4E 202, Skies above Shor's Stone
Gerron Ironbreaker
Vermithor's back seemed wider than the last time Gerron rode on him. He was much faster too, for the sound of rushing winds in Gerron's ears was much sharper than it did back in the skies above High Hrothgar.
Were these the changes he had received when he became a Kruziik? The presence Vermithor now had was quite staggering. It was not quite the same with Odahviing, who radiated true might and danger, but it was close.
Of course, he couldn't even compare to the presence that Kiera ensued. Multi-colored, iridescent light surrounded her and formed a dragon-like armor all over her body. The air around her vibrated, her eyes shone with powerful light as they were aimed forward, to where Alduin had just destroyed one of the walls.
Gazing downwards, General Tullius and the rest were still in chaos trying to even out the tide of undead, but with the reinforcements from Legate Rikke's company, it seemed they would achieve victory soon.
That was good, for it meant there was only one more enemy left.
Vermithor beat his wings as he flew forward like an arrow, empowered by the bond he shared with Kiera. From below, Gerron spotted Serana running with Mirabelle, and he screamed.
"Serana!" His wife perked up from his voice as he put out a hand. "Vermithor, fly low!"
Kiera patted the dragon's back twice, and a grumble was let out from the Bronze Fury as he began banking lower, to the point that screams came out from the people who were impacted by the massive winds caused by Vermithor's wings.
Gerron leaned down just as Serana conjured long chains of ice that went upwards, connecting with his vambrace as the Vampiress was yanked with them. Gerron pulled, and she was wrenched upwards and plopped on the saddle with them.
"Good on you to join us!" Kiera screamed, a grin on her face.
Serana's eyes were wide when she saw Kiera's state. "Damn… you feel even more dangerous than my father."
Kiera's grin widened even more. "Good, cause it's time to beat that Black Dragon to the ground!"
Kiera stood and jumped from Vermithor's back, the dragon recoiling slightly from the force. To their surprise, Kiera did not fall, but flew towards the dragon in the distance as her sword blazed gold.
"Alduin!" Kiera screamed, Dawnbreaker in hand before she swung it down. "YOL TOOR SHUL!"
A humongous blazing torrent of orange and golden flames coalesced that raced towards the World-Eater.
To his credit, Alduin turned as his beady red eyes focused on Kiera's attack before unleashing his own shout. "FO KRAH DIIN!"
The icy blizzard met the wave of fire as a cloud of steam formed on the point of impact. The wave of fire slowed, giving Alduin enough time to maneuver to the side, letting the torrent of flame continue into the air harmlessly.
But that was the point, for Gerron saw Kiera fly above Alduin with him none the wiser, using the cloud of steam for cover.
The purpose of it came not a second later, for Kiera shouted to the heavens. "JOOR ZAH FRUL!"
The Dragonrend shout swallowed Alduin whole, and for the first time, the World-Eater was forced to the ground as he was knocked out of the skies and landed on the snowy fields outside the curtain wall, kicking up plumes.
Vermithor instantly dived as Gerron readied his Mercury Hammer. Beside him Serana's hands lit up in magic as Vermithor shouted.
"QO SPAAN LOK!"
A magicka blast from the Mercury Hammer, a beam of black lightning from Vermithor's Maw, and pure white ice was ejected as they did a fly-by that all impacted on Alduin's prone form.
Smoke covered that location as Kiera descended down, Dawnbreaker held downwards as she shouted. "WULD NAH KEST!"
A thunderous sound echoed as she dashed with the power of the Thu'um, slamming downwards as another plume of dust and snow flew upwards.
When the smoke cleared, it showed Alduin's prone form, Dawnbreaker piercing through the lower part of his neck. Kiera was there, blazing still with Dragon Aspect. Blood spewed from the wound, though Gerron noted that it didn't look lethal.
Kiera noticed it too. As she was about to riposte for another strike, a massive spiky tail smacked her away as she was launched at high speeds, slamming onto a snowy hill and blowing it apart.
Vermithor was about to dive to continue the attack, until Alduin's red gaze slammed onto them in full force and Gerron found himself frozen in place.
"You have grown strong, Dovahkiin." Alduin said, shrugging off all the snow as he once more stood up on full height, looking like a mountain of midnight scales. "Geh, to absorb the souls of Odahviing and Durnehviir, slain by your allies. It seems the might of the Kruziik has fallen in recent times."
He tried to move his wings to take flight, but the Dragonrend shout remained to anchor him here. "Grown strong, indeed."
Kiera got back up from the crash site, one hand wiping the blood that dripped from her mouth.
