Chapter Text
The mountains of Morthal were always cold, no matter the season the region was in. Despite Sun’s Height barely ending, the winds bit at Elyden’s long thin ears and threaten to topple him off the cliffs. But the altmer himself was from Winterhold, so really this was just a normal Tirdas for him.
Nudging away a leaf that flew face-first onto his nose, he looked down his map with his notes strategically surrounding him, ‘safe’ from the weather, as the worn down temple he hid in still had some walls left. It was scarcely anything, and Elyden could barely make a guess of what it once was from the smoothed out totems, the remains of stone hawks that were once carved to swoop over the rivers and mountains with a hard stare. So this was probably once a spot of worship for Kyne.
“Not surprising.” Elyden thought as he struggled to stand up on his nearly asleep legs, brushing off fragments of stone on his coat to walk over to the cliff’s edge. “She would’ve probably appreciated the view.”
Anchoring a hard grip on an ancient tree branch, he carefully leaned over to look down the long drop as the nail-bitingly cold wind screamed past his tight hair bun. He was staring right at it, the whole reason he even hiked up this mountain: a dragon’s burial site. Never would he have guessed that it’s where an ancient corpse lay, resting for thousands of years, if it weren’t for the Dragonstone that he and Farengar carefully translated.
A smile grew on his face, despite how much it hurt his chapped lips. He remembered the cheer of joy he gave when he finally cut through the giant bushes that cloaked the mound, and found hints of worn stone that still had the dragon’s name etched clearly in dovahzul. If Elyden was to show this place to anyone, a few hundred feet from the hollow temple, no one would really be able to know what it was. But that didn’t matter, Elyden knew and today he was going back to Whiterun to show proof of his findings so the Jarl of Whiterun could begin an official excavation! He had basically waited for his whole life for this very moment; thank the Divines for Farengar’s mystery funder.
Giggling a bit to himself in excitement, Elyden made himself go back inside the supposed safety of the temple. Before he used his modded recall spell, a roar echoed across the mountains. It gave him a pause.
Elyden had traveled a lot as both a courier for Winterhold but also during his youth, so he had heard a lot of strange things. But this? He had never heard such a sound.
Against his better judgment, he stepped out into the back of the temple and raised a hand to squint against the bright clear skies to try and find the source. He didn’t think saber cats roamed this area during the current time of the year, though the noise didn’t sound like any feline he knew. It echoed in his chest in an uncanny, yet familiar way even if Elyden knew he had never heard of such a thing in his lifetime.
He lowered his hand just in time to witness something burst out from the clouds. A black creature right above where Helgan should be. The burning town left a thin trail of smoke that followed the creature as it flew closer and closer.
Elyden quickly dived back inside the ruined temple and clutched his arms around his head. The worn stone that had barely sheltered him wobbled and crashed too close to him as the thing sped past the building and circled around the burial with another screech. Elyden took a shaky breath, his heart hammering with adrenaline, as he looked worryingly at the tons of heavy stone that could’ve easily crushed him if he was just a bit to the left.
“Pahlokvun, return from where you have rested for so long and search for my Voice!” The creature Shouted with a thunderclap.
Elyden carefully walked around in the wobbly building,gathering his packed items so he could leave as soon as possible.
Wait…Dovahzul? That was dovahzul. Elyden knew it was dovahzul. He had studied the language for decades, it was one of the reasons why Farengar asked for a partnership with his project, so he of all people should recognize the language. Even though Elyden knew better, his curiosity sky-rocketed to the point it was itched and he couldn’t resist the temptation to take a peek.
Carefully holding onto a tree branch that curled inside the temple, Elyden looked up through the ruined ceiling to gaze upon the being.
It was…a dragon. A dragon with worn black scales twirled through the skies, his maw the size of a mill, dripping specks of gold and blue onto the burial site below. The wings were wider than a wagon and as thick as Elyden’s arms and yet they lifted the serpent into the windy air like he was made out of feathers.
Elyden carefully walked closer. He was trained in stealth as a young boy, sure to not step on any sticks or leaves on accident.
Could it be Alduin? He wondered. The appearance seemed to match the old records he read from Farengar’s own personal research. It even checked out with the accounts given from friendly dragon cultists, though Elyden couldn’t see the dragon’s eyes to confirm.
He was always told that the eyes were the key to telling Alduin apart from the other dragons. The average wyvern’s eyes were old, yes, but allegedly not as intense as Alduin’s. His gaze would freeze you, it was said, with nothing but a single glance into his bright red eyes. Not because they were larger than life but because they had seen many things. Elyden heard that if you looked into them for too long, you could see other fantastical worlds, ones that he tore apart and devoured. Strange creatures and odd people who were nothing more than mere memories for the miniature god. He was also told that it made even the hardiest men, mer, or beast go mad. But Elyden was still curious.
