A.N. [This is the sequel to Caprifexia the Beneficent, Saviour of the Multiverse. If you haven't read that already, I'd advise you do so first, since this follows directly from that work.]
Chapter 1
Caprifexia screamed as ropes of burning gold wrapped themselves around her tail and one of her hind-legs. She dug in her claws into the puffy white snow, scrambling for purchase. Ahead of her loomed her friends, impossibly tall, their faces disapproving. J'zargo crossed his arms, Serana turned away, and Einar shook his head. Overhead sickly Void light played across the shattered sky like a twisted aurora, framing the immense silhouette of a winged woman.
"Help me!" she screamed as the pull from behind her increased. "Help me!"
"Why are you struggling?" said Einar, his voice cold. "I thought you said you were a hero? You're not a hero, you're just a stupid lizard."
Another rope of burning gold wrapped itself around her right forelimb, and she crashed to the snow as it was wrenched backward. She scrambled with her free claw, but she found no purchase as the snow shifted into sand.
"J'zargo always knew the tiny, pathetic dragon wasn't good enough," said J'zargo as the blazing sunshine overhead began to eat away at their bodies. "That she would fail them all."
"No! No!" she screamed as they turned to dust and wafted away.
Behind her there was a pealof laughter, and Caprifexia looked back to see the angelic form of Mirael floating in front of the dark Eye of Caprifexia, the angel's hands gripping the golden ropes. Rather than the blazing gold light that should have washed from the Eye, it seemed to drink in light around it just like the wound in the sky had.
"Struggle all you like, it will change nothing," cackled Mirael, drawing in the rope, hand over hand. Behind the Eye began to shudder and toll.
Knock, knock, knock.
"Let me go!" sobbed Caprifexia, her claws skidding over sheer black stone. "Let me go!"
Knock, knock, knock.
"What is, will be," said Mirael, her eyes shining with golden light.
Knock, knock, knock.
"You cannot escape Destiny!" screamed the angel.
"Little dragon?" called J'zargo.
Knock, knock, knock.
"It is your fate!" said the angel, giving one last tug before grabbing Caprifexia's tail and wrenching her up off the ground, grabbing her by the jaw and baring her perfect white teeth. "You will die here, little dragon, with me."
Caprifexia tried to breathe fire, but nothing happened. She was weak, helpless, vulnerable, pathetic.
"Little dragon, it is time to get up," called J'zargo.
Knock, knock, knock.
The angle turned toward the Eye, holding Caprifexia up toward it. Caprifexia's body began to glow gold, the light leeching out from her body and into the Eye, sucking her soul from her piece by piece.
Knock, knock, knock.
Caprifexia screamed, her eyes snapping open. She looked around wildly, her heart racing in her chest as she searched wildly for the eye, for Mirael…
There was no villainous angel, no Eye. She was back in her room; back at the Winterhold college. Her books lined the walls, and her desk was covered in notebooks and journals full of half-finished spells and ideas. Some fish she had caught the day beforehand, which she was saving for later, was in a bucket by the door. Golden morning light was spilling in underneath the curtains and painting her soft quilted blanket in brilliant hues.
A dream. Just a dream.
The door opened, and Caprifexia's head turned to see J'zargo entering, a concerned expression on his feline face.
"Little dragon?" he asked.
"I'm fine," she said, shaking her head and pushing herself off her curl-pad, transforming from her whelpling body into her elven guise. Black scales shifted into a long dark cloak, dark leggings, and dusky skin; her short black mane that had just begun to really grow in drew itself up around her head and lengthened, spilling down to her waist as her wings folded into her shoulders; her face shifted, compressing into a heart shaped elven face, her glowing red eyes changing their orientation and shifting her field of vision forward.
"A bad dream?" asked J'zargo.
"I'm fine," said Caprifexia, reaching down and grabbing her satchel, stuffing the stupid mortal textbook that they got really snooty about if she didn't bring to their hopelessly slow and boring classes.
"The little dragon knows she can talk to J'zargo, yes?" he said, putting a hand on her shoulder.
She glared at him. J'zargo sighed.
"Breakfast will be ending soon, we should hurry," he said, turning and heading toward the stairs that led down and out of the Hall of Attainment. There were a few students, Caprifexia refused to think of them as 'peers,' and they waved to J'zargo, who nodded back.
"Einar and Serana will be returning today," said J'zargo as they passed out and into the college's central, circular courtyard.