"My kin perished, but that is never a problem for immortal beings such as dov." Alduin stated as he raised his head high and shouting to the heavens. "Return to life, my brethren. SLEN TIID VO!"
To their dread and complete surprise, the deceased dragons on the ground, the ones whose souls Kiera did not absorb began to rise once more.
'One…five…twenty.' Gerron's eyes widened as more of them rose. "You've got to be fucking kidding me."
The risen dragons lifted their heads as one and let out a chorus of roars that punched through the cold air like a thunderclap. Each one was a corpse brought back—scorched, in some cases still bearing the wounds that had felled them—and yet they moved with a purpose that had nothing to do with flesh. Alduin's will made them dangerous long after their bodies had any right to be.
On the ground below, Kiera was already back on her feet, her eyes fixed on Alduin without any trace of retreat. She had taken worse hits than a tail swipe, Gerron knew. She would be fine.
The risen dragons, though, were a different problem.
Even as the Dragonrend held Alduin earthbound, the twenty he'd raised were already taking to the skies. Three of them wheeled immediately toward Vermithor, and Gerron felt the Bronze Fury tense beneath him like a coiled spring.
He looked back at Serana.
She was already watching him, measuring the situation exactly as he was.
He didn't have to say anything. She could see it the same as him. Kiera was down there alone, keeping Alduin engaged, and the Dragonrend was not going to last forever. The World-Eater would get his wings back eventually, and when he did, Kiera would need to hit him again. And again.
That meant someone needed to be down there with her between those moments. To keep Alduin's attention split. To buy Kiera the breathing room to reload.
To make the World-Eater furious enough that he didn't think too clearly.
"I'm going." Serana said.
He didn't argue. "Go."
She grinned then, fangs descending as she began to shift and transform.
For the very first time, bat-like wings sprouted from her back as her spine elongated. Her skin turned more visibly pale, as the skull began shifting, till the gaze of a Vampire Lord was met by Gerron's own.
But there was something different there, instead of the full crimson red, there was a twinge of a white glow behind the irises. And Serana's form ended up becoming a lot less monstrous compared to Harkon's.
Gerron's lips went to a smile. "Kick his ass, sweetheart."
With a simple beat of her wings, she stepped off Vermithor's saddle and flew, touching down in the snow forty feet from Alduin's flank and immediately moved, not toward the World-Eater but around him, putting herself in the opposite position from where Kiera was rising from the snow.
Two threats. Two angles. Both demanding his attention.
Alduin's red eyes tracked her, and Serana caught the World-Eater's gaze easily without flinching.
Her talon-like hands were already shaping the opening of a destruction chain—lightning first, he guessed, to demand his immediate attention—and for a fraction of a second there was something almost theatrical about the way she stood there: a single vampire against a creature that had unmade civilizations.
She launched them forward.
The lightning cracked across Alduin's snout and his head whipped to the side with a snarl. His attention split instantly, swiveling between Kiera, who was circling with Dawnbreaker drawn, and this new irritant who was already repositioning before the smoke had cleared.
Kiera shot him a glance across the field, and nodded. She gripped Dawnbreaker in both hands and advanced.
Good. They had it.
He and Vermithor turned toward the sky.
"QO SPAAN LOK!"
The black lightning erupted from Vermithor's maw and tore through the nearest risen dragon's chest mid-dive, sending it spiraling away trailing smoke, crashing into the outer field. That bought half a second. Not enough—the second and third were already there, and the second was going for Vermithor's right wing.
Gerron leaned and swung the Mercury Hammer in a sweeping arc.
The magicka blast caught the risen dragon broadside and staggered it, its dead joints locking awkwardly as the force translated through its reanimated body—and that was the difference, Gerron noted, between the risen dead and a living dragon. A living one would have twisted with the hit, shed it. This one absorbed it wrong, the corpse's stiffness working against it. He filed that away.
The third dragon came in from above, going for Vermithor's back.
"Bank right!" Gerron snapped.
Vermithor didn't need telling. He was already rolling, the sudden barrel that sent Gerron's stomach lurching sideways.
He had one hand braced on the saddle, one gripping the Mercury Hammer, and he put both to work as the dragon's claws scraped across Vermithor's flank and found no purchase. Vermithor's own tail came around in the same motion, slamming across the risen dragon's skull with a crack that Gerron felt through the saddle.
The corpse-dragon dropped.
Three down.
Seventeen more.
