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Chapter Text

“And so the First Dragonborn meets the Last Dragonborn at the summit of Apocrypha. No doubt just as Hermaeus Mora intended.” Miraak’s words rang out bold and proud over the inky seas that surrounded his lonely tower.

He stood, gleaming and glowing, every inch the Dragon Priest he had been, unchanged and preserved in time like a moth behind glass, since Hermaeus Mora’s theft of him from his rightful place at the helm of Tamriel. He kept his back straight and his shoulders tall, let his voice thunder with echoes, and he looked down upon the Last Dragonborn fearsomely-masked, staff in hand. His show, his pride, his excitement, was for his benefit, and theirs, and the dragons that watched them, silent and monumental in this battle of the ages.

Sahrotaar, Relonikiv, Kruziikrel. His companions, his servants, through his torment – and now, the witnesses of his triumph.

As they would all witness!

“The hour of my freedom from this place and its fickle master draws near!” Miraak cried exultantly, fought to remind himself it was for moments more premature, “and soon I will be master of my own fate, once again. My time in Apocrypha is over. And soon, so will be yours.”

Hermaeus Mora’s thousand-fold eyes were unseen in the sickly green sky, but Miraak knew he was there. If he peered over the sheer edge to that liquid darkness, he knew he’d see Seekers clustered like crows, with their ragged cloaks like tattered wings tugged by no current save that of Fate and Mora’s will in airless Apocrypha. In the waters themselves, he would see Lurkers bleeding oil with steady pulses that sat upon the ink in fiery shimmers. Even the constant muttering of rustling pages hissed and whispered amongst themselves, as if placing bets. He heard the riotous wet slap of the ink against the base of the tower, the tentacles beneath squirming like blind worms to the light, and Miraak knew the whole of Apocrypha was watching.

In the tautness of the near-silence, his dragon- and man-heart stuttered in its restless anticipation, cried with each pounding beat the hope of a thousand years’ work swift-coming culmination: soon, soon.

Steady and sure, the Last Dragonborn that returned his gaze. Even now, on the eve of his victory, he drank in the sight; how he had craved the presence of another as the years worn on in his lonely imprisonment.

The air seemed easier to breathe scented by the freshness of Nirn they carried in their lungs, and their arms, their armour, were richly coloured, the most vibrant thing in this world of nightmare and books. No pallid greens or inkblushed blues for them, this Dragonborn wore handsome red and burnished steel. They were solid, made strong by the grain and meat of Skyrim, by the grape and grass of their sun-dazzled, Aedric-blessed life outside this cursed realm. Even now, their form was faint to his eyes, anchored to their real body on Nirn. As he soon would be real, and subject to the pressures of the wind and the rain, the sun and sky, once more.

They were no simple Seeker of Mora’s knowledge, this Dragonborn, with their well-worn sword held sure in their grip and their scratched shield in the other, no, they came to Miraak in the armaments of a warrior, the trappings of an empire Miraak had seen in illustrations. Their skin was browned by sun, their dark eyes watchful and shadowed beneath the owl-face of their wood mask.

Such cheap imitation though their mask was, he scoffed internally, of the mighty artefact they would have been gifted had they walked in Miraak’s time – but no, the men of this new age were weak and stumbling, and remembered not what they ought. No matter, though, he thought, and felt his lips twist to bare his teeth unseen, Miraak would teach them.

“You will die here, by my hand,” Miraak continued, promised, “And with the power of your soul, I will enact my glorious return to Solstheim.”

Unaffected, or perhaps he dared to hope, sparked by this threat, the Last Dragonborn rolled their shoulders with a metallic grinding and extended one gauntlet. They beckoned to him insouciantly, and their feet slid apart to a fighting stance, ready to leap in any direction.

“No words for me, Dragonborn?” Miraak taunted, too eager to let this fated confrontation end without a moment to savour its richness upon his tongue, and the Last Dragonborn growled.

“You waste your breath,” they said, in their raw, untrained Voice of thunder, “Better to beg the name of the one who will be victorious: I am LAAT-AAZ-IN!”

“A strong name,” Miraak allowed, grinning savagely under his mask as their Shout rocked the tower beneath them, shivers of that power in the soles of his boots, “You could have been mighty, if fate had decreed otherwise, Slayer of Alduin.”

“Might is unnecessary to win against a man who only talks.” Laataazin nettled at his pride, but though their weapon was held ready they waited for him to speak first, as the elder of the two of them. The note of respect for Miraak was beyond what he had expected – the Greybeards it seemed had bothered to teach their rare pupil some things. Miraak burned to know what else.

“Is that so?” Miraak murmured, and he could not hold back anymore, mortal words were soft as snow in his mouth and he needed fire. “YOL TOOR SHUL!”

It was a mighty greeting, and Laataazin’s wide eyes vanished behind their shield. The plume of fire was brilliant and blinding-bright, and through it, Laataazin charged fearlessly at him. Blinking smoke from his eyes and too slow to leap aside, Miraak swept his staff across his chest. Their shield, glowing white-hot at the edges, smashed into him like a battering ram. The staff clanged hollowly at the brute impact.

They wrestled there at the summit. It was hot work. The thinner parts of Laataazin’s armour were molten and spark-bright, the flames that licked at the fabrics of their tabard smoking relentlessly. Miraak drove his heels into the soft leathery floor, refusing to back down even as he felt his staff begin to creak ominously and his muscles scream. Kruziikrel snarled – Miraak heard the snap of jaws, one of the other dragons harrying it. Sahrotaar? Laataazin had flown it to the summit. Their eyes burned in the firelight through the mask, behind the shield, glimpses of brown shimmering orange. Miraak met those fire-bright eyes, and saw in them a soul that mirrored his own.

Inexorably, Laataazin pushed him back.

Miraak gritted his teeth as he was forced back one step, then another. He had the height advantage, towering clear, he could see their skin bubbling and scalding under their armour at the intense heat, but Laataazin was strong. Cracks raced like fault-lines up his staff, and he had moments – moments, before it shattered in his grip.

They would disarm him? So be it!

He gave a giant shove, and Laataazin’s shield dipped as they staggered. He seized the opportunity and at once Miraak discharged all the magic in the staff. It exploded with a thunderous boom and crack of searing white light.

Miraak was blown clear, rolling quickly to his feet with visions of Laataazin planting their sword in his spine. He squinted around his arms protecting his head from the shrapnel flying everywhere, and hissed.

Laataazin had gone to one knee, but as he stared, they shrugged off the explosion and rose to their feet. Their mask had shattered on their face, and they swiped their metal-clad arm over the wreckage. Fresh blood splattered free from the splinters driven into the flesh of their face, but Laataazin did not pause a moment before raising their head to look for Miraak. Threateningly, their shoulders rolled back, their neck arched, and Miraak had just enough presence of mind to throw up a ward before Laataazin Shouted.

“YOL TOOR SHUL!”

His ward was battered by the strength of their fire, but held. Over the roar of the dragon-fire, Miraak could hear his actual dragons thrumming warmly in approval. Miraak’s fierce joy welled like a song in his heart. Laataazin’s Thu’um was strong, nearly his match. How long it had been, since he had had conversation with one of the Dov – true conversation, of magnificent fire and fury!

Miraak would not dishonour his opponent by holding back an inch. As Laataazin’s dragon-fire dimmed, Miraak shot a bolt of lightning into its heart. Laataazin cursed in a rumbling voice – either he’d surprised them or hit them. He followed it up immediately with a torrent of ice-storm. The cold was revitalising after the heat of their grappling, and even better, he heard the brittle snap of Laataazin’s armour. Thick mist descended, the hiss of his summoned snow spitting when it touched their searing hot armour, the tower.

Miraak drew his sword and spun it idly in one hand.

“Hiding is beneath you, Dragonborn,” he called smugly. Casting Muffle in one hand, he prowled around the column of mist and strained his eyes for any movement in the shadows inside. There – a flicker!

Miraak’s Cyclone Shout bolstered the speed of his limbs, until he was like a surging tempest. He rained down blows on Laataazin, their shield, their armoured shoulders, but Laataazin bore the vicious attacks like a fortress of stone. His oily weapon, the gleam of Mora’s eye dark against his wrist, spawned writhing tentacles that yanked and pulled at the ties of their armour. One strap frayed and snapped under his onslaught, and Laataazin leapt back as if they had just realised what he was about.

“Serpent!” they hissed at him, and Miraak smirked.

He turned his eyes to the crumbling pillars where the dragons snapped and snarled at each other. Relonikiv was tenting its wings, posturing at a growling Sahrotaar, whose finned tail lashed restlessly. Its eyes were dull and distressed.

“Weak that you are,” Miraak called up to it, “You may serve me again to redeem yourself.”

He summoned in a great breath to Shout, but Laataazin’s rung out first, with a crack like sundering worlds. All three dragons froze, the leash of Bend Will dropping over them like a lead blanket.

“Go!” Laataazin shouted hoarsely. They had pushed themselves to Shout sooner than they should have, Miraak could hear the cracks in their throat. No master indeed the Greybeards had raised.

Relonikiv was first, shooting up like an arrow from a bow, then Sahrotaar with a howl of “Thuri!” that sounded almost mournful. Kruziikrel fought, digging its talons into the pillars, but Relonikiv swooped down again to bite at its head until, roaring, Kruziikrel lumbered into the sky. Sahrotaar circled them in swooping lines, like a carrion bird over an army.

“Using my own Shout against me?” Miraak snarled, “They cannot help you up there!”

Miraak did not wait for them to recover but rushed to close the gap. He needed that shield gone if he wanted to close this fight and secure his freedom. Distracted by the dragons, Laataazin didn’t have time to raise their shield before he was on them.

“MUL QAH DIIV!” Miraak’s Dragon Aspect emblazoned him like a god, strengthened his attacks. He went for power this time, two hands clutching over the grip of his sword, blinding Laataazin with sweeps of his great spectral wings. They firmed beneath their onslaught, but their fierce eyes were looking at his face – and so therefore missed his tail lashing around to crack against their knee.

Laataazin stumbled, and Miraak wedged his sword under the shield and sent it flying. A well-placed lightning bolt had it soaring clear over the edge of the tower, and he retreated out of the range of their retribution. With how strong they were, he did not want to risk being caught beneath their blade. He imagined they must strike with the strength of a giant.

Facing him, Laataazin’s expression, marred by old scars and freshly-cut by the splinters of their mask, was a ferocious scowl. Their only reply was a wracking cough. They held their weaponless hand cocked protectively over their midriff, where the loosened strap had left their chestplate to sag on one side.

Relonikiv screamed anxiously.

They met with a furious clash. Evenly armed, though Miraak noted Laataazin had not once used magic, their struggle was one of bodies and clanging weapons. They drove notches into his sword with the force of their swings, jarred his arms all the way up to his shoulder. The fight was long, brutal, and messy. Thrice they cut him and once they just fisted a hand around his belt and headbutted him so hard his skull rang inside his mask.

The summit quickly became scarred with their tumultuous battle, smoking pits of dragon-fire and magical ice still crackling with the aftermath of lightning. The leathery spines of the books that made up this particular tower became waterlogged and swampy under their feet, making Miraak’s boots slide and slip when they bulled against him.

It was an intricate dance, and Miraak’s partner knew the steps well. Better, perhaps, than he, after all this time in Apocrypha with none but Seekers and Lurkers with whom to practice his skills. He praised their skill, and reassured them of the inevitability of his triumph. He could not lose. Miraak’s destiny was freedom.

Through it all, the ink swirled and sucked against the base of the tower, and the dragons circled far above it, their agitated roaring backdrop to the clashing of their blades, Miraak’s grunts when they pushed him back. Laataazin was quiet, but he heard the raspiness of their breathing, saw the sweat that dripped down their forehead and mingled with the blood on their face. He couldn’t stop himself from inhaling when they came together again, close as lovers with their breath misting the front of his mask. Their sweat was pure and human, untainted by daedra.

When they were so close he could feel the trembling of their muscles as they fought him not through their blade but through their brace against his chest, Miraak met their eyes. They were brown as earth, he noticed, narrowed in determination. Bloodshot, as if they hadn’t been sleeping well. He bared his teeth at them. How long had they spent, toiling at his stones? Were their bloody eyes his alone?

The tentacles of his sword oozing wetly down the guard of their own, Miraak leant all his weight on their arms. He bore down on them with all his height advantage, crowding the smaller Last Dragonborn until he could see the strain gritting their teeth.

“Getting tired, Dragonborn?” Miraak purred, ignoring the fatigue in his own muscles.

They flicked their gaze up to the dragons circling far overhead. Their arm shook. Miraak pushed harder, sensing an opportunity, and all at once their body trembled at the force of him and gave in. His sword punched into the gap in their armour and slid in to the hilt. Reflexively, Miraak tried to yank it free – but it had notched into bone, and all he achieved was making blood gush wet and warm from the wound.

Laataazin gasped.

For a brief moment, the both of them only blinked at the sword that speared from Laataazin’s chest, the blood that spurted steadily over Miraak’s gloves, but then suddenly, their weapon fell from nerveless fingers and clattered to the floor.

“NO!” Mora howled, “This cannot be!”

Laataazin fell, and Miraak caught them without knowing why. They were warm and real, heavy, in his arms. He sank to his knees to bear their weight, arrested by the sheer redness of their shocking-bright blood over their steely armour, his robes, his buckle. Exposed, Laataazin stared up at him, their ruined face mortal and small. This close, he noticed details about them he had not before; the grey hairs that stood among the close-cropped brown of their hair – older than Miraak looked, but centuries younger – the wrinkles around their eyes and mouth that told him they had loved to laugh, once. Laataazin did not laugh now. They coughed, a wet, rattling gurgle, and blood splattered over the scarred lips. They were trying to speak, he could see their lips fumbling, but only blood came out.

“This is the only way, Dragonborn,” Miraak hissed at them, “The only way I can be free.”

Their hand, weakly, curled into the front of his robes.

“This is not my design!” Mora shrieked, and Miraak was dimly aware of his tentacles racing over the floor towards them.

Laataazin’s wide eyes stared up at Miraak. Tears of pain glittered on their cheek. Their breath was shallow and rattling around the sword. They were going to suffocate on their own blood; Miraak had perforated their lung. But there was no time for Laataazin to die slowly in Miraak’s arms. Mora was coming.

Miraak gripped the Last Dragonborn’s jaw, and closed his eyes, his bloody gloved hand spreading red stains over Laataazin’s neck as he sought the softness of their temples, then the back of their head. He pulled on his magicka, that deep and verdant pool inside of him. And then as Mora reached them, Miraak cast the strongest lightning spell he knew.

A snap of burning flesh and Mora’s scream. Laataazin’s body convulsed in his arms, and Miraak roared in pain as the electricity shot through his own body, but they were dead before their stunned hand could untwist from their robes.

Mora’s tentacles wrapped around Laataazin’s chest and yanked. Miraak clung to their body doggedly.

“No,” he shouted, “NO! You won’t-“

A bolt of green magic struck his shoulder and Miraak cried out. Seekers – waves of them, coming up the side of the tower-

Laataazin’s flesh was beginning to glow, Miraak maintaining a death grip on them as the embers of their soul roared to life and surged into him. He felt their flesh dissolving against his fingers, felt the hungry jaws inside his dragon-soul rear its jaw wide, ready to rend and tear Laataazin’s soul into nothing but power for Miraak.

Another blast of magic rocked him, then three more in quick succession. It blew him onto his back and Miraak stared through eyes blurred with pain as the three dragons in the sky tucked their wings and dove. Fire blasted from Sahrotaar, immolating a wave of Seekers before they could fire on Miraak again.

Mora’s tentacles thickened like snake coils and with a mighty heave, the Prince yanked Laataazin’s body from his grasp. Miraak clung to the shred of the Last Dragonborn’s soul even as their body was ripped away from him. With effort, Miraak plunged his magic into the centre of Laataazin’s soul, and followed that tiny, tugging thread, back to Laataazin’s real body.

The air rent wide with a horrible Daedric scream. An unholy rictus of green light shredded open and Miraak saw through, warm darkness, firelight, Nirn. Mora was howling with rage, his thick tentacles wrapping around Miraak’s neck, his body, his limbs, trying to slow him down. The dragons protected him from the Seekers, rode flaming passes over Mora’s tentacles so they withered and popped with the thick reek of smoking oil, but Miraak felt himself being dragged back, slowly, into Mora’s embrace.

“No, no, no,” he gasped, desperation searing as tears in his eyes.

For a moment, Miraak felt a surge of something, as if some dying ember of the Last Dragonborn had heard his cry as he ate their soul, and then the glorious streams of gold and blue and green became fire, dragonfire, infused with all the colours of Keizaal’s auroras and hotter than its sun.  A rancid smell boiled up as Mora’s tentacles bubbled and burnt in the fire of Laataazin’s soul infusing into Miraak, their flesh into his, their will becoming his own.

Miraak forced his foot through the portal, then his shoulder. He struggled there like a fly caught in a web as the portal began to narrow and waver, his body wrenched between planes by Mora’s tentacles.

“Niid,” Miraak roared, “MUL QAH DIIV!”

His Dragon Aspect formed spears of spines that drove into Mora’s tentacles, causing the Daedric Prince to snarl. The tentacle hold loosed, just barely, just slightly, and Miraak stumbled forward, out, out, out, into Nirn.

Miraak collapsed to his knees onto Laataazin’s fleshless body, hearing their bones rattle within the casings of their armour at the force of the collision. With his last shred of strength, he reached back and hooked his hand into the portal, feeling Apocrypha’s fury shred into the bone and muscle of his hand. It was agony, agony, but first Sahrotaar’s blue snout wrested its way out, Relonikiv, slim and quick, and Kruziikrel, shouldering through with a deep bass roar at the tightening shred of Mora’s thorns.

The portal snapped closed with a resounding boom. Miraak felt Mora’s presence die, a last imprint of futile, terrible rage.

One of the dragons was howling, and droplets of dragonblood were stinging acidic on Miraak’s shoulders, his bowed head. His hand was a wreck, bloody ink gushing from the wounds, and Miraak was laughing, laughing.

He gripped Laat Dovahkiin’s empty chestplate until his gloves creaked. Their mask rattled free of their fleshless skull, blank white wood yet unbroken here, with no eyes, no enemy, no soul. Miraak gasped for breath around horrible laughter that wrenched at his chest as if it were possessing him, hot tears in his eyes.

Miraak was free.

Chapter Text

A high, anxious dragon-creel jarred Miraak from total unconsciousness. A pause. Then, again. That awful, hair-raising screech, the kind of sound that flaked chalk, cracked glass and shattered eardrums.

Miraak had never felt worse in his life. He was not even sure he was alive. If he wanted to be.

His body was numbness and agony. He tried to open his eyes, but they were glued shut. His mouth, too, reducing his breath to a whistling wheeze past the turgid coagulant of thick, thick ink. Even his gasping little sob was stoppered in his blocked tear-ducts. His mask was sucked tightly against his skin. It felt like being choked. Stars burst in the dizzy darkness behind his eyes when he tried to breathe. His ribs ached familiarly. Broken? Something sharp jutted against the grind of his flesh. It felt like metal. It felt like death.

The dragon creeled again. The primordial terror of that sound. It was afraid. It was hurting. It was animal.

It was the sort of sound that summoned hurrying priests. It was the sort of sound that echoed off mountainsides and resounded down valleys, and woke even children wise enough not to scream. It was the sort of sound that came before the gristly snap of jaws and bone and viscera, and a new, bloody mask to press onto the quick-forgotten face of a new servant.

Names, traded like currency. But he was Mir-Aak. He was the mightiest Dragon Priest of them all, and everything he had won had been with fire and fury and strength no dragon could deny. That no dragon could replace.

Wherever he was, whatever cry the dragon made, he would face it, he would conquer it. As fate foretold, their power would meet the thunder of Miraak’s soul, and be subsumed.

Miraak fumbled at his limbs, trying to push off his mask in the vain hope it would help him see, struggling against the rubbery tentacles he was only half-sure he didn’t feel looping like a leash around his neck. He wouldn’t be sure he had hands any longer, if it wasn’t for the fact that one of them hurt.

Hurt like the word pain had been invented for this moment alone.

His glove was unwieldy and stiff, and it was only when the wreck of his hand struck the ground and it squished that he realised that it was because it was full of blood. His blood. Filling his glove, because his hand had been carved open as if by a great serrated knife, and air kissed scarred bone and his fingers hung uselessly and he wanted to vomit.

It was that one, naturally, that finally caught at the lip of the golden mask, because the gods had never loved Miraak.

The pain nearly topped him into darkness again, but he managed a blind scrape at the congealed ink on its face. It tore like skin, and bubbling, acid wetness sleeted down his cheek and jaw. It was like a Seeker’s bite.

But his eyes opened, and he could make out dim, blurry shapes. Light was needles in his eyes, but Miraak was a Dragon Priest, and his destiny had had him conquer every pain set before him and make himself its master. He needed no god. He had himself. He did have himself, didn’t he? It hurt, it hurt, it hurt. He must be in his own body.

Stone floor, stone walls. Thick with dust, made him cough. The slumbering serpent of a dragon’s tail. Dirty, foul-smelling, dull; no loving priest had tended it with warm water and oil, the scalebeds were so dry he could see the ink-ridden cracks. Armour gleamed like a rusty hill under the slump of Miraak’s broken body, old steel warped and rent tellingly down the middle where a sword might slide home. A bloodless wound here, in Nirn, but a lightning scar across the stone like the spiderweb scarring of their face. The mask watching Miraak dully even now, centimetres from his hand where he must have dropped it.

Laat Dovahkiin’s armour and their flesh-stripped bones, his bedmate and bed both for his first night on Tamriel. When he coughed, wetly, ink stained their armour – oh, oh, that wasn’t rust, that was Miraak, bleeding all over the corpse of his foe.

Time – he could feel it, a silent rasp on his spine – passing, how dreadful, how glorious, to count it under his heartbeats like grains of sand in a gear, how long had it been? A night?

Not time enough for Laataazin’s bones to bleach. Their supplies to gather dust. Their potions. Large bottles of glowing red and blue and green, set carefully just below the plinth where the Black Book awaited. Closed, for now, but he could hear it whisper, could see Mora’s eyes on him through the susurrus of the pages. But the Prince did not reach out to reclaim his plaything, only watched.

Miraak could feel his oily laughter, could imagine the words that would drip from his wretched darkness, mourning how far his Champion had fallen – on his belly like a snake, hand over grim hand, straining towards Laataazin’s castoffs.

Not victorious, after all, but a strong name still for a worthy fight.

Never had a journey across a simple stone floor seemed so desperate and so humiliating. He crawled on the ground like a child, sweating profusely and unable to hold back his pained moans. Even his voice, his pain, sounded whispery and faint, barely an echo of its true self. It did not reverberate like it should, and the stone did not quake and tremble at its touch. He felt wrung out, limp, like a colourless ghost.

And Mora watched, watched. Miraak felt the eyes all over him, like ants. Or was it air? He felt every thread in his robes grating his skin like being dragged up the back of dragon. The fastest, bloodiest way to flay a man. Their scales could cut like diamonds. Only Miraak had made the euphemism ‘riding the dragon’ anything other than a painful death sentence.

He was the mightiest Dragon Priest that ever lived.

His shaking hands knocked the first potion over and it rolled out of his reach. The wetness on his face was warm as tears, sharp as acid. The blood and ink that wept from his watering eyes, his nose, that drowned the dragon’s scream in his ears, forbade that notion of ghostliness. No snowiness for Miraak, no, Apocrypha’s reek was all over him, dripped in him, made sodden and heavy as weights his robes.

The second bottle cooperated, but the cork wrestled with him a moment too long. That first sip stuck to his throat and teeth and tongue like paper. He hacked out some mulchy mess he didn’t bother to examine and managed two mouthfuls of crimson potion. Ancient nerves awoke protesting in his tongue – he could not tell what he tasted, only that it was foul, and thick, and felt like rot and ash.

His stomach’s revolt was instant. He knuckled his fist against his mouth, forcing the potion to stay down. But Miraak was already coughing around the first swallow, the second had him retching. Miserable bile stung his lips and splattered blue-green ink down his chin. Cold sweat sprung out on his forehead. Laataazin’s mask’s empty eyes watched him hauntingly.

Breathing dragged fishhooks through the soft tissue of his throat. To distract himself from the weak clenches of his exhausted stomach trying to empty itself, Miraak stared forbiddingly at the neat row of potions, scattered now by his clumsiness, and tried to memorise their colours. There were green ones, red ones. Blue ones. Sahrotaar, he thought dimly, the colour was like its scales. Where was he? The dragon had gone quiet. More colours than Miraak had seen in thousands of years. Of eras of human history he had been forced to read about, with no hand on Tamriel to rewrite the passage of events.

No longer.

A glint caught his weary eye, deeper red than the rest. Wine-red, rather than blood-red. The stony glimmer tantalised him, teased some exhausted part of Miraak that still craved to know. What secret was hidden here, among Laataazin’s healing potions? Miraak’s, now, by right of conquest, whatever it was.

The first person to speak to him in a thousand years, whose bones had held Miraak’s bleeding, unconscious body.

He retched again when he tried to move, but his stomach only cramped warningly around nothing. Miraak fumbled ungently through the stock of potions, his blurring eyes more hindrance than help. Eventually, he drew out a necklace, simple wood set with the ruby that had caught his eye, nothing more. Crudely-carved dragons squirmed around that red sun, chasing triangular shapes that might have been birds, and tattered feathers frayed around the cord. It was shoddy, no masterpiece to Miraak’s discerning eye.

Disappointment was sharp and quick, but chased quickly on the heel of intrigue as he sensed the enchantment that laid over the piece. A strong sacrifice had been made over this little scrap of wood and feather, so strong that it hummed and burned. But why waste such powerful enchantment on so fragile a material?

Wood burnt, and cracked, and rotted. Dragon Priests built in stone, for the servants of generations that would come after them and convince their master they had never died at all. No change, no loss, stubborn to time. Enduring, immortal, unfleshed.

It did not feel detrimental, so he looped it over his head. His, now. Laataazin was dead, and their world, their life, their soul, it was all Miraak’s, as it always should have been. The necklace itched like a secret, but he would decipher its enchantment. For now, it served as challenge and trophy both to Miraak’s strength. Such arrogance, from Laataazin, leaving behind even a scrap of power when they went to face their death.

The dragon shrieked, lower and louder. Miraak jerked, torn from his contemplation, and his back seized into a hard knot of painful muscle. Through watering eyes, he saw the long whipping neck, the flutelike snout, the leafblade tail – Relonikiv, craning shrilly towards dimness that swallowed the world twenty feet from Miraak in all directions. Relonikiv’s jade head dipped and danced, its yellow eyes ringed with apocryphal ooze that splattered the ground.

“Relonikiv,” he tried to say. It creaked out weakly. “Rel-“

It heard him that time, and Relonikiv’s cringing head dropped low to the ground, neck arched up like a snake, wings fluttering with anxiety. It groaned at Miraak, yellow eyes bright as lamps in the darkness, snarling teeth barrelled with putrid breath that warped and smoked the air of the darkness they shared.

He could not see what disturbed it, what horror above had it so transfixed, nor did he know why it did not simply fly to escape it. Relonikiv had not been brave when it had met Miraak, and the centuries hence had only sharpened its instinct to flee when faced with something it did not understand.

“Come,” he whispered to it, but Relonikiv cowered away with a low whine. Miraak hissed out a breath between his teeth. He had no patience for Relonikiv’s timidity today, not in this much pain. “What do you think I’ll do, fool? … Find me Sahrotaar. Relonikiv? Sahrotaar.”

Relonikiv blinked at him. It reared its head out of sight into the lumpy darkness, those dizzying swirls of venomous yellow leaving a glowing trail, like a sparkler through the night. There was the telltale snap of dragon jaws, and then Sahrotaar’s brassy, confused bellow as it was jerked abruptly from slumber. Miraak’s eyesight was blurry, and Sahrotaar’s great head rearing out of the darkness looked like nothing so much as a vast, terrible serpent. Relonikiv screamed back, and now the darkness was pierced by the dusty light coming from – somewhere, and four luminous dragon-eyes, moon-pale blue and acid yellow.

“What is this place?” Sahrotaar snarled, “I do not believe what my nose tells me.”

