranged his cloak. They ended up keeping pace together. "I'm sorry I snapped earlier," he muttered, since he was trying to do less of that with his vampiric acquaintance. "Just the mer in me jumping to all kinds of attention. Don't mind him."

Serana's eyes shone thoughtfully from below the rim of her cowl. "I didn't realize this was so important to you," she admitted. "All this business with Auri-El… I thought you followed the Yokudan pantheon. Actually, I've been wondering about that. Odd gods for a High Elf to follow."

"Oh, I know," said Solen, leaping on the chance for friendlier conversation. "My brother's father helped raise me, and they were Redguards; we pulled over a lot in Hammerfell ports and then I wandered the deserts for years. But my uncle always made sure I knew our own kind's history. Dunno if you're up to a history lesson, though. It's all elf stuff. Pretty boring…"

Serana folded her arms. "Try me, golden boy."

Solen laughed. "All right. See, the elves all began as Aldmer first, the Aedric descendants trapped in Tamriel. We split apart, obviously – Altmer, Falmer, Bosmer – but it's why our pantheons are similar. Except those who went after the Daedra. The Chimer and Ayleids and Orsimer went real hardcore with their divergence."

"Aedric descendants?" Serana shook her head in dismay. "By the Mace, no wonder Gendolin strutted everywhere like a prince."

"This is all Merethic legend, obviously. Maybe even Dawn. I'm surprised you didn't know some of this already, I know you're not that old."

"My family's castle is on a remote island in the Sea of Ghosts, we didn't exactly get out much. What were these Aldmer like?"

"High Elves, supposedly. Where d'you think we get our quaint ideas about pedigree from?" Solen rolled his eyes and hunched his shoulders against another frigid gust. "An old Aldmeri belief is the pursuit of our lost divinity. You know, because we were 'sundered from our righteous place in Aetherius' or whatever. From what Gelebor told us, this mode of thought was definitely the fashion here."

"Right. Those poor Initiates were lugging that ewer around in an attempt to become one with their god." Serana's eyes wandered towards where the distant shape of the Inner Sanctum pronged out from the southwest mountains, high and remote as a monastery. "I wonder how many succeeded. As beautiful as this place is, it's not exactly… hospitable."

"Ice, wind, snow, wolves, giants, trolls, wayshrines in remote and unfriendly corners…" Solen rubbed his arms and snorted. "Less of a serene refuge of meditation and more of a test how well a mer suffers his mortality with dignity. Another cheerful old belief, by the way."

"You Elves are just rays of sunshine, aren't you? I can see why you preferred Redguard theology."

"I mean, they have plenty of fun stories too – whoa!"

"Careful!"

They were making steady progress across the lake when the weather turned in earnest with all of Skyrim's perilous rapidity. The wind exchanged its knifing bite for a sledgehammer, and then stuck knives in the sledgehammer. The sky dimmed and darkened, and the air thickened with flurries of snow. Even Serana began to struggle, less with the cold as keeping her balance against the gusts. "I'd honestly take the sun over this," she muttered, as a swirl of snow whipped into her face.

"You heard her," Aela grunted, squinting through the flurrying air. "Can't you do something about this, Solen? We're about to go snowblind here."

"I got it, I got it." Solen sucked in a breath and spun around to face the swelling blizzard. "LOK VAH KOOR!"

The Thu'um lashed forth, not quite like a thunderclap, but certainly with enough chastisement that the roaring wind dropped with an almost disconcerting suddenness. Solen glimpsed, for a moment, the path the Shout had forged through the clouds as if cloven by a blade – then the grey mass over their heads pulled swiftly apart, pushed aside and upon itself and away, until the clear blue sky glowed over them and the sun returned, wonderfully warm in the stilled air. "Wow," Serana murmured, as the Vale brightened around them once more. "I… didn't know he could do something about it. That's incredible."

Solen sighed in relief and shook off the snow that still clung to his mantle and cloak as he started to thaw out. "The Thu'um's handy for all kinds of things, isn't? The handiest of adventuring companions."

