The Devil
Loading Screen… Tiber Septim sought to destroy the Devil, Konahrik his whole life, but never found the Elven Devil…
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"I was born to hate."
This was thousands of years prior to the Fourth Era. This was the Dawn Era, before time and the world was fully established, when the gods warred on the world, before their ascension to Aetherius. Skyrim was different, it wasn't as cold and there were no monsters. All he saw around him was a massive, blackened crater and towering pines, a light cover of snow blanketed the land. Dizziness pervaded his skull as he crawled to the edge of the hollow, coughing blood. He positioned the Elder Scroll onto his back, keeping his visage masked with the Mask of Akatosh. He dust-wiped himself and stood straight, reorienting his body as the nausea threatened to put him down again.
He blinked ashes out of his eyes, consuming the spit on his tongue. A few bunnies hopped by, oblivious to his condition. A deer galivanting amongst the snow-ladened hills and winding icy canyons to the east. He shuddered as he in-took a breath of air, exhaling through his nose. As if Kynareth, Talos' wife herself was spitting on him, it began to rain. The teardrops of the clouds showered down on him, freezing the snow into ice, or sloshing it into a mix of glacial waves. Clouds of chaos creatia swooped and body-slammed the ground.
Kyne's screams echoed with the thunder and lightning that followed, striking several trees, setting them aflame. He could hear her voice resonate in the wind. Though, now that he thought about it, she was probably upset at Talos. There was no way she was aware of Krest. He trudged through the downpour and sleet, his light-stalhrim boots protecting him from the elements. More lightning crackled through the sky; he swore he could see the clouds forming the shapes of the gods. He was taking the course of history into his own hands, him, a mere mortal with no special abilities. Skyrim stirred in the harsh cries of Mother Nature, the tree branches swiveling with heavy slush and muck splitting across giant hailstone lakes. He was soused in the rain, a snake had coiled around his leg to find comfort, so he threw it off. The rainfall attacked over and over, but his will was unshakable now that he was so close.
He remembered Saadia lying on the ground, helpless. Shaken from his introspection when he came upon a large white hall in the middle of the outdoors. It was a tunnel that emptied into a thicket of trees.
Roving through the colossal corridor into the small bushel. A mauve bush spoke to him, "turn back, for this is the Carnivorous Copse."
The compact grove of trees were bunched together like one big bush, snarling lowly in the breeze. Krest unsheathed his blades and sprinted through the wound, slashing, and crashing offshoots that whipped and fought back. He cleaved through them like obsidian through flesh, coming out the other end of the group of plants with a few scratches. The heads of spriggan lurchers tumbling out in his wake. As if some sort of final boss of a dungeon, the biggest tree, a stocky sugar pine approached him from across the rocky mountaintops in the clearing they found themselves in. – Rocks and snowy grass cambered on. The scenery of the glade was pulchritudinous. Clouds split as rays of sunshine shone with a colossal waterfall pouring into a giant basin-lake over the Jeralls that separated Skyrim from Cyrodiil. The land between him and the border covered with smaller, regular pine trees. Perhaps one of the densest forests he'd ever bore witness too. It was mostly devoid of snow too.
"You dare enter sacred ground," rasped the king tree, having uprooted itself. "For your transgression, you shall pay, Evil One."
He sprinted into the dense forest, blinking frantically for escape.
The towering monuments of nature swayed; the ground covered by their shade with only a few beams of sunlight breaking through. Krest had the distinct feeling that the trees were watching his movements... waiting. The King Tree rumbled after him.
Krest raced as fast as legs would let him. The sentient tree chasing after him, taking long strides. He made out broken reflections in the rain puddles. The overgrown piece of vegetation was almost upon him before he took a sharp left and saw a crystal-white fountain the size of a small pond ahead in the deeper area of the shade, a golden beam of sunlight radiating it in glorious color. He jumped into it, shocked at how deep it really was. Cooling and fresh, the liquid a translucent turquoise-type blue. He bobbed his head to the top and saw the hungry Ent stop dead in its tracks before the magnanimous marvel.
He wasn't sure if it was water in his lashes or eyes. But the tree seemed to... smirk? Before turning around eventually and retreating.
Well… at least I didn't get eaten by a plant.
He watched it go until it was shrouded by leaves and no longer visible. Swimming around he gazed at the fountain he was floating in. In the center there was a silvery-sandstone station with a golden faucet in the shape of a fish's mouth sprouting the brilliant-hued liquid into the pool of the well. The ehlnofey must've made this. Peering around the forest, it was actually quite peaceful here. Something coiled around his ankles and jerked down. Krest whirred, needing to get out, to be saved. Two strong hands clasped themselves around his armpits and drummed up, freeing him from his watery grave and placing him gently down on the grass.