Relonikiv rustled its wings and snapped its jaws. It groaned again, quiet and low and distressed.

“Sahrotaar,” Miraak wheezed, and at once the blunt blue head was nudging at his side, Sahrotaar’s eyes already thoughtfully lidded, so that their soft glow was muted. Though Sahrotaar’s searching snout was gentle, the contact nearly knocked Miraak over, weak as he was.

“Thuri.”

“Up,” Miraak fumbled at the dragon’s nose with his uninjured – his less injured – hand, but thankfully, Sahrotaar understood his meaning swiftly. Sahrotaar nudged its nose underneath his arm and took Miraak’s weight with it as it carefully lifted him to his feet. He clung on to the fringe of webbed scales beneath its protruding jaw and tried very hard not to faint.

It took more effort than Miraak would ever admit.

The ridges of Sahrotaar’s scales felt harsh against his bared forehead. Miraak was aware of the lank locks of hair that fell across Sahrotaar’s snout as his own, the same way he knew that the hand that throbbed with blood and pain was his – distantly, without full recognition. He missed his mask. But the ink was still leaking out of him, his mouth, his eyes, his ears and nose, in irregular, acidic spurts that made him choke and his skin burn.

He could just see one crystalline blue eye, the colour of the bright ice of his homeland, watching him underneath the protective inner lid. Sahrotaar’s breath gusted his robes about his body, felt like standing in a tempest, though the ancient, soaked fabric barely stirred.

Miraak panted wetly against Sahrotaar’s head, spangles of pain jarring from his much-abused body with every breath, every second he forced his muscles to lock and his legs to bear a portion of his weight. Apocrypha had preserved him, so he knew his body was more than strong enough to stand tall, but theory had never felt so far from reality.

“Where is… where is Kruziikrel?”

Relonikiv uttered a mournful warble. Its wings pressed tight against its back, it sniffed at what Miraak had taken to be fallen rock, or some other masonry. Something heaped and grey, utterly still. But not dead, or else Miraak would have taken its soul, and likely feel far better than he did now.

“I smell blood, thuri,” Sahrotaar rumbled. Its voice jarred Miraak’s bones all the way up to the elbow, and he bit back a bitter curse of pain.

“Take me,” he commanded, and ignored how thin his voice was.

Sahrotaar helped him limp over to the prone form of Kruziikrel, who slumped like a dragon dead and bled steadily. Thin grooves had worn where it had lain as its acidic blood bit into the ancient stone. At first, Miraak mistook its neck for its mouth, several mouths, all open and staring red red tongue – then he understood that Kruziikrel had been grievously wounded indeed.

Ragged tears had ripped all the way up its neck to its shoulders, where now loose skin flapped like lips, scales peeled back like a gutted trout. As they got closer, Miraak could smell the blood himself, brittle and violent.

Miraak collapsed next to Kruziikrel. His slump against the dragon’s mostly-intact chest was graceless, but if Kruziikrel felt any pain it was not enough to jar it from slumber. Blood soaked his glove and stung his skin. Kruziikrel had covered their retreat, he ascertained – last through the portal, it had been the one to bear the brunt of Mora’s teeth.

Tracing one of the wounds, Miraak considered – briefly – the spell that had slain the Last Dragonborn. Kruziikrel was weak, but his soul was old and strong.

Relonikiv whined behind him. Miraak could feel Sahrotaar’s presence hunkered at his side, ice-bright eyes watching its master carefully. He felt, at once, the strength of Relonikiv where he was weak, the steadiness of Sahrotaar where he faltered. Some emotion touched Miraak then as he reached for the tired spring of magicka within him, something that was uncomfortable but hid from his examination. Thousands of years they had been his only companions in servitude, and yet, when he was weak and in pain, all his body told him was that each one had teeth longer than his forearm, and years to fester vengeance.

“Laas, Kruziikrel,” Miraak bade, and felt the dragon stir as his magicka reached it golden and bright.

It was the last light he saw.

---

Miraak snapped into awareness. His head throbbed. His chest felt like it was being crushed. He was paralysed. Miraak panicked. He was a prisoner – he was trapped – he was not alone. He could feel breathing, massive, muscular breathing, the whistling snore of a predator so much larger than he was. He could feel soul-shredding pain in his chest. His entire body felt shrunken and small, stuck as sandbags.

“Miraak,” a voice murmured. He knew that voice.

I killed you, Miraak wanted to shout, but his lips were stiff as marble. His heart thundered in his chest, and a cold sweat sprung out on his skin. The air felt wrong – weird. His body was limp, folded against something horribly soft. It was warm, wet. Like a corpse, Miraak thought wildly. Like Laat’s blood soaking his robes. Their body, soft and warm and still in his arms, eyes glossy, dark, dead.

Laataazin. Laat Dovahkiin. Niid, niid – hi los dilon. You are dead!

“Miraak,” Laat called again. Their voice was quiet as always, but close, as if they were standing right by his ear. He could feel the shivery vibrations of it across his skin. Could feel Laat’s wheeze in their voice, the gurgling of the blood they hadn’t managed to cough out in time to speak, before he killed them. “Do you feel mighty now, Miraak?”

Miraak screamed.

The piercing sound shocked him. He gasped suddenly for breath, choked on the vomit heaving out of his mouth. He tried to sit up, tried to roll, but his body was unresponsive and instead he panted between retches, feeling the warmth of his vomit trapped against his face against his chin, his neck, dripping into the neckline of his robes. It reeked of ink, the sour smell of sweat. His tongue was swollen and dry in his mouth, like a gag. The bile stung his lips, burned in two hundred small wounds that split his skin, dry as a draugr.

There was a collar of fire around his neck, blistering with the strength of the sun.

Shuddering sobs took over him after the worst of the retching passed. Tearless, dry, hurting more than it helped. The world rocked and spun underneath him, like he was in flight. Like he was falling. His hands wanted to twitch and curl into claws, wrinkle his robes – the robes, not Laat’s corpse, soft and warm – beneath his punishing grip. The agony of his destroyed hand almost failed to register.

Robes. Not books. Not bodies.

Tamriel. Miraak was free. He was floating somewhere above and below the word, like it dragged him in orbit. Someone was watching him. Mora. Mora was watching him.

He cried, made some horrible mix of sounds that made his aching gut cramp and groan. His body felt like a bruise. He had sweated through his robes, and his skin itched and ached, and everything was too loud, and he was free. So then, why did it feel like he was trapped?

Miraak’s head pulsed in time to his heartbeat, quivering and irregular. His mind felt swampy and confused, reality sliding away from him like softened soap whenever he tried to grasp it. Twice, he commanded himself to move and rose all the way to his feet before he realised his body had not shifted an inch with a deep, internal tug that had his heart hammering in fear. Thrice, he tried to open his eyes, and saw only darkness. He had no eyes, his body told him, there was nothing to open. But he knew – he knew it lied…

Someone was watching him. He could feel its presence, tall and eternal, its greedy hands reaching to grasp him. To take him.

He could hear its breathing, deep and huge.

Mora?

Some part of Miraak knew, vaguely, that he was probably dying. Dehydration, if not shock. It had been so long since he had to worry about these things, but a body was only an animal, and it knew when it hurt. It shouldn’t be like this. The power of Laataazin’s soul should have been enough to sustain him until he could heal the wreck of his body.

Mora’s eyes were tangible as feathers brushing along his skin. Miraak was so cold. So hot. Each thought made his temples pound. And the world spun, spun, spun underneath him, and mocked his attempts to move and breathe. Even when he tried to lie still, there came the sharp, brutal yanks in his sternum, as if he was constantly floating free of his body, some animal part of him so desperate to move it wanted to scrape free of his unmoving flesh altogether.

Something cold and wet, rubbery and strong, licked over the back of his neck. It tickled the shell of his ear, dragging strokes of damp slime and slick ooze of oil. Miraak’s thick tongue stopped his scream. Mora? Mora?! The Prince’s gaze pierced his skin like needles, saw the fetid creature within. Saw him struggling, panicking, against a limp form that had become his new prison. There was never anywhere to hide from Mora’s allseeing eye.

He wanted to get up. He wanted to look over his shoulder. He wanted to check that there was no ghost, no Laataazin. He wanted to slap his hands against his ear, rip away the thing that teased there, flirting with the idea of squirming right the way down into his brain. It would hurt so much.

One final betrayal by Mora? Had the Prince done something? Freed him, just to watch him die slowly inches from three dragonsouls that could save him? … Was this always how it was going to end?

Miraak wanted to cry. Shame warred with his terror, his disgust for himself. How revolted the Miraak of centuries ago, bold and proud in his prime, would be by this shivering, fearful wreck that had stolen his name. And where was Sahrotaar, Relonikiv, Kruziikrel? The repositories of power where Miraak might steal a few more heartbeats of life… He could feel them, the pulse of their souls, not far from him, but they might as well have been far as sundered Atmora for all he could reach them.

He thought about water. About the endless seas of ink that ebbed and flowed within Apocrypha. Thought about wrenching his mask off and gulping desperate, some critical creature inside him so fearful of thirst that he’d taken Mora’s bitter sap willingly down his throat, the Prince’s deep laughter and the solicitous curl of the tentacles that had pulled Miraak’s seizing body from the inky waters. He tried to remember what it was like to cup his hands in pure sweet lakewater, good to drink and fresh, but the memory was faded and grey – more like an awareness it was something he must have done at least once than it was personal.

He thought about water, and he thought about moving, and he thought about dying.

Sounds brushed by, and when he heard the cultists, he thought at first it was another trick of his mind. Their voices were varied and muttering, scuffed by their robes and the wet slap of bare feet on stone. Creaking hinges, rasp of wood-bristles.

“-hearing things,” he heard – his mind parsed the language vaguely, understanding it more as a dreamlike awareness than any cognisance – “I am not of course you are. Temple sealed shrine. Dream-demons … You see demons everywhere. They are everywhere. I was in Vvardenfell … dreamwoken and then slain Blight ash – Lord – how would a dragon get underground, then, you damn fool?”

“Well, it could not be that, sounds like a squealing netch,” there were two voices, Miraak suddenly ascertained, and they were speaking Dunmeris. Did he speak Dunmeris? He must.

“Or a cliff racer,” the other intoned dourly. “They nest in caves.”

“Blessed Jiub, I hope not,” came the reply, then, “Help me with this buggering door.”

The ancient iron doors had been sealed for a long time – longer than Miraak could remember, in fact. They shrieked awfully, ground like glass over the stone. A growl, deep as rocks muttering under the weight of waterfalls. A dragon. Restless, dream-slunk, exhausted. Reflexive.

“… fucking heard that!?”

“What …” A flurry of words that were too quick to grasp. “- heal! I think it’s…”

Something wrenched his shoulder in a fierce grip. Miraak’s body moved limply under the touch, and he heard a sudden clatter – a lamp, perhaps a blade. An icy touch on his neck, fingers, fingers – someone was touching him and he couldn’t see who –

“-still alive, go-!”

The hand on him moving then – silence –

“… Master?”

Chapter Text

“Easy now,” the healer, Soskro, murmured, “Easy. Your body has had quite the shock.”

“Hmm,” another voice came, gravelly, rough with ash. “Just patch me up. I need to get back to guarding the temple doors. I don’t trust that those troublemakers have gone.”

Flame-soft light greeted Miraak’s eyes. It rippled warm orange over the curtains that had been pulled around his bed. A bed? It was warm against his body and held him like an embrace, like Mora had decided to dangle him over the ink-dark seas long enough that Miraak’s body heat started to warm the perpetually tepid rubberiness of his tentacles. There were no beds in Apocrypha, nor curtains, and vague notions of some distant past-dream warred with what Miraak knew – the only fabric was the ragged tatters of the seeker’s cloaks. A similar papery colour, these cloaks that wrapped around the world, but they had dried out, and there were no stains.

The healer and the patient were shadow puppets against the light, their bodies licked with slow-moving, peaceful tentacles that swayed back and forth like the sigh of the waves on the shore. Like the remote figures of lurkers, small as a scale on his gauntlet from the vantage point of his high tower, the bubbles they blew in the ink as they idled.

Miraak’s face itched, but gently, as if it was far away. His ear ached a little, as if he’d been laying on it for a very long time. His mask felt odd on one side, soft instead of hard, and the eyeslits were wider, he thought. All the added peripheral vision made him feel dizzy.

He wanted to close them, but he could not figure out how. Instead, he watched the flutter of the curtains in the soft breeze and felt the salt from the distant sea in his throat. The world seemed to inch past in honey-thick grains, each second languid, lugubrious, elongated as an endless rest among the murmuring pages wrapped in tame dragonwings. He did not need sleep, did not ever fully slip into the dark comfort of Vaermina’s realm, but it was… meditative, in a sense, to leave only one ear open for threats, and simply lie quietly for a time.

Sahrotaar was the best to sleep on if Mora did not have him within his curling knot of oil-dark tendrils, even though Sahrotaar was always a placid room temperature. Its scales were smooth and soft, circular, made for slipping like a knife between the skin of the water, and its finned wings would curl round Miraak with the most care, like he was a sea-pearl in the heart of a clam. The bones in Sahrotaar’s wings still jabbed him, and Sahrotaar would insist on sliding its big snout into the pocket of space it had made between its wings and its body, filling it all with the subtle reek of old fish and ink, but it was better than nesting among the ripped pages of books.

Miraak wondered where Sahrotaar was.

“Mirdein, you have a spear hole in your leg the size of a drake,” Soskro said with the firmness of an argument often repeated, “You’ll sit here til I tell you.”

Mirdein grunted. “Yes, muthsera.”

Miraak breathed on his own now, without the tube down his throat and blurry white mask-faces manning bellows to manually pump his lungs for him. The huffing of the bellows had marked his days in and out of silence, and though something had always felt faintly wrong, Miraak could sense the presence of another close by – one of his dragons, surely, keeping watch against the lurkers – that occasionally pressed into him with tender magics that made his muscles unknot and his body loose and limp. Reassuringly, it still hurt, and the insistent feeling of violation and vulnerability was soothing in its familiarity. Perhaps Mora was feeding him again, or taking from him, and that was why Soskro was there, solid as never before when they’d met in dreams, spoonfeeding him potions that left his mind dreamy.

Soskro had seemed proud when Miraak could breathe all by himself. He focused on it, sucking air into himself until he felt buoyant as a balloon, ready to drift away. Fly, all by himself, in windless Apocrypha, with no dragonwings to hold him up.

“Don’t be smart with me, wife.”

The gentle tones of Restoration magic chimed like the ringing of bells to call the priests to evensongs, and Miraak floated in the sense-memory and wondered vaguely if anyone would be mad if he didn’t go, because he didn’t think he had a mouth anymore, and he thought that was good for singing. He had eyes, more eye than he was used to – had there always been so much to see, to the left of him? – but dim memory told him that he didn’t need to see. Mora would be there, to see for him, see in him, see to him, and his voice oily-smooth would tell him what he needed to do.

The curtains were glowing faintly. He wondered if they were supposed to. It looked like dragonfire caught in glass, like the scales of a fire-drake steaming where it lay in the snow. Dragon eyes and dragon names slipped foglike through his memory, and though he tried to shape the words of forgiveness for forgetting the name of the beast whose hide watched him through the curtains, his tongue was busy holding in all his air.

“I need you alive,” Soskro continued, “not dead on the end of some Skaal blade.”

“It was just a training accident,” said Mirdein, dismissively. “Sulis got too close. Nothing serious.”

“Serious enough for you to be stabbed! Since when did training get so violent?” Soskro’s voice was loud. Miraak thought he might sing to calm the tensions so no one would get bitten or eaten, but there was no space around all the air in him.

“Tensions are rising, Soskro! No one likes being sealed in the temple and you know there’s been accusations-“

His vision was going grey at the edges. Miraak released all his breath in a wheezing exhale. The voices went quiet. He mourned them. Mora so rarely put on different voices to catch Miraak out anymore and send him hurtling down book-strewn paths chasing echoes of memories. It had been one of the games they played. Mora had laughed at it, but Miraak did not remember laughing.

He did not remember most things, these days.

“Is he awake?” Mirdein asked, eventually, and Soskro sighed.

“Higher than a netch in a skooma-barrel, but yes, I think so. He’s staying awake most of the time now, can’t get much out of him but nonsense and odd words, but I think he’s more or less lucid. Taking him off the illusions helped.”

The shadow puppets moved, and then the curtains parted like a wound. Furrowed brows like the iron trellises of Apocrypha’s bridges stared down at him, then a broad-shouldered shape nudged into the curtained off section where Miraak nested. Another shape on its heels, merging together and apart, then Soskro appeared like magic and pushed Mirdein into a chair.

“Serjo.” The voice of Mirdein was back, but closer now. Rough, and warm, like the scratch of Kruziikrel’s sleepy mumbles when Miraak stole a moment of rest on his flame-hot throat. There was a bandage wrapped around her thigh at Miraak’s eye-level, a bloody spot the size of a coin already soaking through. Mirdein was a big woman, big enough to make the chair creak when she leaned forward to get a good look at him.

Some impression that something was wrong tickled him, and his face began to itch unbearably. He tried to lift his hand to scratch it, but his arm was tied to his side, his hand immobilised in a thick swathe of bandages. While Miraak puzzled that out, Soskro leant into his vision and smiled at him.

Red, red eyes, like Laataazin’s blood over his hands, these elves had. He thought they were elves. Soskro’s left hand was golden, and clicked and whirred softly when moved, and Miraak knew that it felt cold and hard, like things that touched his face were supposed to. He did not move away when Soskro’s thin metal fingers touched his cheek.

“Here, Lord,” said Soskro, and then lightly draped a gentle kerchief of silk over his face. The itching soothed immediately, and Miraak sighed against the coolness on his skin. It was the wrong weight – he did not know how he knew, but he knew it was wrong – but it felt more right than before. More right than Mirdein looking at him.

Mirdein exhaled slowly. There was a weight in the shadow of her shape through the silk, a slump of tired shoulders.

“Have faith,” said Soskro, quietly, “He will recover when he recovers. We will hold out.”

“I am patient,” said Mirdein, dourly, but then her voice softened.  “I – and my men – will keep you safe, serjo. Do not fear for my loyalty.”

“Geh, aam-hi,” Miraak heard himself say, as if through a very long tunnel. Yes, you serve me. The world shivered in response, and for a brief moment, he thought he heard the lonely cry of a dragon. Soskro’s soft intake of breath was one of awe.

Mora’s tentacles kissed Miraak’s nose on the inside of the silk kerchief, pulsed dizzyingly in his vision when Mirdein spoke again, firm as bedrock, “As you say, serjo.”

---

Frea clung to a jutting rock not far from the Tree Stone and squinted through the blinding snowfall. She had been crouched in the lee of the rock for some time now and her furs were dusted with snow, until she looked like nothing so much as a sleeping wolf taking refuge from the bitter winds.

Once, the animals had lived in the old ruin beyond the boneyard, wolfcubs whelping in the ancient rooms and birds nesting in the crumbling walls. There had been people, there had always been people in the temple, but only three or four at most, wary of outsiders but content to leave the Skaal well enough alone. As the Skaal had been happy to leave them; the cult of the Traitor could have their dusty ruin hidden behind the heaped skeletons of dragons fused together by time and the interminable movements of ice, no Skaal wanted to go near that wretched place. If the All-Maker did not move to kill them, it was certainly no business of the Skaal.

Of them all, only Frea had ever ventured inside. With the Last Dragonborn at her side, they’d carved a path through the temple with might and strength, to uncover the truth behind the disappearance of Frea’s people. The Traitor’s mind-snare was broken at the Tree Stone and the Skaal freed the night Laataazin had returned to read Herma Mora’s dark Book and confront Miraak – but the animals still had not returned to the temple, and Frea wanted to know why.

Frea pressed a far-seer to her eye and peered through it, hoping to catch a glimpse of swishing robes or patched armour along the top steps. Be they brigands, mostly, and honourless thieves, the cult of Miraak had grown hugely during the domination of the Stones. Yet, there was no sign of them, not even fat-bellied wolves slinking to their dens, or vultures drawn to the fresh carrion. Skorn had once cautioned the Skaal to stay away from the cultists and their dark magics, but Skorn was dead now to Herma Mora, and the burden of nurturing the Skaal’s spiritual connection to their land – and defending it – was Frea’s to shoulder.

And so Frea watched, and Frea waited, and the temple remained quiet.

Better that silence than the one in her father’s hall. The village was alive again, if weary and battered from months of gruelling work without their minds, and everyone felt Skorn’s loss deeply as their own wound. Their eyes were sunken when they looked at Frea for guidance, their hands thin and chapped with rough work when they touched her forehead, and though their hearts still were steady, Frea felt their grief and pain both as a stab of guilt to her own. Skorn would have served the Skaal better, but Frea did not know how to fix their nightmares for them or the days they had slaved that had been stolen from them, and though she could make tinctures for the rasping cough Oslaf had developed since a winter night at the Tree Stone she could not bring back the child that had died that night beside him, whose frozen body was found there still clutching his father’s leg.  

Frea burned at the injustice of it. There was no guidance she could find meditating with the chants her father had taught her, well-worn as river stones in her mouth, no peace in trying to discern the will of the All-Maker in the dead that slept beneath the icy ground, but there was the fire of hatred in her heart, and that warmed her as she lay in the snow. Vengeance and safety in the knowledge that the temple was watched, and whatever scourge remained within unable to steal like shadows in the night to rob the minds of her people, she could bring the Skaal, if nothing else.

She dropped the far-seer to root in her belt for a pouch of cold-staying berries, her mitts awkward on the ties. Bags and bags of these she’d gone through travelling with Laataazin Dragonborn, whose southern blood chilled easily, and whose joints were worn with age and battle. It felt almost wrong to eat them by herself now, the tartness breaking on her tongue like a memory. But Frea was a practical person, and sentiment would not stop her freezing to death.

A shadow swept over the snow, and Frea blinked. A bird – perhaps, but no bird was so large – she fumbled with the far-seer, and jammed it to her eye just as the dragon passed over the temple of Miraak.

It was a frost one, it had to be, to fly so high, so fast, through the snow that Frea had not even heard the thunder of its wings. Laataazin had told her there were many different types of dragons, that they each favoured elements but it was best to assume all could flame and frost. Frea had seen them fight a dragon once, gripping her weapon tightly as she guarded the idle mage Neloth at Nchardak. Her heart had been in her throat as Laataazin taunted the great beast, evading its snarling and snapping jaws as it crowed slavishly about its master Miraak, and finally sent it to howling retreat with a final, bone-shattering blow to its leg.

The dragon circled over the temple, its head ducked like it was hunting for prey. It held something in its claws, she thought, for its right leg was oddly extended, not tucked close against its spiney body like the left. Unless – was this the same creature that Laataazin had chased off at Nchardak? It could not be. Had it returned to search the remains of the temple for its master?

Suddenly, from the temple another dragon rose on flapping wings, interrupting the lazy flight of the Nchardak dragon. This one was easier to see against the snow, the colour of a burnished ruby, and it spat fire a ship-length in front of it that the Nchardak dragon had to hastily dodge or risk charring. The two dragons circled each other, exchanging snapping forays too quickly for Frea to keep up with through her far-seer. They did not breathe flame or frost at each other, or clash fully, but instead danced around each other in the way Frea had seen wolves of the same pack play-fight – if a thousand times more deadly.

They tussled there in the sky for a while, but after a certain development that Frea could not spot from her position huddled in the snow some agreement was evidently reached, and the Nchardak dragon tucked its wings and dove into the darkness of the temple, presumably to land. As if flushed out like a hen from the sudden appearance of a fox, a third dragon, jade-green all over, rocketed out from the temple walls with a bitter screech. It was a horrible noise, and Frea’s far-seer tumbled from her hand as she hunched to protect her ears.

The screech cut off, suddenly, and through streaming eyes Frea squinted to see the two dragons left in the sky descending together, their blurry shapes quickly swallowed by the snow. Three dragons, solitary beasts one and all, roosting together in the temple, and one of them Frea knew had been loyal to Miraak once.

Tucking the far-seer back into her pocket, Frea rose stiffly, but cautiously, and crept away from the hollow she had made. She kept low until she reached the wooded line of the trees, then straightened, casting a last, perturbed look over her shoulder. Farani Strong-Voice would want to hear of this.

Chapter Text

A meeting was called to discuss Frea’s findings. Frea spent the interim hours between her return and the gathering of the Skaal kneeling tensely before her father’s shrine. She stared with eyes that stung and burned but did not water at the carvings Skorn had worked into wood with his own hands – the bears that chased the tumbling snow-foxes, the evergreen leaves and feathers of hunting hawks. A whole world cavorted across the knots and grains of the wood, a whole world that, frozen forever, did not know Skorn was dead.

The smoke from the sputtering candles spat and hissed over the fatty tallow. Last year’s rendering, stinking up the village with the vast cauldrons bubbling away, had produced squat, greasy candles. Too much moisture. It had been a hot year, and the snow had fallen as rain, miring the mountain paths thick with mud. Skorn had sent Frea on a long trip to pray at the Sun Stone for the will of the All-Maker. She remembered that spring, sweating under her furs as she struggled triumphantly back up the path to the village to his smiling approval. She had been proud, back then, to be trusted with such a task alone.

The movements of the village outside were only a wooden wall away. She could hear the crunch of boots through the snow, the metallic bang-bang-bang of Edla driving nails into her leaking roof, the murmur of voices rough and warm and familiar. Coughing, too, a nasty wet gurgle as Oslaf fought the winter in his lungs, and Aeta’s giggles as she played a throwing-sticks game. Inside the dimness of her hut, the furs of her hood fluttered against her cheek with each harsh exhale close to a sob. The stiffness of her knees was distracting, but not enough to cloak the hollowness that dogged her like a ghost.

“Father,” she prayed. “All-Maker, guide me. I know not what we should do.”

She closed her eyes and tears sprung then, like they had been lying in wait. Warm and wet, they rolled down her cheeks like a compassionate hand. The All-Maker’s touch, like that day at the Sun Stone, as if the clouds had parted to shine brightly on her perspiring forehead.

If it had been any other, Frea would have counselled them to look to their faith, reminded them that all things ended eventually. That although her father was dead, his strength lived on in her, in the house he had maintained, the forests he had kept watch over, the people he had loved. The Skaal who were dead had never died so long as their loved ones still drew breath against the harshness of the winter, but when one suffered, they all carried the pain in their breast. They were interconnected, not just because of their way of life, but because of their reverence of the All-Maker, and the great breathing of the world they lived in. A shaman’s duty was to learn to listen to that heartbeat – but it was difficult, so difficult, when hers was wounded.

Still, there was some comfort to be found in the familiar motions of prayer and tending the shrine, and when Frea had cried herself out the weight on her heart had not gone, but it did feel less heavy. The shadows of the snow-foxes dancing in the light of the candles made her smile, genuine, if watery.

She sat up and wiped away the salt crusted on her cheeks, and as she did a silver glinting caught her eye. It was the Dragonborn’s warhammer leaning against the wall, dented and scratched from breaking the skulls of dragons, but still shining fiercely with the foe-slaying enchantments wrought within its steel. Beside the shrine, the warlike artefact radiated a cold kind of violence that felt unfamiliar and icy to Frea’s hands. This was not of the earth of Solstheim, and it had bathed deeply and well in the blood of Laataazin’s enemies. There was a certain weight to an object that had been wielded by a person of great power, to an object that could only be a killing weapon. Edla could not fix her roof with a hammer this large and heavy, and no quick hunter’s kill could be slit with its warped claw, polished with a deadly gleam that spoke of how many eyesockets it had been driven through.

She took it, her spine popping as she stretched, and felt the unfamiliar weight of the mighty hammer strain her shoulders. She remembered that steel shine reflecting the uncanny brown-red of Laataazin’s deep and worn eyes when they had pressed the heavy haft into Frea’s hands and bade Frea use it to protect her people.

“Do not fail,” Frea had said to them, and Laataazin clapped their fist to their chest and promised to return. Frea had trusted them, then, but she did not know what to think when dragons flocked in the sky like carrion crows above Miraak’s temple.

Surely, if Laataazin had returned triumphant, they would have slain the wyrms. It hurt Frea to think of Laataazin avoiding returning to the Skaal, made guilt needle at her heart. She had been curt with them, at the end, her father’s blood still wet on their hands. Perhaps Frea was the reason that the Dragonborn had not returned. Perhaps the warhammer was farewell, as much it was guardian.