“The time has come for you to rise once more to retake what was stolen from us! Rise from the Thu’um of your Master!” With the final word Shouted, the rocky terrain rumbled underneath Elyden’s feet as the packed dirt of the burial mound burst upward into a heavy mist.
The thick cloud covered Elyden’s face and settled in his lungs like a fatty film over cold soup. Pounding a fist to his chest, he struggled to hack out the dust from his throat while blinded from runny eyes. Just as quickly as he regained his sight and breath, the fog cleared. And crawling out from the grave was a giant monster.
Each piece of bone was being sewn together on strings of muscle, inches of fat, and feet of brown scales. Thick teeth snapped at the sky, struggling to get in a proper gulp of air as Alduin looked on proudly.
Fascinating! Elyden leant out over the edge to get a better look, cursing his position that hindered his ability to get out his journal and make some quick sketches before the opportunity slipped away.
He considered trying to say something in dovahzul—wanting to truly see if he was even understandable to the dragons and not just draugr—but a misstep sent him tumbling past the cliff’s edge. Elyden quickly grabbed onto some tree roots with a harsh tug to his shoulders. His heart nearly burst through his throat as his hands ached with tension through his gloves, feet dangling right above the rebirthed dragon.
He planted his feet firmly underneath him on the shelves of roots and began his climb back up. Elyden thanked the gods that old habits die hard.
Was he nearly splattered into a million pieces in front of a literal god? Yes. Did he care about death? Only if it wasn’t embarrassing. He wanted to question them, not make a fool of himself in front of the draconic creatures.
“You’re oddly calm around us for a Dragonborn.” Alduin’s dovahzul was perfectly clear, a heavy timbre that filled Elyden’s head, despite the large fangs that protrude over his heavy jaw.
The altmer carefully scrambled back up to his original spot, losing a few pencils that definitely shattered on top of the revived dragon’s head. He heard an annoyed growl from below and hoped that he didn’t slip again and fall right into its jaws.
Taking a quick breath as his adrenaline settled and nerves stilled to a manageable level, he turned to face Alduin who was still circling the burial mound. There were worrying growls and grunts of effort, and echoes of scraping of stone coming from the bottom of the valley right around where the tomb was, but Elyden couldn’t think of that now.
“What?” He blinked as his brain finally caught up and he just realized what the hell Alduin said to him. Elyden resisted approaching the cliff again, especially as the scraping got closer and closer.
“Me? Dragonborn?” A nervous laugh bubbled out as he stepped back, watching a claw latch onto the top of the cliff, with fresh nerves still exposed. It was easily the length and width of his forearm.
Right, dovahzul. He needs to speak in dovahzul. More important than the approaching piece of a god.
“I’m an elf, that doesn’t make sense ha…” He practically vibrated with excitement, “ anyways, uh, do you mind if I ask a—”
The black dragon hummed consideringly, gliding onto a hill on the side of the temple grounds, thoughtlessly destroying any surrounding trees and totems. He nearly blocked out the rising sun, which seemed nostalgic for an odd reason.
“At least you know our tongue, but you do not recognize our souls.”
As Elyden felt some pride for having understood a dead language, a wretched odor burnt his nose, which interrupted his thoughts. He saw the steam rising off Pahlokvun’s fleshy head, greeting him with a cruel smile.
The eyeballs just formed on Pahlokvun’s bare skull and blood leaked from empty gums and tightening skin. An overwhelming stench of gore and bodily waste attacked Elyden’s senses as he struggled to not gag. He wanted to hurl everything out from his empty stomach and he begged his body to turn away from the horrific sight. But he couldn’t. Elyden watched with morbid fascination as the dragon barely managed to pull itself up onto more stable ground, new bones snapping off before being forcibly pulled back into place with the muscles acting as elastic rope. Their noses were mere inches away from touching, the scales were still sliding off the loose skin.
Elyden finally regained enough sense to step back a bit, his eyes still locked onto the equally yellowish green eyes of the dragon’s who looked as eager as a cat seeing a quivering mouse. He could see its heart pumping life into the web of veins. Their heartbeats were in sync, racing with adrenaline. Though Elyden’s beat with terror; Pahlokvun’s beat with excitement.
Alduin stared at the two carefully, casually flicking back and forth before he gently whispered: “Vuth.”
Pahlokvun collapsed like a puppet with its strings cut. The once living nerves shriveled up and melted fat flowed off sagging muscles into the grass, staining Elyden’s boots.
Elyden had seen many horrid things in his centuries on Nirn, but this tops it all. He clutched a gloved hand against his mouth to try to ease the nausea and light-headedness off. The gore made his stomach turn and he nearly vomited in his mouth, begging to anyone out there listening to not get sick. Despite the viscera flopping around like tortured snakes, which desperately trying to tear themselves from the heavy bones, Elyden couldn’t look away. His eyes were beginning to burn as his eyelids refused to blink at the sight of the once living eyeballs melting into sludge.