"Then maybe the Thu'um should carry this ewer," said Aela.

"Er – well, being handy doesn't mean it has hands… Look, my turn when we reach the island, okay?" The mound of rock and snow jutting up from the frozen lake wasn't so far off now. At least they'd managed to keep tottering in the right direction after the snowstorm had blown over.

Aela sighed and shrugged the ewer more comfortably into her arms. "As you say, Harbinger –"

Her next step forward froze her still; they all heard the different tenor of thud within the ice, thinner, brittle. They came alert at once, senses straining, abruptly reminded that they stood on a sheet of frozen water, not solid ground. "Careful," Aela warned, as she cautiously leaned off her foot. "Ice is thinner here."

Feeling out each step, ears pricked for every sound, she negotiated her way more mindfully across the ice. Solen slightly wished that he hadn't Shouted after all, uncomfortably reminded that fur, steel plate armour, and dragonbone weapons did not a buoyant elf make. But the ice was still thick enough to hold them for now, he thought, and the sun wasn't that hot… Still… "Maybe we should go the long way round," he suggested. He didn't want to think how cold the water would be below.

"It'll hold," said Aela, her breath coming in misty clouds. "Those icesheets across the Sea of Ghosts were thinner than this."

They stiffened as a deep, otherworldly groan suddenly rippled below the bluish-white sheet, dancing across the lake. The primal sound threw Solen back to the days when he'd traversed the glacial crevasses of the Pale and the aforementioned icebergs beyond Winterhold, far in Skyrim's northernmost reaches. "Wait," said Serana, when the lake fell silent again. "I'll go first." She in her sleek leathers was dressed much more lightly than her fur-clad companions, and seemed unusually surefoot on the ice – neither Solen nor Aela had seen her slip yet. She stepped away from them, and both werewolves trained their senses to how the ice responded beneath the vampire's tread. Gradually the sharper, tinnier sounds of cracking seams broadened into deeper, more reassuring thumps; heartened, Aela and then Solen followed her, walking carefully in single file. That island and its blessedly solid rock can't be underfoot soon enough, Solen thought, as the primeval chord creaked through the lake again. The sound of moving ice – or something moving beneath it.

He was so preoccupied reminding himself that Skyrim's waters were far too cold for sea serpents – and that this was a lake, not a sea – that he almost walked into Aela; she'd stopped dead, tense as a deer. "It's all right, sister," Solen said, as the quiet resumed. "Those glaciers in the Pale never stopped singing, remember?"

"It's not that." Aela turned her head, a slight frown on her face. "Just feels like we're being… watched."

The ice beneath Serana's feet erupted, shredded into a roaring geyser as something huge burst into the sky. An all-too-familiar roar blasted against Solen's ears as the Dragon unfurled its wings with a rubbery sweep and seemed to splay itself across their sight; webbed spines pressed flat against the sides of its neck and tail spread open, doubling its girth. Its scales were the most remarkable conflagration of orange and blue he'd ever seen, and its eyes gleamed colder than the frozen lake.

Serana had been flung clear of the breach; shaking off the shock and splinters, she scrambled upright with spells kindling in her palms. "That one a friend of yours, Dragonborn?"

Solen lunged for his bow. "Nope!"

He could only think of a handful of worse places where a Dragon had challenged him – and a challenge was undoubtedly what this one wanted as it roared again, higher and shriller. Gritting his teeth, Solen seized an arrow, a dozen Shouts racing through his mind and clamouring for use – then the frozen lake groaned again. The world flipped over as a second Dragon tore up through the ice right under his boots, carrying him skyward with it, and Solen yelled as he was swept frightfully over its back, scrambling for purchase against bright scales slickened in deluges of icy water. His bow tumbled out of his hands, and he just managed to seize onto one of the creature's tail-spines, leaving him swaying wildly high above the Forgotten Vale.