Her knees popped as she stood, protesting the extra weight of the warhammer that Frea slung over her back. Frea imagined that her steps were heavier and louder with the Dragonborn’s gift shadowing her shoulder, as Laataazin’s had been, thunderous and world-changing.

Frea could not hunt a dragon alone, and send it scurrying into the sky with a few bone-shattering blows. But Frea could take the Dragonborn’s example and their gift, and use it to protect her people. After all, she was not alone. The whole of the Skaal were with her, and the All-Maker, and her father’s memory.

The sky was dark when she emerged, lit by the flickering sparks of the firelight. The meeting of the Skaal was already in full swing, but all hushed conversation stopped when Frea entered Farani’s hall, eyes drawn to the fearsome warhammer over her shoulder. They were all there, the adults of the village young and old, Frea’s family well-worn and familiar as the grooves generations of feet had polished into the floorboards of Farani’s hall. There was night-bread roasting on the fire, filling the hall with its yeasty scent. Fresh-faced Nikulas, flushed in the fire’s warmth, was nibbling on a spare twizzler of chewy bread. He started guiltily when Frea’s gaze swept across them and met his, as if he feared briefly being sent back to the house with his supper like a naughty child.

They all recognised the warhammer, of course they did. There had been no one like Laataazin Dragonborn on the whole of Solstheim, and though their energy was dark and their path had strayed far from the All-Maker, they had led them to free the Skaal with this very hammer. Yet still, Frea saw surprise and unease on their firelit faces like a wall of stones across the path.

“Frea,” said Farani, “Come, join us.” She made no mention of Frea’s lateness or Laataazin’s warhammer, though her sharp eyes lingered on the shadow it cast over Frea’s cheek. Or perhaps, the still visible smears of redness around her eyes from her grief.

Morwen made space between herself and Baldor, who grunted shortly. He was armed too, with a sword the pommel of which jabbed her ribs when she squeezed in next to him. Frea was jammed between two heavy bodies with her toes pointing towards the fire, yet all her body could muster was a persistent, creeping chill. The warhammer’s weight wanted to bow her spine, and it was an effort to keep her posture straight and commanding under that and the expectant silence of the Skaal both.

“Chief.”

“You have all heard the shaman’s news,” said Farani, looking over them steadily. The beads in her braided hair gleamed dully.

The shadows of the fire darkened the wrinkles on her face, like they were a bas-relief from the rubbings the lowlander scholar Tharstan would take around the old temple ruins, streaky charcoal images of fearsome serpents and writhing wyrms, and the monstrous men that served them. To Tharstan, a wonderful story, to the Skaal, a grim warning. They had always known the Traitor’s trickeries were not yet done. Had not they fended off the gloam-eyed seekers of Herma Mora for generations, ordinary people who had been stolen from themselves, bleeding tell-tale ink over Skaal blade and Skaal wit?

“Dragons,” grunted Deor. Beside him, his wife Yrsa worked quietly on a torn shirt. He held the string and tugged free more when she reached the end of her row. “We have all heard tale of them, by now. Do we call council for every grizzly that ponders the strength of our walls? They are no business of ours, so long as they stay their claws.”

Frea’s heart sank, as a chorus of muttered agreement followed the woodcutter’s words. The Skaal, though uneasy, were a wounded people. They were no more eager to rush into another battle than they were to acknowledge one was happening. She wanted to rail at them – look, look, there are the signs, this is not over! But she could not blame them. Frea did not want to believe it was not over, though her heart knew it, with every grief-slung beat.

“He speaks true,” said Wulf. The scar that bisected his eye seemed to frown in the low light. “There is no wisdom in borrowing trouble we need not. Let the wyrms nest together in the accursed temple. They will move on shortly enough, there is not food enough for them all here.”

“Dragons don’t need to eat,” Frea said softly. Silence when she spoke, and she tried to catch Deor’s eye. He avoided her stare, his lips disappearing under the bush of his beard. Dismayed, she cried, “You cannot seriously think this means nothing at all! The Dragonborn spoke to me of more dragon-lore than any of you, and they do not flock together, not unless someone makes them! Is a dragon a dog, to be turned out when he steals from the table? If we do not act –“

“Frea.” Farani spoke strongly, and Frea flushed as she realised her voice had been growing louder.

“Chief,” said Morwen, glancing at Farani. Farani, suddenly appearing very tired, gestured for her to speak. Morwen addressed the fire, but none struggled to hear her words, intensely as she spoke them. “A sleeping trap is still a trap. Frea’s right. For now, they don’t seem interested in us. You want to bet on that continuing? No – take a party and hunt them. We drive them out, make sure that temple is properly empty.”

“To kill unnecessarily is not our way,” said Wulf, sternly, only belatedly glancing back at Farani for permission to speak. Morwen’s anger was sudden and bright, but she held her tongue at Farani’s gesture. Newcomer to the Skaal she was not any longer, but she took personally still any accusation that she was less a Skaal than any of them.

“I, for one, wouldn’t mind knowing if that foul magic is gone from the temple,” Oslaf muttered. “Are we still in danger of losing our minds to the Stones or what?”

As one, the Skaal looked to Frea. The weight of the warhammer on her back seemed to triple, until Frea had to lean forward onto her elbows to offset it. The bones of her elbows dug into the meat of her thighs painfully; she had lost weight. Her heart was almost as heavy as the hammer when she said, “I have not sensed direct manipulation of the temple or the Tree Stone since…”

She trailed off, a dozen ends to that sentence popping up in her mind. Since this all began, since I watched my father die, since my friend disappeared, since you all started to look to me.

Thankfully, Farani nodded, not needing her to specify. “So, the Traitor’s whispers appear, for now, to have stopped?”

“Here,” said Frea, helplessly. “We can all see that it has. I cannot tell what is happening in the rest of Solstheim. My connection to the land has been … challenged, of late.”

Someone snorted, and Frea white-knuckled her fists, and did not look up. She did not want to see which of her people had laughed at her pain, even as the meaty sound of an elbow jabbing into ribs assured her she was not alone in that grief that made it hard to hear the song of the All-Maker’s peace.

“Wait,” said Tharstan, slowly. Frea was surprised to see the scholar at the council, but she supposed in a question of dragons his collected lore about their history might have been deemed useful. “Direct manipulation? Does that mean …”

“It’s not gone?” Oslaf interrupted, in alarm. “Whatever he did to the Stones-?”

“It’s not,” Frea confirmed. “The energy the efforts of our stolen people raised there is aimless, since the Dragonborn destroyed his direct hold, but it has not yet dispersed back into the ground. I do not know why.”

Farani raised a hand to pre-emptively quell the storm that arose, and when whispers surged irrespective of her gesture she commanded, “Quiet!”

The echoes died loudly against the walls, hushing the Skaal, and proving the aptness of Farani Strong-Voice’s name. In the silence that fell, still as summer-woods, she sighed. “You said you recognised one of the dragons, shaman.”

“Yes,” said Frea. The use of her father’s title – now hers – subdued her. “It served Miraak. I was there when Laataazin drove it off.”

Farani closed her eyes, as if Frea had driven a dagger into her heart. “You suspect the Dragonborn failed.”

That caused a riot of questions and accusations, and through it Frea stared at the chieftain and felt something inside her freeze brittle-sharp. It cracked when she took in her next breath, and each thump of her heart felt as if it bounded against a thorny cage of icicles lodged in the muscle. Her hands shook when she clasped them in her lap.

Frea had not suspected, not truly, but now in Farani’s voice it seemed so much more real a possibility. But the Dragonborn – dead, and Miraak freed? No god would let that come to pass, Frea knew that. And if the Traitor had survived, the temple would not be quiet. The end would come upon them as swift as dragon’s wing.

“I do not know that,” Frea said quietly, but no one was listening.

“-go to the temple and find the fetchers,” Morwen was saying loudly, to the enthusiastic agreement of Oslaf, much to the irritation of Wulf, whose cheeks had bloomed a choleric red.

Finna, sat across from Frea in the circle, tossed the contents of her tankard onto the fire. It exploded in a fountain of sparks, and the rich reek of Skaal mead billowed up in the smoke.

“For the love of the All-Maker,” she snapped across the din, “You will wake the children with all this noise.”

“Settle, hear me speak,” said Farani, and the Skaal turned to their chieftain for her verdict.

“I agree that the time is not right to provoke the beasts by attacking the temple,” she said, and when Morwen opened her mouth angrily she continued, with a sharp look, “But nor do I conscience doing nothing. It concerns me that we know not what happened to the foe’s work upon the rest of the Stones. I would ask of you to go from the village and find the answers that elude us here.”

“I will go,” Frea said immediately. “I have been travelled the land most recently, and I am best suited to know if something remains amiss with the All-Stones.”

Farani inclined her head, but before she could speak, Baldor broke in. “Forgive me, chief,” he said, in his gruff voice like the creak of his own forge from disuse. He had been quieter, ever since his capture and subsequent escape from the sun-elves in their black and gold, and he had never been a garrulous man to begin with. “But you hold our wisdom, lass. If you don’t come back…”

“We can’t lose you!” Yrsa gasped, and her hand dropped swiftly to her belly with a clack of her needles.

“You will need to defend the village,” Frea met her eyes, reassuringly. “In case the dragons do attack.”

“Aye,” sighed Farani. With the formation of a plan beginning, the Skaal began to relax, and the tense atmosphere was slowly dissipating. Morwen grumpily tore off some of the roasting nightbread and stuffed it in her mouth. Inadvertently, Frea’s stomach clenched at the warm, homely smell. She had not eaten. “But that does not mean you should go alone, shaman.”

“Um.” It was Nikulas. He looked mortified at the attention of the chief, but though he fidgeted he spoke clearly, as a Skaal should. “I’ll go with her.”

“You’re a child,” said Edla, dismissively, and Nikulas blushed.

“I’m here, aren’t I?” he demanded, “And I can fight. I’m fast. Faster than any of you.”

“That much is true,” said Wulf, with a belly-laugh that made his shoulders shake. “Lad has the step of a hare.”

“And the shot of one,” added Morwen, to the warm amusement of the gathering.

“He may go,” said Farani, acknowledging Nikulas’ surprised thanks with a smile, then to Frea, “Well?”

“We will take supplies for two weeks’ travel,” she said, “If we are not returned by then…”

“Aye,” said Farani Strong-Voice. “All-Maker be with you both.”

---

Morning found Frea on the road as promised. Her pack was full, her armour donned, and her eyes tired, glazed from another sleepless night in her empty house. Her father’s dust-gathering bed haunted her with its silence, and she almost looked forward to unrolling the bedroll tucked tightly next to the threatening spire of Laataazin’s warhammer over the snowfields that wound their way like a great white skirt around the lower flanks of the mountains that night.

Nikulas trotted along behind her, far too eager for the morning’s earliness and the grimness of their quest. He veritably bounced along on the safe path to the Tree Stone, and Frea could feel his excited energy like a geyser’s spin behind her back. Thankfully, he knew to keep quiet as they skirted the Tree Stone with a wide berth, creeping low to the ground like thieves in case the dragons were about. Frea saw no shapes in the sky, but not three meters from the Stone they found a fallen tree.

It had been shredded as if by vast claws larger than Frea’s entire body, and each cut was clean as if a hot knife through butter. The bark was charred, and when Frea laid a hand on it, it was disturbingly warm. Recent, but the dragon who had done it had been quiet enough that no sentries had spotted it. Or long-burning, perhaps. Worst of all, one end of the tree looked as if it had been gnawed by mighty teeth – and was covered in peeling, vinegary splatters that Frea did not have to examine to know were ink. Herma-Mora’s poison in dragon jaws. That was no good sign.

She and Nikulas exchanged a look over the smoking tree. He had paled under his hood, and for a moment, Frea considered sending him back to the village. But she had no hope of changing Farani’s mind without word from the other Stones, and though he was clearly alarmed, he was too young and stubborn to go without a fight this close to home.

Against her better judgement, they pressed on, and made good time away from the temple of Miraak and the creatures that hid in its dark depths. They were climbing down one of the cliff paths that wound like snakes round the sheer mountainsides when he spoke up.

Frea was concentrating on where she was going, not wanting to fall in front of Nikulas, who, in the fashion of youth, was quick as a squirrel over the icy rocks. It had been some time since she had taken this path herself – it was faster, but it tested the nimbleness of even the most sure-footed of the Skaal. There was no way that she could have taken the Dragonborn, with their dizzying seizures and lowlander’s stride, down this path for Skaal mountain-bred.

“What were they like?” he asked her, and surprised, Frea overbalanced. She grunted, and planted her feet to keep from stumbling down the ragged path. A pebble rolled free and bounced down the rock face, and she grimaced at each dull thud and crack it made on its way down.

“Who?” she asked, though she already knew.

“The Dragonborn,” Nikulas clarified, impatiently.

Frea exhaled slowly and carefully edged her way round a protruding lump of ice. “A soldier,” she said, eventually, weighing the words in her mind, “with a great burden. Skaal-friend, perhaps, but no Skaal.”

Nikulas absorbed this, hopping lightly after Frea. A spray of gravel from his passage drummed against her boots.

“Do you think they’re coming back to help us again?” he said. When Frea remained quiet, he added in a boisterous tone she wasn’t sure which of them was meant to reassure, “We don’t need them, anyway.”

Frea said nothing. At her continued silence, Nikulas wilted. They didn’t speak again for a long time.

Their pace was steady though, and Nikulas was a helpful travel companion, pointing out quicker paths and steadier routes. He had a hunter’s eye, too, twice Frea saw his hand start to his bow before some creature she had not yet spotted bounded across their path. He spotted the figure first, too, as they made their way through the snowfields, thick with tumbled rocks and jagged sculptures of ice.

“Shaman,” he said, and touched her elbow. “Do you see…?”

He pointed, and Frea followed his gaze to see a dim outline, vaguely person-shaped, weaving drunkenly about on the path ahead.

“Hello?” Frea called, but there was no response. She frowned, thinking of how hypothermia could take a mind’s reasoning.

The figure lurched closer, and as it parted the thick mist her heartrate picked up. She knew these, had faced them before with the Dragonborn at her back. It moved oddly, like it was like clay instead of a person. It bent in the wrong places, too fluidly for a creature with human joints. What might have been flesh once was pushed up and shoved in random places, mounded as if it had been cast from a collapsed corpse and then got up from the floor that had cushioned it.

Its grey mouth opened and closed like a gasping fish caught in a paroxysm of once-life, and it hugged itself like a crying child. Ash flaked from it like shedding skin, so it left a little trail as it came towards them.

“What … is that?” Nikulas breathed, appalled.

He sounded sick. She didn’t blame him. The wretched creature made her nerves jangle, like breathing in poison-dust, and sweat spring out on her forehead. It was unnatural, tortured, undead. Frea grabbed for the Dragonborn’s warhammer. She was almost too revolted by it to pity it, but there was something in the way it began to reach for them, its clumpy fists wavering as a newborn’s, that cut her as much as it horrified her.

I’m sorry, she thought, all I can to is put you out of your misery.

“Ash-spawn,” she said. “Don’t let it hit you, they’re strong.”

It stumbled towards them, unsteadily, its eyeless head bored with two blank dark holes that had no tear ducts with which to weep. There was a red stone embedded in its chest, she could see its muted glow through the layers of ash and grime that made up its twisted body. It pulsed, like a heartbeat, but far too slowly.

She heard Nikulas rattle an arrow from his quiver. From the sound, she guessed his hands were shaking.

“We must put it down,” said Frea, remembering how Laataazin had tried for several hours to pacify one of the ‘spawn. It never worked for long. They were as relentless as waves on the shore. “Do it cleanly.”

“Aye,” gulped Nikulas.

Frea readied the warhammer, widening her stance to adjust to the weight of the cumbersome weapon. She had, just in case, her hand-axe tucked into her belt, but it felt right to use the gift Laataazin had left her. The hand-axe had always been helpful for scaling the sheer ice-cliffs, but Laataazin’s warhammer was that: a war weapon. Just the sight of it had made enemies quail in Laataazin’s powerful hands, in Frea’s, she hoped only that it might help her avoid a needless fight.

Nikulas nocked, drew, aimed – and missed. The arrow clattered off a rock, and Frea heard Nikulas swear, but the ash-spawn was on them.

Laataazin’s warhammer was easier to swing now, as if it hungered for violence.  Frea howled as she brought it over her head and crunched it down onto the ash-spawn’s shoulder. The ashy shell shattered inwards. Dust exploded, and Frea coughed as her eyes were stung with the bitter smoke that billowed from the ‘spawn’s wound. This close though, with a hammer like this, she didn’t need to be able to see to score a hit. Frea’s muscles burned as she swung the hammer back for another go, feeling her grin distorting her face as the lethal weight cannoned through the air. But before her swing could connect, Nikulas fumbled with his bow and shot again.

This time, his aim was perfect.

An arrow sprouted from the side of the ash-spawn’s face, and with a dusty groan it collapsed in on itself. With nothing to stop her momentum, Frea stumbled into the ashy remnants, accidentally kicking the strange stone that had been embedded in its chest far into the snow. She rolled her shoulders and slung the hammer back over her shoulder.

“Good shot,” said Frea, electing not to mention the first one.

Nikulas grinned; she could see his pride in his puffed chest. “Thanks.”

“I have not seen one this far north before,” she said, “Normally, they haunt the coast by the wizard’s tower, far away.”

“They are not common then?” Nikulas asked with bald relief, and Frea smiled.

“Not to my knowing, no.”

“Thank the All-Maker!”

Frea broke and chuckled. The sound was weak and strained, as if some part of Frea had forgotten how to make it at all, and died almost as quick as it came. But Nikulas beamed, and when they started walking again, the silence felt a little more companionable than before.

Raven Rock’s walls were visible through the drifting ashfall when they stopped for the night in a small Skaal-camp normally used for trading. Nikulas erected their tent in a rocky lee while Frea laid wards that would sing to her through the earth if any would pass into their little sanctuary. They lit no fire that night, warmed well by their exertion, and dined on snow melted in Frea’s fire-cupping palms and good food brought from the village. Nikulas spoke a little, but when Frea did not respond to his overtures he lapsed into thoughtful contemplation of the sky.

It was a mild night, the stars covered by soft clouds of ash that dusted down slowly. Hazy outlines of the double moons pierced the blanket of the warm, muted darkness that passed as night below the mountains.

“Soon,” he said to her, as she unbuckled her armour, “I will be the furthest from home I have ever been.”

Frea looked at him, the uncertainty in his brave, excited smile, and didn’t have the heart to tell him it did not grow any easier.

They jostled together in the single tent. Nikulas fit well in the circle of her arms, his scruffy hair tickling her nose when she breathed. He smelled of sweat and lye-soap and home. Frea closed her eyes and felt his warmth like a bittersweet balm. The tears were swift and silent, and she cried in gasping breaths for her empty house and her dead father, and the many Skaal who would never feel the warmth of a kinsman’s embrace again. Though Nikulas said nothing, he cautiously tightened his arm around her, and that was enough.

That night they slept curled together like pups, and for the first time in weeks, Frea’s rest was deep and dreamless.

Chapter Text

Focusing on steadying his breathing, Miraak refused to pass out. He sat on a litter of sturdy fabric lashed between two wooden poles, each carried by an acolyte. The irregular jerking of the litter was not nearly close enough to the bunching of a dragon’s flight muscles under the soles of his boots or the fluid bobbing Apocrypha’s many sodden jetties and piers to ease his sensitive stomach.

Soskro slipped ahead of the litter like an eel, steps sure on the uneven ground of the dark tunnel. Miraak’s view of him was impeded by the swarthy trunk of the acolyte who held the front bar of his litter, but periodically he would glance back to check on them, and the light he held in his metal hand spilled over the bone-white mask he wore like a dazzling beacon in the dark.

The magelight burned with a steady, cold blue light three paces from Soskro’s turned back, but to either side of the litter, darkness swallowed the rough stones. Miraak fought to not twitch at the shadows that leapt and snarled in his peripheral vision like living things when the light left them, but he was gritting his teeth so hard he tasted iron on his tongue. He knew the flickering shadows were only a quirk of the scars left from pickaxes when this uneven tunnel had been hewn from solid stone, but he swore he saw the wet gleam of eyes among them, beady benthic pupils fat and black like oozing slugs. Watching him, not intervening, not even greatly curious, just watching, like Miraak was a pet doing some new, unfathomable – yet ultimately irrelevant – trick.

Hidden in the sleeve of his robe, his uninjured right hand closed into a fist.

Nowhere to be seen was the smooth stonework of Atmoran construction, the proud arches and hidden back-tunnels lined by dozens of stern iron coffins that he had fled past into the bowels of the temple, Vahlok hot on his heels. The rugs had been soddened from melted ice and vein-sap, the air wretched with blistering arcane fire, and the world shook from the thunderous crash of spell-work and dragon roars. He had barely seen a pace in front of himself in that reckless charge into the abyss, but he thought he remembered the path he had taken down to where he had kept the Book; his final flight on Nirn. This claustrophobic little tunnel with its sloping rock floor was not it.

Had the temple truly changed so much, while he had been gone? Miraak was not even sure he could walk it without needing to hunch.

The oddly-proportioned, towering acolyte who carried the front of his litter certainly couldn’t. By name of Ulf, if Miraak recalled correctly. Vertebra straining visibly beneath the undyed cloth of his ill-fitting robes like tumbled boulders, Ulf’s round shoulders sloped forwards, his head tucked tight against his chest. He was surely taller than Miraak at full height, and only needed one hand to hold up the front of the litter. The large knuckles that stuck out from his sleeve were fringed with gingerish hair that put Miraak in mind of a bear’s paw, and his nails were cracked and bitten, the reddened flesh around them raw from constant picking.  

Ulf stumbled over a loose stone in the dark. The litter swung and nearly struck the wall; Miraak bit back a curse and his stomach both as he jerked out over the abyss for a brief, heart-stopping second. Reflexively, he tried to steady himself and his left hand brushed the stone. That was enough to have it explode into a busy throbbing, and he had to close his eyes to weather the sharp bright pain without groaning aloud.

Sensation was just … so much, outside Apocrypha.

“Sorry,” Ulf muttered, in his perpetually hurried, oddly desperate way. His big shoulders slumped even further; Miraak could feel it in how the litter tipped forward and gravity tugged at his tightly crossed knees.

Miraak pushed back with his boot heels down against the fabric as much as he dared. His gut ached tensely, threatening a violent reprisal either in vomit or the painful, involuntary voiding of his bowels. As if there had been any other kind, since he had first awoken in the temple and known himself. Soskro thought he would regain control in time, but Miraak wasn’t prepared to wait.

He clamped down on his muscles with iron will, ignoring the sweat breaking out on his forehead and the clammy chill on his cheeks. He was thankful for the darkness obscuring his irrepressible tremors of pain and the wounded way he held his left hand close against himself. It itched fiercely where it was cramped inside his borrowed glove, even with widening slits cut into the knuckles. Flashes of white bandages showed in the gaps in the leather, just like his bones had stuck out in the wrecked remains of his hand before Soskro had folded his flesh back together.

“Watch yourself,” Soskro snapped at Ulf, “Miraak-thuri, you are well?”

Miraak swallowed bitter bile; it burned all the way down his throat, but he felt only stark relief that his stomach had evidently chosen vomiting.

“Bo,” he barked, go, and the litter jerked as the acolytes quickly obeyed.

Already, he wanted nothing more than darkness and quiet, perfect solitude with which to rest his aching body and exhausted mind. But it was long past time to leave the infirmary.

Fortunately, they did not have much further to go before Soskro waved them to a stop, metal hand flashing warm bronze reflections up the wall. Smoother stonework, he was pleased to see, the small, curved bricks he was familiar with, coming to two arched doorways on either side. The magelight blinked out, as this room was lit by a central firepit in the shape of a carved draconic mouth. Fire licking over the toothless gums, the ominous brazier dominated the circular room, its hollow metal eyes squinted shut against the ashes in its throat. The pinched nostrils and scooping jaw remined Miraak somewhat of Sahrotaar, and he was hard-pressed to recall if these had been original in his time, or if the resemblance was simply that uncanny.

Not for the first time, he wondered whether Sahrotaar and the other dragons had been spared the indignity of recovery he had endured. He had heard Kruziikrel roar some time ago, and had taken no one’s soul, but he knew naught else of how they fared. This had taken precedence.

The brazier did its job well, the heat struck him like a wall as Mirdein and Ulf carried him into the room. He struggled to draw in a breath, for the sticky, wet air seared the insides of his cheeks and his tongue as if he’d Shouted fire one too many times. Sweat sprung out on his skin and the brightness needled his eyes through the slits in his mask. He heard some of the other acolytes murmuring in foreign, hushed voices at his entrance, but he made out only vague shapes, blurred by the tears streaming down his cheeks.

Abruptly, Miraak thought of battling the Last Dragonborn within Apocrypha. He had trapped them within a cloud of superheated mist much like this, blinding them by the strength of his fire. Wariness rewrote his experience of the dark procession from the infirmary; Soskro’s thin magelight became a ploy to dazzle him with the fire’s brightness, the circuitous route to befuddle his senses, the intense heat a trick to make him sluggish.

Weak.

Subtly, he called magic to his uninjured hand. It hurt like pissing on a waterless stomach, the flickers of shock magic stinging acidly in his bones. His body protested the use, his magical reserves a pathetic puddle compared to the raging ocean of normal. But it would be enough to startle, perhaps, enough time for Miraak to draw in a breath to Shout.

Once the litter had been placed down on the floor, tucked equidistant between the two archways, the shadow of the brazier’s ironworked throat fell over his eyes. With this faint reprieve, the dim waviness of the assembled acolytes resolved into individual figures, maybe a dozen of them, standing round silently with their faces veiled by the smoky light. He wasn’t sure where Soskro and Mirdein, the only ones he knew he would recognise, had slipped into the crowd, but Ulf was visible from height alone, looming back by the entrance like the sturdy, blocky shape of a guardian tomb.

He inhaled slowly through his teeth. It helped with the hot air, though his temples still pounded dully, and holding magic concealed in his palm sent jagged tooths of pain up into his elbow.

For the most part, all appeared to be wearing the same rough wool robes, over linen trousers belted with lengths of twine. Not all of them fit well; they were hand-me-downs, any dyes long since faded, with uncertain stitches meandering over the fraying hems and mismatched patches. Though their bodies were all different, most had a gaunt, harrowed look that the robes could not quite conceal, like the lost of Apocrypha, wiling away the fruit of their lives until their bodies collapsed from starvation and Seekers rose from the rags. Despite an obvious effort towards personal hygiene, a depressing smell hung about them. It was the dingy reek of tired bodies holing up in cramped quarters, and musty old clothes that had not been beaten clean in clear fresh air. Some even forwent shoes, though all had the same carved masks that Soskro wore, tucked insouciantly into their makeshift belts or obscuring their faces.

It was, all told, a disheartening display.

This was what he had to work with? A few quivering wraiths in homespun crouching in the ruins of the fallen monument of his greatness? This was what Vahlok’s propaganda, and a few thousand years of faithlessness from his people, had left him, Miraak, the strongest Dragonborn that had ever lived? It was a bitter pill. Long already had he raged over the injustice of being forgotten, of being wiped away, but it was no less galling to see the consequences in person.

He constrained his disappointment and shrugged it from his shoulders, dismissing the magic he had gathered. No matter, he was back now. Soon, the whole world would see, and Miraak would have his pick of all the followers he could desire. Besides, they had proven themselves sensitive to his whisperings from Oblivion and loyal, to endure through such conditions. Now began the long path to their rewards.

Graciously, he waved his hand, permitting them to seat themselves. He had seen one or two of the skinnier ones tremble, and it was far too hot for them to be cold. Better get them sat now and avoid his rather meagre numbers being depleted by someone toppling into the fire. Miraak was aware of the impact he had on others, after all.

The majesty of the Voice was no gentle thing for a mortal to bear.

There was an odd hesitance before they sat. Unfamiliarity with his hand signal, or impertinence, perhaps, either way, he heard someone hiss something in Dunmeri too quick and accented for him to catch, and then the whole group lurched into finding places on the cushions that had been strewn around the ironworked floor.