A harsh wind suddenly burst through the skeletal corpse as streaks of golds and blues intertwined with oranges and pinks into millions of streams that surrounded Elyden.
Despite screaming internally with panic and fear, he felt an overwhelming sense of calm. The rope burn on his hands no longer stung and his mind was sated from its quivering. Flashes of memories, of masks and the storm above the clouds, filled his head like wet sand.
He still had his eyes on the carcass, it had been stripped clean of everything. It was pure white and a perfect skeleton with only a few scars from its past life. The one on its hip was from an arrow that missed its mark before it was felled by a group of Blades. One on its jaw was a tooth ripped off after he lodged his jaw on some poor fool’s arm…Wait why is Elyden remembering this?
“Diin Stiildus Vuth.”
The simple Shout was said gently, but Elyden felt his bones violently freeze and his breathing slow into tiny puffs. Elyden tried to move anything in his body, but it all felt alien and numb to him, like his suspiciously slow heartbeat. Panic bubbled despite how calm he felt outwardly, he felt like he was stuffed inside a tight cage where he barely had room to wiggle a toe. His unblinking eyes flickered towards Alduin who looked back at him with the interest of a scholar. Not the one suited for a godly being.
Alduin crawled down from his spot and impassively walked over to Elyden as if he didn’t weigh more than an entire Hold. He got close enough that he easily pressed his giant snout up against Elyden’s chest that felt like it should be heaving; it burnt past his heavily enchanted coat. The heavy breathing of the beast would’ve easily knocked Elyden’s skeleton off his body if it wasn’t for him being as still as stone. A thick swallow traveled down his throat and Elyden thought he was going to die right here and then. The face of the massive dragon was taller than twice Elyden over, it would take no effort to swallow him whole. The very thought made him want to cry, but he wasn’t going to cry in front of a god. He avoided Alduin’s eyes and instead focused on his crown-like horns that looked as sharp as blades, with jagged and worn edges.
“During my imprisonment in the Time Wound, I saw glimpses of your face and memories, Elyden.” Alduin said in an almost purr, as he bared his many craggy teeth.
Elyden gave a quiet whimper as he realized that they were as big as his legs. He felt like a doll, unable to do anything while Alduin grazed a single tooth against his enchanted robes.
Alduin’s eyes looked for a reaction, completely ignoring the small flame cloak Elyden always casted to warm himself. Those eyes felt unreal, like they were an amalgamation of everything and nothing that mortals ever knew. It hurt to look at them but Elyden could do nothing to escape his gaze. He could feel every single emotion at once and he wanted to claw out of his own flesh to escape it.
A strip of skin was painfully scraped off his body like wet paper, the tooth sizzled like a hot iron which finally made Elyden’s unblinking eyes water. He managed to not cry as his body was being slowly cooked alive. He was powerless to stop it despite his muscles begging him to move.
“Don’t disappoint me like Miraak and the Nordic Heroes.” Alduin unhooked his hold on Elyden and withdrew as elegantly as a snake, unfit for his large form that could crush a town in two seconds. “I look forward to our fight in Sovngarde with your budding strength.” He stepped back and unfurled his wings with a final word
“Frein.”
Just as Alduin took off to the skies and disappeared into the clouds, Elyden was freed. He stumbled on his feet like a toddler, he desperately took heavy gasps to fill his stagnant lungs and to still his tears.
Elyden, as graceful as a mammoth, leant against the temple and clutched a palm against his bleeding stomach. With a shaky breath, he dared to look down at his ripped coat and at the gash that stung and made his ears ring. He could smell burnt hairs and his hands were too shaky to properly stop the bleeding, his gloves now soaked from his own blood. Hissing out in the pain, Elyden scolded himself for being so shaken. He had seen his own innards, mended debilitating wounds, and been badly burnt many times before. His body was littered with centuries old scars of failed pyromancy, he should be immune to this.
Failing to swallow down another whimper, Elyden cast a simple healing spell without even having to look as he was so used to his own anatomy that he trusted the spell to fix him up without accidentally making things worse. The grass beneath him was soggy from the melted fat, already being feasted on by some bugs.
Now, sure that he wouldn’t bleed out, he’d hopefully only have a new scar that would blend in with everything else. Elyden squeezed his eyes shut from the new pounding headache of vague thoughts and feelings. They weren’t his, he knew that for sure. They spoke of dragon priests, of sacrifices, of clearing the skies, and of crushing people underneath his claws. Nothing of his, absolutely none of them his…not even the nostalgic satisfaction of crushing a skull under his boots—claws.