From the ramparts below, the Ebony Palace turrets were already retargeting upward, bolts of raw magicka screaming skyward in volleys, and Gerron could see the turret operators working fast, smart enough to prioritize the ones breaking for the city interior over the ones engaged with Vermithor in open sky. Good. Ralof must have given the order; the man had a good eye for the shape of a fight.
But seventeen was still a threat, and even with the turrets, the attrition was going to take time they might not have.
Gerron looked down one more time at the snow-covered fields.
Kiera and Serana were already deep in the fight with Alduin. The World-Eater lunged at Kiera and she burst upward taking flight, getting distance, while Serana behind him tore open a portal as two storm atronachs and a fresh pair of frost ones erupted from them and threw themselves at Alduin's flank..
It was working. For now.
Aela and the others were already in Redbelly Mine. Gerron had no doubt about that. The Ebony Blade was the key and it would come out of that mine one way or another, and when it did, Kiera would need it in her hands as soon as possible.
That was the job. Keep the risen twenty occupied. Keep the pressure off the turrets. Keep Alduin from taking to the skies.
Gerron rolled his neck, felt the familiar focus settle behind his eyes.
"Alright," he said, largely to himself. "Let's get to work."
Vermithor rumbled in deep agreement, and they turned to meet the next three.
…
4E 202, Redbelly Mine
Aela the Huntress
The darkness of Redbelly Mine swallowed them whole the moment they stepped past the torchlight at the entrance.
Aela didn't mind. She had hunted in worse.
The mine's air was cool and damp, thick with the smell of old stone and iron-rich soil. Somewhere deeper, something moved. The faintest sound of scraping of many small legs across rock. She felt it at the nape of her neck before her ears caught it, the fine hairs rising.
Hircine's blessing sharpened everything. In this dark, she could see three times what any man could. The vague outline of the wooden bridge ahead, the iron brackets holding the torches that still burned weakly at intervals on the walls. The faint threads of webbing that clung to the upper corners where the mine's roof met the walls.
Old webbing. And new.
She didn't break stride.
Behind her, Isran's warhammer began to glow. Not brightly—he was being cautious, she noted with approval—just enough to cast a low pool of light around their group. Vilkas fell in at her left without being asked, Wuuthrad held at the ready across his body.
Brynjolf took the rear without instruction, Nightingale blade drawn. And Aranea walked in the middle of the formation, magelight held low in her palm, her face calm.
"Stay close," Aela said quietly, and the formation tightened.
The wooden bridge over the pit was ten yards ahead.
She slowed.
The tracks were wrong.
She crouched at the entrance to the bridge, running two fingers across the dust on the boards. Fresh disturbance, but deliberately obscured. The pattern was too even, too careful.
It wasn't hidden through mortal means she realized, but through magic. Her jaw tightened. Mephala. Of course.
"Something wrong?" Vilkas asked.
"Tracks are hidden." She looked up. "Daedric influence too. Someone was very careful about this."
Isran stepped forward without a word. He raised the warhammer slowly, and the light shifted, turning brighter and more golden. Aela recognized it as the telltale sign of Stendarr's Light.
The bridge sizzled like putting meat on a cooking pot the moment the light hit them, and thus the hidden tracks were revealed.
They were small, child-sized, moving across the bridge and down to the left, consistent with the mine's layout. It headed for the ramp, the spiral that led down to the pit floor.
"Didn't Gerron once say spiders used to live here till he cleared it completely?" Vilkas asked, looking at the webbing on the upper walls.
"That's when he found this place was filled with ebony veins when the iron dried up," Isran confirmed. "Back at the very start."
A sudden skittering grew louder as they moved deeper across the bridge, and then the first one dropped from the ceiling. Then five more. Then a dozen.
Frostbite spiders—not the small, ankle-biting variety that wandered caves, but the large ones, body the size of a cart wheel.
"Wonderful," Brynjolf said from the rear. "Where are all these coming from?" he added a half-second later, his blade already singing from its sheathe as one of the spiders leapt for him. "I thought the Dragonslayer had already cleared it!"
"It has to be Mephala's influence," Aranea said, not missing a beat, her hand sweeping in a wide arc as a bolt of lightning cracked outward and split one of the spiders cleanly in two. "Another name she's known by is the Webspinner. Spiders are her domain."
Vilkas didn't comment. He was already moving.
Wuuthrad carved through the first three like they weren't there. He then twisted, raking across another that leapt from the walls. He fought like a whirlwind, Aela realized. There was no wasted motion, no hesitation, clean and total commitment to each blow.