They were odd looking pillows, thick wedges with embroidered tassels of disproportionately fine quality to their owners’ threadbare robes, and all quite unalike, with different patterns and colours. Some smaller, squashy-looking ones even looked handmade in a hundred sizes, from scraps of silk and cotton, shreds of curtains or what might have once been shipsail, richly dyed breaks in the pattern that were stuffed behind backs and knees. He noticed holes from leaping sparks in more than a few of the expensive fabrics, the washed out irregularity of the colours across one spanning length of fabric, and thought that these too were old, had been old likely before they were taken from wherever the acolytes had found them.

Nestled among the cushions were sturdy earthenware platters piled high with dozens of small dishes and bowls, the purpose of which he could not ascertain. Some held food, others liquid, a cacophony of riotous smells that had Miraak breathing slowly through his mouth. His guts rebelled, squeezing foully into a fist wrapped around his insides. The almost-violent response his body had to the presence of actual food, even if it looked unlike anything he had ever seen before, had him leaning back against the wall, faintly sickened. He could not eat it, even if he hadn’t felt ill at the thought, barely any of it looked small enough to suck through a straw that would fit under his mask.

As he watched, one of the acolytes reached forward and began to help herself, crunching down on what resembled a fried bug with every appearance of enjoyment and not the least concern that she was being rude. He was not sure if she was, by her standards, and Miraak would not have shared a meal with underlings he outranked anyway. Still, the sounds of her chewing were distracting as he gathered his thoughts to speak.

“Di aar-sahvot,” he began, quieter than he had intended to avoid coughing with how searingly hot it was. My faithful servants. “Long have you toiled in my Name.”

He paused to survey them, watching with some satisfaction how they reacted to his Voice rumbling through them, touching every secret bone and pulsing muscle in their bodies, flaying them bare beneath the intangible caress of his words. One, a purple-skinned elf with their knees drawn up against their chest, even gasped softly, hand over their mouth.

Dovahzul was an old tongue, a strong tongue, and Miraak powerful; even without any particular spirit put into the words, Miraak spoke and knew for a fact that the world stopped to listen. The temple walls hungered for it. The fire leapt as if it craved being spun from dragon-throats, the iron warmed as if it remembered dragon-claws. Built for dragon-song, he imagined this temple must have missed it, after so long an absence.

He was the mightiest creature any of them had ever seen, that this temple had ever seen. Well they would do to take heed to its reverence, these wiser joore, these mortals, who knew to pledge themselves to him.

“Long have you worked to carry my Voice to the people of Solstheim. Long were you called to expose your throats to the teeth of mockery, deprivation, and dishonour.”

His last word, dukaan, rung with echoes, shivering through the stone. He infused it with the memory of a once-follower, the ancient priest who had taken the Priesthood’s mockery as his own Name out of love for Miraak. It was the highest of flattering praise to this rag-tag group to imply that they were peers of Dukaan.

As he swept his gaze over them, trying to linger on each face, he thought that none of them were truly sensible of this honour, hovering on their grubby pillows to listen to him like starstruck children. Their thin faces were slack with the sort of wounded greed of the very desperate, some suspicious, others hopeful, yet more looking only confused. He marked the ones who seemed to doubt and moved on.

“I see your loyalty. I see that it has cost you.” Miraak dropped his voice, soft now, persuasive now. Seduced, they leant towards him, the malleable folds of their hearts his to manipulate; even if they had not already all been sensitive to him, few could resist Miraak’s mastery of the vocal arts, he thought pridefully. “Yet, you listened, across planes, across dreams, and I have guided you. And now,” he permitted his triumph to ring in his rising voice, smirked as they mirrored it back to him with straightening spines and parted lips, “I have returned to lead you again!”

His voice died to echoes, broken only by the guttering chuckle of the fire. He thought they were barely breathing.

“My fire will char the weak that stand against us, and they will remember, for I am Fire,” Miraak promised them, drawing on that dark, deep well of fury in his soul to make his Voice ripple and rebound, “All the world will hear my Voice, and become as slaves to my will, for I am Will. Praise the strength you see before you, for you have been given a chance to serve under the True Dragonborn! I am Miraak!”

With that ringing finish, he smoothed his hand down into his lap, and awaited their reaction.

For a moment, there was quiet. And then, one of the acolytes said, in the rough tongue of the grey-elves spoken now on Solstheim, “What?”

Miraak narrowed his eyes at her. She was an old human, with wrinkled white skin and close-cropped hair frosted over with grey. Her eyes were a watery pale blue. She jarred him unpleasantly, tickled some memory at the back of his mind, but whatever it was had been eaten away, leaving only a faint and hollow scar.

“Agata,” Soskro hissed. Ah, he was over there, crouched next to Mirdein against the wall, metal hand braced against the cushions as if he almost intended to leap over several bodies right at Agata. Mirdein’s glittering ruby eyes were considering Miraak, but her hand was hooked into Soskro’s belt quellingly. “Mind your disrespect.”

“I don’t speak the dragon language as well as you, child,” Agata said. She spoke Dunmeris too quickly for Miraak to parse in time to reply before the conversation moved on, laboriously matching up the words he knew with what he remembered sounding out from texts and snippets of dreams. Her palms spread ruefully, apologetically, but all Miraak noticed was the calluses on them. Extensive, with barely any scars; this one had done a lot of bladework, and skilfully.

“So – it’s true?” This next speaker was another human woman, younger than Agata. Incongruously, she had a flowering stem tucked in her curly hair, and her brown skin warmed when his mask turned towards her. She held her shrewd gaze on the dark holes of his mask, though Miraak knew that she would not be able to see his eyes.

“Of course it’s true,” Soskro flared.

Another acolyte behind her frowned sceptically at Soskro’s words. Yet, as if the acolyte, the purple elf, had felt his attention catch, their face immediately smoothed into a blank and pleasant mask. They tilted their chin to listen intently to Soskro. The fire shifted the bruised shadows of the elf’s eyesockets until the weeping triangles of ink surrounding each red eye seemed to be wriggling and swaying, like Mora snaking hungrily around some new, screaming prey. The rubbery tentacles would lick their bodies like a thousand turgid tongues, dragging them down into the oily waters to be torn into shreds of memory and digested down in the dark.

Sickened, Miraak hauled his eyes away. His skin itched like worms writhed blindly under it, mouthing at the junctions of his veins, the sensitive places he hid with layers of robes and metal. He shuddered but did not scratch; he did not want the confirmation of what he would find underneath.

“This is our lord,” Soskro was saying, passionately. “If some foul creature tore my heart from my chest and seared my lungs, they would find his name written on my lips. Were my skin ripped from my body, my eyes from my skull, every limb broken and severed, I would sense his touch. I would know him sick and weary, torn between life and death, I would know him. Rok los Mir-Aak!”

He is Miraak.

Soskro smiled at Miraak, the weary lines ground deep into his sombre elven face from a life of hard living fading away by that righteous fire inside him, so bright that it spilled out of his fresh-blood eyes. “Zu’u aar.” I am your servant.

“Geh,” said Miraak, simply.

This brief exchange encouraged the others, talk picked up, at first quietly, then with increasing confidence when no one was cut down. Soskro launched into a translation of Miraak’s words in rapid Dunmeris to the dawning understanding of Agata and the elf that was perched belligerently next to her, paler than Soskro with a scattering of pin-like scars across the cheek. They spoke together in an odd, impenetrable pidgin; some words he recognised as oddly garbled Dovahzul, others he thought were Dunmeris, some of that odd human language – Cyrod? – some of the dreamers in the elven town amidst the ash knew, others yet he did not know at all.

It was swelteringly hot and sweat had soaked his robes until they irritated his clammy skin. Grasping the loose threads of the conversation was near impossible in that blurry heat, the dizziness that surged half a beat behind every movement of his head like the belated rumble of thunder.

Attempting to knead out the poisonous clawing of cramps in his stomach, Miraak rubbed his ornate belt buckle in tiny circles. He would not try, then.

“Silence,” murmured Miraak.

The chatter died. Even if their minds doubted, their hearts knew, he thought, pleased by this show of attention.

With effort, he corralled what he knew of Dunmeris, and bent it to his will. It came out confident, if harsh-sounding and strange, and he heard at once how badly his accent distorted the twisting syllables. He permitted himself to wince in the privacy of his mask, disliking how awkward it felt to stumble. “You doubt me.”

“Maybe we should.” It was the tattooed acolyte, speaking faster than he could formulate his next sentence, and glaring hard – not at him, but at Soskro. “Convenient, sure, he turns up now, not say, when we needed a couple of dragons.”

Mirdein bristled, yanking Soskro back down when he twitched dangerously. “You question my husband’s integrity?” she asked, no less softly for all it was clearly a threat.

“There are tongues here that ask for shortening,” Miraak said. He was not sure that the idiom precisely translated, but they clearly got the gist, and uneasy stillness descended. He considered his words before he spoke, placed each one out of his mouth carefully, like building a cairn of sharp-edged flints. “You think me the low-flying hawk whose wingspan fools the snake. A pretender.”

No one dared speak now, but they glanced shiftily at each other.

He inhaled. “MUL QAH DIIV!”

He had not bothered to reign in his volume, and the temple rocked. Those sat near him were knocked down like leaves scattered before the storm, and a few of the sharper-eared elves cried out, clutching their heads like he had driven nails into their skulls. The fire guttered at the wind from his lips and blew out, and in the dark ember-light, his shimmering horns, his magnificent scales, blazed like auroras spun from pure magic and divine soul alone. Mantled in his Dragon Aspect, Miraak sat, radiant, and awaited his due praise.

He noticed one of them make a sign, tucking his forefinger under his thumb to kiss his last three fingers. His skin was grey-pale like fresh fallen ash carried by the wind, his cheeks sallow with shock. Miraak saw the reflection of his golden mask lit from within dancing like dragonfire in those red eyes, and felt pride stiffen his shoulders, his stern neck.

“Once your eyes were blinded,” he said, saw familiarity jump like a shock of lightning between each dazzled face, “Now through me do you see.”

“Our hands once were idle,” Soskro whispered thickly, and there were tears in his eyes that broke and ran freely down his angular jaw. He suddenly gripped at his cheeks as if overcome, his long locks of greying hair hiding his stricken face. “Now through them does he speak.”

“You will heed my Voice,” Miraak told them. In Dovahzul, he added, “Or my teeth to your neck, when the time comes.”

He did not think anyone needed it translated.

After nothing but Soskro’s quiet sobs, he cut his hand through the air. Taking this as permission to speak, one of the acolytes shifted on her pillow and then abruptly clapped her fist to her chest. She was human, fair, broad, and tall in a way Laataazin had not been, with wind-chapped cheeks and hair plaited out of her face. She sat not with her legs folded but instead stuck out straight like a child. She said something in a tongue that sounded vaguely similar to the Skaal dialect, but the words were nonsensical when placed together. Nonetheless, her eyes were alight, and she was smiling.

“I am Hjoti, my lord,” she said, in accented Dunmeris, “Welcome home.”

Gravely, Miraak inclined his head.

Shock broken, the acolytes straightened themselves, smiles beginning to appear amongst open expressions of awe. One by one, they began to introduce themselves. The one with the flower in her hair was Sadeni, the tattooed one muttered their name was Sulis. Next to Sadeni sat the Dunmer who had made the hand-sign, his name was Drethys, and he spoke with wary enthusiasm, as if he did not quite dare to believe what his eyes saw. Then there was the outspoken elderly human of earlier, Agata, and Soskro radiant with pride. Mirdein, lingering on him thoughtfully, her sleeves rolled up and wiry arms crossed over her chest until the corded muscles bunched. Ulf only nodded to him across the embers, the big human’s hands tussling anxiously in his lap. Next to him was another human, with a gold piercing glittering in the mahogany skin of his brow, who introduced himself as Hakir and smiled warmly.

Only two others had taken Dovahzul names, and Miraak recognised their voices when they spoke from whispering in their dreams. Rofiik and Rufiik, both Dunmer with shining eyes and worshipful faces full of piercings like stars in their dusky skin. They were perfectly mirrored, distinguishable from each other only by their contrasting hair: Rufiik’s white as bone, Rofiik’s dark as night.

Rofiik was brave enough to grab for Miraak’s gloved hand. Limply, it hung there in their hold; Miraak stared blankly at it like it was not his. Frozen in surprise, Miraak’s breath was throttled out of his chest when Rofiik tenderly bent, liquid eyes dutifully downcast, and brushed his knuckles against their forehead.

They let him go, and Miraak snatched his hand back, skin crawling. The contact burned against his glove for long minutes after Rofiik was gone, a tingling stabbing discomfort that warned against permitting any further touch. It spread, making his muscles jump and snarl around a thick shard of ice that lodged in his lungs. It scraped against each agonising breath, though Miraak was distant, his soul scrabbling back against his spine like he had ever been able to run away from anything that had ever mattered happening to his body.

Wanting desperately to blow Rofiik clear out the room with a bolt of lightning, Miraak instead ironed his spine rigid, pretending at being unaffected for all he was worth. If he could not trust himself to speak strongly in chastisement, he could at least conceal his glaring weakness.

“There we go,” Mirdein cut into his internal struggle, “Everyone’s met each other. Now, let’s eat.”

She glanced over at Miraak as she spoke, not in a way that asked permission, but rather one that made clear that she wasn’t. This light insubordination irritated him, but he was reeling as fiery chills raced over ancient nerves and flat numbness pervaded his chest. Mirdein gestured to Drethys, who obligingly tossed a curl of flame to relight the embers.  

What followed was an odd ceremony that Miraak did not understand and only half-observed through his detachment. Everyone was handed a bowl, in which was drizzled a small bit of liquid – oil, he thought, one bottle for the humans, another for the elves. Shyly, Rufiik, who sat closest to Miraak, made it halfway into tremblingly offering him a bowl before Miraak got a hold of himself and managed to – if jerkily – wave a forestalling hand. He categorically did not want any more surprises.

He trapped the offending hand under the wrist of his left. Unobtrusively, Miraak sawed at it like he could remove the lingering afterimage of Rofiik’s touch.

Meanwhile, his followers distributed amongst themselves the contents of the platters. Plates of fried bugs of the like Miraak had seen Hjoti eat earlier proved popular, as did small round loaves of what he thought was some kind of bread, though denser and flatter looking than he had seen before. They did not make themselves separate plates, but instead grouped around the platters, fingers darting in to grab what they wanted. Agata, grinning, revealed a case of mead hidden under a pillow, to the joyful shouts of some of the acolytes, particularly the humans. Mirdein and Sulis both refused hastily, caught each other’s eye, and then Sulis snorted, the back of their hand stifling their mouth.

Lurking by the entrance and eating like a bird, Soskro was staring wistfully at Mirdein leaning against Ulf, who had put a heavy arm companionably around her shoulder as they shared a plate of a violent purple fried leaf. It was spiced so heavily Miraak’s nose tickled from across the room. Somewhere, Sadeni was laughing vibrantly, sweet as a bell.

There was a fair amount of moving about, acolytes dragging pillows with them as they chatted, and though there were glances shot his way and he heard his name whispered often, no one approached him directly. He felt like a stone within the path of a current, observing the eddies around him.

Until Hakir elected to break the pattern. He had sat next to Rofiik and Rufiik, who had migrated onto each other’s laps to feed one another, curled close like a knot carved of all the same wood, so he only needed to twist to address Miraak.

“So,” said Hakir casually, examining Miraak with curiosity. He offered another one of his warm smiles. “It must be good to be free.”

“It would be easier to pave the sea than understand,” Miraak returned in Dovahzul, after a moment’s puzzling, for Hakir had used Dunmeris. The whole room fell abruptly silent when Miraak spoke.

The fire coughed.

Drethys scratched his scarred cheek. “You looked in a bad way when me and Ro found you, serjo. You, uh, feeling better? … You look better,” he added on the end, hastily, squinting at Miraak as if fearing he had offended.

“My imprisonment was … gruelling,” Miraak admitted frankly, “I survived what others could not by my strength of will alone. She is a good healer,” he gestured loosely to Soskro, “and my will has not faded. I will soon overcome this … temporary weakness of flesh.”

There was an awkward pause in which Mirdein scowled at Miraak, but Soskro, with an odd expression, cut her off with a gesture. Mirdein closed her mouth with a click, but she denied him her gaze.

“Well, good,” said Drethys, lamely. He looked to Hakir, but neither seemed to know what to say.

The silence dragged, but Miraak was distracted by a surge of magic to his left.  Sulis was calling low-burning fire into their hand, wisps of smoke trailing away from their painted nails. They lit the oil in their bowl and leant over it, a fractious line of tension above their brow unwinding.

As he watched, many of the rest of the Dunmer were following suit; Rofiik and Rufiik were sharing, but Rofiik tore off a hunk of bread and held it in the flame until it caught. Then they placed it tenderly into Rufiik’s mouth, who chewed and swallowed, face so gentle and unguarded that Miraak felt uneasily like a voyeur.

The humans were not eating food on fire, but they mimicked the ritual by dipping their food in the oil anyway before they ate it. The Dunmer were unaffected, even pleased by the small flames lapping their fingertips as they ate their charred food. Miraak saw Soskro dispense with the bowl altogether, holding a steady flame spell in one hand into which he fed a pale slice of tuber. When it was sufficiently roasted, he licked it off his hand and smirked.

He had known that these people were not those of his time, but as he watched them eat and laugh together, Miraak felt the distance between his and their world widen. He had learnt to read their languages, stumbled through their stories, stared until his eyes were dry holes in his head at their maps, their conceptions of the world around them, and yet, in person they were immeasurably alien.  The Dunmer, with their skins all the colours of twilight and eyes a thousand shades of fire, the humans as different from one another as a dragon’s scales were alike. Miraak had expected to remain apart from them; in some sense, he had always been even among his own people, but he was left feeling displaced, like a step had vanished from beneath his searching foot.

Slowly flexing his fist open and closed, Miraak leant back. Even through the cushions the litter had been liberally loaded with, he fancied he could feel the coolness of the stone, welcome in the fearsome heat. His robes stuck to his numb body like a second skin, and all the little fires were not helping.

But Miraak was resolute; he would not show weakness. If this trial by literal fire was what it took, then it was what he would endure.

Through the padding of his robes and the litter, he felt something jab him, a rock, perhaps, or the hard edge of a cushion. He twitched his shoulders, trying to shift so it no longer aggravated him. Yet the hard edge was unerring; no matter how much he squirmed, it continued to stab right against an old wound. That spot had occasionally ached even with all of Apocrypha’s magic preserving his body exactly as his memory said it should be, and it did no less now, throbbing angrily.

For it was directly on that spot that Vahlok had thrust his bladed staff right through Miraak’s body until the metal winked wet and bright between his ribs. He’d severed Miraak’s spine with that single blow, and as Miraak had twitched helplessly, Vahlok planted his boot contemptuously against the back of Miraak’s neck. Slowly, without taking care to be gentle, Vahlok had yanked his staff free. Miraak still remembered the messy squelch it had made, the blood that sputtered and gushed, remembered his mouth working but no sound coming out.

Mora had stolen him and restored him, even fixed his robes and replaced his weapons, but it wasn’t in Mora’s nature to forget even if Miraak could. His flesh knew well that he had been dealt a deathblow there.

Over the long years, he had grown close to asking Mora to eat the memory of this wound from Miraak as he had so much else of Miraak’s life. Vahlok had not vanquished Miraak like a warrior. Instead, Miraak’s last memory of Nirn was being cut down from behind like a criminal. He had died trying to crawl away, stuck like a squirming fish on his knees. Shame alone had stopped him, reluctance to call attention to his last disgrace and thus invite Mora to deride him. Yet Miraak’s perfect recollection of the exact place of Vahlok’s wound was eternal, humiliating reminder that he owed his escape from a traitor’s death to Mora alone.

Miraak grit his teeth as choking loathing closed his throat. He was clenching his fist so hard the prick of his claws bored bruiselike through the glove against his palm and the leather creaked. Contrarily, he pushed back against the jabbing on his spine, ignoring the fresh burst of pain. The wound there was long gone, and so was Miraak’s service to Mora.

Still, a significant portion of the sweat on his brow was not from the unpleasant memory, and Miraak desperately wished they had come to a wider hall, maybe one with windows.

“Sos-Kro.” He spoke quietly, but their head snapped up as if yanked by a string, and the others’ words stopped in their mouths as quick as a hunting peregrine drops its wings. The fire in Soskro’s hand guttered out as they gave him their full attention.

Miraak beckoned, and Soskro rose, picking their way past the curious stares of the other acolytes. Two paces away, Miraak held his hand. With feral grace, Soskro sank into a crouch, their knees popping.

“Why do you take food in this room, where tails cannot be straight?” Miraak asked. “Many wider spaces were in that temple which stood under my skies.”

As ever, no one had dared talk while Miraak did, and now the tenseness was broken by shuffling bodies and averted eyes. Hjoti was stuffing her mouth with the air of someone who very much did not wish to be called to answer, and Ulf had gone the colour of sour milk.

Even Soskro twitched uncomfortably, and said, “Much of the rest of the temple is … unsuitable.”

He was about to take them to task for this vague response when Agata, clearly able to follow this shorter exchange of Dovahzul, interrupted in Dunmeris. As before, her pale eyes challenged him, but they were tight with grief. “He means, it’s full of the dead we haven’t got to yet.”

“Geh, di draugr,” said Miraak, unclear as to why this would pose a problem. “The guardians,” he added, for Agata’s benefit.

Surreptitiously, Miraak rolled his hips, either to click his spine, or perhaps move away from whatever it was that prodded it so viciously. The pain had only grown worse, now a pulsating knot overtaking his entire lower back. It stole away at his focus with steady, intrusive advances.

“Serjo,” Mirdein broke in, quietly, also in Dunmeris. The address was respectful, but Mirdein did not look at him when she spoke, her shoulders squaring as if she found herself under unexpected censure. “Not the elder dead, our fellows in service to you. We sustained heavy losses when the – False Dragonborn and his Skaal companion stormed the temple. Not yet everyone has been … found.”

No one was eating now. Sulis was glaring down at their bowl, gripping it so hard that it looked like it or they were imminently about to shatter.

“Put back together, you mean,” they said, bitterly, with a foul quirk of the lips that was no true smile. “That fucking bastard smashed through us like we were paper. I saw…”

They trailed off, for Hjoti had reached over – stretching out over her side and supporting her weight on one elbow – and grasped their shoulder in a firm hold. Sulis stilled completely. For an impossible moment, Miraak swore he saw the cold gleam of bared steel in their hand, but barely a second later, Hjoti let go, and it was gone before he could be sure. Despite this, Sulis did not finish their sentence, grim-faced, the tearlike ink-trails brazen on their cheeks.

“I will sing each spirit to the threshold of the great bear’s den,” Miraak told them all. “And we will each dress her flesh.”

Lack of practice notwithstanding, he spoke in Dunmeris, hoping the gesture to accompany them in their grief carried through. By the surprised emotions dawning in Drethys’ eyes, he thought it did, at least slightly. Miraak was not personally affected by the deaths of the other acolytes beyond mild displeasure that the Last Dragonborn had diminished an already dwindling number, but he was a priest, and foremost among his duties after the dragons had been tending the dead and comforting the living.

No one contradicted him, regardless, and with a measure of relief, he allowed the conversation to drop.

Waiting until the other acolytes had freshly distracted themselves, with muted talk or picking over the remnants of their food, Miraak inched his right hand off his lap and slipped it behind his back. He had to be slow, Soskro had remained right next to him, though he was clearly uncomfortable this far into the room. Not sweating for his life, though, like Miraak was, just overwhelmed, his long hair sighing over his shoulders like an austere shroud as his head turned here and there, tracking different sounds and sights. Still, he picked through the food offered, eyeing it beadily before committing to eating it, and kept his eyes on Mirdein, like a drowning man did a lighthouse.

Miraak held his breath as he groped behind his back. Entirely unnecessarily, but his skin was prickling and his stomach swarmed with jitters. Something about this didn’t feel right.

Eventually, he bumped against the offender – smooth and hard and flat, creaking faintly when he squeezed it down between his back and the wall. Horribly, immediately familiar. Though Miraak did not call his magic consciously, caustic sparks lit in his fingertips. The faintest wisp of burning leather, putrid with spilled ink, made his head spin and his stomach heave.

No. He would have noticed the moment he came in, the second he was placed down. No.

His heartbeat was in his shoulder, his arm, his hand. Miraak saw it thumping irregularly in his dimming sight. He kept his mask firmly pointed towards the fire, like he was admiring the too-vivid tongues of flames in the iron dragon’s mouth.

Bit by bit, he eased the book out until it was by his hip, pinching the cover together so hard his bones creaked.

So no eye would be drawn by the play of light over his mask and furtive movement, Miraak delayed, though every bone in his body screamed for him to know. There were ashes in his mouth, he sucked whistling gasps around a thick wadge of inky paper in his throat, his eyes burned and blurred from lack of blinking.

Out of the corner of his sight, with barely a tilt of his mask, Miraak glanced down.

There, innocently as the very first of a fool’s mistakes, his hand splayed over the unmistakeable dark cover of Hermaeus Mora’s Black Book.

It was the Black Book. His Black Book.

Involuntarily, the pad of his gloved finger caressed the familiar ridges and grooves. Waking Dreams was tooled on the cover of the dark, silky leather that Miraak knew would be soft as a newborn against his skin, knotted with artful curlicues that recalled Mora’s tentacles. Like Mora himself, the book quivered under Miraak’s touch, and some shrieking part of him collapsed into that yawning distance between himself, his body, and that which he touched. Even now, that which tempted him.

Spellbound, he traced a gentle circle, watching the embossing squirming towards him, like it wanted to wrap around him, draw him home. A thousand years was long enough to become accustomed to the hold Mora slung around his neck, like a chain, when Miraak read from the Black Books within Apocrypha, muscular and apathetic. A lukewarm collar heavy as a snake, oozing ink against his cheek. He felt it again now, cleaving his unanchored spirit to his body, bittersweetly tender as a vanished lover’s memory.

All it would take would be to slip a finger inside to crack it open. Did he even remember what was written here? Didn’t he want to? There was so much yet that he didn’t know, so much he hadn’t learnt. The unplumbed depths of Apocrypha called siren-song, a hundred lifetimes would not be enough to read everything, and didn’t Miraak hunger for knowledge? Hadn’t he been content there, once?

Couldn’t he be so again?

“No,” Miraak whispered, and thrust the book violently underneath a pillow.

The moment his hand left the cover, it was as if a great weight had cleared from his shoulders. Miraak sagged, knew he cried but he could not stop it. He was flayed, completely raw, like every part of him had been wrenched open, judged and found wanting. The world around him felt unreal, some cruel and vague joke, the acolytes’ faces all blurring into one monstrous amalgamation, the lumpy nest of pillows undulating like the breasts of a vast snow-plain ruffled by wind. He heard them speak but knew not their language, knew nothing but the jackrabbit knifing in his chest, the drumming in his ears, the agony in Vahlok’s wound on his back, where years past in this very temple Miraak had bled to the cusp of death.

A breath rammed into his chest, then another – human instinct overriding his panic. He could not look at where he had stowed the Book, the Book that was supposed to be down at the shrine, with Laataazin’s stripped corpse. Had someone – had someone brought it up here? One of the cultists – yet, even as he scrambled for a reason, his eyes darting across their exposed faces like he could see traces of the same inkstaining he knew scored his own flesh, some tell that they were locked to Mora, as he had been locked, he knew. He knew the Book had not been there before.

Mora. Mora had sent it to him.

A taunt, a warning. He could reach Miraak whenever he pleased. Miraak’s tenuous place on Tamriel was at Mora’s leisure, nothing more. He was not free.

His hand was so sweaty under his glove the leather slid slickly when he clenched his fist. The shadows of the fire fluttered languidly in those slow, rhythmic movements Miraak remembered from when Mora was most pleased, swaying back and forth like kelp fronds in the deep sea. The recollection burned him, and he wanted, fiercely, to douse the damn thing. The acolytes chatted and laughed between themselves, like nothing was wrong, like they had not even noticed.

Miraak felt tainted.

He could not do this anymore. Fear had made his throat tight and dry, he needed to take several breaths before he trusted his voice to sound steady. “I will retire.”