He managed to hang on long enough to gulp a quick breath; then his slippery handhold vanished as the Dragon, lithe as a stoat, twirled neatly on the wing and flicked him off like a bothersome gnat. But one breath was enough. "FEIM!" Solen's ethereal form, rather than his corporeal, was what ended up bouncing madly across the lake before he found his bearings and landed on his feet, Eldródr's hilt between his hands, the ivory blade arresting his wild skid across the ice.

Solen ripped the greatsword free and leapt to standing, his instincts awakened to battle; he'd been separated from Aela and Serana, who stood almost back to back between the breaches in the lake, poised spells and arrow darting uneasily between the two Dragons. Two Dragons, Solen thought again, frustrated and astonished in equal measure; Dragons never shared territory almost as a rule, their natural sense of contest would not allow it, yet here was the inarguable exception. Frankly this revelation shocked him more than their underwater ambush.

The Dragons were identical in appearance, and in intention; the first continued hovering while the second soared in looping circles. Their gnarled voices alternated seamlessly between them.

"Koraav, zeymah. Bowundunne mu lost."

"Nust thuruumu sahlo."

"Nust mindok ni golt."

"Mu fent ofanaus niin."

"Common, you horkers, do you speak it?!" Solen roared at them as he sprinted back across the ice, heedless of its creaking; all that mattered was keeping them off the others. "You want a fight? Here I am!"

The Dragons' attention shifted scornfully in his direction. They couldn't fail to notice the uncommon tenor behind his words. The hoverer bared its fangs. "You do not even know our tongue, do you?"

The soarer pirouetted elegantly on a wingtip. "Such arrogance, to dare take for yourself the name of dovah."

He hadn't heard that one in a while, but it was assurance enough that they intended to send him to Oblivion in a handbasket. "Go!" Solen bellowed, as the Dragons' wingbeats shifted their pattern. "Get to the island!"

Aela sent off an arrow, which the hoverer neatly twisted aside from. "We're not leaving you!"

"GO!" This was beyond glory; they were wholly defenceless on the open ice.

Serana seized the pitcher, Aela swore and lowered her bow, and finally the both of them were sprinting for the only cover to be found on the lake. The Dragons rumbled with what could only be described as sinister laughter.

"Meyye joorre."

"We are the Reverent."

"You will bow."

"Or you will break."

The soaring one suddenly left off its circling – it dived in attack. Aela and Serana felt the shadow cross over them and had the good sense to throw themselves backwards as the Shout split the frigid air. "YOL TOOR SHUL!" A blinding stripe of fire lacerated a wide channel of black water between them and the island. Serana cursed and reeled back trembling from the steam, and Aela all but dragged her backwards as the ice cracked and strained under their feet.

The hoverer launched forward towards Solen with a hiss, yet even as his throat tightened and the Thu'um rose up in his bones, the creature flattened itself, frills and wings melting seamlessly into the stripe of its body; it pierced the icesheet like a knife and vanished in a terrific spray of water and frozen splinters. Solen had a hideous anticipation of what it intended to do, and encouraged himself along. "WULD NAH KEST!"

And none too soon – even as the Whirlwind Sprint carried him forward the ice that had been under his feet exploded into a fragmented tower, expelling the Dragon in full lunge. Whirling its wings and fanning its frills, it soared skyward again, glittering and dazzling beneath the cloudless sky.

Solen spun around to Shout in its wake, yet wingbeats stormed almost at once in his ears from behind. Right. There's two of them! "WULD NAH KEST!"

"FUS RO DAH!" The pulse of force left the icesheet sundered behind him, and water gurgled up gleefully between the deepening cracks. Solen backed up as the frozen surface groaned and shuddered, breaking slowly and grandly apart into floes and platforms, until the ground where Solen, Aela and Serana stood rocked tremulously under their feet, slippery with spray, creaking like the deck of a ship.

"We're not outrunning Dragons on the wing," Aela growled, as the two Reverent circled overhead like vultures. "New plan?"