Isran was different. Where Vilkas moved like a storm, Isran was a wall. He stood at the very front, deliberately shining the light brighter to make himself a bigger target. The moment the spiders came, his warhammer came down in measured strikes—each one accompanied by a pulse of Stendarr's radiance that burned the nearest cluster of spiders where they massed, flaring out in a ring that caught legs and bodies and scorched them back.
Aela didn't fight at the front. She never had.
The Spear of the Hunter lengthened in her grip, extending to twice its normal reach as she moved through the fight at angles—flanking, repositioning, striking at the spiders trying to circle around Vilkas and Isran's guard. The spear moved with her instincts rather than her thoughts, fast and precise, targeting the joints where the legs met the body, the soft underbelly behind the mandibles.
Hircine's blessing ran through her veins, and she never felt so alive in times such as these. Her eyes tracked everything, noting the way the spiders communicated through vibrations in the webbing, predicting where the next cluster would emerge from. When a spider tried to drop from the ceiling above Aranea, Aela saw it three seconds before it moved and drove the spear through its thorax without looking.
Aranea, for her part, required less protecting than most mages Aela had worked with. Her Illusion magic moved through the swarm like a whisper—spiders at the edges of the fight suddenly turned and bit each other with vacant, compelled eyes, clumps of them tangling in confusion before the more pragmatic destruction spells finished the job.
Brynjolf was at the rear, guarding it without being told and without complaint, which Aela appreciated. He was a sly fighter—using the environment the way a proper thief should, angling himself so that attacking him required an enemy to commit fully, and the moment they committed he wasn't where they expected. A technical swordsman, clean and precise.
"How much further?" Vilkas asked as they cleared the bridge and reached the ramp.
Aela checked the tracks, still faintly glowing with the lingering quality of Isran's earlier light. "Down. All the way to the pit floor."
They pushed toward the spiral ramp at the far end of the bridge, and here the mine's layout worked both for them and against them in equal measure. The ramp was narrow—only two could descend side by side at most, which funneled the spiders as well as the party. But the walls of the pit meant nothing could circle around behind them, and the spiders that tried to descend the walls were easy targets.
Aela took a position at the lip of the ramp as the others started down, using the height advantage. The Spear of the Hunter extended and lengthened to its maximum reach as she jabbed downward through the gap in the ramp's guard, driving back the spiders clustering at the first bend. When that wasn't enough, she grabbed two of the massive bodies and simply threw them off the ramp's edge into the pit below. They hit several more on the way down, knocking them loose from the walls.
"Effective," Brynjolf called up, appreciatively.
When the rest had gotten clear, she descended last, sweeping the ramp above clean as she went.
By the time she reached the pit floor, the others had formed a tight defensive arc in the wide, low-ceilinged space at the bottom. The floor here was dotted with old iron ore veins, long since drained, interspersed with the black glitter of ebony deposits. Spider carcasses were already accumulating at the edges of the group's position.
The skittering had slowed.
Not because there were fewer spiders. Because something had told them to stop.
A chill ran down Aela's back as she recognized the feeling. It was the kind of silence a predator makes when it has decided to be patient. Different from the chaotic rush of the swarm. This was intelligent.
Her nose twitched. There.
Under the smell of spider ichor and the damp cave, she detected something else. A child's scent. Almost hidden, no doubt Mephala's influence. But the strength of one Daedric Prince could be countered with another, and Hircine was not one that liked his hunts to be interrupted.
The boy was here. Balgruuf's boy, whose scent she had memorized in Labyrinthian a year ago.
It was close.
Right behind Vilkas.
Hircine's blessing flaring through her blood in a single sharp spike and Aela was already spinning, already driving the spear outward past Vilkas in the same motion.
"He's here!"
The extended spear struck the wall a hair's breadth from where an outline was beginning to materialize.
Isran reacted instantly.
The warhammer came up and the light erupted in full blaze, flooding every inch of the pit in gold and white.
Nelkir appeared.
He looked younger than Aela remembered, standing there in the full light with his back to the stone wall, gripping the Ebony Blade in both hands. He couldn't have been more than fourteen or fifteen. Pale, dark-eyed, with Balgruuf's jaw set in what was clearly meant to be defiance.
But the shadows beneath his feet moved wrong, coiling and reaching like something that wasn't quite a child's shadow at all.
Vilkas surged forward.
Wuuthrad came up in a parry just as Nelkir swung, the Ebony Blade singing as it connected with Ysgramor's weapon. The force of it drove Vilkas back half a step, which surprised the Harbinger.
The blade was Daedric, which meant it punched above its weight. But this was an inexperienced child against one of the finest warriors in all of Skyrim. Vilkas balanced his footing almost immediately, and angled the parry into a push, forcing Nelkir's arms wide.