Every ounce of skill he possessed in the necessary deceptions of strength was called on now as he ironed himself straight and tall, sweat soaking his robes, forcing his chest to move in an approximation of steady, unbothered breathing though he wasn’t sure if even a bit of air was reaching the hard constriction of his lungs. His body was a tense wire, crawling with horror and corrupt with sick slime more memory than reality. He felt Mora’s eyes on him, tickling curious, oily and amused as he had always been at Miraak’s little games.

He squeezed his injured hand as tightly as he could, relying on the torment of the shredded muscles distract himself. He barely took in the acolytes’ reactions, a little surprise at his abruptness, perhaps, but no sense of creeping victory at a revealed weakness.

“Geh, thuri,” said Soskro, at once, and at their call Mirdein jerked to her feet, pushing her bowl of flaming oil at Ulf, who took it and clearly froze, uncertain on what to do. Unwilling to wait even a moment for him to figure it out, Miraak barked the first name he could pick out of his swimming head, “Drethys, attend me.”

The name came out slightly garbled as he tripped on the guttural Dunmeris y paired with a hissing sibilant, and he was aware he had instinctively paused to separate the syllables, as he would in Dovahzul, but he heard movement. It was dull, as if coming from very far away.

Blackness ebbed at the corners of his vision. Miraak swallowed another jagged breath that ripped at him from the insides.

“Sera,” someone said – Drethys? An ash-rough accent, not as thick as Mirdein’s –

The litter tipped wildly as it was lifted, Miraak observed his body jerk and his injured hand grab instinctively onto the fabric. He felt no pain, he felt no panic. He felt nothing.

Drethys was barely broader than skinny Soskro, he huffed a little as it pulled on his strength. Mirdein strained as she leant forward to take more of Miraak’s weight. He saw her muscles outlined under her dark grey skin, powerful with killing-strength. Her face drifted oddly into focus, and, like a stranger, he examined her strong jaw and noble lips, the breadth of her shoulders. It was so strange to see an unmasked face.

The idle thought that she was Ahzidal’s exact type flitted through his mind. Ahzidal might have bargained with him for a chance to speak with her, once, offering gold and goods, maybe even her highly sought-after enchantments, given Mirdein’s attachment to Miraak’s first and most devout.

The fact that Ahzidal had been dead for hundreds of years occurred to him, but floated nonsensically alongside his thoughts, failing to explain itself in any way his numb mind could grasp.

Miraak did not remember the trip back to the infirmary. He blinked, shaky as a foal, and found himself being settled down on a bed. The same one he had awoken in this morning, he thought, but he couldn’t be sure, it felt as if years had passed. Soskro moved his uncooperative, heavy limbs with the ease of practice, so quickly that his body barely had time to protest, and then he was free of the litter and the other two acolytes were stepping back.

On the heels of his newfound awareness slammed exhaustion, and Miraak felt his eyes dip even as he struggled to remain awake. So tired was he that he could not muster the presence of mind to feel embarrassed, or even surprised, at the clear evidence that he had soiled himself at some point. Likely on the walk back. No one seemed to care.

“Serjo,” said Mirdein, and Miraak blinked at her foggily. Ahzidal’s face swam before his eyes, though he could not recall why.

“Go,” he said, matching her in stumbling Dunmeris without thinking about it, “and she may go, too.”

“Begging your pardon,” said Drethys blankly, after a stilted moment, “But do you mean me? Uh – cause I’m not a lady.”

Miraak squinted at him, his slow mind fumbling over Drethys’ objection. Soskro was preparing the oil lamps, and as orange light burst to radiant life behind the flame-guards his eyes watered and his headache reasserted itself. The peach tones of the lamps were soothing in its own way, as foreign to Apocrypha as the sun was to the sea, but it was all still too bright.

“You are … not.” It came out half question, half statement, and in the corner of his eye Miraak saw Soskro’s ear flick towards them, as if he were listening very carefully.

“Never have been,” said Drethys uncomfortably. He scrubbed the back of his neck with one hand.

“So ‘she’ is the wrong word?” Miraak sighed, explosively. He was too tired for this, and it had not been a problem in dreams, where language was more thought than spoken. In Dovahzul, he muttered, “I do not understand. Your language makes no sense, you do not need these words. All your masks look the same! Are none of you women?”

“I am, serjo,” Mirdein asserted. “These two aren’t.”

At this, Soskro interceded. Speaking in Dovahzul, they said, “I will teach you, my lord, if you want to know. We don’t take our names from the masks.”

Tiredly shielding his eyes, Miraak let his head sink against his forearm, though it trembled immediately under the weight. “I will learn. Go,” to Mirdein and Drethys.

Footsteps, then the soft sounds of the cloth hanging over the entrance, then just Soskro, a constant low murmur of mechanical joints. He was fiddling with something that clicked against his metal fingers, potion bottles, Miraak assumed wearily. He would have a dozen for Miraak to drink. But after, finally, Miraak could rest. He longed for nothing more than the stillness of silence, the sounds of only his own breathing. A simple meeting had been unexpectedly trying, and his mind shied away entirely from his … discovery. Nonetheless, the banal conversation with Drethys had somewhat settled him, and Miraak was present and aware, if immensely tired.

After a moment, though, Soskro spoke. “Unslaad krosis.” Unending apologies. “I thought you were making this mistake … on purpose.”

“I was not,” Miraak ground out, irritated. “You inherited the mask of my first, Sos-Kro.”

The quiet clattering of Soskro lining up the potions on Miraak’s bedside. One, two, three. He knew what they were, Soskro had explained them in detail before Miraak had agreed to keep taking them, but the knowledge slipped greasily from his tired mind. Faintly, Miraak smelled them, herby and medicinal.

Soskro didn’t speak, but when Miraak opened his eyes he was hovering close by, staring down at his golden metal palm.

“My grandmother,” he murmured.

“Geh.” Miraak had run out of patience for this strange world and its odd customs. “Leave me.”

Soskro hesitated. “My lord… your robes,” he said delicately, and Miraak wanted to swear, or possibly cry.

“I don’t want you to touch me,” he rasped. But he did not tell Soskro to leave again, the closest to admitting that he would not be able to change his clothes alone, not while this exhausted and weak.

Soskro’s navy-blue skin, deep as a starry night, neared indigo in the orange kiss of the light. When Miraak looked at him, those sloping shadows dyed the curve of his wry lip, gilded the proffered metal hand. “Will this do, thuri?” he asked, gentle as Laataazin’s warm blood had been on Miraak’s hands when he killed them.

Jerking his chin in reluctant acquiescence, Miraak closed his eyes and submitted to Soskro’s help. Soskro’s hand did not aggravate his skin as Rofiik’s had, the rough scrape of the unyielding metal was familiar, reminding him of his mask, his armour. Soskro was efficient, even one-handed, and did not linger on the daedric corruption of Miraak’s body when Miraak could not bear to look at himself. He said nothing at all until it was done and Miraak was laying uncomfortably in the rough, scratchy set of spare robes they had found him. They bade him take the potions before he slept, and left, in what seemed the span of all one movement.

Miraak lay back against the bed, exhausted. Mora was there, in the dark shapes behind his eyes, chased him even when he stared stubbornly up into the mossy shadows of the ceiling, so he reached into the aching wellspring of his magic and flared a magelight rebelliously. It hurt, but he ignored the pain and fed it more magic until the thin magelight wobbled brighter. He imagined each eliminated shadow was burning away a tentacle of Mora, searing away every scrap of ink and spell until there was nothing left of anything at all, just Miraak. He pushed magic into the magelight until the whole room was stripped of shadow and he was alone, in the centre of a bright, harsh world.

He still saw darkness when he closed his watering eyes.

“You are not here,” Miraak told it.

The necklace of rough twine and polished wood around his neck itched. Soskro had left it on alongside his mask, not commenting on the mismatched, rough-looking amulet with its raven and dragon carving, or the sly ruby that winked like an eye between them. The robes his acolytes wore were only a layer thick and did not have an undershirt, so Laataazin’s amulet, taken from their corpse, hung now against his bare skin. The mysterious enchantment tingled. He fished it out of the robes and glared at it, innocuous in his hand.

“You are not here,” he repeated. The wood clinked against his mask when his exhausted arm sagged against his head.

“… Neither of you.”

Chapter Text

When morning came with the foul taste of more pain-staying potions, Miraak wearied at conversing in a strange tongue with his new acolytes. Despite the early hour, a few had been by and were unsubtly turned away by Soskro’s sharp chiding at the door. Miraak pretended to rest, but anxiousness strafed his stomach as he lay abed. Unmoving and undistracted, the humming burn of Laataazin’s necklace around his neck and the gap in his memory of the previous night occupied his mind.

He knew he had found something. Something that his mind slipped away from and refused to examine. His sore heart returned to prod at it like a tongue searched for the lost tooth in the raw root of bloody gum. Chills broke out whenever he startled at a sight, a sound, a shadow. Closing his eyes on the exit for even a second made his spine thrum with panic. His gut lurched acidly with every time he heard the scuffing of the acolytes’ slippers on the stone outside and the slap of Soskro’s bare feet. The animal of his body reacted as a fox with its paw in the trap, determined to gnaw away at his own flesh rather than go caged.

Crammed with manic exhaustion, Miraak felt utterly inhuman. Warily, he watched those who had sworn themselves to him and saw only joore. Fragile, material, mortal. They were all eternally limited by their flesh-souls and their doom-driven mortality in ways that Miraak had overcome long before their grandfathers had paraded their first greys. He had no patience for translating the dragon in his soul to such stumbling learners. Not today.

Eventually, Miraak rose, and had summoned Sulis and Hakir to carry his litter. His interest – and his suspicions – had been piqued by them, but he had no desire to speak yet. With this excuse, he hoped to learn more through passive observation. With luck, following their own talk with his meagre grasp of Dunmeris.

Hakir proved just as amiable as their previous meeting, and Sulis just as reserved. Light and lyrical, Hakir did not waste a single precise word as he spoke of how the acolytes had avoided the temple depths since Relonikiv’s screaming had drawn them, fearful of the snappish, maddened creatures. His accent was not like Mirdein’s or Agata’s, and his voice was too smooth for him to be native to Solstheim or Morrowind, with their frequent ash storms. If he sang as beautifully as he spoke, he would have done well in the days of Miraak’s masters.

It was obvious that he was a gifted mage; Hakir cast absently three separate magelights in one gesture, then dimmed their colours to a soft peach that was a balm to Miraak’s sore eyes. The icy chill of ambient magic he radiated tempted Miraak to rest his head against Hakir’s chest and absorb the energy that rushed out of his lips with each smiling breath. Hakir was a thin man, but his arms did not shake at Miraak’s weight. Miraak suspected his magic augmented his strength.

It was a careless use of magic that betrayed him as a prodigy, but not a master. Vahlok had been like that once. His arms round with brawn, disdaining the magic that rolled off him in waves, he had been Morokei’s most frustrating and intoxicating apprentice.

The scar on Miraak’s back twinged.

Sulis said nothing at all. They played the servant convincingly, had their response in their grief the other night not already pricked Miraak’s wary mind, he would have thought them as quietly polite and reserved as Mirdein with her professional veneer. The litter’s slow progress gave him ample time to examine them. They were short and lean, rangy in the way of the physically fit and poorly fed. The muscles that stood strong and smooth in their shoulders and biceps had the mark of a practiced archer, though they carried no bow. They carried no visible weapons at all beyond a rusty-looking dagger, wore no shoes, and had chosen ragged robes that hung loosely around their body. Even their tattoos had been smudged with ashy mud. An incautious eye less used to ascertaining the tiniest of details to arm himself with in the deadly games of draconic politics might have believed it.

But Sulis had made one mistake.

Visible where their hands gripped the bar of the litter, their nailbeds were well-tended and neat. The nails themselves had been cut short, but not with jagged teeth or a dagger – no, those smooth curves were difficult to achieve without a proper tool. Sulis had been somewhere with enough wealth to tend to their nails recently enough that living in a tomb with very few amenities had yet to crack them. Whatever Sulis gained from presenting that they cared about nothing, it was a fiction.

They bore watching. A patient hunter stalked his kills – though Miraak was in no shape to defend himself long against even a rusty dagger. Still, he was the mightiest dragon priest that had ever lived, if not by strength than by the quickness of his mind.

Hakir and Sulis lingered in the vestibule when they came to the hallowed hall guarded on one end by a fearsome statue to Mora. Miraak knew it was there, even if darkness had swallowed it. He grimaced at the thought of its tentacles writhing about unseen; they could be squirming towards him, and he would not know until they dared penetrate the foot of flickering firelight Hakir had summoned in the draconic maw of a brazier. The air was rank and fetid with the reek of dragonblood and the foul, fishlike stench of Apocrypha. Somewhere in that terrible dark, there was Laataazin’s corpse, and what should have been three dragons.

But as Miraak listened, he only heard one set of whistling lungs. The raspiness of the inhale through the clotted nostrils told him at once which of his three remained. Five thousand years together, and he would know them all blind.

“Sahrotaar,” called Miraak. The pain and tiredness made his voice sharp. It echoed hollowly among the bones of the dead and the dusty stone.

Sahrotaar responded gratifyingly quickly with the grating of claws on stone. “Master,” rumbled out of the darkness. Hakir flared the light in the brazier.

His favoured was a wreck, dull-eyed and thin, more like a knock-kneed milchbeast than a mighty dragon. Its joints stood out in proud profile, Miraak saw the trembling of its legs as it fought to support its own weight. The fins that crowned its blunt head were stuck together in inky wattles, the barbels that hung from its rubbery lips were crusted with saliva and filmy bile. Its tongue swelled out of its mouth, bloated with poisonous green and purple ink. Miraak spotted weeping sores in the dry scalebeds as Sahrotaar crept forward into the light, places where mites had burrowed in the vulnerable hide cracked from centuries of abuse and neglect.

The weeks Miraak had spent in unconscious recovery had not been kind to Sahrotaar.

Sahrotaar cringed from the fire, head slinking low like a snake. As it came closer, its stench became harder to ignore, rotting fish and sulphur, the rank vinegar of musty sour ink. Something settled in Miraak when he breathed it in, his pounding heart seizing onto familiar fears rather than jumping at new shadows.

Hakir and Sulis were not so lucky; Hakir stumbled back and went nearly green. Sulis lurked, seeming unaffected, but he had not missed the wrinkle of disgust on their nose. He dismissed them from his mind; these new servants mattered not, with one of his oldest before him.

Miraak lifted his arms and Sahrotaar slipped its nose into the circle he made with easy deftness. Clinging to the curve of Sahrotaar’s jaw, Miraak bit his lip on a pained moan as Sahrotaar dragged him upright, pressing its wedgelike head into his stomach when his weak legs threatened to give way. His mask dug against the soft muzzle, but Sahrotaar only blew a meaty breath that gusted his robes around his ankles, and did not complain. It never complained.

When he looked up, Sahrotaar’s deep blue eyes were lamplike on his. They were ringed with thick, gooey discharge that wept in inky pus and dripped down its protruding jaw. Mora’s curse had glued its eyes shut.

Possessed with a sudden, bizarre tenderness, Miraak thumbed the worst of it away. Sahrotaar hummed.

Drawing Miraak against its chest, it supported him with the bony knobs of its wing-joints, the fearsome talons curving around his back almost gently, if a dragon could ever be said to understand the meaning of the word. Its jaw sunk low against its neck in rippling jowls, the barbels tufting its jaw twitching as it inhaled his scent; knowing him, as he knew it.

The reverberation of its humming carried through Miraak’s whole chest down through the soles of his boots. The echoes of Sahrotaar’s Thu’um were pleasing to hear, because Miraak knew his was stronger.

This awareness softened him to magnanimity. Miraak caressed the dragon’s jaw, deftly unpeeling the sticky flaps of its fins and untangling the matted barbels. Foul liquid dripped from the moist folds, and Miraak saw more sores weeping white when he tugged Sahrotaar’s crest to full extension. The webbing of its crest felt spongy and weak, as tearable as paper. The fine cartilage within bent unnervingly in his hand.

“You are filthy, I can smell your grime all over the temple,” Miraak told it, with callous honesty. “I can smell you.”

Ashamed, Sahrotaar’s chin dipped as if it meant to avoid his eyes, unbalancing Miraak where he clung to the dragon.

“Watch yourself, Sahrotaar!” Miraak snapped.

“Unending apologies, master.”

Fretfully, Sahrotaar’s wings shuffled and rustled, diffident motions of fear that would be ridiculous on a creature so large were it not Miraak’s rightful due. Sahrotaar’s serpentine length curved towards him, sinking its belly down onto the ground like a dog. Its talon pressed against Miraak’s thigh. Miraak braced against the joint and allowed Sahrotaar to help boost him onto the dragon’s neck.

His thighs hooked over the membranous flares of Sahrotaar’s fins, his body slotting into position with comforting familiarity. Sahrotaar’s pupil dilated when it rolled its eye back to regard Miraak as best as it could from his position behind its head. His golden mask shone bronze in the liquid blackness of its pupil, blazed all around by icefire blue.

Miraak barely noticed the weight that fell from his shoulders. All at once, he could breathe again, as if every moment prior to this had been struggling for scraps of breath.

He wanted more.

“You are loyal to me,” Miraak said, and Sahrotaar’s ink-crusted nostrils flared.

“Always, master.” Its gaze remained liquid and calm.

Miraak soothed the twitching edge of Sahrotaar’s crest with a tender touch. Loosened, a thick clump of ink brushed off, clearing a small section of dulled blue scales.

From his vantage point atop Sahrotaar’s neck, he made out a chink of light in the rocky ceiling. Its dusty light was small and thin, half-choked by dust. A crack in the rock, barely more than a claw-width across, scored all around by vicious scrabblings – Relonikiv, Miraak was willing to bet. It had never liked not seeing the sky.

“Where are the others, Sahrotaar?” he asked. “Did you not seek to taste the skies again, like they did?”

Sahrotaar’s exterior eyelids clicked shut with its blink. Darkness rose and fell with the bony snap; Miraak’s hold involuntarily tightened in the seconds it took for Sahrotaar’s blue-glowing gaze to return.

“I am sorrowful, master,” it said, “I thought it best to remain. I do not know where they went.”

Miraak clicked his tongue. “Coward. You were afraid,” he corrected. Sahrotaar’s head dipped in shame, but it did not protest.

“Come,” said Miraak. He wanted to see Nirn again, crown the world as the dov did, and though Sahrotaar was a skulking coward it would always have the one thing that Miraak did not; a natural dragon-shape, wings that did not flicker out with a Shout. “We will fly together. Through there – we will become ethereal.”

“Yes, master,” it said without hesitation, and turned with lumbering steps to face the crack in the wall. It did not escape Miraak’s notice how Sahrotaar’s head twitched automatically beneath its raised wing to escape the light. In Apocrypha, there was no such clear grey-pale brightness. This was the first sunlight it had seen since it had followed Miraak into the jaws of Mora over five thousand years ago, and Sahrotaar would hide until it had the bidding of its master to feel it on its scales?

Miraak leant down, grabbing handfuls of fins and squeezing his legs, securing his perch just behind the dragon’s crest. His feet found as if it had been seconds since he had last mounted a dragon the ridges in Sahrotaar’s scales, his knees slotting home in the vulnerable hollows behind Sahrotaar’s jaw. He murmured a spell to protect his body through the thin acolyte robes he wore. It would not do to be flayed on this return to the skies.

 “Fly, mighty servant,” Miraak commanded. In his next breath, he reared his head back as if he too had a serpent’s lashing neck and war-drum lungs, and Shouted, “Fade Spirit Bind!”

Sahrotaar’s lower voice was a blast of thunder underneath him, then pale-veined blue ephemeral wings rose and cut through stone like oil through water. Sahrotaar’s muscles bunched as it leapt. For a sickening moment, they tilted forward towards the dark embrace of the rock, then Sahrotaar’s mouldering wings swept down with a booming crack. It lurched upwards, beating its great wings as they rose into the blankness of the stone that buried the temple. Up and up they rose, through the stone, unbreathing, immaterial, ghosts torn slip from between the plains, in a single heartbeat that lasted five quick pumps of Miraak’s fist.

They burst into the light like draugr from coffins. Sahrotaar’s ghostly wing fouled directly into the downy needles of an unbothered pine, terrifying the small, beady-eyed creature that clung to its cracked bark. Furred, grey as shadow, it shrank at Miraak’s stare – then it was gone, vanished far below them as Sahrotaar flapped its wings hard.

There was no air current to tangle them, when ethereal, none to push under its wings, but a dragon’s intent was stronger than the world’s around it, and they soared up quickly.

Sahrotaar’s form flickered back into solidity just as they swept over a lake that had formed in the rocky basin below the ruins of the temple. It was a cloudy day, not thick with ash but pregnant with late-night snow by the chill in the air. Nevertheless, the late morning sun opportunistically found gaps in the grey roil in the sky and gilded the lake into an ice-white sheet. The jagged blues of the glacier heart that fed the water thrust frost-glare into Sahrotaar’s sensitive, deep-sea eyes. It stung even Miraak, hidden behind his mask as he was.

Sahrotaar howled a scream loud enough to crack glass.

Its wings stuttered in the air; one trailing edge clipped a prominent tree. Momentum violently checked, they were dragged into a pinwheeling flail. Sahrotaar slammed towards the lake. Thinking quickly, Miraak kicked the dragon in the throat. It squealed and jerked its head – and, thankfully, its shoulders – upwards to escape the blow, and therefore barrelled chest-first into the pebbly lake-shore with an almighty splash.

Reflexively, Miraak threw his arms over his head to protect himself from the spray of gravelly sand and icy lakewater. His heart pounded and his skin numbed. When he lowered his arms, he cursed to see a long, shallow slash across his forearm from a sharp-edged rock. His robes with their fine enchantments would have protected him from such a minor wound.

Blood welled up, bright purple sheened over with iridescent blues. It didn’t look like Laataazin’s blood. It didn’t look human.

Miraak swallowed around a lump in his throat and determinedly ignored the taste of iron and ink lurking like a foul promise on his tongue. He spat its poison at Sahrotaar instead, hissing out a vicious order, “Fly, Sahrotaar, so help me Jhunal I will guide you.”

Sahrotaar whined faintly, but it heaved a spluttering, wet breath and gathered itself. The impromptu dip of Sahrotaar’s lower half had done some good, at least, as it miserably pushed its chest out of the muddy lakebed, Miraak watched millennia of inky sludge course off its finned tail and drip turgidly from its wings. Underneath the uniform leathery-green slime of Apocrypha, traces of the original cerulean blue shone like cracks of pure sky.

Locking his legs tighter around the dragon’s neck, Miraak pushed aside the pained squeeze of his muscles as Sahrotaar settled back onto its haunches and spread its wings. Some ancient water-dwelling instinct had it fanning its wings as if to dry them, casting foul droplets yards up the much-abused lakeshore. It stained the snow like spots of rot.

Another jarring leap as Sahrotaar clumsily fell into the air. All the grace Miraak remembered was gone, the wind battered and rocked them as Sahrotaar bulled upwards, eyes firmly closed to the bright light of the sun. Artlessly, it simply pumped its wings to gain altitude as fast as it could. The wind tugged at its thrashing fins and lashing tail and sent them seesawing in jagged spirals that flung Miraak’s stomach against the back of his teeth.

Impatiently, Miraak waited until he judged they had risen to a decent height, then he shifted his knee against Sahrotaar’s neck. Sahrotaar, attentive to him, turned, one wing rising. It caught an updraft, and their wild jerking smoothed into a steady glide.

Sahrotaar’s clamshell wings belled into lazy arcs as it rode the air current. Its length straightened, the fluttering fins smoothing instinctively back against its eel-like body. They picked up speed, air thwapping playfully against Miraak’s damp robes, seeking the holes.

They fell into a familiar pattern, Miraak scanning the sky for the disturbances in the ash and cloud that signalled stronger crosscurrents, Sahrotaar making minute adjustments with a flare of fins or swing of tail to keep them on the course Miraak indicated. Sahrotaar was responsive and quick as ever, relaxing underneath him as Miraak murmured commands and warnings, accompanying each command with subconscious shifts of his bodyweight and the tensing of his hips and thighs. In turn, he was focused almost entirely on the dragon beneath him, Sahrotaar’s even, if quickened, breathing and the thud of its heartbeat through the tender scales Miraak’s body protected, the instinctive tilt and curl of it reacting to whispers of air too small for Miraak to notice.

The outside world faded away into greyness, unimportant but for where Sahrotaar’s wingbeats stroked it. Sensory noise competed for Miraak’s attention, the chill of his wind-raked robes against his skin, the hearth-glow warmth of Laataazin’s amulet, the flapping whistle of air streaming against the eyeslits of his mask where no thick robe anchored the attached hood, the subtle tickle of hair against his neck, his clenching, burning muscles and the pain in his gut, but he felt none of it. Nothing but the tug of gravity pressing him against Sahrotaar’s neck when they turned, nothing but its pleased, clicking purr low in the hollow of its throat as they rode the air.

He imitated the sound thoughtlessly, and for a moment, beautiful and clear, Miraak could pretend it was his wings that cupped the sky like he could hold the whole world right there, a bubble in the palm of his hand.

All dreams ended.

Sahrotaar’s nostrils flared, and it stretched out its neck eagerly. Far below them, the rolling cliffs were melting into the sharp foamy crash of the shore, black humps of stone flecked with white and the wavering purple dots of grazing – netch, he thought they were called. Unbroken, the sea stretched away into the horizon, towards the rest of Keizaal, the heartland of the old holdings. It had started to rain, in irregular spits that bounced off Sahrotaar’s neck and skittered from the scalloped edges of its wings. Sun dazzled in arctic patches among small crusts of ice that clung valiantly amidst the wave-tossed rocks, sharp discs of harsh light that had Miraak reaching down to cover Sahrotaar’s eyelids with the palms of his hands, just in case. The tight flesh of his injured hand tugged at the motion.

“I smell the sea,” Sahrotaar said abruptly. Without input from Miraak, it slid into a smooth, stomach-dropping hairpin and shot towards the open water, body as streamlined as an arrow cast from a thunderous bow.

Miraak indulged it, knowing Sahrotaar felt as home among the crushing depths as he did in packed snowbanks. Still, as he hunkered down against the dragon’s pebbled neck to avoid being torn off from their speed, his cheeks itched wetly. He dashed his fist against them under his mask, the flapping of his hood striking his neck and shoulders like the pattering of a thousand small slaps for his weakness. When he anchored his arm around Sahrotaar again, he ignored both the bloody ink staining his robes and the far more suspicious salt stain on his glove.

It was the emergent rain, nothing more.

Let Sahrotaar fly over the open water if it pleased it. There were no mages to shoot them down from the coast, after all, no Vahlok or opposing dragons to challenge them and force them to land. He had had vague considerations of finding Relonikiv and Kruziikrel, but now he was outside, he had no desire at all to return to the temple and even less to wrangle his recalcitrant servants. They could not run to any place Sahrotaar could not also reach, and they had no defence against Miraak’s will. When he called, they would come.

Though his body hurt, and he knew already he would not be stirring from bed for a long while afterwards, he forced himself to ask more of his endurance. There was no wind in Apocrypha, no air to feel streaming against his body, threatening to pluck him off Sahrotaar’s back, no seasalt tang, no stormy chill, no dashing of bitter rain on his mask. There was nothing like dragonflight, true dragonflight.

Perking up, Sahrotaar flew confidently now, angling its body to chase the winds as if it had not been centuries. A winged creature never truly forgot how to fly, though Sahrotaar had always been more comfortable underwater than above it.

Sahrotaar’s shadow dappled the water. Its shadowy claws tussled with whitehaired wave-caps; shapes beneath darted away, just visible under the steel-grey. The waves were tall and hissing rain speckled the taut skin of the sweating water. A horn broke the surface. Then another, then a whole line of them spraying seafoam like carving tosses chips of ice winking-bright.

“Sahrotaar, pull up,” Miraak said urgently, tugging on its crest of fins. “Rise, now!”

Reluctantly, Sahrotaar lingered, stretching its nose longingly towards the water. Only for a second before it tilted its wings to obey him, but that was enough.

A dragon exploded from the water with a mighty roar, catching Sahrotaar’s tail in its jaws. Sahrotaar yelped; Miraak Shouted fire at the dragon. His fire struck true, boiling the dragon’s icicle-wreathed crown. Blisters welted over its leathery scales and it wailed, releasing Sahrotaar to splash noisily back into the sea.

