Dungeons & Dragons
Loading Screen… The Elder Scrolls are mysterious items outside of time and space that foretell of prophecies and major events. Subject to rewrites and change, always evolving, possessing a mind of their own…
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Dibella snuggled on Reymon Ebonarm's chest, pulling the blanket over them. They were in Barbelo, Dibella's domain.
"Last night was fun, Reman," Dibella ran her hand over his ebony chest.
Reymon grunted, the gleam of lust in his eyes. "Indeed, it was."
She postured up and cupped his scalp, kissing the Ebony Warrior deeply.
But when she opened her eyes, she was kissing nothing, and he was gone.
Talos erased Reman Cyrodiil from the mythic when he ascended, she realized as the memory faded, because Reymon was the ninth divine before him. Talos erased him from memory too. Only Reman's time of being Dragonborn on Nirn remains…
19th of Evening Star, 4th Era 22
"Again," Dibella yawned, covering her mouth as Krest fist-punched the dummy. It jounced back a bit but not nearly enough. "No, keep your wrists straight and thrust your whole body into the punch." She moved him gently aside and demonstrated. Dibella dodged an imaginary blow and struck the dummy with a short-left hook, ripping its head clean off. "Oops. But you see what I'm doing, right?" Krest nodded, pushing his hair back with his hands as rainwater assaulted them, wetting her own pixie cut.
His blue eyes like ice and hydrangea flowers looked at her as if she were the whole world.
He's so young and innocent.
The snow had stilled outside Rose-River Lodge and the flowers of the Hearthlands twirled in the light breeze. It had been a few days since Saadia's departure to the Far Shores, and her funeral was being held this evening. Akatosh had busied himself like Dibella, and Krest had slumped into another bout of despair; it took a fair bit of convincing to get him out of his room today to train. Idrasa had returned to Nordenbjorg to alert Saadia's friends and Tsun was still out spreading word of the hearing around Tamriel while Ancano was in charge of arranging the service.
Tomorrow, Krest and Dibella were to retrieve the object that would supposedly aid them in their capture and defeat of Talos, the Elder Scroll of Dragons.
Krest copied her and this time the second practise dummy smacked the ground and sprung back up. "Good job." Dibella high-fived him and Krest blushed deep crimson. "Stay in control, keep calm, and assess the situation to see what you can use to your advantage. Your fighting's usually been sloppy, all over the place, and fueled by rage. You only win if you keep calm and under control. Focus on landing your punch or kick with power from the entire body, performing as one unit. Don't just scream and thrash around like a madman, disjointed and undisciplined. The smart survive. And remember, practice, practice, practice!"
Krest nodded, his long eyelashes scraping against his upper cheek. "Yes, ma'am."
Later that evening the funeral was being held by the Western Watchtower under a darkening, moonless sky. Idrasa was there, holding hands with another Dunmer girl named Gabriella Theras. Ancano was also present alongside Saadia's former mentor: Aisha. Jarl Tullius and Legate Rikke were amongst anyone else from Nordenbjorg who knew her well. Akatosh performed ancient rites and sprinkled holy water in several places and even the priestesses from Old Fort had come. Hamal, Anwen, Orla, Fjotra, and Senna. Yeshur the Redguard prophet was there as well.
"I did say she had the heart of her father, Ruptga." Yeshur ticked the side of his head three times with a clever smile. "Ruptga is just the Redguard name for Akatosh, after all."
"Now's not the time, Yeshur." Hamal shook her hooded head. "My friend, Irdi Sul said she would be here… where is she?"
"Yes, yes, yes." The Redguard man brushed it off.
"So many dead, and now Saadia too," Rikke used a handkerchief to wipe her cheeks, discussing with Jarl Tullius.
Dibella overheard Aisha conversing with the Dark Elf couple, "Saadia's father has fallen ill after the passing of his son, Kematu. Now, my Saadia is gone too. Who did this?"
"It was Talos," Idrasa told her bluntly.