Nelkir vanished once again as the shadows took him, snuffing out his outline in an instant.
"Left," Aela said without hesitation, feeling the displacement in the air, the way a hunter reads the grass. "Three steps."
Isran pivoted and the warhammer swept in a wide horizontal arc through the space she'd indicated. The light caught something as shadow scattered, and Nelkir reappeared stumbling, having taken a glancing blow across his shoulder.
He was fast for a child. As expected of a Champion of Mephala.
He vanished again.
'Up above.' Aela thought.
She tracked his scent to the wall above, where he'd used the spider webs as footholds—a quick, clever climb—and drove the extended spear upward at the exact angle to catch his right hand.
The crack was audible. The haft of the spear had struck his wrist with enough precision to numb it completely.
The Ebony Blade dropped.
Before Nelkir could shift his grip or vanish again, Aranea's hand came up. The paralysis spell took him mid-fall, locking every muscle rigid as he dropped the last few feet and landed hard on the stone floor.
The Ebony Blade clattered beside him, shadows writhing from the blade in slow, frustrated coils.
Nelkir lay stiff and blinking, unable to move, his dark eyes going between fury and something younger, something frightened.
Brynjolf stepped from the far edge of the pit and crouched beside Nelkir, took the hilt of his Nightingale blade, and slammed it firmly against the side of the boy's head.
Nelkir's eyes rolled to the back of his head as the room went quiet.
Aela lowered the spear and exhaled lightly through the nose. That old, familiar letting-go of tension after the moment of the hunt had resolved.
Isran walked forward, looking down at the Ebony Blade on the ground. The shadows from it stretched toward his boots. He crouched, reached down, and closed his fingers around the hilt.
The shadows climbed immediately, surging up his gauntlet and forearm, reaching with cold urgency like something testing the limits of a new cage.
A grunt of pain escaped him. His jaw tightened.
Then his eyes lit up bright golden light. It was vast, blazing out from his pupils as though Stendarr himself had looked through them. Golden radiance poured down his arm from within, and the shadows recoiled, retreating back to the blade's edge, writhing and then going still.
Isran rose to his feet, holding the Ebony Blade at arm's length, his expression one of profound displeasure. "This thing is horrid beyond measure."
Before Aela could reply, the skittering intensified as the remaining spiders moved.
Not toward them, thankfully. Every surviving spider in the pit turned at once, as if a single shared nerve had been severed, and fled. The skittering rose to a crescendo for exactly two seconds as hundreds of legs scrambled across stone, retreating deeper into the tunnels, the cracks, and whatever hole they crawled out of.
It was technically a hazard waiting to happen. She made a minor note to bring this up with the Jarl about his spider infestation.
Brynjolf looked at the empty walls with approval before sheathing his blade. "Well done."
Isran just snorted, looking at the blade in his grip with a deep scowl. "Mephala's work. You were right, Priestess. This whole damn cave is apparently Mephala's domain. No doubt the spiders that came here initially were her doing as well."
"Then we'd best get out of here before she changes her mind." Aela said.
She pulled a torn strip of cloak and tossed it to Isran, who began wrapping the blade in it.
Brynjolf had already hauled Nelkir up across his shoulders, "Light as a feather," he offered into the silence.
Vilkas huffed something that was almost a laugh.
Aela turned toward the ramp.
Above them, through the shaft of the pit, the muted sounds of battle still filtered down from the world outside. The distant crack of turrets. The rumble of wings. The thunderous back-and-forth of two forces that had been at it for hours.
'Looks like the battle up there hasn't slowed in the least.' She thought. 'Getting this through all of that to the Dragonborn will be a pain.'
…
AN: Here we go!
The fight against Alduin and the Hunt for Nelkir. This chapter was really fun to make despite how hard it ended up being. Fight scenes are always so difficult with choreography being something that's so tough to put into words.
Kiera punched. "Ow," said Alduin.
Hopefully, I ended up with something a bit satisfactory, and that whole Redbelly Mine sequence was really great to do. It felt right to connect it all back to the place where Gerron first started.
Also, SERANA VAMPIRE LORD FORM. Man, I've been wanting to do that for ages. Y'all are about to see the culmination of the power gained from a Daughter of Coldharbour, Champion of Meridia, and Potema's necromantic potency combined into one.
12 advanced chapters are available on my P-word. Chapter 131 should be available by the time this chapter is posted. Just look up my name, TeemVizzle, and you'll find me.
For free users, you can get 2 chapters ahead instead if you're interested.
Cheers lads.