"Reason with them!" Serana exclaimed, wobbling as her floe creaked. "You're half Dragon, aren't you?"

"That's not how being Dragonborn works, Serana!" Solen sprang back towards the middle of his platform as the lake licked hungrily at its ragged edges. "And quite frankly, it usually has the opposite effect!" Still, it never hurt to try avoid a fight, so Solen filled his lungs again. "Hey! Spiky and Sneaky! Don't suppose we could just call it a draw and go our separate ways?"

The Reverent considered them with something almost like amusement.

"Ahh. Tovitslenrahhe."

"Nust bo fah ningut krein."

"Kunsil wah qahnaar niin."

"Olmu qahnaaraan vogein."

Something about the way they stared at the ewer in Serana's arms gave Solen a nasty feeling that the Betrayed might not entirely be responsible for the Bow's predeceasing questers' untimely ends. "New plan," he declared, as the Dragons' wing gait changed. "Don't fall in."

One of them trimmed and plunged effortlessly through the ice. Solen ran towards the other incoming on the wing. "FUS RO DAH!"

With impossible dexterity, it flowed around the cone of force like a ribbon in the wind, then righted itself and answered in kind. "IIZ SLEN NUS!"

"WULD NAH KEST!" Solen slid aside as the surface of the floe erupted violently in a slicing line of frozen spears. He hurled a Shout in the Dragon's wake as it winged over his head. "YOL TOOR SHUL!" The fiery plume raced up at it from behind, and still it curled gracefully out of its path, tumbling like an acrobat, glowing unscathed as it angled back into the sky. Despite the situation, it was hard not to be impressed. Odahviing might actually have contenders for being best on the wing.

Aela pulled the bowstring to her cheek, just as the floe beneath her feet violently upended as the submerged Dragon breached with all its usual flashiness; the Huntress barely managed to spring from the overturning floe, but made the leap and escaped the lunging lakewaters as the Dragon twisted skyward, water spiralling from its wings.

Solen had hardly turned to make sure she was all right when again a shadow darkened his back. He didn't think. "FEIM!"

"YOL TOOR SHUL!"

Only he should have thought – the world suddenly sunk up to Solen's eyelids as the fiery torrent melted the floe right out from under him. Oh, Sep –! His ethereal form wouldn't last long, though at least it let him float – trying not to panic, he floundered to the nearest rim, rocking in the aftermath of the Thu'um. He barely managed to drag himself aboard it before all the weight of his corporeality snapped back. The frigid water bit savagely at his boots and the ends of his cloak, warning him it wouldn't be so lenient again. Instantly he heard another Shout called into being over his head. "FO KRAH DIIN!"

Too breathless to Shout, Solen flung his arms over his face, but the storm of ice and cold never struck; Serana had leapt between it and him, a ward outstretched between her fingers. The defensive spell wavered but held beneath the Thu'um, and Aela's arrows pursued the Dragon until it trimmed and dived out of her sights. "We have to get off this ice!" Serana snarled, as she jerked Solen to his feet.

Solen flung his eyes towards the island, so close, so far. "I'm open to ideas!"

They scrambled back from the floe's edge as the waters rippled ominously. "You're a lot faster in the other skin. A lot more agile, too."

Aela jerked her bow skyward as the other Dragon spun on its wingtips back towards them. "It takes energy to change. We need to build it up again."

"And what in Oblivion does that mean?"

"It's not on call right now, all right?!"

Their floe rocked sharply, flipping almost vertical, throwing them sliding. Solen rammed Eldródr into the ice and seized Aela's collar before she slithered over the edge. Serana crashed against his arm and clung until the floe mercifully evened out again. Spines and frills threshed the water, orange and blue scales slithering among the bobbing sheets of ice in a sharkish fashion. "Not on call?" Serana exclaimed furiously, once they were on their feet again. "Not on call?! What bloody kind of curse do you call that?!"