Gabriella held the Caller's hand. "Idrasa, please stay safe. I couldn't bear losing you to that monster."
Dibella and Krest trekked up the graveled pathway as the early morning sun shone on them. Krest examined his augmented forearms, seams ran throughout them, waiting beneath the skin were Dwarven-stinger blades like the one's some automatons used. He took his adjusted stalhrim gauntlets and secured them over it, slinging a cognizance at the plants that littered the sides of the snowy walkway. Dibella herself was dressed in her fitted angelic-winged armor, sword on her back should she need it. Lampposts flanked them.
She ghosted two fingers up Krest's shoulder, and he nearly flinched at the contact. "Bacchus says there's a wayshrine in Fellglow Keep and we can use it to take us to Ocearan. From there we'll fly to the Pyramid of Ice. We'll head to Jattewood on our way back and take a train to Hrothgar for the Peace Council. There're quicker ways but I really wanna see the giant golden trees and walking flowers of New Mereth for myself. They were once green but a wizard in the Second Era enchanted the entire Rift Forest to become gold permanently. The trees are from Valenwood too, which is why they're the size of skyscrapers."
Krest's eyebrows curved like cutlasses at that revelation. His pupils dilated every time he looked at her, she noticed with a smirk. I've been too cruel to him.
Their path was mostly undeterred other than a few wolves. The arched-river bridge of Valtheim overrun by bandits, snow, and broken clay carts outside the entrance stood in their way. Skyrim's wind murmured in soft Nordic chants. Dibella knocked most of the reavers into the thrashing waterfalls while Krest just knocked out his opponents. For some reason it felt like he was holding back on them on purpose.
"With all that metal in your arms, you have some serious knockout power," Dibella noted. "If you could catch Talos on the chin clean, you could put his lights out I bet."
"I don't know, he's bigger than me." Krest stared lifelessly ahead.
The Imperial had become more and more expressionless even developing a slight strabismus. Grief affects everyone differently. Idrasa had been very quiet while Ancano had become increasingly bitter and remote. Even Akatosh had taken to reading alone in the study rather than the merrymaking and wine drinking he usually engaged in.
They passed shackles on a wall and came back onto the hilly, snow tundra until they reached the dilapidated den that was Fellglow Keep. Abandoned with massive piles of snow laying around and skeletons strewn about. A forehouse built into a hillock. They entered a flooded backdoor and walked past grey deteriorating cobbles with unlit candlesticks about. Corpses of necromancers and giant black widows. Cobwebs and treasure chests were cornered in each room they stalked by. Wooden beams served as supports to keep the ceiling afloat. They didn't face any hostiles but saw several bodies with necromancer robes. Once or twice a chest transformed into a mimic Daedra and sprung at them as gargoyles watched overhead. One chamber held undead testing facilities and another a scrolled library with water-logged tomes. Elven wine bottles laid half empty on circular hewn tables with shabby chairs all under rotting, rustic chandeliers.
It was when they jammed down a necromancer's alley flooded with a small layer of water that Dibella's head lit up. "Tell me about your family, Krest."
Krest slowed his pace and breathed a deep sigh. "My mother, Persephone passed away when I was a child. She was killed. My father, Velus, was a former lover of hers, but he didn't want me. While my grandfather, Attis, was physically and mentally unfit to raise me. So, I was thrown into the school for Praetorians in the Imperial City."
Dibella put a hand on his shoulder. "You grew up without a mother then. That must've been hard." Her heart swelled with paternal love.
"What about you?" Krest asked.
"Well, you know I have three kids. Sibylla, Erp, and Meridia. Anu is my parent." Then she prodded deeper, "have you always been alone?"
Krest rubbed the back of his neck, nodding subtly, suddenly very interested in his boots. He pointed ahead with his chin as they'd come to a fork. One way ascending a stairway, the other filing into a closet.