Frantically, Sahrotaar charged into the sky, trumpeting its alarm with hissing bursts of aggrieved fire. Miraak guarded his head as the ashes blew back biting hot over his shoulders. Sahrotaar’s irregular fire-breath flashed like lightning strikes, searing white in his vision. The rain slapped against Sahrotaar’s slippery scales, mixing with the slurry of ink on its wings.

From the coast, Miraak heard a sound that chilled his blood; another dragon’s roar.

It shredded the sky in a sonic boom and turned the whole world to fire. Miraak grabbed onto his frills and tried to squint past the tears in his eyes, but he saw nothing but fire, heard nothing but the reverberation of the dragon’s call. Sahrotaar flailed in the sky, panicking, unable to see and unguided. Its cry shook Miraak’s bones, but he could not hear it, deafened as he was. His nerveless hold skidded down the great serpentine neck. Pure panic surged.

Miraak grabbed desperately at Sahrotaar’s crest. The weakened fins tore under his hand, and as Sahrotaar bucked in surprise, Miraak fell.

For two seizing, heart-hammering breaths, Miraak tumbled free in the open air. The wind shrieked at his mask, seized great handfuls of his threadbare robes, pummelled against his limbs until he felt as if they would snap off from the pressure.

Valiantly, he sucked in as much breath as he could before it was torn from his lips and prepared to Shout.

Then he hit Relonikiv.

He recognised it only from the flexible spines that punctured his chest as he collided with its back with enough force to crack something blisteringly painful in his torso. Miraak’s body bounced limply on the dragon’s back, but skewered on Relonikiv’s spines, he did not slide off while his vision was whited out from pain.

“Rel…” His voice was snatched by the wind. Relonikiv screamed piercingly as it flew in crazed loops, even if he could Shout, he doubted the dragon would hear him. It had always been a flighty creature, never attentive to others.

Relonikiv executed a particularly sharp loop; Miraak felt the prickly tip of one of its spines grate against his rib-bone. He swallowed down vomit. With shaking, bloodied hands he grabbed hold of the stiff spines that sprouted from Relonikiv’s back like a bristling porcupine mane. He had fallen athwart Relonikiv’s skinny hips, right above its leaf-bladed tail, slender as a whip and twice as lethal. When he tentatively locked his thighs around the dragon, Relonikiv’s feather-shaped, sharp scales pricked his skin through the robes. Wet warmth trickled down his legs, soaked his boots.

He gritted his teeth as he forced himself to squeeze. A human’s body was good for very few things that a dragon’s could not do better – clinging like a terrified monkey happened to be one of them – but Miraak could have done without the agony and trembling burn of abused muscles.

More confident he would not fall, Miraak nudged his cheek flat to Relonikiv’s withers and squinted blearily at the sky.

He saw three dragons through the slanting rain upon a backdrop of bruised clouds. The stormfront had thickened into a menacing frown at the presence of five masters of the Thu’um, and the incipient storm unleashed itself in voracious crackles across their sky-cracking wingbeats, their rumbling tongues.

Kruziikrel was there, snapping and snarling at the third dragon, familiar, with half the icicles that adorned it like a threatening cage of bristling thorns melted away in a score of fresh burns down leathery neck. Krosulhah, Miraak recognised suddenly, and scowled under his mask. So, it was the one who had startled Sahrotaar.

It put on a good show of being distraught about it, bugling mournfully as it strafed the waters and growled at Kruziikrel’s steaming bulk, as if it was trying to encourage Kruziikrel to search for Miraak. But he was not sure he believed his prodigal servant – he had thought Krosulhah dead at Laataazin’s hand. Had it bargained a traitor’s survival?

Lightning snapped in Sahrotaar’s mouth as it, blinded, howled wordlessly. Splatters of inky water sprayed the roiling sea like gushes of black blood. He had the vague sense he had lost time, seeing the vibrant purple clouds streaked with ashy columns of smoke from Kruziikrel’s fiery greeting, the blazing pink hues of the still bright sun beyond the cloud-cover, the snow that burnt in its glow like the mountains were sheathed in roses.

Relonikiv rose and dipped faster than the wind itself, giving the strange impression of stillness on its back, airlessness, save for the near-crushing presence of gravity gluing his body to the spines. He bled over them in steady pulses.

It was one with the air in a way that all the others did not quite manage. Kruziikrel hung like a stone with wingbeats that shattered at the sky like pounding fists. When the rain met its hard red scales hot as the internal throb of a volcano’s heart it boiled away into steam, until Kruziikrel was wreathed in fog like the grasping fingers of dead men and ghosts. Sahrotaar was emblazoned by the saltwater, its length sinuous and boneless, curling and coiling on itself, but it flew like waves fell, rhythmic and rote. Krosulhah danced along like the unconscious curling of first frost, bright, brilliant, shimmering – delicate.

And below Krosulhah, the waves lurched and leered, casting a distorted mirror of the burn of dragon-fire blaze and lightning strike.

His body was too weak to feed his spells magic alone? No matter – Miraak’s element was lightning, and there was plenty of that like jabbing spears hurled from the heavens.

He closed his eyes and concentrated. He imagined his magic was a line of singing silver, coursing through his body to his uninjured hand, down and then out, into the crackling atmosphere of the storm. He made a lasso of magic around the searing energy abundant all around them, then drew it into his body, slowly, carefully, feeling each crackling twitch and burn under his skin. A subtle purple glow emanated from the loose lips of the scratches on his arms, hummed next to his heart fey and wild.

Miraak had been a priest first before he had been a Dragonborn, long before he had ever found the word in a dusty text written hundreds of years after his birth. He had grown up around and under dragons in service to their every need. Once, it had been a matter of life and death to memorise every draconic instinct, every twitch and quirk. Miraak would not be boasting to claim he knew the bodies of dragons better than he did his own.

Gathering his stolen magic in the palm of his hand, Miraak waited for his moment. He eyed Relonikiv’s shifting body critically, and just as Relonikiv bowed into another gut-twisting turn, Miraak lobbed a ball of lightning into the sensitive spot at the base of Relonikiv’s spine.

Relonikiv yowled, automatically tucking its wings close and committing to the dive, as any dovah would, expecting to be attacked from above. They plummeted down, gaining speed so quickly that it was all Miraak could do to hang on doggedly.

Instinctively, Relonikiv flared its wings to stop itself before it hit the water, but Miraak shot more lightning at its left wing. Relonikiv squealed and rolled. Miraak managed to hang on for the first stomach-churning tip, but the second as the momentum of the corkscrew increased their velocity tore him from Relonikiv with a messy squelch. He let himself fall, focused on swelling his lungs with the biggest breath he could.

The water struck him like a blow. Dizzily, Miraak held onto his breath, dazed and aware of only the salt stinging in his wounds, his eyes. He sunk, watching far-removed from reality as the surface of the sea whipped and churned with flashes of light and thunderous dragon-calls that groaned through the deep. It was cold, he noticed, with distant pleasure, cold enough that his muscles locked tight and refused to aid him as he sank, slowly, into the watery abyss.

 Relonikiv hit the water a moment later, shrieking and wailing as it thrashed. Its screaming shattered the strange disassociation, and Miraak regained enough presence of mind to kick off his shoes and struggle to swim away. The lashing edge of a wing caught him and sent him pinwheeling into the cold darkness.

Fear constricted his chest. He wasn’t sure which way was up – he couldn’t breathe-

“Whirlwind Fury Tempest!” Miraak Shouted with his hoarded breath, but the depthless blue was hopelessly disorientating. He closed his eyes and fought his body to move, his chest squeezing as he denied it breath. His mask weighted his face like a stone, dragging his head down, just like Mora did, when Miraak read from the Books, salt on his tongue-

Suddenly, an arm, thick, human, warm, latched around his waist. Pulled flush against Ulf’s bare, hairy chest, Miraak was dragged like a wet cat as the big man kicked towards the surface. Implacable as steel, Ulf’s powerful arms did not budge when Miraak struck him, half-drowned and all panicked, nor did he flinch at the residual crackles of lightning magic.

They broke the surface. Miraak coughed and spluttered. Ulf thumped him on the back, still holding him up, his furry face smudged by the salt in Miraak’s eyes only concerned. The heat of him was like a brand, his blubbery flesh slick and impossible to grasp. Miraak settled for seizing Ulf’s chest hair, twiggy ginger in his fist, pinking the sea-chilled skin.

He felt small and drowned in Ulf’s powerful arms, like a child.

“Hey, breathe,” Ulf mumbled, barely loud enough to hear over the dragon roars, “I got you.”

Pride stinging, Miraak permitted Ulf to swim them to shore. He had timed his fall surprisingly well, landing close enough that had he been healthy, he would have had no trouble – once he found the surface, that is. He would have been fine. He had conquered worse odds, had he not?

As soon as Ulf’s foot found rocky sand and he lumbered to his feet, Miraak pushed himself away. Surprised, Ulf dropped his arm, and predictably, Miraak fell to his knees. The water carried him another few paces in shore while he kicked at it uselessly. His masked cheek ground up against the black sand and Miraak closed his eyes to restrain his impotent fury as Ulf walked uncertainly past him, strong as an oak.

“Lord!” Soskro’s voice, cracked with terror. Their footsteps pelted down the sand towards him. Miraak began to struggle up, off-balanced by the buffeting of the waves snarling at the shore. Spray flung over his hood and soaked his hair. Horrified, he realised that some of the green-black tresses had escaped their confinement, and now slapped and stuck against his shoulders and mask, foul with ink that ballooned blackly in the water.

Soskro flung themselves at him, heedless of their robes, and at once helped him to his feet. He staggered forward into their arms, tangling his mask in their fine long hair, their smoky scent. Their metal hand was hard against his back, the slightness of their body warm and firm against his, tingling with magic and unspent life-strength. Their magic flared, and then licking flames blazed into life over their dusk blue skin, like the last rays of sunlight over mountains.

The heat from the fire burnt at Miraak’s soaked robes, his cold flesh, but it did not hurt, did not do anything other than seize a fist around the cold soul of him and clench, as if it wanted to pull him forward into Soskro, beneath their skin, to the pulsing pit of their heart.

“Get off me,” Miraak bellowed hoarsely, and Soskro let him go with the woundedness of a punished hound. With the last of his strength, he coiled his fist and backhanded them, hard.

It landed harder than he meant it to, or perhaps Soskro was unbalanced, either way, they fell bodily to the ground. Their long skinny limbs scattered like fallen pins, their hair knotted and writhed in the black sand. Like an inanimate puppet, Soskro lay as they fell. They did not shout, or lash out, or cry. No, Soskro went quiet, quiet as the dead.

The other acolytes – more had come rushing out of the temple, he surmised, following Ulf down to the coast – went abruptly still. He did not see Mirdein among the small crowd, but even Sulis stared at him blankly, as if he had done something unforgiveable.

The slap of his fist hitting Soskro’s cheek seemed to reverberate up the cliffs, unmuffled by the pouring rain.

There was a moment of silence as all looked at Soskro, sprawled on the floor. Drethys was crammed close against Ulf’s now-clothed chest, flaming as Soskro had. As he stared, the flames slowly began to waver and wane. The dripping Ulf shivered and held Drethys closer.

Trembling, Soskro curled in on themselves. They drew their legs to their chest, their movements slow with an odd, toneless shock. Their flesh palm came up to cradle their cheek where Miraak had hit them. It was already purpling with blood.

“I don’t need your help,” Miraak seethed. His hand ached, his gut squirmed, he had his arm clamped over his bleeding chest. He wasn’t sure how much longer he could stand, his knees wobbly as a foal’s, but he refused, he refused to give in to weakness, even his own. “I don’t need any of you.”

“Of course, my master,” said Soskro quietly. They looked at him when they spoke, but their gaze seemed to go through him, anchored someplace far else beyond Miraak. They dropped their eyes, and with that their hair fell over their face like a shroud.

Baring his teeth under his mask, Miraak panted. He staggered when he turned, craning his neck to squint at the dragon-dance above. Inhaling was agony as the scraps of his borrowed robe clawed at the wounds on his chest, but he persevered.

“Sahrotaar! Relonikiv! Kruziikrel! Krosulhah!”

He left barely a breath between each Shout, and the thunderous shockwave rolled through the ground like a quake. The acolytes stumbled, Sulis sent to their knees, and distantly, a rocky crunching foretold a landslide. The dragons roared, then there was a war of wings as they all fought to land first. Miraak threw up his arm and shielded his face from the tossing sprays of sand, but when Kruziikrel landed with a heavy thud his knees gave way.

He collapsed onto the ground, wheezing tightly through his teeth as the fall jarred all the way up his spine into his skull. His teeth ached from how hard he gritted them. Miraak sunk glove-padded claws into his flesh and glared at the assembled dragons.

Sahrotaar had the grace to look ashamed, still mostly in the water, it hid from him like a shy child. Its scooped jaw was held so low it was gritted with sand. Kruziikrel loomed next to it, imperious and threatening, its black-striped wings held proudly upraised as if to remind Miraak precisely how large and deadly it truly was. Relonikiv lurked behind Kruziikrel, skinny body visible through its legs as peeking jade green. Its slender snout peered round Kruziikrel’s thick shoulder with worried yellow-green eyes. Krosulhah stood slightly apart, favouring one leg but otherwise brimming with joy, visible in its twitching tail and straining neck.

“Mir-Aak,” said Krosulhah, “You return at last.”

The other dragons said nothing, did not greet him. Miraak savoured their reticence, the slow hunching of Kruziikrel’s powerful shoulders, Relonikiv’s whistling anxiety. It was easier to gather himself when he didn’t have to concern himself with keeping his feet underneath him.

“Earth Mind Dragon,” Miraak breathed, and his dragons flinched as Bend Will hit them noiseless as a snare.

Of them all, only Krosulhah had any drastic reaction; it flung itself backwards with a wail, its eyes scrunching shut and its wings tenting. Its injured leg buckled underneath it. Krosulhah went down in the sand, huffing like a Dwemer machine.

Kruziikrel’s blazing orange eyes dulled, and its head bowed as if pressed down to the floor by a great weight. Relonikiv went icily still. Sahrotaar’s chin slumped into the sand until it threatened the holes of its nostrils. Still, they denied him their words.

Miraak revelled in the power he felt, singing strong and true through his veins. Even struggling to maintain the strength to stand, he could leash four of the most potent beasts on Nirn to his will. Truly, he was the mightiest of all.

“Do you heed your master?” he asked them.

Relonikiv whimpered an affirmative, and Kruziikrel’s head dipped even further. It hissed between its teeth as if the motion physically pained the great beast.

“Yes,” Sahrotaar rumbled from the water, pale-blue eyes fixed unswervingly on Miraak. Krosulhah echoed it.

“I have led us to freedom,” he said, gesturing round at the wonder of the world around them. The rain pattered in singing staccato to his words. “But I have been weakened by the endeavour.”

He paused, expectantly. The acolytes said nothing, but when he glanced to check they were there and listening, he saw them bunched together pale-faced at the dragons clustered on the beach. Ulf was squeezing to him Soskro, who leant against him lifelessly like a large, strange doll.

“You have what strengthens me,” Miraak continued. “I ask for a sacrifice, in payment for my guideship. Allow your strength to become mine.”

Silence followed this. Sahrotaar’s swishing tail stirred waves that slopped over its back. Kruziikrel’s nostrils flared wetly, and Relonikiv cringed further behind it. The rain dripped like tears off the end of Relonikiv’s leaf-shaped wings, smoked off Kruziikrel’s impressive horns like mist. Blood welled in its place; something had reopened the horrible scarring on Kruziikrel’s neck, and it bled red acid onto the black sand.

“You are cowards, seeking only to preserve your petty lives!” Krosulhah roared at them. “I am loyal!”

It swung its great head down to regard Miraak, the icicles along its jaw clattering together. “Take my soul, Lord. All that I am is yours.”

“You are a true servant, Krosulhah,” Miraak murmured, well-pleased, “Come to me.”

He held out his hand to the acolytes, and heard the dry rasp of a knife being drawn from its sheath. It was a gamble not to look, but his hand closed safely round a wire-wrapped hilt, and Miraak felt satisfaction burn like an ember in his belly. Let this stay their doubts.

Krosulhah limped over and lay down, angling its heavy jaw over his lap. Its tail twitched back and forth with agitation, and its breathing was shallow and rasping. Still, it held Miraak’s gaze loyally, bravely, even as it pushed its snout into the sand to give Miraak better access to the soft space behind its jaw.

“You are honoured,” Miraak said, “with this death, Kro-Sul-Hah.”

Smoothing the back of his glove down Krosulhah’s snout, Miraak regarded the dragon’s heaving neck. The side that Krosulhah presented to him was raw and blistered with burns, still damp with melting icewater from the icicles that grew from its body like dripping horns primed to shatter. Krosulhah shared Sahrotaar’s soft, circular scales, made for enduring the pressurised scraping of the sea’s saltridden teeth. They were so small they felt like rough leather under a bare fingertip, not scales at all. Where on Sahrotaar each tiny, nail-sized scale was like a tiny slice of sky, on Krosulhah they were brilliant silver, like hundreds of thousands of coins melted together into a winking hide laced with ice and starlight.

Miraak’s fire-breath had seared Krosulhah with sooty black marks. Reddened and angry, the burns wept heat and clear ooze, perceptible even through Miraak’s leather glove.

He squeezed the hilt of the dagger, forbidding his hand from shaking. He had done this – oh, he had lost count of how many times – but it never felt less dangerous, never quite felt right to the part of him that had been raised under dragonwing. His heart beat a rabbit’s pace in his throat as he aimed the dagger, the rusty blade dull and coppery as Kruziikrel’s eye.

Miraak steeled himself.

He stabbed Krosulhah in one sharp thrust, quick and clean into its brain. It was dead before it had time to cry, its massive body seizing with one brief, final jerk. Blood dribbled out of the wound, when he yanked out the dagger and tossed it blindly behind him, it gushed. It stung and hissed at the remains of Miraak’s borrowed robes, eating through the dull fabric like it wasn’t there, like it couldn’t bear to be parted from a thriving dragonsoul.

He felt Laataazin’s warm human weight in his arms, how could he not? Krosulhah’s slack jaw and lolling tongue became their face, splinter-smeared, fumbling lips, that hand clenched in Miraak’s robes. The shape of their skull was imprinted on the palm of his hand, the branching ridges of the lightning-shaped scars that had leapt up their neck into their hair, tangling in his fingers. He felt their breath on his cheek, soft and fluttering, like the wings of a small, hopeful bird.

“Does it hurt, having your soul ripped out like that?” he asked them, and Laataazin trembling, bleeding in Miraak’s embrace, gave him a watery smile.

“Not at all,” the impression of their lips whispered, but their tearstained eyes shimmering like the sunlight of Miraak’s first free sunset never met his.

Then their body convulsed, and was gone. Brilliant purple magic dissolved into glittering streams of bright yellow and auroral blue, glistening strands of silver wrapped around shards of ice-blue, Krosulhah, in all of its beauty, and all of its terrible ugliness. The hungriness inside Miraak sunk its teeth into Krosulhah, rending and tearing, scraps of memory and shards of sensations buffeting him as power, power, pure as dawn itself, spilled across his cheek, his eager tongue. He felt Krosulhah’s fear, its loyalty, its poignant loneliness; how it had craved for Miraak to return all those long years alone. All that was Miraak circled Krosulhah’s soul like a prowling hunter, overcoming it, subsuming it until it was naught but meat in the fire of his dragonsoul.

Miraak heard his own resonant moan jar the bones on his lap in a symphony of dislocating joints and rattling cracks. The greatest rush he had ever felt strummed his body like an instrument of the gods himself, and the melody, arcane and starbright, burst behind his eyes like the shock of orgasm. Such paltry physical sensations and words paled to describe the immensity of it, but when it was over, Miraak unbent himself from his feral hunch and grinned.

He felt his own teeth in his mouth, sharp enough to cut, felt his wings defying the pelting rain like flags of allegiance, his tail lashing with triumph. His eyes, when he opened them, glowed so strongly with the residue of his Dragon Aspect that Miraak saw their fire reflected in the dulled scales of his three watchful dragons.

“Master,” Sahrotaar murmured, with something like awe, something like fear.

Digging the foreclaws of his wings into the shifting sand, Miraak pushed to his feet. He forced his tail still into a proud curl, stiffened his spine and rose his chin. He allowed the storm to garb him like a god-king in a crown of thunderclouds and purple lightning, the agitated sea seething around his bare feet with his vicious talons. His robes were half-destroyed, hanging off him where they remained, but the skin underneath was unmarred, scrawled by the shifting wink of daedric false-eyes and lies in scrawling script. The ink flowered in the shapes of his bruises, but it was near invisible under the incandescence of the spines that marched over his vulnerable stomach and back.

He saw himself, reflected in their eyes – the weak dov, the joore – divine, mighty, magnificent, Miraak.

“I am your guide to greatness!” Miraak bellowed. The harsh Dovahzul cracked like a whip, the strength of his Voice furrowing fat scars into the sand in the shape of draconic sigils and claw-marks scraped against the earthbones themselves. The joore cried for their bleeding ears, fell like worms to his feet.  “Only heed my every word and wish as your own, and I will crack open the gates of Oblivion to rain their treasures at your feet, I will conquer the leaders of this land and allot you their thrones, I will lift you from the ashes of your lives to such power the like of which you cannot comprehend!”

The wind howled assent, Solstheim itself shuddered and groaned under the boot of its master, gone too long, come now to reclaim what was his. He surveyed them all, the wan-faced joore of his acolytes, the bow-necked dragons. Softly he spoke now, for Miraak could be loving, he could be merciful, a gentle guide at the reign instead of harsh at the crop.

“I will not destroy you,” he promised them tenderly, “If only you are loyal to me.”

Chapter Text

Miraak lay upon a bier in the cool depths of the temple, and closed veinless lids over hollow eyes. His soul rampaged in his chest, howled at the confines of the thick earthen ropes of muscle that bound skin to skeleton, blood to bone, mind to matter. He wailed at the horrible, cruel inevitability of a creature of air and fire, frost and sky, beyond all fragments of soul made form, chained within the lugubrious hell of a mortal body. His soul had not been meant to be a man, and each step he took was shadowed with the terrible loss of what Akatosh had taken from him – his claws and teeth, his strong wings to bear him far away, his lashing tail and his serpent’s eye – all for the sake of fate.

But he was Miraak, mightier than any god’s plan for him, stronger than any restless ghost or dragon, and he mastered his own fate. And so he lay there, his dragon-borne heart pounding a war rhythm in his chest, and he ate Krosulhah’s soul.

In dreams, he was Krosulhah, and he was magnificent. He knew it, he breathed it, he lived it. He was the lord of secret sorcery, the subtle manipulation of the mind, and the harsh glaze of sun on autumn ice – deceiving in its solidity to the eye, treacherous beneath. Flight was a dream to him, he knew nothing of cages, the earth no more a prison than his immortal body understood the concept of nightmare.

Scents of warm-home-heart tickled his nose as he lazily chased a thermal in a rising arc. The kind gusts belled out his regal blue-white wings, until he stretched each wingtip and felt them cup each halfway around the world. Far below, the rugged tip of the new land of fahliil basked in the spring sun.

Fresh with melted ice, the Sotkol joore-nest was so dark and brazen against the fading snowheights of the strunmah Krosulhah had chosen that the rounded roof seemed smeared with ash, as if a firebellied Dov had saw fit to free its followers from another winter. Bossy Kruziikrel, come to flaunt its ruby foe-teeth, and boil Krosulhah’s cold waters with its fiery scales until the soothing seas itched too terribly to lie in, would do that if only to steal Krosulhah’s favourites away. But no rival had seen fit to poach from Krosulhah’s flock.

No, today was a good day, wrought in spring-sun warmth that scattered droplets of icewater along Krosulhah’s shimmering silver spine. His garlands of frost were melting, under the heat of this southern sun, and as his next lazy downbeat sprayed cold rain across the stubborn crags of the mountain, he marvelled.

To the bitter north, there was no season of spring, or of summer, ground away by the passage of time. Krosulhah, born from the heaving seas of the world’s birth, remembered the creation of all seasons, how winter shook itself in first snapping and snarling, and out of its corpse grew fresh shoots, game that was fun to chase, and the joore.

Futile, summer-bright things, with soft teeth and softer paws. Such quiet voices they had, that they needed whole packs to sing with the resonance of dragons. Friendly, fearful creatures, living like termites in the dense warrens of cave and tree, their small eyes glittering in their flat faces like tiny gemstones. They did not glow, like a dragon’s eyes did. Instead, a joor reflected the light that was around it, one of the qualities that had made them so perfect for their great purpose.

Atmora’s endless winter was no trouble for ice dragons who loved the snow, but – Krosulhah tucked his wings and fell like a spear hurled from the heavens towards the sea, and the waiting chasms of gnashing rocky teeth beneath the waves, guarding the labyrinthine seacaves snarling through the rugged map of this part of Keizaal – it was not dragons alone who loved the Dov.

Dukaan was waiting for him when he breached the black water, seafoam gilding the pure icicles that clung to his argent jaw, the mighty forking of his submarine frill crowned by an impressive thicket of ice and emblazoned with chill that made him glitter as if he were crusted with precious gems. The glow of his own eyes scattered moontossed beams around the smooth walls of the seacave, catching in the rigid lines of swirling decorations carved with clever joor paws until it seemed as if the whole rock wall was alight, alive, with the ripple of waves. Only joore could turn rock to water, with nothing but shadows and the light of a dragon’s eyes.

His breath curled out ahead of him in a foggy plume of white. Dukaan’s scalloped silvery mask, so like Krosulhah’s own scales, paled with ice crystals that hung heavy in the mantle of white fur around her shoulders. Beneath it, her eyes glistened, bird-black as onyx.

“Beautiful one,” she said, spoke smooth and true, like any good joore raised to the dragon tongue did, “I am awed and ashamed to kneel before you, in such humbleness as I do.”

Krosulhah lashed his great tail, driving his spiny body further up into the sea caves beneath Sotkol and emerging from the chill water. He fanned his wings, billowing gusts of cool air up the passageways cut large enough for even a dragon to pass through and ruffling Dukaan’s robes. She had left him just the perfect amount of space to settle on his ebony sharp claws and diamond-plated chest, just close enough that he could arch his spiny neck to press his scaly snout to her chest without having to wriggle forward at all.

How well she knew him, from tip to tail, from scale to soul.

Her small arms came around his jaw, deft claws painted silver as his reflexively seeking the soft patch of scales under Krosulhah’s throat for a good scratch. The tips of Krosulhah’s wings sagged as he melted under her attentions, careful to angle the sharp prod of his tusks away from her delicate flesh. Her robes rumpled and fluttered as if caught by stormsung winds when he exhaled a greeting breath.

She blew back, more of a chin jerk of her flat face than any breath, captured as it was in her mask. Her eyes gentled at him, all that unbearable softness on display; how careful a Dov had to be, to avoid hurting them with their fragile skins and their bodies full of a thousand pulsing things, without a single one of which they withered away into a sleep that they could not be woken from again. Precious, momentary things, as warm and lovely as the sunlight’s dazzle on bright wings, between the onward march of the clouds. And so he greeted her with breath and air, and not with fire.

“Drem-lok,” Krosulhah rumbled with pleasure, “di-sonaak, Dukaan.”

“Hail, Krosulhah,” she returned, and tipped forward until her slight weight rested against his nose, negligible to dragon as large and strong as Krosulhah. Her warmth cradled the sensitive, flexible scales of his head, too hot to be borne, if it were not for her. She sighed. “What news from the north? Has Al-Du-In caught wind of our plans?”

“Niid,” Krosulhah said. “I think not. Yet. Faasnu Kruziikrel has been given a new priest. Fah yol mey. After much whining.”

“The fearless one should perhaps stop killing them, and then would not need more,” Dukaan muttered. Her blunt claws scratched under his chin with a surge of vigour; even with strangers, she felt their loss, she felt for their pain. Krosulhah wondered where she put it all, in that small chest with its rabbit-thudding pulse counting out the scant seconds of her life. “No matter how convenient it is for our smuggling operations.”