He spit water to his side and looked back up, squinting through his eyes at the figure whose face was lit up by sunlight. – Some sort of silvery, clay monster, like it belonged in a Black Marsh swamp.
"Master," it gurgled from the opening in what would be its head.
"Who are you?" Krest stood, shaking water.
"You make me." He pointed at Krest's mask. It could make monsters…
It dawned on him then and everything suddenly made sense. The puzzle was solved.
The cacciatore shifted, slithering into a nearby stream. The water here was a deep, ethereal blue. Infilled in between stone chasms and caverns. Krest saw a thin passageway full of water, a waterslide. He got in as the grey of his intent-created-monster flew away down the stream and let the currents take them away. The slimy form resorbed itself in the azure-coloured liquid. The stream was moving insanely fast. The water slide spun and twisted down into some caves, cascading until eventually descending under the surface and into the falls of the caverns beneath, curving back up and spitting him off a massive waterfall.
Krest submerged in the great pink lake, an influx of water submitted himself deeper and deeper in. He sequestered his way betwixt an inlet, into the glowing-cherry ocean deep beneath Skyrim. Mermaid songs echoed and reverberated off every nook and cranny of the bewitching caverns here. He paddled after a hammerhead shark he summoned; taking hold of its back fin as it shot them through the water at an unfathomable speed, burrowing through the open gates into an underwater village. Warm and welcoming, like a whole other realm, he could hear the distant melody of pearls and saw a few mermen flying around as well. It felt like another world – detached from all the hubbub of the one he was used to living in. They glided through the underground sea seamlessly. Swam into the old Dreugh city of the previous kalpa and saw how it was marked with homes built inside reefs, flowing through a coral forest now, magically summery aqua. Finally, through a hole, they rose through a normal lake, landing in the yellow tundras of the prehistoric Hrothgar plains.
Great-horned owls and cockatrices he conjured flew overhead.
Krest approached the ancient city of Drakefell, located near where the modern-day Rose-River Lodge was. The Skyforge and Idavoll palace sat here near wooden buildings and farmhouses. A collection of painstakingly stilted huts on a small hill, elevated above the rest of the tundra basin, near the monument of the Western Watchtower. The Skyforge; a giant smithy for blacksmithing in a corner, a carved form of an eagle presiding over it. A woman was carrying buckets of water up a hill as a fire burned through chimneys of another hut. An old man rocked back and forth in his wooden chair. Krest stood there as he came to the outskirts, reeds of grass and wheat flipping his way. Sugarcane and more.
These were the Wandering Ehlnofey, the ancestors of mankind. If I kill them all, perhaps Talos will die out without worshippers, Krest grinned evilly. Why should they live. Humans care for only themselves.
"I am Bjorn Vur," the one-eyed old man welcomed him.
Whispers circulated through the miserable community. "He might be a demon, careful. Look at its face."
"Leave or die, Lorkhanic sheep," hissed Krest as his arms undid themselves. "Damn your Shor."
"True men never back—" the old man's body hit the frost before he finished his sentence, blood spraying out as he convulsed, painting the dirt.
"Bjorn, NO!" Yelled a warrior, rearing on Krest.
The woman shot three successive rounds from her bow at Krest, one of which got him in the shoulder. Krest summoned something.
A giant ten-legged spider erupted through a hovel and swallowed the woman whole. A puce-shaded Helangeri, its pincers at the ends of its arms snapping and opening violently, eight eyes examining curiously.
Akatosh uses this mask to summon dragons from Aetherius, just as I am using it to summon monsters from Oblivion.
A kick sent Krest flying into the snow. He looked up. A man was slamming his sword at him. Krest grabbed his wrist with both his arms, but the ehlnofey socked him right in his forehead, flying his chin up. Krest hissed, as a viper sprung at the man. He kicked it aside with a knee-block and pounded Krest's cheek with a hard fist. A knee went up his chin, he brought his head down upon his leg next.
Krest rocked him upside the chin, twisting the proto-Atmoran's neck into his shoulder-blade.
The sun basked the countryside in orange hues, blood staining the ice. Krest zoomed up, ignoring the sights, and snuck into Idavoll. Stone walls and duping shadows stealing through. He saw a Knev flying ship symbol and a coat of arms with two swords crossed over each other littered on the ground. They didn't seem like they belonged in this kalpa.
"No, Auriel won't get in. If only that bitch-wife of his, Mara hadn't escaped our prisons. Quite the pair of breasts, she had," Talos, or rather, Lorkhan was saying.