Finally, they came into a domed chamber with a portal gleaming at the dais behind a statue of a humanoid dragon holding a sword downward. The pair stepped through and were transported out onto an iceberg, the sea's breeze biting into her skin. A whale was boarding people up inside its mouth and swimming off underneath the freezing, glowing blue ocean. Atmora's skyline in the distance across. The top portion of the underwater city of Ocearan poked through, having waterways with little boats instead of streets. Jarl Thian Free-Winter and his throng of court officials marched across the same berg they were on to reach the shrine.
"We've been reserved rooms, so we'll have a few days' time to get acquainted with everyone," said Jarl Thian, carrying a trunk of his things. "So, Brunwulf, Skardan, I want you to relax."
Brunwulf's eyes glazed over lustfully when he saw Dibella, and he stared at her like a hungry tiger stared at a piece of bloody meat. Dibella rolled her eyes so far, she nearly saw the back of her head.
"I know, I know." Queen Macalla shivered in the gusts of water that rose and retreated. "I just have a bad feeling about all this. Thalmor, the Elder Council, Praetorians, and Galmar Stone-Fist and his Sons of Septim. It's a recipe for disaster."
"Come off it, my love. Look, it's an Imperial." Thian pointed at Krest. "They're rare up here. Maybe we should take it as a prize!" The Jarl joked.
Skardan hoisted his trunk towards the wayshrine. "What about that fine Nord lass accompanying said Imperial. Could she be related to us? She seems oddly familiar?"
"I hope not. That would make the chaos in my trousers certainly weird." Brunwulf's eyes roiled with unbridled lust. "Fine Nord lass like that deserves to be with a true Nord."
Oh Anu, Dibella thought, I don't even want to think about what he's imagining inside his head.
"Don't you know it's rude to stare." Thian slapped Skardan and Brunwulf on their butts and jumped through the portal. The latter was now watering at the mouth, still looking at Dibella.
She rolled her eyes and told Krest to grab onto her tight. Krest hesitated but eventually held on and they flew off across the snowscape. Krest put his head sideways against her back and clutched his arms around her waist, closing his eyes tight. She felt his cheek heat up against her neck.
Dibella blushed. She quite liked the way he tenderly hugged her.
They flew over an impasse, a wall of trees, a sea of green firs, zooming over the remains of Vindheim, the first human settlement on Tamriel, a fair way inland past the lighthouse and water tower. Waves crashed against the dark shore near a monument of Shor. Carnivorous Sea-Giants resided in Vindheim, having set up their own society, feasting and eating human meat. Massive spears and armor formed from ice. Red eyes. This was The Old Hold, an Iceberg Island attached to mainland Skyrim. Eighty percent of it being bluish glacial mass. The area of northeastern Skyrim was hyperborean and wrought with barren panoramas. The winds sung here; songs of battles long fought thousands of years ago. The ghosts of the Snow Elves wandering around. The area from the west was forged of large snow-ladened hills with glacial basins but the northeast, far off was just a giant, transparent blue iceberg nicknamed 'Solstheim'. Hsaarik Head was somewhere north apart of the broken cape and Mount Anthor was beneath them. – Tucked away atop a rise of ice-shelves in the far northern end, overlooking the glistening glint of blue that mirrored the sky in colour, lie a pyramid of decent size, but unlike its Hammerfell counterparts, this one was constructed purely of ice blocks.
They landed and Krest stood up on the stone ledge, studying his reflection in the gleam of the shining ice, tightening his cloak, and parting his hair a little. He leaned against the gelid squares as Dibella tucked her arms away into her greaves' pockets. She took a deep breath and drove a fist through the rime-sealed doorway, breaking it open easily.
She stretched her forelimbs, the back of her forearm tapping Krest's upper chest. "Hope you're not afraid of the dark."