He dug into one of his many enchanted side bags and pulled out a pipe to fill with some Redguard tobacco and lit it with a quick firespell. A terrible habit that Elyden was fully aware of and was told off for countless times, but old habits die hard and it helped to clear his head. With a steady breath into the pipe, the numbingly sweet taste calmed his shaky hands and allowed him to start processing everything threatening to bubble out like boiling water.
Alright. So. He met The Dragon God, absorbed a dragon’s living soul, then Alduin froze him for a little bite, and to top it all off Alduin wants him to live in order to give him a good fight…This sounds ridiculous. So damn ridiculous.
An ugly bubble of stress threatened to rear its head but Elyden shoved it down with an exhale of smoke, which reminded him of the steam from Pahlokvun’s body. He shuddered, it brought back memories of his younger days, watching the steaming remains of men.
So, what am I going to do?
Reflected in the blood under his feet, Elyden saw his graying black hair fall across his large broken nose, making him reflexively sneer with discomfort, despite how utterly stupid those feelings were. Stupid, stupid, stupid. It’s bad enough that he is aging as gracefully as milk, but the fact that cheaper dyes don’t last as long anymore. A perfect staple for a hero, eh?
He’s an altmer, and a low-class one at that. Nords usually don’t like him due to the association of high elves with the Thalmor. They’ll just think that he ‘stole the mantle from a deserving Nord’. And there was no way Elyden was going back to Windhelm again, even with the ‘protection’ of being the…Dragonborn, apparently.
The pipe felt warm against his moist gloves as Elyden took another puff. It was going to be annoying to wear them wet and to clean them to make sure they don’t shrink, again.
Elves usually don’t like him due to his bloodline. Plus being a ‘walking Nordic trophy’ wouldn’t put him in good graces with most people who weren't a Stormcloak. Though, he can’t go to the Imperials as he’d be branded a member of the Thalmor right away. Just as well, he doesn’t agree with a lot of their policies anyway. He’d feel like a sell-out.
Elyden could try being quiet about it, make a new identity of being a Dragonborn. Be just a vague ‘hero’ until he somehow survives a fight against a legion of miniature gods then going back to being ‘just Elyden’. But then how would he balance being Elyden and Dragonborn at the same time? He was one of the few enchanting professors at Winterhold and his connections with Farengar established him as a proper scholar of the Dragon Cult. It doesn’t really seem possible for him to bounce back and forth between such very different jobs.
Sighing from exhaustion, and the frustration of it all, Elyden wrung a free hand through his very messed up bun to ease his scalp.
But what of the Dragon Cult? This also means the dragon priests will revive, and he knew this better than anyone considering his decades spent studying the cult’s undead faction. And what does this mean for Morokei? The nordic temples that have been sealed off from grave robbers? The armies of draugr wandering underneath the cities? The masked dragon priests?
He anchored his old white pipe on his lips and slapped his palms against his thighs before standing back up. He immediately froze as he heard a loud groan right across from him. Elyden watched as the dragon skeleton’s tail snapped off the spine and dragged the hooked legs down with it, with the rest of the body following. The wing’s claws still dug into the dirt and stone as it looked like it was dragged off the cliff. A foreign pang of grief spiked within him as the skull bounced off the rocks before disappearing off the heights with the rest of the body. It was quiet for a good bit until a booming shook the earth and Elyden with it. Elyden fell to the floor with a yelp and struggled to steady himself against the small earthquake.
With a loud crack from behind him, the rotten support beams of the temple snapped in half and the giant stones collapsed on top of each other like a set of logs. Unable to do anything, Elyden painfully watched as his weeks of research were destroyed underneath the wreckage.
After the cloud of dust cleared, he sighed and made himself walk over to the giant stone bricks for the few papers that peaked out. Elyden glanced at the few things that remained intact with a huff of annoyance. The notes weren’t as legible now that the ink was smeared and his sketches were ruined.
‘ So much work - just gone.’
He choked back a silent scream from everything that was happening, Elyden shoved the notes into a pocket on his coat and took another puff from his pipe, calming down a bit more.
Elyden took a quick look at where the dragon skeleton once was and crammed the cries of despair down with everything else. He decided to dwell on that later as he automatically went to a spot not covered in gore to cast his Recall spell. Flexing out his gloved mage-worn hands to remember the specific spot in Whiterun, Elyden watched the small sparks form into a large pocket that quickly enveloped him in a puff of gunpowder with the warmth of a mouth before plopping him onto the cobble streets of Whiterun’s Plains District.
No one really reacted to him teleporting in, nor to him looking like oblivion as the citizens had unfortunately adjusted to Elyden’s antics. With Dragonsreach looming before him, he shook his head to try to shake his hair out of his face, fully aware of the skeleton of his, apparently, draconic brethren.
‘Is this why I always felt uncomfortable in the palace?’