"Do you want the specifics now?" Solen snapped. "FUS RO DAH!" The Shout didn't hit, of course, but at least it forced the airborne Dragon to spiral aside.

"I don't see you changing, princess!" Aela rebuked, sending an arrow whistling after it.

"It's too bright out here, I'd be flying blind!" Serana leaned over the floe and hurled a spear of ice at where the Reverent had just submerged again. "My magic's stunted out in the sun as it is!"

Solen ripped his greatsword free. "Any other ideas?!"

"Sure, I could throw the pitcher at them?"

The airborne Dragon pivoted elegantly and lunged down from the sky. Aela sent three arrows at its head in quick succession, and two of them connected; one tore a pinprick hole in the membranous frills on its neck, the other left a long white scar against its bony beak-like maw. She might as well have thrown stones to stop an avalanche. Its jaws gaped, its chest expanding with the rising Thu'um.

"DUCK!" Solen bellowed, and Aela and Serana threw themselves flat as he roared over their heads. "FUS RO DAH!"

His Words of Power echoed the Dragon's. The two Thu'um of unrelenting force collided midair, and the almighty shockwave that was born of unstoppable meeting immovable flipped the world on its head. The Dragon was spun backwards in a graceless tangle, screeching, though at the last moment it managed to flatten itself and dive rather than crash. Solen, Aela and Serana had no such escape and were blasted across the frozen lake off the upturned floes, tossed like leaves in a storm gale. Their landing knocked the air from their lungs and stars into their eyes, their ringing ears full of the restless groaning of cracking ice.

Get up. The command pulsed abruptly in Solen's aching head as he lay flat and gasping, sunlight dazzling his face. Get up or you're dead. Get up!

Eldródr was still in his hands, and he used the greatsword to help him mount his dazed feet. Beside him, Aela had managed to hold onto her bow, though she'd lost most of her arrows and more than a few plates of her armour. Serana, beyond all belief, still clutched the ewer. "Are we winning yet?" she groaned, pulling her hood back over her eyes.

"Almost." Solen tasted blood in his mouth and spat it out. "Don't worry. Got 'em… right where I want them."

"It's bad," Aela translated, clutching her temple. "Where've they gone?" The skies were empty and the lake ominously quiet.

"LAAS YAH NIR." The twin spectres of the Reverent Dragons outlined themselves beneath the creaking icefield, swirling fishlike in the depths below, spiralling ever towards them. "Planning to make an entrance," Solen muttered, leaning back. The ice field onto which they'd been thrown was still reasonably solid, though latticed with fractures. It wouldn't take too many breaches to turn the whole place into a floating mess of danger again. Gods, those creatures are like wolves, covering for each other, working together to bring us down. Fast, overwhelming, exploiting.

But he thought he'd gained a sense of their strategy now. One under, one over. They were always trying to separate their prey, and they wouldn't breach the water simultaneously. The plan he scraped together felt more like a gamble, but it was better than nothing. "Spread out," Solen ordered. "You two, get up and back up. Put that fault between us."

"I really hope that's not all you've got in mind," said Serana.

"Just trust me on this." If they really were like wolves, they wouldn't refuse such an obvious chance to split them apart. Or such was the hope. "Serana, can you cast an ice spear? A big one?"

"Is a horker fat? But until sunset that's the only one you'll get."

"That's enough. Just get ready."

Serana swung the ewer into Aela's stomach. "I'll need two hands. Here. Hold this."

The Huntress almost dropped the pitcher, and stared down its narrow neck almost incredulously. "Did – did you freeze its contents?"

"Can't be spilling all that hard-earned ceremony during battle, can we?" Serana brought her wrists together, grimacing with the strain; a swirling white glow conjured and compounded into a threatening haze between her fingers. "When do you want it?"

"You'll know when." One of the two auras below suddenly peeled away and condensed as it bolted towards the surface. It took the bait. Solen leapt back as a powerful current set the frozen floor creaking again. The Thu'um swelled up from his bones as the Dragon's aura brightened with its approach. Just before it breached, Solen drew a sharp breath and prayed he'd timed it right. "TIID KLO UN!"