Krest dragged his feet in after her. Dibella yanked him forward so he could peer into the abyss ahead. The chasm burrowed deep and was filled with clear water that reflected the coldness of the glorified igloo, small ice floes in the way. They dived in, the water sucking them downwards at a high-speed current, passing by barred sewer grates loaded with algae, overgrown corals, and grime. The water was chilly and cooled her all over, shockingly not as icy as she had originally assumed. They shot through a veil at the end, landing in a pool at the bottom. Dibella swum upwards and gazed toward the ceiling from where they fell, some sort of enchantment was keeping the water above from flooding the sable chamber they were in now.
This seems more nordic than dwemer.
Dibella gripped Krest's hand and led him up the ramp towards the styled platform. They traversed a short hallway that narrowed into a small dwarven door with an odd locking mechanism. At the base of the vent lay a skeleton in mage robes with a journal fragment. Dibella scowled at the note.
"Well, this is disturbing."
They never understood me. They will pay. I'll find the scroll and blind them! The infamous Hamelyn Holdan will have his revenge!
Krest grimaced, crumpling the paper and tossing it aside. Dibella eyed the icicles on the wall, rotating her head to the black door with an inscription scrawled over it.
With proof all around, the earth teams with life.
"We were not the result of chaos running rife," answered Dibella.
The vault cracked open as Krest quirked a brow.
She entered through the rectangular hole. The next section of the dungeon was a snowy, parapeted passageway with Falmer artefacts peppered and lodged in the paddock. Both modern Falmeri and ancient snow elven.
Dibella brushed against Krest's shoulder and elbow. "This dungeon is a collaboration between ancient Nords, Snow Elves, the Akaviri, and Dwemer. Don't ask me how that happened. We're under the Sea of Ghosts now I believe. Some sort of sea room."
The icy routes were inscribed with old runic patterns, echoes of a time long forgotten. The long stretch of footpath got mind-numbing as they traversed it. Dibella gazed at Krest as he innocently stared at her. He looked so cute she could kiss him.
A man of average height, adorned in jeweled imperial-armor with a helmet that covered his face stepped around the corner. A group of two people spoored behind him, all wearing necromancer robes. "Someone there?" One of them asseverated, casting oakflesh.
The flesh of Krest's forearms gave way, collaborating with his gauntlets, transforming into stinger-blades, aimed at the Altmer entomancer. Dibella easily dispatched the remaining two. The Nord put up a bit of a fight, landing a punch on her face. But when Dibella distorted his arms behind him, his bonce snapped round in search for an avenue for escape whilst he screeched and panicked. Clawing and nailing at her hands. She ripped his helmet off and snapped his neck. She caught a glimpse of his deceased ally's face, a young Gnome. She then broke the neck of the Altmer who Krest had apprehended.
"The other Divines may have reservations against bloodshed, but I have no such restrictions on myself." Her hands washed themselves, magic rending the ichor off with holy water.
Krest still looked at her like she was the only person in the world.
"Come on, now." She teased a finger under his chin and strode off.
Krest drew level with Dibella, and they paced down the secret sea-room, making their way into a cavern with a rope bridge across it with nothing on the other side. The bridge was illuminated by sunlight which was filtered through an ice-covered opening. Below the bridge was a ghastly blue lagoon. Dibella caught sight of an entrance towards the ceiling but there was no way up there.
Krest sighed, hugging his chest when Dibella audited the pit beneath.
"Do you have any food?" She reached out for him.
For some reason she had the urge to touch him, caress his cheek, cup his face, or something. Krest delved into his pocket and nabbed a satchel and transferred it to her. She opened it and spun the strawberry in hand.
She held it to his mouth. "Take a bite." She held him in place with her ankle behind his heel. "We have to show it's not poisonous. Take a bite." He took a bite off the sugary fruit. "Good boy." Dibella then bit into the same spot he had, her jaw muscles rotating elegantly. She tossed the remainder of the fruit into the lagoon before sucking the stray bits off her finger. "You have some on your mouth." Krest shied away, his hair curtaining him as he used his glove to clean his lips. Dibella wrenched him towards her and using her finger she'd licked, posed the fingertip at his teeth. "Open up."