The bug-ridden tree in the centre of the courtyard was gone, removed after the fifth time it had spontaneously combusted for absolutely non-dragon related reasons (and how dare you suggest otherwise!?), in the tree's place stood a statute with two figures. One, the now dead Archmage Aran, dressed in his robes and facing toward the college's entrance. His hand was outstretched with thumb, index and middle finger extended in the classical Nirnian form for casting shields. Beside him, in a mirrored pose, was the likewise dead 'Master' of the Psijic order, the elf with closely cropped hair, dressed in the distinctive Psijic robes. Below it was a plaque scribed with over a hundred names, and below that, in larger text, the inscription:
To Archmage Aran, Master Alariel, and all those who fell shielding the world from the powers of the Void. May their names ring through the ages.
Following 'the Calamity' six months earlier, as it had come to be known, what was left of the Psijic order had taken up residence in Winterhold College to guard the Eye of Magnus, which really should have been called the Eye of Caprifexia; the artefact which linked Nirn to the magical demi-plane of Aetherias, the chaotic realm the local mages needed to power their spells and was, allegedly, of central importance to the continuation of Nirn. The Order hadn't quite merged with the college, but several of the more senior mages from Winterhold had joined the Order.
What the statue didn't have was Caprifexia, despite the fact that it had been her that had saved Nirn. The stupid mortals hadn't so much as slowed Mirael down, and without Caprifexia's intervention Nirn would have ended. But did she get credit? No, she'd even heard that some of the other (stupid) students claiming that the 'giant and amazing and majestic black dragon' (her!) had been the death-rattle of Amanosh. How insulting!
'Caprifexia of Azeroth'might have been on the honour roll of those who had fought at the Throat of the World inside the college, but it wasn't on the plaque of the honoured fallen, despite her sacrifice. More than that, some of the Psijic wizards had had the temerity to criticise her for destroying Skyrim! Oh yes, as if it would have been far better if she had just Planeswalked away and left the entire universe to burn?
"I know," grumbled Caprifexia. "Dragon's don't forget."
"Then J'zargo supposes that the little dragon did not forget today's assignment?" he chuckled. "For Destruction class?"
"I didn't forget," she said. "I elected not to bother with it. It's stupid!"
"J'zargo does not think that will impress Faralda," chuckled J'zargo, before stroking the hairs on his chin. "Although he also suspects that the little dragon does not care."
"Why do I even need to learn how to 'regulate the flow of ambient flux to optimise the efficient transfer of energy through the soul for the creation of offensive magic!'" she complained. "I don't even need to use the energy of Aetherius anymore for that stuff! I use Red mana! I'm not drawing from a medium that resists me, it doesn't lose efficiency!"
J'zargo stroked his chin. "That is true," he said wisely. "The little dragon's powers are quite impressive."
"I know," she said, pushing open the heavy door to the Hall of Elements, the College's main building, with a single hand and holding it open for her friend.
They moved up the stairs, passing the flow of students who had already eaten and heading up to the dining hall. Since the Calamity stories of the 'mighty Winterhold that had stood heroically against the Thalmor and Vampire alliance' had spread across the Plane, and the college's ranks of students had swelled. Young mages from all over Nirn had flocked to the tiny icy isle, which housed a town, half of a mountain cut in half, and the sea-stack upon which the college itself rested. Even after the near total decimation of the college's staff in the battle against Mirael, the college now had more members than it had in hundreds of years. The halls were packed, and although they knew better than to make Caprifexia share her room with some snotty nosed mortal, many of the junior students were doubled or even tripled up in rooms while the college expanded its buildings.
Breakfast was Caprifexia's least favourite meal of the day. Unlike lunch and dinner, meat and fish was rarely served by the kitchen staff. She'd complained, but to no avail, so it was with a glower that she looked down at her bowl of honey'd porridge and listened to J'zargo chat with a few of her so-called-peers in the 'Fifth Year' course she'd been placed into: Onmud, Brelyna, and some other mortals who had arrived at the college more recently, and who Caprifexia hadn't bothered to learn the names of.
After breakfast was Alteration, taught by the new Archmage, Tolfdir, who had been the most senior of the Winterhold mages to survive the Calamity. He was boringly cautious and not particularly powerful, but she did have to admit that she'd learnt a lot of magic in his classes over the past six months. Not as much as she would have learnt back in a proper magic school, run by dragons, but more than she had expected.
After that was lunch, still no fish, and then Destruction. Despite the fact that none of the other students could even hope to approach the power that unlocking and linking her soul to the entierity of the potent weave of Skyrim's Red mana had given Caprifexia, the instructor Faralda, like everyone else, was unceasingly critical of her. It was 'you haven't done your stupid and boring assignment Caprifexia,' 'that isn't the exercise Caprifexia,' and 'your clearly superior and better way of manifesting pyromantic energy is "patently unsafe for anyone who isn't fireproof."'