Time slowed to a crawl, almost stilled, and the world went bluish-silver. The Dragon looked eerie suspended amidst the explosive ruin of is entrance, every scale and spine slicked flat and its form lean and straight as an arrow, almost beautiful in its synergy with the lake. That synergy Solen now would turn against it, with its scales still glistening wet, and even as the air filled his lungs like treacle and his tongue moved sluggishly in his mouth, the Thu'um ultimately answered him. "IIZ SLEN NUS!"

He hadn't expected the Ice Form Shout to completely immobilize something the size of a Dragon, but it certainly punched as he'd hoped it would – the Slow Time Shout fell away and the Reverent's graceful ambush became a torturous launch, as the water drenching its scales froze instantly into a blanket of searing spines. Its head, throat and shoulders encased, the Dragon struggled skyward with an anguished wail. Serana recognized her cue and didn't delay; her icy spear took the Dragon beneath one floundering wing, knocking it from the sky with another screech of dismay. The ice cracked under its sprawled landing but held.

"It's down!" Aela roared, firing them all with the rally. Solen started towards it, then stopped, remembering – there's two of them! Right on time, the second Reverent breached in an eruption of ice and water, bellowing with rage as it beheld the fate of its kindred.

And Solen knew at once that they could not afford to lose this chance. This had to end. "JOOR ZAH FRUL!"

Dragonrend – a Shout of pure hatred, the bitterness and woe of the ancient Nords toiling beneath the tyranny of Dragons in an age long past made manifest; a Shout that inflicted the insufferable, inconceivable premise of mortality, death and time and futility, upon those proud and immortal creatures. It was, perhaps, the only Shout that a Dragon could never learn; it did not come from Akatosh, but from the darkest, fiercest, most indestructible corners of the mortal spirit. It was why it tortured them so.

The Shout flashed forth quick as light, and the Reverent screamed as the Shout ensnared it; scales afire in a cold blue and black radiance, burdening its soul until no longer had the spirit to fly. Its wings folded limp at its side and down it came upon the ice, thundering to an ungraceful landing, thrashing in the folds of that unbearable concept. Within Solen, the beast howled with all the savage glee of fallen prey, but another, far more natural corruption ran rampant within his heart, urging all premise of compassion and sympathy from his mind. All the weight of mortality's bitterness, the weakness of flesh and enslavement to time, scorched his tongue and soul; intoning in gleeful and vile mantra how the only joy that lay within such an ephemeral, doom-driven existence was the downfall of others, especially the mighty.

But that isn't me. Solen forced the thought through him like the tolling of a clear bell, ringing through the surging storm. I don't hate them. I won't hate them. He breathed in, breathed out. That isn't who I am, nor who I want to be. Striking in hatred only broke steel. Dragonrend had consumed him the first time, and his old greatsword had shattered against Alduin's scales. Eldródr hung steady in his hands as he sprinted for the fallen Dragon.

The Reverent swung at his approach, and its flailing tail lashed madly in his direction – Solen sprang over the slicing sweep and picked up his pace. I bring you down because I must. The ivory greatsword spun in his hand, blazing with fire and frost, hewing a bloody stripe across the flesh of a flailing wing. Not because I want your suffering. He turned the Dragon's lunging jaws aside with a sundering sweep, and a spray of dark blood shot across the ice. But to defend what you would destroy. The Dragon arched back to Shout; he silenced it with one sharp Word. Because I must defend my own.

Breath by breath, reminder by reminder, he shut out the beast howling bloodlust in his ears and emptied his heart of Dragonrend's evil. And as his spirit lightened and his mind detached from those hateful urges, Solen laughed, suffused with a fierce and wondrous joy. To that side of him he had gone and returned from. Rayya was right – of course he could find his way! Suddenly there was no more torment of nature, only the thrill of the fight, a dance he knew all the steps to and followed with whirling grace. Strike by strike the Reverent recoiled; its bony head was as hard as an Ancient's scales, but the rest of its supple hide was barely tougher than a Blood's. It might be breathtakingly agile in the air, but it was painfully unused to brawling on the ground, and floundered; Solen leaned into his blows, carving steadily for the throat.