Krohsulhah snorted a laugh. He thought Dukaan would govern the joore at Kruziikrel’s nest better than Kruziikrel did, and this was a fine joke, to imagine her giving mighty, flaming Kruziikrel, impatient with everyone, orders that must be obeyed, weak as a kitten. How could a joor control a dragon? They were such small creatures, barely any teeth at all. But they spoke a dragon’s tongue, and their hearts were steadfast and strong, stronger even, Krosulhah thought, than the Dov. But without a dragon’s Voice, their will was still dependent on a dragon’s indulgence to listen.

“You speak with the mind of a joor, but a Dov’s sense, dii. I do not think this one will last long.”

“What mask does he bear?” Dukaan asked. She rose, and after a quick, guilty look behind her, pulled off her own mask to press a quick kiss to Krosulhah’s horn. Her fur spilled out her face around without the voluminous hood to keep it back; always so much more than Krosulhah expected there to be. He swore it grew every time he looked away. Such was the nature of mortals, constantly changing.

Obligingly, he bent his neck to allow her to climb up his spiny shoulders, and find a perch there with her clever hands wrapped around a spare spine. Nimble and quick, these joore, and how quietly they could move without the earth lumbering through each of their heavy steps! Dukaan’s small claws tickled when they skated along the ridges of his polished scales. Some joore did not even have that much, and were small and weak all over, full of warm blood and soft meat. But not his Dukaan, no. She smelled perpetually of cool snow, and never minded his chilly scales even in the longest arc of winter.

“Faaz, rok los…” Krohsulhah’s mind sought a glimpse of memory as Dukaan scurried about on his back. She was a warm spot on his back, right over the vulnerable place where his neck joined his body. When she had settled herself, a loose rope wrapped around Krosulhah’s neck, she tapped his scales.

The flash of a mask came to him, the strange, oily scent the priest had carried following quick after. Like snorting sparks, it had stung his nose with the briny memory of the madness that lurked in the deeps. Though he had worn many bells in his robes that jangled and clashed together harmoniously, the little joor had been slow on his feet, and his eyes submissively lowered. His will was already broken despite winning for himself a mask of the favoured, and every step drug against the tidal current of the deep, and his rattling breath was the whisper of wind through fallen leaves. Of dead things, of decaying things, of the strange, still sleeps of the joore, wherein they would never wake but only dream.

Kruziikrel would be through with him in barely a year, Krosulhah thought. Firebright Kruziikrel, bragging and gloating, immense and majestic, saddled with this sad little creature, whose very breath seemed to hum a discordant note in a song? No, Krosulhah suspected he would barely live long enough to allow Dukaan to take advantage of the chaos of his arrival to steal away precious joore from the talons of unworthy Dov. On the heels of this recollection, Krosulhah remembered the name.

Pleased with himself, he ruffled his wings. “He is Miraak.”

---

The maw of Raven Rock was set low beneath the vast scowl of its walls, the teeth of its portcullis scraping the drifting hills of ash. As Frea and Nikulas crested one such shifting, powdery hill, the bonemould-clad guards slammed their spears down into a jagged ring of spikes. The close eye of the sun hanging like a spectre over the ashy clouds wreathed their bristling spears into individual points of fire. Each fearsome helmet hid sharp red eyes that were as cold and hard as rubies.

“Halt!” one shouted.

Placatingly, Frea raised her hands. The strap that secured Laataazin’s hammer to her shoulder dug into the meat of her muscle and ground against the bone.

Nikulas glanced sidelong at her. He had been carrying his bow in hand, like any good hunter ever watchful for a flushed hare or snowfox. As he fumbled to hastily copy her, he dropped it. The bow hit the ash with a muted thump, the string snapping back against the wood.

He cringed. Frea pursed her lips and kept her eyes forward, Nikulas’ blazing cheeks like summer sun in her peripheral vision.

She offered a silent prayer to the All-Maker that Nikulas had not cracked his bow. The Dunmer bows Frea might find to replace them in town were built for slender elven proportions and were made to be regularly drenched in oils and set alight. Nikulas’ thick human fingers would struggle on the small grips, and it would never shoot as well cold.

But beyond the practicality of conserving the Skaal’s limited resources, there was something in the air here she didn’t trust. Suspicious xenophobia, Frea expected that, but not raised weapons. It had never gone so far as that before.

The clumsy disarmament eased some of the more undisciplined guards, and a few spear tips closer to the back dipped to rest gently on the ash. No doubt they would be hastily taken up if the captain scowling at them from under his bonemould helm turned.

The young were the same everywhere, it seemed.

“Hail,” she called, in her clumsy Dunmeris. She knew only a few words, enough to announce who she was and that she meant no harm. She had never been tasked with hunting or trading with the lowland elves and so had never had occasion to learn more than the basics, though travelling with Laataazin who understood barely more than she and could not speak at all had brushed up her skills.

At her shout, a wave of relief swept through the guards; even the less green ones slumped. At the captain’s gesture, the ring of spears raised, put up against bone-plated shoulders with a deathly rattling.

“Hail, stranger,” he said, “Welcome to Raven Rock.”

The guards formed two neat rows for Nikulas and Frea to pass through. Stepping into the shadow of the Bulwark, Frea swallowed around a lump of apprehension.

Even Nikulas’ vibrating eagerness died into a wary sort of unease that matched her own as they passed under the towering walls of the Bulwark. No seasoned hunter was he, but he didn’t need to be one to feel that Raven Rock had all the tense exhaustion of a trap in waiting.

The huge walls loomed over her, pressing her into the vast dark heaviness of their enfold. The air was noticeably hotter inside, almost clammy with a thick shimmer that clustered round the dun, dully shining carapaces of the houses, bone, shell and chimes of carved wood, unmoving in the listless still. The fields that pressed up against the walls of the Bulwark like the rolling crumples of patchworked furs were fallow soil, dark and picked bare.

Braziers were lit at every corner, burning with sweet perfumes that cloyed the air. The townsfolk haunted the alleys between the dusty gutters, half-choked with ash that was normally swept away. There were more than Frea remembered, rangy and lean as wolves. Sunken into tight, pinched faces, the knots of their bellies, their spirits flickered and glowed like banked coals.

She stumbled into the gaze of one elf counting coins in the shade of a sprawling trama root. Quick as an arrow, the coins vanished in a silver flash, and their slender hands with nails painted poison purple crept into the ash to curl around the hilt of a wicked-looking dagger. Outlined in the dark shadows of tear-tracks, their eyes burned as they lingered on Frea’s weapons.

The attitude was quiet; subdued. No one talked. There was no laughter or song in these streets, only the whispering of the ash and the silent, persistent sense of being watched.

Purposefully, Frea struck out across the town, towards the Earth Stone. The sea breeze chilled her cheeks as she crossed the boardwalk, her boots echoing hollowly. The Earth Stone sat a little away from the nearby buildings, still with half-risen barricades and guard posts that stood empty, like eyesockets dotting the walls of tombs. It was not completely unattended; a single Redoran guard was slumped over a rickety chair, snoring into his helmet.

Careless. Frea bit her tongue and tasted salt flecked on her lips.

Nikulas’ footsteps were silent as a cat’s behind her as Frea skirted the guard and slipped into the barricaded area around the Earth Stone. Dark water sloshed over her boots, and she grimaced. Nikulas nimbly hopped over to the ring of stone that hugged the very plinth of the Stone, risen like grave marker to the smoky sky. Squaring her stance, Frea leant back against the barricades and crooked a rune of mage-sight, the third finger of her left hand against the pad of her thumb, over her eye.

The glistening leylines of the land superimposed themselves over her sight, threads woven round the swollen nexus that was the Earth Stone. The magic here pulsed and roiled like the ocean not too far from its lonely hill, disturbed as a kicked nest. It dragged deep, through hollow chambers of ancient rock, through the very twisting foundations of Solstheim itself. The blood of the All-Maker pounded through the tributaries that had been cut here by Frea’s ancestors long ago, risen into glowing pools of energy clustered around each Stone, invigorating the earth, purifying the waters and sweetening the sky. The whole island sung through these Stones and the Skaal that watched them. To the learned shaman who knew how to read them, the Stones had once whispered of everything from the tiniest forager to the greatest tree, the silent humming of the mountains, the dead men that slept in their cold tombs, the vast network of power that stretched over Solstheim together like links in a great chain.

But now, all they sang was one word. One name.

Miraak.

His touch fell upon her soft as snow kissed her cheeks, but there was no will there. Just – presence. Awareness, like she was being watched, in the same slow way the moons observed the passing of the stars and the interminable dancing of fireflies. Mortal lives, flickers of light against the encroach of void, dark as ink and deep as memory itself.

Uneasily, Frea took a step back, out of the inky water around the base of the Stone, certain that in the dim waters that oozed there she had caught sight of Herma-Mora’s eye.

“This needs cleansing,” she muttered.

Hand straying to his bow, Nikulas peered into the water suspiciously. Frea doubted he could shoot an arrow anywhere helpful, but she understood the desire to face the unknown with a weapon in hand. “Is it this bad at the Wind Stone, too?”

“You can sense it?” Frea eyed him, but he did not seem any different, if a little nervous.

Avoiding her wary squint, Nikulas rubbed the back of his neck. He checked his fingers, as if expecting blood – or maybe ink – to have stained them. “It’s – louder here. I hear him.”

“You hear him?!” Frea grabbed her amulet subconsciously. The flicker of her father’s magic was calming, but it warred with a creeping and persistent guilt. She only had the one, after all, and one had not been enough without Laataazin’s aid. Amulets, weapons, and all the wisdom of the Skaal hadn’t been enough. This time, they had to be, there was nothing else. “… What is he saying?”

Nikulas shifted from foot to foot. He pushed the hood of his fur parka down, revealing a pale face that was glossing with sweat. The brisk, salty wind chapped his cheeks, but it could not hide the tips of his ears turning red. His tongue darted out to wet his lips, anxious as a watersnake caught in a rockpool by stirring seas.

“Just…” Nikulas squeezed the grip of his bow until his knuckles turned white. The stretch-blanched skin over his knuckles stood in harsh contrast to the hectic flush brimming in the hollow of his throat, his wrists, all the places where vulnerable blood gathered. As he stood motionless, his eyes glazed and his pupils narrowed to pinpricks, as if he stood before a great bright light that Frea could not see. He began to sweat, drips sleeting towards his dampening collar. He held his body too rigid to shiver. Like even breathing would be too much.

“I hear his whispers,” he breathed, “… and there’s music – singing – just far away, but I can… I – I feel like flying.”

He scuffed one of the carven lines worked into the base of the circle around the Stone’s base. A tingle worked its way into her aching bones where her skull met her spine. The trapped energy hummed restlessly, visceral as a shudder caught under her skin.

Something… stirred.

Acting quickly, Frea yanked Nikulas’ arm. He toppled half-over, yelping as he splashed foul water up to his knee, but Frea did not pause until she had towed him out of the stone circle, past the barricades and the sleeping guard.

Seizing him by the shoulders, Frea shook him. Anxiously, she searched his face, fever-flushing darkly, the hair on his temples curling with his sweat. His oak-brown eyes were muzzy. He blinked at her, trying for a wobbly smile. Nearly hoarse with relief, Frea released him and whirled around to hide her face. For a moment, she’d thought – well, it didn’t matter what she had thought.

Groaning, he sagged against the barricade wall nauseously, one arm creeping around his stomach. He touched himself like a stranger to his own body, a faint grief or virulent relief pinching his mouth as he ran human hands over his nose, his cheeks, gripped at his belly.  “Oh, that does not feel good.”

“We should leave this place,” Frea managed to keep her voice clear, though cool, though fear threatened to strangle it, she could not alarm him, she could not. She could not risk bringing to his eyes, so young and bright with a hope yet to be crushed out, the dreadful fear she had felt those nights at the Stones, shaking numb limbs and feeling around her neck the necklace that warded her like a lodestone for the prayers of her people. “Are you well, Nikulas?”

“Aye.” Nikulas leant over and spat illustratively in the dirt. He plastered on a rather wan, but brave face. “Aye, see, no hammering from me. I’ve got your back, Frea.”

“Alright,” she said. She worked her jaw around the words, feeling them thick and awkward in her mouth. A headache crept into her temples and banged there like incautious shutters. Her stomach did not want to relax from its tense nest of snakes. She wanted, badly, to be away from the Stone. “But tell me if you start to hear anything again.”

“Aye, shaman,” he said lightly, but his eyes were serious.

As he followed her away from the shrine, Frea caught him glancing over his shoulder and rubbing at his ear, as if to remove the phantom feeling of lips against it, did not speak of the wordless surge it roused within her. She kicked a stone against the foot of the guardsman as they passed, already several swinging strides away by the time he spluttered himself awake.

She did not think this place should be unguarded. No more were the Stones watchful guardians and earthen protectors. Not for the Skaal, and not for the people of Raven Rock.

“Those… whispers,” said Nikulas as they left, “That’s what Oslaf and the others heard, wasn’t it?”

“No,” Frea said tightly.

Her boots came down aggressive and sharp on the hollow chitinous planks boarding the ashy dust of the pathways, and she forced herself to slow down. They were attracting odd looks. Skaal weren’t a common enough sight in Raven Rock to go without notice anymore. They hadn’t been since before Miraak’s curse had started stirring in the Stones, and they had rather more on their mind than trading furs for spice and lowlander coin.

The guards were watching them warily, their hands on their belts loosely fingering weapons. The guards had never been the friendliest of Dunmer in Raven Rock, but they had usually treated newcomers with distant politeness. Perhaps Frea owed her chillier reception to the fact she no longer walked at the Dragonborn’s side. The world had seemed colder, greyer, without Laataazin in it, somehow less full. They had this air of gravity and purpose about them that made any chore into a quest, an adventure, a legend.

The heft of their warhammer on her back restored the weight of their company, but not the wonder. Or perhaps that had been Frea’s own brand of foolish youth, when she had still thought that saving the day would be enough to undo the night that had ruled before it.

Frea’s absent mind had taken them unconsciously to the forge district, where she did most of her trading when she was in town. The tradesfolk of Raven Rock were always friendlier than anyone else, welcoming fine Skaal craftsmanship. Here, at least, she was greeted with gruff nods and the occasional thin-lipped smile.

“Am I going to start dreamwalking?” Nikulas asked quietly from behind her, drawing her attention to the uncomfortable silence that had settled between them.

Grateful to be drawn out of her thoughts, Frea smiled at him. It was a thin, drowned thing. Nikulas’ dark eyes furrowed up, unsure how to take good humour from her. She touched his elbow, trying for reassuring instead of staid.

“No, I don’t think so.”

His answering smile came out like the dawn. “Thank you, shaman.”

Frea looked away from his innocent warmth and tried not to think about the fact that as long as Frea held the only amulet resistant to Miraak’s powers, Nikulas could be commanded to work the Stones whenever he liked, and Frea would be none the wiser til she found him, hammering away.

The clang of metal on metal answered her thought, and Frea jumped. She found Laataazin’s hammer all but materialised in her hands, digging into the meat of her palms bruisingly. Her bare fingers looked muddied and cold, childlike, curled around the heavy haft. The Raven Rock smith, a wiry, pale human from far across the sea, glanced up at her. His canny eyes were sunk low in his skull, mounded with exhausted wrinkles.

“Ahoy, Skaal. You want your weapons fixed up, you’ll have to wait. Guards’ order came through first.”

“Oh, we weren’t here to trade…” Nikulas started, but Frea approached the smith, caught by the stick of iron he was scrutinising. Sensing a conversation, the smith, Mallory, shoved it back into the coals.

Closer to the forge, the heat was fearsome, fire-salts popping and crackling in the hearth like chattering atronachs. Flame-treated Dunmeri weapons would not melt in any ordinary fire, at least, not without frost-salts to weaken them first. Frea knew that much, from Baldor Iron-Shaper’s grumbling when the Skaal brought back treated weapons from trade. The Skaal were no witch-elves, they did not conjure atronachs and daedra and slay them for their heartfires and skin-salts. But Frea’s own war-axe had been made with fire-treated quicksilver folded round a steel blade, and it had cut through the searing attacks of enemy Dunmer as if their fires were water.

“That blade has been sheared in half,” Frea interrupted. “… Of metals I know, only stahlrim could do this, and we do not make it frequently. Who cleaved that sword?”

“I ain’t paid to ask questions about dead folk’s blades, Skaal.” Mallory wiped his brow and set down his hammer. “Truth be told, I’m glad to see some of your sort about town. I’d had you all figured wiped out long before now.”

“Wiped out?” Nikulas demanded.

“Aye.” Mallory squinted at them. “The ‘spawn was bad enough before. Still, will you be wanting anything?” He looked admiringly at the hammer Frea had forgotten she held. “Aye, I’d pay you to get my hands on that beauty.”

It simmered when he looked at it, as if the death-enchantments within the metal sung for the blood that fuelled them. If he recognised the intricate carvings of twisted dragons, he said nothing, but Frea shifted it uncomfortably over her back anyway. She wasn’t here to talk about the Dragonborn.

“No, friend,” she said, as graciously as she could manage. “We came to see if the curse of Miraak continued to affect your people.”

“Miraak?” Mallory scratched his chin. His nails rasped against his unshaven cheek. “Can’t say as I remember where I’ve heard that before…”

“The Stones!” Nikulas burst in, insulted. “The Traitor came and took everyone’s minds while they slept, and they laboured away for hours – tens of us died!”

Mallory’s expression flattened, his cracked lips pressing in a thin line. “Ah, the Dragonborn’s business at the Stones? Your pardon, but I’d figured that was in the past now.”

He turned away from them, straightening some tangles of leather that coiled over the workbench behind him. His nimble hands made quick work of the knots, but he kept his eyes focused on the table. Frea read hesitance in the line of his shoulders. His reticence ignited anger in her heart.

“In the past?” Frea repeated, nettled, barely recognising the quiet threat in her voice as her own. “Bare weeks have passed, smith. Our bodies are still not yet feeding next summer’s worms. Have none of your people’s scouts kept watch on the temple?”

“Aye,” said Malloy, his unease a twitch in his sooty cheek, “Well, I never lost anyone personally, really, lass.” He shrugged defensively. “I gave the Dragonborn free servicing when she fought that mind-thief, because of Fethis, asking on account of his missing associate. I’m a smith, I fix weapons and armour. There’s enough dead about to break good steel against without needing to go looking in the tombs for them.”

He glanced over his shoulder and his eyes tightened, lingering on something just past her. As subtly as she could, Frea stole a look and spotted a loitering guard on the corner. The guard was sagging against a wall, bonemould armour ashblown and long spear shortened by a foot. With a start, Frea recognised him from the gate. Had they been followed?

Nikulas’ arms were crossed over his chest, weight set back on his heels belligerently, but his ire was focused on the smith. His hunter’s ear had caught no stealthy step behind them, or he would have alerted her, surely. Frea touched her amulet, and forced herself to relax her shoulders.

Mallory cleared his throat. “Well, if you ain’t here to trade, I got to ask you to move along. I’m busy.”

“Aye,” said Frea. “All-Maker’s blessing, Skaal-friend.”

It came out bitter and sharp, and she frowned at herself as she turned away. Storn would have kept his good humour, navigated the conversation with calm. Frea represented the village every time she left, she owed them better. The amulet’s magic hummed against her clutching hand, cool as a breath of frost.

“Yeah, yeah,” said Mallory absently, clearing a space on his workbench, “Shadows guide you.”

As they stepped away, the guard came up behind them, proffering his broken spear and engaging Mallory in such rapid muttered Dunmeris that Frea hadn’t a chance of eavesdropping on.

“We should check the town out, huh? Maybe someone else has noticed something,” Nikulas suggested brightly, and Frea nodded. “I wonder why’d they think we all died.”

“Aye,” she said. “I mistrust this.” She glanced around. It was midday, but the market was empty. Dust blew in scattered puffs across the chitin planking, tracing patterned eddies. Frea lingered on them, convincing herself she did not see runes scribed in the ash’s senseless scrawling. A merchant was sat hollowly on a nearby crate, staring into the neck of a bottle of shein. In the shadows of an alley, crimson eyes glittered against dark tattoos. They seared her like a brand, watching, waiting.

For her to be alone?

 “We should split up, Nikulas.”

“Huh?” Nikulas turned and looked over his shoulder obviously, making her wince. “Why?”

“We will cover more ground,” Frea said. She thought the people were obviously wary of them together. It was a trick she had played with Laataazin once, after all, it was hard to get information from star-struck locals without one of them playing distraction.

Locals speak freer if guards are gone, Laataazin had told Frea. No true Nord trusts his jarl these days. I suspect these folk aren’t so different.

“If you need me, light an arrow and fire it.” She smiled, humourlessly. “Or scream.”

“Aye, shaman,” said Nikulas nervously. “I’ll meet you – uh…”

“The tavern,” said Frea, pointing to the sloping roof of the Retching Netch, just about visible, “in an hour.”

He nodded, not comfortable with the plan but deferring to her. But when Frea searched the alley for a glimpse of those red eyes, he clasped her bicep. Halted, Frea thinned her brow. Nikulas did not let go.

“Are you all right, Frea?”

She blinked, nonplussed. His kindness hit her delayed but with a sudden burn in her throat that hurt to swallow around. She was fine, of course she was. His hold on her was steady, and his root-deep patience was embracing as the comfort of a fire on a cold night, and all at once, Frea felt the unsteadiness she had been refusing to acknowledge buckle her knees.

Pulling her into a quick hug, Nikulas squeezed her to him. She buried her face into the fur of his parka and breathed in his warm, familiar scent. One of his tattered braids tickled her cheek; she would offer to help him redo them later, she promised herself, like a Skaal should.

Stepping back felt like wrenching the very heart of herself away.

“I will be fine,” Frea told him, the only one of her people for miles. “Go.”

“Aye,” said Nikulas. He did not protest anymore, but walked off, conspicuously angling away from the Earth Stone and the chattering waves. Frea squared her shoulders and eyed the marketplace’s darker corners. Time to find out if her suspicions bore any fruit.

Chapter Text

Miraak gasped awake, as much himself as always and yet more than he had ever been. His hands flew to his body, wild with hope. Forgetting his terrible injuries, he searched for scales and wings. The pain struck him at the same time as reality reasserted itself and he curled around a silently crushing scream.

A man. Only a man, with no mighty teeth, no diamond-scales, no powerful wings to snatch and soar the sky, never to be trapped by any will save his own. A man with a dragon-soul swollen and replete with an infusion of memory and strength that fit terribly within his body, as if every part of Miraak stretched and tugged and pulled himself into the wrong, strong shape. Only a man, not a dragon, not free at all.

He could eat their souls and soar in their dragon-dreams, but at some point, he would always have to wake up.

Tears trickled down his cheeks, warming the inside of his mask. Controlling his breathing absolutely, Miraak permitted himself to cry, soundless and invisible, for all that he had lost, for all that he had never had. It would pass, as it always did. At least, it would dim long enough for him to press it back into the tumult of his mind.

For now, Krosulhah’s soul was fresh within him, the soul-memories he had gleaned from it sharp and vivid in comparison to his own dulled joor senses. His clothes pressed oddly against his soft, sensitive skin, his nose felt squashed and his breathing truncated. He was flightless, wings ripped from him before he was even born, and his teeth were dull – but the Voice was all around him, within him, a thread of absolute, grounding will. Miraak focused on it; sky above, Voice within. The air whistling through his lips, filling his lungs, the flex of his diaphragm as he exhaled, the rush against the surface of his mask. Familiar, even in the aftermath of the dragon-dream, for to Shout all creatures needed to breathe.

He was somewhere dark, and cool – underground, sense told him, or the back stacks of Apocrypha, where books and slime formed towering walls lit only by the listless luminescence of a seeker’s eyeless stare. In his temple, his magic added, recognising the whispering hum of the spells worked into rock to animate the guardians and preserve the stones, spells he had laid long ago, fearing siege. The long-ago panic of that day still tinged the spellwork, made it caustic and snapping, wary as a beaten dog chained to a vicious master. He was somewhere quiet, for he could hear no other close by their breathing, probably somewhere in the bowels of the temple where no cultist would venture.

Like any dragon, when overwhelmed Miraak knew he holed himself up where he was sure none could find him, to lick his wounds and regain his mind in peace. Krosulhah’s soul in his told him to seek ice caves and the subzero silence of arctic burrows, but Miraak the man thought of soft nests of ripped pages and spread spines, reassuringly cool metal against his cheeks, the solidity of leather creaking as he touched fingertip to fingertip. There were no pages, no ink, not even the wet slush of Mora’s tentacles moving placidly through the deeps, only hard stone and dust that made his nose sting.

Not Apocrypha. Then where?

Inhaling slowly, he worked his jaw free of the stiffness of repeated Shouting, and opened his eyes. As expected, it was dark, and cool, and still, but it was only when he uncoiled himself from the foetal position and felt his foot kick against the hollow ring of metal and bone that he realised where he was.

A magelight lit in his palm with barely a thought, Miraak stared down at the flesh-stripped corpse of his rival Dragonborn. When he raised the light, he could see the twisted Daedric scar where he had torn open the portal between realms, a splattering of black bile that could have been Kruziikrel’s blood or his own. Sahrotaar had lain in this festering pit for weeks, Miraak saw loosened scales, pitted scars in the walls where it had rolled around, trying to get comfortable in the cramped space. There were glass shards speckled like stars in the bright magelight from the potion bottles Miraak had crawled to, crushed by a careless sweep from a dragon tail. The once fine floor was speckled with mystery stains and shredded by restless claws, and the whole room reeked of decay and dragon. He knew it only through Krosulhah’s memory of himself, the foul scent that clung to his hair and his skin and his blood; Mora, rot and dust.

Shame pricked at him, that he stank and did not know it, that the reek was so deeply embedded into his body that even Soskro’s attentive care or his unexpected plunge into the ocean had not washed it away. He had been vain, once, as befit the mightiest of the dragon priests, but now as Miraak laboured to his feet, all he was capable of was a hollow tiredness and vague, uneasy misery.

There was a crusted pool of blood where Miraak had lain on the cusp of death, where they – Drethys and Rofiik – had found his body and dragged him away from the dragons, to be healed and saved. With a peculiar sense of vertigo, Miraak stood over it and scuffed his boot through the flaked blood. It was dark as ink. His left hand ached; he flexed his fingers and marvelled at the tug and pull of repaired tendons.

Krosulhah’s soul had done for him what Soskro’s healing could only have granted with time and great skill. Miraak stood under his own power, weak but sure. His magic was leashed to his command, and with it, he could compensate for physical weakness, until he recovered his fighting strength. It barely hurt to use his magic anymore, only an acidic tug to remind him that his reserves were not what they were, and he could close his hand without his glove filling with blood, if not free from pain strong enough to make him grit his teeth. His blunt, joor teeth, in his short flat mouth.  

He would recover his fighting strength. Miraak, the strongest draconic will of them all, would not be held down for long.

“Laataazin,” he murmured their name, but it rang empty, no dragon soul to receive the call to no matter how he Shouted. There was no soul here, no memory, no ghost, in that shattered skeleton. Why then, did he feel their breath misting the front of his mask, the heat of their blood over his hands?

How insubstantial they were, in death. He traced the jagged fray of their chestplate’s strap, palming down the nicked and scratched surface until he found a telltale scar in the ribs, where, a world away in Apocrypha, his sword had stuck. His nerves tingled with waking pain, feeling once again their weight in his arms, dragging him to his knee, their warmth, their solidity. They had gripped onto his robes until they strained over his shoulders, like Miraak was a real thing, like they could stop the blood pumping out of their body by clutching at him alone. Clinging to their killer, to the fading heartbeats of life, before Miraak’s vicious lightning had struck.

He knelt beside the bones and picked up their skull.

Missing their mandible, it was light in his hands, a human’s skull, with no especially pronounced brow ridge. What little of the occipital bone remained at the back of their skull that his finishing attack had not blasted away was rounded. Smaller than those he had handled before, yes – they had been short, in comparison to him, head and shoulders below him. Having seen Hakir, Sadeni, and Hjoti, who while not at Miraak’s lofty height were not small, he wondered if Laataazin were from a different area, or if poor nutrition had stunted their growth.

Curiously, he rotated it to check their teeth. Small and flat, like his, though he had tasted the strength of their Voice and not found it lacking. They had had most of them when they had died, but not all, and what remained sat crookedly; they had healed unevenly, signs of stress in the bone told him Laataazin had likely lost those teeth in a fight. A grains-based diet, Miraak was willing to bet based on the extensive wear of their upper molars, for much of their growing life, and little resources to care for their teeth. Certainly, no magical attempt had been made to fix them. Perhaps they had been poor, then, in the least, they had not been raised with an eye to the strength and preservation qualities of their body after death.