Lorkhan's palace in Skyrim held golden walls with high ceilings, hanging crystal chandeliers, red-velvet rugs draped on marble corridors and animate portraits, flower-filled vases among other decorations on the alcoves to the sides. Krest came into the central dining chamber that held a large white table in the center with thrones lining the length on each side. Light seamed in from the cosmos outside and a fine assortment of foods rested on the countertop. Four of the gods were here. Talos, he looked largely the same though with less scars and wearing Nordic gear though his goatee was longer and hair lengthier and browner. Tsun seemed a lot younger, without a beard and brown hair as long as Krest's. Kynareth was there too. Dibella was younger too. She seemed innocent but also abused, as marks marred her face and her eye-sockets reddened. Her hair was also much longer here than it was in the modern day.
Krest unobtrusively sat down at the table.
"I suppose you're right, milord." The young Tsun ate a bite off a lambchop.
"I am always." Lorkhan downed a pint of ale, gluttonously slopping it up and wiping his mouth with his hairy forearm before smashing it on the floor. "Another!"
Gods, everything about you makes me retch you miserable, stupid wretch.
"I gotta tell you, you're even worse here than where I'm from," Krest whispered. Lorkhan glanced around but he didn't see him.
Talos clenched his jaw beneath his goatee-bearded mien but didn't say anything.
"Talos," Krest annunciated. This time everyone at the table looked at him, eyes alert. Krest glanced down and noticed he was seated in Shor's Throne.
This idiot doesn't even enchant his throne so anybody can sit in it.
"Who are you?" The younger Talos rose quickly from his seat, fists tightening.
"Just another mistake of yours, Talos." Krest crumpled his own, cracking his neck.
"Who in blazes is Talos?" Lorkhan raised a thinning brow. "I am Shor, Hero of Men, god of men."
Krest removed his hood, showing his mask. "Talos is you. Did you really think you could rape, kill, subjugate and get away with it? Do you like my mask by the way? It's called Konahrik; after me now that I think about it."
Tsun mumbled something he didn't quite pick up.
"Just what's this all about?" Talos rammed his fist against the tabletop. His fingers coiled like a cobra around the fork on his plate. "You want revenge? Did I kill your family, little elf? Well, I'll slaughter a million more elves if I must."
"It's about more than just revenge, Talos." Krest shut his insets as electrical surges crackled over his skin.
A gasp sounded around the hall. Platters clattered to the floor. White light enveloped his vision.
The dragon awoke.
Krest Armilius was the Devil, Konahrik.
Krest shed tears. "For every elven child you slaughtered. For every woman you raped. For everyone you subjugated. I WILL KILL YOU."
Konahrik unleashed hordes of demonic beasts across Skyrim, commanding them to slaughter every soldier of Lorkhan-Talos, or anyone who got in the way. Razing thousands of his troops situated in the food-grounds outside. His elongated dov form combusted the palace, littering treen everywhere and crushing the souls reeling below. Konahrik shrieked like a banshee at the heavens, a victory cry over his enemy. Broods of servants were swallowed by him when his snout came down and dragged over the floor, swallowing down the demonic Nords, chewing and mulling their flesh, marrow, and organs between his teeth. Various hordes of civilians fled the scene, but he engulfed them all in his flames, charring the countryside.
I'll kill them all. And the Thalmor will rule all.
"I will unmake this entire world and destroy mankind," Krest rasped in his dovah form.
He smashed his massive fist into a closet where a group of the vermin hid. Reducing them into sticky guts. A war-chief's limbs ripped individually from his ligaments, scattering his skull fragments into oblivion as rivers of blood cascaded down the plains. Contingents of his summoned creatures, the monsters swarmed Skyrim, resorting it to a fiery hellscape. Thunder resounded as the clouds choked the sunlight's grasp. Lightning blinded his right eye, the ichor and whiteness oozing off his scaly face. A giant werebear jammed his ribcage, Konahrik flung it across the mist, breaking the jaw of a large hawk who'd foolishly challenged him. A massive blue whale bit down on his face, appearing from nowhere.
Krest shook it off, screeching into the sky and widened his wings, knocking over the last remaining wall of the ruptured mansion, stomping on all fours, wings flaring, toward a hamlet where more of Lorkhan's hell spawn played. His wingspan wide enough to dwarf the palace.
"Servants, heed my command, encircle this home in your fury. Kill Shor's people," Krest rasped as beasts conjured, formulating from seemingly nothing and enveloping Lorkhan's homeland into the hell the Ninth Divine belonged to. "YOL TOOR SHUL!" A whole contingent of Talos' soldiers were fried to char under Krest's fire-breath, their blood becoming tar. Like ink, the ebony-droplets spattered the tundra as if the land itself begged for mercy he'd never supply. He was done with mercy. Never again.
I won't show mercy to a world that never showed me any.