So preoccupied that he almost missed his shouted name. Solen swung around even as the Shout scorched his ears. "GAAN LAH HAS!"

By then it was too late to even think of a Shout to defend himself with – he glimpsed the other Reverent's badly frost-blistered head with jaws agape, and then the funnel of seething indigo light flashed to engulf him. A watery breeze clung to him in a slithering skin – and second by second it squeezed, stealing the strength from his limbs and the fire in his heart. Oh, that's not good…

He felt the Dragon move behind him and whirled around, Eldródr sweeping punishment across the reaching maw – but the strike lacked all its old force and care, and Solen stumbled badly in the backswing. It was growing perilously heavy in his hands as still the leeching drain worsened upon his vitality. It was all he could do to muster his Voice as the Reverent leaned back to Shout, and Sprint aside from the burst of flame; his boots skidded on the ice and he fouled his step, stumbling onto a knee, gasping for breath.

"Solen!" Aela's arms appeared under his own, trying to haul him to his feet. "Easy, brother. We have you."

Ethereal, Solen thought, stop the drain, yet his head was spinning like a top, and he felt slow and stupid and tired, even as his heart raced in anxious defiance of death. Across from him the two Reverent drew together, almost grinning; the ensnaring hues on the rended one were ebbing as the Shout's power faded, and the frost-stricken one's burned and blistered scales regrew before their eyes as it gorged on stolen life force. This can't be it, Solen thought bewilderedly. We can't have lost.

But Aela's quiver was spent, Serana had cast her magicka to the dregs, and even when Solen managed to pitch himself in and out of ethereality, dispelling the drain's hold, he felt as frail as a hollowed egg. "Take it these ones are too normal to fear?" the Huntress inquired, as she drew her dagger.

"More than," Solen groaned, struggling onto his feet as the Dragons flared their frills open.

"Any last tricks up your sleeve before we panic?" Serana asked grimly.

The Reverent drew back for Thu'um, their eyes blazing blue as winter, pure with malice and contempt. Eyes just like Gendolin's…

Reminding Solen that no matter what it took, no matter what had to be done, he wasn't going to lose. "Just one," he said, and drew breath. Tu'whacca forgive me for this. "GOL HAH DOV!"

The air pulsed once with silver and gold, and the forming Shouts on the Dragons' tongues died unsaid and unsung. Keening softly, they lowered their heads and closed their jaws, and bowed until their chins scraped the ice.

Aela uncertainly lowered her dagger. "What are they…?"

Solen stepped out to meet them, unsmiling. The two Dragons hissed softly and hailed him together. "Thuri." When he raised his hands, they lightly touched their snouts to his outstretched palms, like trained hounds, and stood quiet and attentive without the least bit of memory or rage in their empty eyes.

"Your names," he said, before they would forget them, and unquestioningly they obeyed.

The one to his left answered in a growl coarse and deep. "Voslaarum."

The one to his right had an almost imperceptibly higher, reedier tenor to his voice. "Naaslaarum."

"Solen, what…?" Serana, bewildered, tentatively spoke. "What did you do?"

"I broke them." Solen turned his back to the Reverent, who raised their flared heads watchfully over his shoulders. "They won't threaten us anymore."

Gingerly his companions drew closer, and the Dragons that had looked upon them with such scorn and bloodlust now blinked at them with only the mildest interest. Serana's face paled with understanding. "You… thralled them."

"That's what the Bend Will Shout leaves behind. It destroys their minds, any memory of pride or the independent spirit." Solen's jaw tightened, and he shook his head. "I could ask them to turn on each other. Drown themselves. Snap their necks. Yield their very souls. They'd obey without question." He sighed. "I gained this forbidden knowledge pursuing one of my own, years ago, in Solstheim. I'd sworn to myself, never again."