Krest's eyes widened so much he seemed an Akaviri drawing.
She probed her finger into his mouth, drawing her tongue seductively over her teeth. Krest closed his eyes and gently lavished his tongue over her soft tip, his cheeks sucking inwards. She eventually relinquished her index, briefly cupping his chin. - She then did something that tensed every muscle in his body; Dibella spun him around, engulfing him in her arms from behind, her nose against the back of his neck. A tentacle stretched up from the lagoon and wrapped around them, lifting them up.
Dibella sniffed his hair and tucked her chin against the sensitive side of his throat. "You smell delicious."
Her arms coiled around him like a snake. He limped against the ice-wall as the squid released them on the upper pathway. Dibella smiled graciously as Krest twitched and flinched, his knees wobbling like crazy. Dibella finally released him, her arms and fingers lingering on his neck and shoulders. "By the way, your heart was beating very fast. Hope everything's alright?" Her eyes curved romantically, and a lewd look drew across her features. "Have you never been hugged by a woman before? I feel very lucky then."
Krest's eyes were dilated like coals as he hugged the slippery wall for safety. She gripped his palm and led him on, past a black-ice-windowed underbelly; a tub full of sea-dreughs. The creepy mutated-lobster men eyed them eerily with their red beady eyes.
Once the rulers of Nirn… Imagine if they tried to reclaim it. She shuddered.
They happened past some winding inner roads as Dibella led him through the watery cove like a mother led her child through a marketplace. The snow system eventually curved sharply and exited into a wider berth with an ancient nordic puzzle wall. However, this one held dwarven machines around it, akaviri symbols instead of atmoran ones, and falmeri reinforcements. Contrasting her study of the nature of Nord burial cairns, the claw that was inserted had five fingers, not three according to the slots and number of animal totems described on the entryway.
Dibella put a hand against it. "The scroll is in here."
The gateway arose and what opened was a black chamber, surrounded with serpent, wyvern, and dragon shaped effigies. A mote of black water with a steeple in the center were what stood out to her. She thought she saw a pair of eyes watching from the depths of the dark water as they crossed a makeshift wooden bridge onto the center of the island, making their way up the small tower. They came to the top of the indoor turret. It was a library. The Elder Scroll of the Last Dragonborn was prostrated in a column of virescent light in the center, cheerfully spinning away.
Approaching it, she murmured, "fus." It gave way and she secured it over her back, striding out with him into the snow-enclosed fore-room. "You just have to speak to it in dovahzul," elaborated Dibella.
Krest pointed at a hole in the fortified ice.
Dibella peaked through. "It's a slide, come on." She climbed through and Krest hustled after her.
It zoomed and carried them a ways, looping and skidding until dumping them out into an esoteric bone-chilling waterway, not unlike the one the dreughs were contained in. It was an underwater garden, glowing mushrooms and plant tendrils poking through the surface. Dibella grabbed Krest and pushed him towards a ladder. He climbed out, his body trembling. Dibella scrambled up and snapped her fingers to dry herself. She hugged Krest, curling his wet head against her collar. Instantly his injuries healed, and he heated up against her.
"Thank you." His skin was flushed pink, and his eyes darted from floor to wall repeatedly.
Dibella took hold of his hand once more and they set off down a ruined tower that had books and old crates scattered everywhere, an alcove-closet full of contraband stuffed in the side. A door on the left revealed a dwarven storeroom with a chest, apparatus, and a latch door. Dibella kicked it open. The sea rested below. - She put a spell on Krest that warmed him up and indicated for him to jump in.
The ocean burst through in a cacophony of chill. A sea dragon was there to greet her before Dibella power kicked it as it lunged on them. Dibella encompassed him in her armoured arms and they flew up the Sea of Ghosts onto dry ice-lands. She saw a ningen too on her way up.
The Elder Scroll of Dragons was in their possession. Talos was as good as dead.
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A/N: Please Review. This was probably one of my least favorite chapters tbh.