It was ridiculous, why, by the Titans, did she need to learn how to keep fire magic that she conjured from directly passing heat into her skin? She was physically incapable of burning. Not to mention, whenever the others in the class got even the slightest thing right, they were praised and rewarded, where if Caprifexia performed a spell particularly elegantly, which was most of the time, all she ever got was a nod! Yet more evidence of the rampant and systematic dragonism in the college.
She'd complained, loudly, to the allegedly impartial 'Student Complaints Board' but they, being all mortals, had dismissed her case out of hand. Something to do with 'not actually filling in paperwork properly' and 'failing to cite specific examples.' Yet more evidence of dragonism, as far as she was concerned.
Still, the class eventually ended, and Caprifexia wasted no time rushing from the room as soon as the first peal of the bell rang.
The temperature beyond the college was five or so degrees above freezing, and there was a light summer rain. There wasn't any of the sometimes brutal wind that rocked the island, however, and she shifted as soon as she was out of the gate, transforming back into her now meter and a half long body and soaring out over the ocean, beating her wings as she circled higher and higher until she crested the top of the sliced-apart mountain and could see dozens and dozens of miles in every direction.
She spotted the ship that Einar and Serana had to be on immediately, and smiled as she swooped southward, pressing her wings against her torso and diving, dropping over three hundred feet before snapping her wings open and shooting forward like a bolt of lighting.
There were a few shouts of alarm as she closed on the vessel, but she ignored the characteristic mortal meweling, angling herself down as she approached the ship, the tips of her claws scything through the top of the swell for a moment before she pulled up sharply, cutting her momentum as she came to a virtual stop at the gunwall.
She shifted her form, and alighted on the deck, smiling as Einar crossed the deck toward her.
"Einar!" she said, rushing forward and hugging him.
"Capri," he said, lowering his voice as he grabbed her by the shoulders. "You promised you wouldn't wear that form in public!"
"I just wanted to see you," she said frowning up at him.
"And you couldn't wait another hour?" he said. "Capri, people get scared when you wear your dragon form. Especially when you swoop out of the sky like you're about to strafe the ship; and especially since you're getting bigger. You're not totally tiny anymore. Look how scared everyone is. Look!"
Caprifexia glanced up to the crew of the boat, who, it was true, were looking at her with no small degree of trepidation. Stupid mortals, getting scared over everything…
"I just wanted to see you," she said, tears welling in her eyes as a knot that had been forming in her chest for weeks finally drew taut. "You're always tell me off! Nothing I ever do is good enough!"
"I'm not always telling you off," he said. "I only 'tell you off' when you do something you shouldn't-"
"Which is apparently all the time!" she yelled, stomping her foot; the decking beneath her foot splintered and cracked. "Stupid Caprifexia can't do anything right! I saved this world! I gave up everything! It's my destiny to give up my life to save all of you wretched, ungrateful mortals! And what thanks do I get? None! All you do is tell me I'm doing everything wrong! That it's my fault that Skyrim was destroyed, never mind the fact that you yourself said my future self had no choice but to blow everything up!"
"Capri," said Einar, glancing around and nervously chuckling. "Your- your humour needs more work, that isn't funny-"
"All I wanted to do was see you!" she said, balling her hands into fists as boiling tears streamed down her cheeks and dripped onto the deck below. "The one person other than J'zargo in all creation who is supposed to care about me! But did you even say hello? No! You say- you say I'm not good at 'people skills,' but you don't even think I'm a proper person! To you I'm just a stupid reptile who does everything wrong all the time!"
"What? That isn't true at all!" he said.
"Then why are you ashamed of my true form!?" she shouted, shifting back and flaring her wings. "I'm not allowed to be me anywhere!"
"Capri, you're scaring them!" said Einar, looking around at the ridiculous snivelling mortal crew, who were looking at her with fear and revulsion.
"And it's always about them, isn't it!?" she shouted, flapping her wings and rising into the air. "Well fine, if you like them so much more than me, I'll just leave!"
She turned and extended a claw, her entire body glowing gold.
"Capri, no, stop!" said Einar, alarm in his voice as a portal appeared in front of her.
She stepped through and into the Void, turning back to see him running toward the portal. She narrowed her eyes and flexed her Spark, and the portal snapped shut, leaving her alone in the Void. Her heart ached as she crouched down, hot tears dripping from her eyes and hissing where they fell onto the disgusting Void tendrils and eyeballs.
A large part of her wanted nothing but to turn around and head back, to beg Einar to forgive her. But for what? For having the audacity to be herself? For being excited to see her friend who was supposed to love her?
She'd just get told off more. No, if nothing she could do was good enough for him, for the wizards, for any of them, then she'd just do them all a favour and leave. Caprifexia took one last look at the archway that led to Nirn, and to which she could feel her single Red bond linking her, before turning and heading out into the endless expanse of the Multiverse.