"But… why?" Serana gingerly stepped closer, and Voslaarum's blank eyes measured her thoughtfully. "You could've… I don't mean to say you should have, but if you have this power to end battles before they even begin, why… why not use it?" She turned to Solen sharply. "If this can break a Dragon's mind –"

"– it could break Gendolin's, right?" Solen finished, and smiled joylessly. "Maybe. Only here's the thing: the first and foremost instinct in a Dragon is their will to power, to dominate. This Shout is that will made manifest, and just like Dragonrend – that Shout that ripped Naaslaarum from flight – it calls out the absolute worst parts of me. The part of me that is part Dragon – and gods help me, the part of me that's Altmer, too. The will to power. The will to bend, and break, and rule." He gripped Eldródr's hilt tightly. "I'm not a tyrant. I don't want to be a tyrant. But I have the power to be one, if I wanted it – and that's terrifying. As soon as I start using such knowledge lightly, instead of in true need… nothing separates me from what I'm fighting anymore. Nothing at all."

Aela stepped past Solen and ran her fingers thoughtfully along Naaslaarum's gently pulsating neck, gleaming scales smooth as silk under her touch. "If Gendolin had this power, he wouldn't hesitate," she said quietly, and levelled Solen with her most approving older-sibling look. "I'm glad you do, Harbinger."

It was enough to assuage him. "Just feel free to shoot me if I ever go crazy with power, shield-sister."

"I don't need to. Rayya and cheese keep you in line fine enough."

"Well, we have neither on us right now, so you're the next best thing."

The Reverent rumbled softly. "Dovahkiin thuri. Our necks to your teeth."

"What would you have us do?"

"Just… guard the lake," Solen sighed, settling Eldródr over his back. "Go back to sleep, or… whatever you were doing under the ice."

Serana scooped up the ewer. "You're not going to kill them?"

"Why should I? They're no longer a threat. Right?" Solen frowned sternly at the twin Dragons, who bowed grandly under his gaze. "What were you doing before we came along? Eating every pilgrim that came after Auriel's Bow?"

"Mu saran ahrk koraavi."

"Mu dein suleyk."

"We waited and watched."

"We guarded the power."

"Power?" Aela echoed alertly. "Surely not Auriel's Bow?"

In answer the two Reverent turned their heads towards the island – and whether it was simply the angle at which the battle had placed them, or simply because it was lit differently in the afternoon sun, the Word Wall that towered at the peak of the island's hill was unmistakable and visible to all.

"Ah," said Solen, understanding. "Right." He could almost hear the whispers of the waiting Word already.

[A/N]: I didn't originally plan for the infamous Revered Dragon encounter on the Forgotten Vale ice lake to become quite as dramatic as it did, but such is the joy (and curse) of writing - sometimes your own fingers take you along on unexpected tangents. And if you're wondering the name change to the Reverent, it's wholly because these two are one of the most unique Dragon encounters in the game, and because constantly addressing them as 'the Revered Dragons' didn't have quite the same creative punch.

Translations for the untranslated dialogue:

Koraav, zeymah. Bowundunne mu lost. = Look, brother. We have guests.
Nust thuruumu sahlo. = They greet us poorly. (Non-canon: Thuruumu = welcome, derived from thuri, which is used as a hail as well as literally meaning 'overlord')
Nust mindok ni golt. = They do not know (their) place.
Mu fent ofanaus niin. = We shall punish them. (Ofanaus = suffer-give)

Meyye joorre = Foolish mortals.

Tovitslenrahhe = They are pilgrims. (Tovitslenrah = search-god-spirit)
Nust bo fah ningut krein. = They come for (the) sun-bow.
Kunsil wah qahnaar niin. = (What) pleasure to deny them. (Kunsil = bright-soul)
Olmu qahnaaraan vogein. = As we denied the rest. (vogein = un-one, to mean others)