He descended on the miserable village, something hitting his side and knocking him astray, ash blinding his remaining left eye. Talos grunted, heaving heavy breaths, carrying a sword.
Krest flapped his wings as dust clouds gathered. He took off, coming back down to swoop in majestic arcs, reigning down more fire upon Talos' army. As a Dragon, he streaked through the sky, air sailing past him as he breathed, soldiers toppled over up and down the vast expanses of Skyrim.
Someone latched onto his shoulder-blade.
Talos clutched his horns, trying to steer him away from his army. Talos grunted when Konahrik caused his horns to burn.
Talos gripped Konahrik-Krest under the jaw and wrenched up, to block his maw from spewing anymore fire upon his enemies. Lorkhan sunk his sword into his neck. Krest, on the verge of death, transformed back into his man form and landed on both feet. He pulled the Elder Scroll from his back. "I unleash hordes of monsters onto your land. So, your people may always live in fear!" Then Krest used the Elder Scroll to take him back to the Fourth Era.
In the whirlpool of the thousands Krest has slaughtered with extreme hatred, he laughed into the abyss. His laughter echoed higher and higher until even Anu Himself had to look.
Now, I'll kill EVERYONE WHO ISN'T AN ALTMER. Krest transformed back into a dragon as he emerged. Only Summerset Isles will remain on this world, everyone else will die.
Wood thrashed everywhere as Krest erupted like a volcano through Paarthurnax's palace, back in his own time period, a hole through Akatosh's room, his shrieks wailing in the mountain ranges, echoing for hundreds of miles, searing the clouds.
"The Devil returns," croaked a bloodied Stenvar from below.
"People of Tamriel, it is I, Krest Armilius the Devil, the leader of the Thalmor and the Aldmeri Dominion. But you may know me by my aldmeri name, Konahrik Iblis. For far too long you have spent worshipping a truly repugnant deity – Talos Lorkhan. A man who commit genocide on my people, the Altmer of Summerset. You idolized this colonialist and now you all will die. I will destroy all life on Tamriel outside the Summerset Isles and unmake this whole world so that the Altmer and I may return to Aetherius. But mankind and anyone who isn't a pure Altmer will be erased from the mythic. I will level every forest, destroy every city."
"I will kill you all."
Krest swooped down to meet his enemy. The city of Hrothgar laid destroyed in his wake. Talos was there, having murdered Paarthurnax. The Sons of Septim having joined him and a battle broken out between them, the Thalmor, and anyone else who joined in. The clanging of spears and swooshing of blades resounding as fires and screams echoed. Tsun, Dibella, and Akatosh trying to get things under control and keep the civilians safe as all hell broke loose.
Talos looked up from the ash covered hall in the night sky at Krest with recognition.
"KONAHRIK!" Talos screamed through his human mouth, his snake-tail silent.
Krest breathed fire onto a quarter of the Sons of Septim and relished as their flesh melted off their bodies.
"LET MY PEOPLE GO!" Talos cried, lunging a spear right at Krest's ribcage.
Krest streaked down, cocking his dragon-fist back far. Talos' violet irises glowed as Krest's justice neared. Talos spun and dodged, using his sword to jump onto Krest.
Krest heated up his body, singeing Talos underside, blowing fire and throwing Talos off him. Body slamming the Ninth Divine into a building, shattering the roof and walls utterly.
Talos narrowly dodged Krest's leap which wrecked the rest of the building and smashed the remaining members of the Blades, splattering them into guts. Soulkiller in Talos' hand was up. Krest's massive draconic fist smashed Talos against the boulder as the Soulkiller staff pierced Krest's dragon heart. Everything ruptured. Snow thrashed everywhere. Krest's soul drained away like sand through an hourglass. Violet cones slithered in his eye as his dragon-body slipped off like snakeskin, leaving Krest back in his human form, but his soul was gone. Talos had cleaved it from him with the Soulkiller staff.
Ebony smoke as dark as the burnt edge of torches wafted everywhere and Krest coughed. His mind scrambled as Talos rolled over and got up, violet ichor streaming out of him. He's still not dead. Why didn't anything change?
Krest still wore the Konahrik mask.
"TIID KLO UL EREI GAAR," the Thu'um of Akatosh vibrated through Krest's bones and soul.
Krest was still on the mountaintop, though everything felt crisper, isolated, as if he were in some sort of limbo in his dying moments. Time was slowed and nothing was moving outside him and Talos within a circle. Krest stood up and healed himself the best he could while dusting the smog off his iced armor as Talos watched him, though this time the glint of fear was in Talos' eyes.
"It was you… you were the Konahrik all along." Talos gaped when Krest removed the Mask of Akatosh to reveal himself.
"We've got some talking to do." Akatosh glared daggers at them both.
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A/N: Please review.