Chapter Text
THE FIRST TIME Miraak dies, he discovers that it hurts like hell. It is the easiest way to understand that momentary bout of brutal suffering, simplistic but straight to the point. There was the exertion of the fight that had weakened him. His opponent matches his strength—fierce and frankly talented in the art of battle. Magic and steel used against him, bound by the soul of a dragon. He might be the First Dragonborn and he may be a prideful man (and rightly so!) but as he had fought for his life—his freedom—he realized then that he had severely underestimated the Last Dragonborn.
He didn't know her name the first time he died. All he knew was that she wanted his death, and when Mora had turned on him, running him through with one of those disgusting tentacles and hoisting him in the air to choke on his breath and blood (he couldn't have dignity in death, could he?), she had lost her temper.
"Hey!" she had complained. "I was going to do that!"
"...pardon," Mora had said, his sickeningly orotund voice slow and—is that hesitance? By the gods. He'd have rather died at this dragonborn's hand than Mora's any day.
"Hmph," she replied, and then he died. In hindsight, it's amusing. At this point, Miraak is willing to take any last bit of humor he can get in this cruel, cruel world. If it revolves around his suffering, he may as well make light of it. As it happened, though, there was nothing but that sinking relief that he was finally free. Free—of Nirn, but by extension, Apocrypha. He had wondered, then, if he would go to Sovngarde. Mora had interrupted their honorable combat. Maybe Mora would take his soul for himself.
Miraak doesn't mind the idea of floating in a void. He wouldn't even mind nothing at all. Just... not this.
As he dies, he recalled that he had asked her, once, if it would hurt to have their souls ripped out. He learns the answer to that right here and now.
(The answer is yes.)
THE SECOND, THIRD, AND FOURTH TIME was not nearly as amusing as the first. Maybe it was simply the shock of closing his eyes, feeling his soul get torn out (how would he describe it? there were no words for that disconnect, that loss, and that fierce, biting ache that overtook him.) and it lasted for a second, and then—
"Go," Miraak had said to Sahrotaar. "You will find her." He wasn't even aware, then, at that moment, he had come back the second time. Scarcely had the last word left his mouth did he realize that he feels like he's lived through this moment twice.
It wasn't too long before he realized exactly what was happening.
There was Sahrotaar, coming down from above, Last Dragonborn on his back. The sheer shock of everything going on had stunned him. The Last dropping down from his dragon the way he had done it once, Hermaeus Mora appearing, and then the battle he had found himself locked in. What could he do but fight? Nothing but carrying on what had clearly already started without him.
It was strange, that sensation that had first hit him. In all his years in Apocrypha, he had never felt that before—like everything was happening for the second time. It may have been the sheer shock of doing this all over again, and that was exactly what had happened. It happened exactly as it had the last two times.
GOL HAH DOV, then her gaining the upper hand, and then... shck. That wet squelch and the sound of his chest getting torn apart is too loud in his ears, and the pain, as he experiences it for the second time, is unfortunately worse. He must've been too surprised to notice the sickening feeling of slowly getting impaled to death. Innuendos aside, he only found it remotely amusing much later.
"Hey!" the Last had complained. Again. "I was going to do that!"
"...pardon," Mora replied.
And Miraak died. Again.
He was fully expecting to wake from this torture into nothing, really. It may have been wishful thinking—the last of his hope, once put into escaping Apocrypha, then placed to being freed from that gods-awful repeat of the last thirty minutes of his life. He had tricked himself into thinking, then, that it was simply some afterlife dream.
When he found that he could open his eyes, the very same nightmare had greeted him. Sahrotaar. Mora. GOL HAH DOV. Getting impaled on a tentacle in the worst way possible.
He mouthed the words soundlessly as they echoed around him.
Hey! I was going to do that!
...pardon.
There was no deviation, he noted in that infinite second of blinding pain as the Last had torn his soul from him for their consumption. The second thing he noted was the complete and utter rage filling him. The first time he died, it was nothing but relief in the confidence that he would at least be free of Mora, if not back on Nirn. The second time he died, it was in the hope that he would get tormented by his death for the first and last time.
The third time? FUCK, he wants to scream. FUCKING HELL. (He doesn't get his chance on the third occasion.)
And so, as he watches Sahrotaar depart for the fourth time, he does.