Not like Miraak, reared for an eternal servitude, casting off his chains to enforce his will on his once-captors.

He set the skull down carefully, then went through their pockets methodically. When his investigation turned up nothing of note, Miraak sat back on his heels and pooled magic in his palms. He began, as any decent priest would, with the skull, alighting blue flames of magic in their eyesockets as he hooked the nexus of his spell into the seat of their cranial cavity.

It made for an obvious weak point in a draugr, but it was easiest to empower a skeleton from the skull, where the memory of the brain directing the body lived on. Laataazin’s stripped soul had ripped both flesh and blood from their bones, leaving behind nothing but a shell without even the shapes of memories to direct his working, almost as if they had lain dead for years rather than at most, weeks. Animating the long dead created more work for less gain; the best servants, the wights and lords, were made by resurrection upon the moment of death, after a life of training to prepare their bodies for the honour.

But Miraak was not the most magnificent of the Dragon Priests for nothing, and his will had bent living gods to bow their heads. A few paltry bones of a vanquished foe were nothing.

He hummed under his breath, familiar words coming to him without thought. He did not breathe them into shapes, but followed their tune as he wove magic to bone, bone to will, and ignited it all.

“Rise,” he commanded, and Laataazin’s bones groaned and rumbled, tiny sparks of magic racing down the hollow gaps he could see where their armour hung off them, no longer filled by their flesh.

Blazing with blue fire, Laataazin’s battered skeleton twitched. There was no cognisance in the wretched pits of its eyeholes, only a bitter and consuming rush of magic bound to a dead thing’s form. The armour they had worn to their death rattled and shrieked as the skeleton sat up, bone scraping against metal and leather and dried blood. The spell sucked at his magic thirstily, as porous as dragonbone to the light of Aetherius, and Miraak fed a small stream of magic to keep it animate as he stood.

“Fix yourself,” he told the skeleton, well-pleased.

Even the dread Nahkriin would have been hard pressed to find a fault in the canniness of the blue fire, the thin lines of magic that spiderwebbed over the cracks in their bones, fixing and strengthening as he went. With time, and tools, Miraak thought he could restore the skeleton, paint its bones with hardening resins, wrap its joints and moving parts with reinforcing cloth to reduce the magical burden on his spell, etch words of command into its skull, its teeth, every bone and breath, so it would Shout with an echo of his Voice. A dragonboned champion, for the dragonborn that had slain them. It was good work, and it would protect his temple and his glory.

He left Laataazin’s skeleton finding its scattered bones to jam them into the magical matrixes of his spell and went to investigate the rest of the chamber.

Long ago, this room had been the thumping heart of the temple. Tumbled bones were strewn over monumental stairways carved directly into the rock, remnants of dragon trophies from Miraak’s hunts. Toppled smudges of discolouration told of the enormous braziers wrought in dragon-shapes of wicked iron he had filled with ever-burning arcane fires that whispered ancient secrets to the cultists that had passed through here, devout and awed by his glory, his secret and awesome power. Benches and bookshelves had lined the walls, a hall meant as much for lecture and knowledge as it was monument to his majesty. A vast shrine to Hermaeus Mora dominated the end of the room, cracked and faded by time and the minute shifts of earth, but untouched by the three dragons. A wide, dusty berth was left around the shrine, broken only by the dark pool of Miraak’s dried blood, and the shadows where Laataazin’s skeleton had been scattered, dead and dissolving before they could finish falling.

The upthrust arches of Mora’s carven tentacles turned his stomach to water. Skirting the shrine, Miraak kept his eyes on it and his back to the rock, staring until his eyes ached to convince himself he could not see it move. It was rock, inert rock, once shaped into a form Miraak had thought pleasing, nothing more. There was no magic in it, no presence but the afterimage of ancient rituals wrought in his name, blood spilled and secrets learnt.

Twice, this room had seen portals rent open to Apocrypha, and both times, the doorway had been paid for amply in suffering. There was none now, but the temple’s wards itched on his skin. Was not a thing twice-broken too fragile to trust a third time? If Mora could destroy Miraak’s wards to steal him from the jaws of death, could he not do it from the lap of his well earnt victory?

Bitterness stung his mouth like swallowed salt. If Mora tried, Miraak would resist. He would not be taken in again by the Prince’s suggestions and offers, his dark promises and corrupt temptations. Miraak knew that he would rather die than permit Mora to swallow what was left of his legend without a fight. For thousands of years Mora had denied him even death to end his suffering in his imprisonment, but Miraak was free now, master of his own fate once again, and never would Mora possess his Dragonborn trophy.

There was no stain left where Miraak had fallen to Vahlok’s blade in the back, so long ago. He could not pick out the exact spot where it happened, like there was darkened ooze from his long first night back on Tamriel. It felt wrong to not know, not to pinpoint the place where Vahlok had caught up to him with a bellow as Miraak ran from him like a coward, desperate to reach the Black Book and whatever scrap of power he could wrest from it.

He swallowed, pressing his knuckle to where his robes disguised the scar on his abdomen. Rolling his shoulder, he felt a long-gone ache from a bootheel twisting there as Vahlok pulled the bladed staff free. Tentacles had raced down from the shrine, not simply rock then, but wet and green like boiling roots, furious roiling pits like the boles from a tree’s canker, fetid and earthy and far too many. The inksap had swallowed him, consumed him, held him; for three days and three nights he had fought, but when he awoke it was to a wretchedly airless sky and a thousand watching eyes.

Miraak, the thing-that-was-just-stone whispered. With a creaking of bone, Laataazin’s empty skull turned to look at him. The blue fire wisped away from the cracks in their skull like a halo, like a crown of flame and dragon-horn, like Mora’s tendrils licking up the platform of the tower, like Miraak’s own blood pounding out of his ruined hand and his impaled chest and his gurgling lungs. Laataazin had faced him as they died, not down in the dirt as he had been, but Miraak knew all too well what it was to choke for breath around lungs that filled with his own blood, killed by a reflex to breathe.

But they had not been killed by a sword through the ribs, as he had not been. Miraak had taken their life with his lightning, conquered their soul, and so wrested his own from Mora’s grasp.

“I will not be...” His voice came out weak, cracked. Furious, he cleared his throat and thrust his chest out, calling enough magic to his palms that his bones ached and buzzed. “I am Miraak!” he bellowed, until the stones rang and the temple cried with his Voice, the earth shuddered and groaned and knew him, master of all that came before him.

“I am the end of Kro-Sul-Hah, and a hundred Dov before him, the mightiest Sonaak who ever lived! And you – are – not – HERE!”

He clapped his palms together with a thunderous boom. White-hot lightning exploded into being, striking the shrine’s statue with all the bottled fury of a captive dragon. He roared as it left him, thrusting his arms out to the deadly blast. The stone shattered staccato, chunks of mortar whizzing through the air to pock the walls. Laataazin’s bound skeleton, acting on dumb instinct to protect its master, launched itself at him. Hurling him clear, they went down in a rattle of cracking bones and plate.

In the aftermath, Miraak panted. The whole temple groaned. Thick plumes of dust wreathed the ceiling like the silks of ghosts, but there were no tentacles, no horrible memories in the stone. The statue was gone, annihilated in his uncontrolled lightning bolt, leaving behind a craggy scar in the temple wall. Cracks raced haywire, hissing dust like deep-elf vents.

He bared his teeth in a feral grin, slumping triumphantly onto his elbow. “You are not here.”

As the dust cleared, Miraak caught sight of a hole leading deeper into the temple. Levering himself to his feet, Miraak staggered back up the stone steps, ignoring both the scratching of his animated skeleton fighting to free itself from the rock and the agony of his battered and bruised body vociferously protesting his use of magic. Long ago, two stone beams had fallen, exposing a small room just visible under a slurry of rock. It might have been just visible from a certain angle behind the shrine, but with Mora’s statue gone, it was easily exposed. There had been chambers in this part of the temple once, Miraak recalled, places of absolute privacy where he could study his work in silence, small bunks for acolytes, sheds for tools. He had ordered them walled up when preparing for Vahlok’s army, leaving only one defensible route through the entire temple.

All this was known to him. What he could see just inside the previously blocked off rooms was not.

It looked like some adventurer’s rudimentary camp, bafflingly in the centre of his temple. Stones salvaged from the temple ruins had been placed in a rough circle, stretching towards the small crack in the ceiling to the world above. Dusty furs were rolled into a tight lump, lashed together with leathery animal hide. A pack was stowed in one corner, the thickly distended bellies of full waterskins lounging next to it.

Gingerly, Miraak settled down onto the furs.  Vision peeling white at the edges, he took a moment to gasp hoarsely with his head between his knees. Chills raced down his forearms to collect in his aching palms. He felt each bone, sore and sizzling with magic runoff. Willing his heart to settle, Miraak slowly pulled off his mask. It came off with a tug and the insidious rip of gunked ink against the insides, but the air was at once closer, sharper, more nourishing than it had been through its clogged grills. Reverently, he set it down.

The air touched his bare cheeks almost sensuously, and Miraak shuddered at the alien sensation. He scrubbed at his wet face with his sleeve, but each rub of his dirty sleeve against his skin scraped raw as needles against his exposed softness. Ink-soaked, his hair slapped against his head like a nestful of dead snakes. He pushed it back, grimacing as his glove came away stained deep green, felt his ears twitching at the absence of the hood’s weight against their points. Reflexively, he grabbed his mask.

His nostrils flared, sensing something intoxicatingly familiar hanging around the furs. Wine and sweat, the sun and sea, the earthiness of a mortal body.

Laataazin. His rival Dragonborn, the key and price of his freedom.

Firmly, Miraak laid the mask face-down against his knee. Looking down into his own mask’s face gave him vertigo.

He could not forget the sensory imprints of the first person he had seen in millennia, even if everything hadn’t felt so immediate, so demanding, without the buffer of his mask to filter it. This, their camp on their last night on Tamriel, felt like a footprint he could not help but place his boot to, destroying signs of their passage through the world with an inextricable desire to touch, to conquer, to possess the same ground they had. There was nothing personal in this place, but they were everywhere; in the russet glints of brown-grey hair trapped in the strap of their pack, the crumbs swept into the impromptu fireplace, the stippled fur of the creature whose pelt had warmed them as they slept on the cold stone, hidden beneath his temple in the last place any cultist would think to check – behind the imposing statue of Hermaeus Mora.

“A clever enough trick,” he told the skeleton lurking by the crack into the bolthole, the unholy furnace of its eyesockets turned emptily to look at nothing. It did not idle, did not twitch or breathe or shuffle, but simply waited so stilly that his eye skipped over it. “But you were still foolish, to challenge me and believe you could win, Dragonborn.”

Drawing their pack into his lap, he shook out their belongings. Folded at the top was something of dark fabric, with gold embroidery that caught his eye. He pulled at it and unveiled a set of robes, deep wine purple with minimal golden accents at the chest and shoulders. He hummed, glancing down at his own ragged attire. The acolyte robes Soskro had dressed him in were significantly worse for wear after having had holes torn in it by Relonikiv’s spines, soaked in seawater, and then rolled in the dust of an ancient cavern.

It was difficult, hot work getting changed on his own; twice, he had to stop and breathe steadily while his heart thudded dangerously in his ear and his vision swayed. He moved as quickly as he could, bile coating his tongue thickly at the feeling of air on his skin, the wetness of ink sliding down his spine from his hair, the unbearable intimacy of his own body, sallow and soft where his memories insisted he should be scaled and strong. It was a relief to yank his mask back on and lash the robe closed, so tightly it ached around his ribs. It was made for a bigger man than he, but the looseness was a comfort, reduced the immediacy of the new sensation against his body. He did not remember all this sensitivity before Apocrypha. At least the robe did not have holes.

To distract himself, he reached with some desperation to the pack. There was very little; spartan camping gear, a jar of pungent whale oil that made Miraak sneeze, and a map of what, with study, he eventually realised was Solstheim, the island his stalking grounds had become. Notes had been added in a crude hand.

Wobbly Dovahzul characters written seemingly at random made strings of nonsense words. The puzzle pleased him; Miraak bared his teeth behind his mask, and held the map up to the magelight, wondering if it was some code. After some intense thought, he spoke the sound aloud and translated it to what he knew of modern languages, trying to mimic how his human acolytes spoke with their rounded vowels and softened consonants, for his own accent was harsh and guttural, made for a dragon’s roar. He had cycled through three languages before he hit on Cyrodillic and realised that the nonsense words were approximations and transliterations of Dov names.

His own name was there, scrawled by his temple and badly misspelled.  He brushed his thumb over the uncertain letters, wondering for the first time Laataazin’s reaction to Apocrypha, the endless library with its reams of dense texts. He had seen many pass through its halls, hunger for secret knowledge was not solely the province of the literate and where will existed Mora provided a path. He had presumed that they had approached it much as he had so long ago, circularly, roundabout, grazing through the stacks and hunting for scraps of power. A clear goal was as much boon as it was hardship in Apocrypha, where the greater one wanted to find a secret, the more tightly it was kept, but without fortitude and strength of mind it became impossible to navigate the labyrinth of whispers, the palace of eyes.

He wondered how easily Mora had snared them with a bargain; if, impossibly, he had not managed it at all. Mora had meant Miraak to die, that much had been clear, but what was his plan for the Last Dragonborn? A replacement, for a trophy’s shine that had dulled?

“A poorer companion you could not have found,” Miraak muttered. The fluttering of the paper began to make his teeth itch, so Miraak folded the map and tucked it out of sight under the pack.

He found in tightly rolled sheath of leather stuffed in the bottom of the pack a bottle of wine, sealed with a twist of magic he recognised immediately was no mortal work. It was plain glass, but the liquid within winked and seethed in its prison, curling towards his grip like a hungry cat, or a wanton lover.

Linger, the wine tempted him, breathe it in, you’re curious, you want to read a little more. You want to lay down, immerse yourself, take a load off. Come on, it’s all right here. It’s been so long since you just let yourself go, you should take a sip, just one…

Laataazin’s skeleton shifted, its armour scraping noisily against the bone. Snarling, Miraak hurled the wine at the wall. The wine bottle shattered with a disappointed hissing of laughter, and at once, a tension he had not even been aware of uncoiled within the room. He shook himself, freshly nauseated at the thought of yet more hidden observers, taking note of how to lure him, break past his guard and entrap him in their schemes.

He rubbed his arms, trying to rid himself of the crawling sensation of daedric taint, lingering in the air like a bloodstain. His skin itched terribly, and he felt suddenly as if he had been seen vulnerable, violated by a gleeful presence that would delight all the more in his discomfort.

“So, you too felt the seductions of the Princes,” he muttered to the skeleton standing by him impassively. It had no eyes with which to watch, but it stood silent sentinel, attuned to danger regardless. The tugging at his magical reserves and the sense of it like a phantom limb running over the shape of Laataazin’s skeleton was almost soothing.

There was no one here, just Miraak, and the reanimated skeleton.

“More fool you, trading yourself for temporary indulgence,” he sneered at it, to Laataazin in his memory. “Perhaps with a stronger will, you would have lasted longer against me.”

Waiting for orders, Laataazin’s skeleton did not rise to the insult, nor make any threat of cognitive thought. It simply stood and burned, resolute as a signal flame on the furthest tower out to sea, guiding ships and attendant dragons into shore. Miraak remembered those twinkling lights, on the crossing to Mereth, as they had called the new land then, Relonikiv’s tail to Atmora’s cold winds and blue fires in the night, calling the march onwards. Had he known then that he would not see the land of his birth, buried now for thousands of years under snow and ice, ever again?

The memories were dull and faded, gnawed around the edges. For all he that he tried, all Miraak could summon of that long cold night was the soft flicker of the fire’s glow against the heaving water, and the total silence of Relonikiv’s swift wings.

“No sword, no shield,” said Miraak, dragging himself back to the present. “I suppose you did not expect to bring those back out of Apocrypha with you.”

Hollow eyesockets stared into him, expectant and silent. It did not question his insinuation, did not seek for answers as a living creature might, did not search for its discarded weapons of its own accord. No, Laataazin’s skeleton would simply fling itself at an enemy with armoured bone alone, unless he thought to arm it, and it would continue until it ground itself into dust.

There was nothing here but Miraak.

“Come,” he snapped, and forced himself to his feet.

With the world spinning and shaking around him, he made it halfway down the hall before he had to give up and slump against a pillar. Sweat sleeted down his forehead. He wheezed wetly, feeling a charnel of clogged mucus and ink waiting for a chance to be coughed out settled in his throat. The inside of his head knocked; threatening shivers ran up and down his muscles, warning of collapse. His magelight winked out.

Frustration squeezed shut his eyes. He was tired of weakness, always weakness. Had he been so sick, so frail, that one great blast truly been beyond his capabilities, before Apocrypha? Miraak could not remember. His mortal life seemed to him far distant and faded, washed smooth by the passage of long time, until sometimes he feared he was more truly Mora’s creation than he had ever been anything else.

Yet he knew this; Miraak had been the greatest of all the dragon priests, and none could take that from him. After all, had he not defeated the Last Dragonborn, mythwalker though they were, and outlasted every one of his rivals?

“Laas yah nir,” he breathed on a raspy exhale. Beneath the mask, his pupils sharpened into slits, wisps of flame huffing out of his nose. All at once, he saw the world as a dragon did, the heat of his acolytes’ bodies radiating through the stones of the temple, the dusty wallows and tracks of the draugr guardians, the scent trails of the other dragons, crisscrossed over with a rich-foul scent he knew for his own, resplendent and repugnant with daedric spoil.

They were gathered in the upper temple, not too far from the rot reek of bodies and blood. Far enough.

Miraak slumped. He looked to Laataazin's corpse, standing obediently in his shadow, the crawling hiss of the daedric wine and the shattered shrine, and the guttering pits of flame in its eye sockets, as strong as that final moment, that push, that glorious and agonising freedom from Apocrypha. How sweet their soul had tasted, breaking on his lips, foul as his own was magnificent.

 “Carry me,” he rasped, and obediently, the skeleton moved forwards.

Empowered by his magic, it lifted him with ease. He was significantly taller than they had been in life, and his feet dragged towards the floor, kept up only by the circle their bony wrist made under his thighs. He rested his cheek against Laataazin’s bloodied breastplate, wincing as his body was jostled against their bony joints. He noticed in a crack of their armour a strand of grey-brown hair, but it drifted into dust when he touched it.

The pitted glow of the magic in their skull cast threatening shadows over the slopes of their exposed cheekbones, limned their teeth as fire wisped out, like their soul still illuminated him, still nourished them with its strength instead of coiling around the dark spaces inside the hunger inside him, the emptiness where wings and tail should have sprouted. 

The quarried passageways that led up to the upper temple had been made in desperation, and their edges were sharp and unforgiving in the chill light of Laataazin’s wraithlike glow, slimed with a mysterious dampness that he felt as a clamminess down his spine. The tunnels were faintly rank, moist and oily; like Apocrypha, Mora’s presence had seeped into the very stones here, until even the very air trembled with the knowing of him. He could smell the churn of dust and death under their bony feet, the fear-sweat and blood that clung to their armour, soaked into the leathers back when Laataazin had struggled, fought and bled. 

It was quiet to his strengthened senses, but for the creak of their bones, his breathing and the thump of his heart. The scuffs of their footsteps on the stone floors of the temple echoed the familiar sound of death-cursed guardians patrolling darkened hallways in a vestigial memory of Miraak’s youth. He listened to the noisy rush of his blood through his body, the magic that cracked and sparked in the stones of the temple and in the bones of the foe who carried him.

Miraak rested his masked cheek against Laataazin’s chestplate, pressing down until the solidity made him ache. The implacability of the bone-and-magic arms that held him were near painful, containing the whole of his body like he was just a physical thing, able to be kept and trapped on the purest of mortal terms. There was no distressing heat, no busy workings of a living body to distract his ear, only the cool stillness of the grave, the placidity of his own magic soothed by the presence of its master. The metals of his mask clinked when he shifted against the pitted metal of their armour, the cloth of the robes he had scavenged rustled and murmured, the magic hummed and sang. 

Miraak closed his eyes and let the entirety of the sensory experience lull him into a stupor. He passed the journey this way, curled like a child in death’s arms, watching with his ears and his nose and the awareness of his skin the world pass by. When he reached the door to the temple proper, he inhaled back into himself, drew his manner over his flesh stitch by stitch, and had the skeleton set him down.

Steadying himself against the wall, Miraak brushed straight his new robes and rose himself up to his full height. He still felt weakened, but he had strength enough to be what they expected of him, what he expected of himself. His magic burned him spitefully as he summoned it to supplement the aching muscles in his legs and back, shaking from the effort of carrying himself. He tilted his mask up until he knew it caught the light like rays of sun shone on his head alone, filled his lungs with the resonance of air waiting to be made music. 

Then he strode through the doors.

The doors boomed as they struck the wall, and the yelping acolytes scattered like a flock of startled birds. Cards sprayed into the air; they had been all gathered round to play some kind of betting game. Agata swept out her arm over the floor and caught up every last glint in the storm of his appearance, but Sadeni did not even notice, mouth agape as Miraak bore down on them like an avenging instrument of death, the skeleton prowling at his side. 

“Lord!” Rofiik called in greeting, tangled in a pile of limbs with Rufiik until their hair mixed, black and white like rivers of night and starlight. They made to move, but Mirdein, squatting by the low card table, cut her hand through the air, and Rofiik lapsed uneasily back against the rock.

“We heard the blast,” Hakir said. Miraak thought he saw a pinch in Hakir’s easy smile, and though he scanned Miraak’s body as if to check for wounds he did not come closer. “But I see you found some good from it,” he added, gesturing to Miraak’s robes. 

“Do we need to worry about the temple coming down on our heads?” Agata asked baldly. Ulf, who had been sat placidly beside her, glanced up at the temple ceiling, clearly taken by a sudden fear of that very thing happening.

“Through no thanks to you and yours,” Miraak replied tartly, “Myself and the temple are well.”

“We thought it best to leave you to your contemplations.” Mirdein spoke, her voice flat and her eyes hard. She had a hand on Soskro’s thigh. When Miraak's gaze fell on them, Soskro's warm hand crept to cover hers, palms clasping. He avoided Miraak, his hair tumbling about his face to hide him from view.

“What is that?” Drethys broke in, his red eyes wide. He raised a shaking hand to point at Laataazin’s idle skeleton. A shuffle went through the assembled cultists, a disjointed murmur of awe and unease. 

Miraak spun, allowing a curl of pleasure to creep into his voice, and tilted his knuckle under the skeleton’s jaw, lifting the pits of its sockets to stare into the slits of his mask. It went without resistance. 

“This,” he said, “is the only creature I have had the pleasure of tinvaak with, and ever will again: Laat-Aaz-In they named themselves to me, and by my hand fell at the summit of Apocrypha.”

“The False Dragonborn,” breathed Rufiik. Their voice was softer, shyer than their mate’s, an inhale rather than a sigh.

“False only in their arrogance,” Miraak said, curling his finger down the pitted cheekbone. The skeleton stood blankly, without self. “A mighty foe, mightier than any of you.” He cast a derisive eye over their huddled shabbiness, fresh in Krosulhah’s memory of the glutting of glory in the height of the Cult’s power, they were even more meagre shadows of his rightful due. “But fate decreed that they would die to win my freedom.”

He didn't even see it coming. 

Hjoti hurled a rock at the skeleton. It whizzed past his head and struck Laataazin's skull with a horrible crack of stone against bone. Too late, Miraak flinched away, nerves jangling with panic, panic that immediately ignited fury.

"Joor! You dare!" he thundered.

“That creature killed our friends!” Hjoti snapped, drawing her shoulders back proudly to face his assault. At her full height, she was only a head shorter than he, and where he was clad in a loose robe she wore scuffed leather that strained over her muscular arms and thick neck.  There were nods and mutters of agreement among the others, and none would meet his eye.

He hissed, but he knew better to start a fight he could not win. 

“There is no soul – joor! Faaz.” He paused, reigning in his temper. They were his, his to spend and use wisely. They would learn. 

“Come,” he said, through gritted teeth. “I will tend the fallen. Take me there, those of you with the stomach for death and mind to learn.”

Chapter Text

The dead had been laid out in Miraak’s throne room. There was a bitter irony to that, if he thought too long about it. Once, Miraak had held court there, receiving audiences from his people who begged him for his power, his mercy, or his wisdom. They had queued to see his masked face beneath the shadows of the rebellious, the prisoners wasting and breaking in their twisted cages. The stench of pain and brutalised flesh would be too much for some, who would need to be guided pale and shaking out of the temple proper, but Miraak was a dragon priest, of dragons, and his nest was no soft or gentle place. The wise and the prepared knew that.

Nowadays, it was a monument only to its former self. The imposing stairs to the platform where his toppled throne awaited him were shattered, half the cages had rusted shut or fallen, and the intricately carved walls had been blasted smooth by time and ancient battle. Hooks that had once held tapestries and hunted furs were gone or empty, leaving threatening shadows and dulled, evil points. No fires were lit, no incense burned, and no whispering acolytes groaned the songs of devotion and duty as they rolled out rugs so thick and brightly coloured they shamed the springtime grass, each one patterned with stories of glory. Instead of dew-eyed worshippers and awed petitioners, there was only the sleeping expectation of the occasional draugr guardian that had survived the massacre, staring vacantly out towards the temple approach. 

Daylight filtered in from cracks in the crumpled outer wall, and a whistling wind shivered through the corroded bars of the cages until they jangled and moaned together, like the long ago voices of the tested and unfaithful come again. Snow dusted a fallen pillar, and mounded in lumps along the lower court. Grills that had bordered the court to carry away blood and waste had fallen through in places, leaving strange dark gaps that reminded him of punched out teeth. Everywhere, there was dust, so thick that as his boots stirred the stone it flurried around him like the tassels of ghosts. 

And it stank. 

So pungently even Miraak could detect it through his mask, an eyewatering reek hung in the air, physical as a wall. The acolytes behind him had come in prepared with cloths over their mouths, but he heard someone gag. It was the sour stench of rotting flesh, untended and unwashed. 

In stained wraps of salvaged fabric, bodies had been laid out in the lower court, feet to head. Their lumpen shapes were distorted under the fabric, and fluids puddled and ran from them down into grooves cut into the floor. Ice had been packed around the bodies, supplemented by the drifting snow. It gleamed with a coolly magical hue that Miraak recognised as Hakir’s work. Even weeks old, it held a palpable chill.

There were dozens of the wrapped bodies, each one a cultist Laataazin had taken from him. With new eyes, Miraak examined the sombre group huddled in the doorway. Ulf had Rufiik under his arm, his big ginger face hidden in their soft white hair. Rufiik still held Rofiik’s hand loosely, but stared at the floor, silent, as the big man’s shoulders shook from the force of his grief. Sadeni was clearly nauseous, hovering in the doorway with a kerchief held over her mouth, Hakir beside her gently rubbing her back. Mirdein was a bulwark with her arms crossed over her chest. Staring over the bodies with a callous dispassion, Agata’s eyes were heavy with sudden age and terrible experience. Drethys lingered behind her uncomfortably, like the small human woman was his shield, and buried his freckled face against his arm. Hjoti stood as bravely as any hero from a grand tale, but her expression was downcast, and her cheek clammy. Soskro, a haunted spectre, watched Miraak with one cherry-red eye through the dark mass of his hair. 

Their numbers had been reduced by at least two thirds. Those that remained, weak or small, quiet or cowardly, stood to serve him now not through virtue of their prowess but simply by avoiding the foe. How many more dedicated servants had he lost, to that futile defence when the Last Dragonborn had come through, seeking Miraak? And yet, Laataazin had stayed in the temple, sheltered by Miraak's walls and his people, undetected and unbothered.

Miraak’s eyes fell on Laataazin’s bound skeleton, impassively lurking behind the bunched acolytes. He couldn't decide if he respected or loathed their gall.

"Our fallen friends," Ulf said in his deep, low voice. It was a simple statement, but the acknowledgement seemed to clear something for the acolytes, for they visibly centred themselves, straightening spines and raising shoulders.

"Many, to one warrior," Miraak allowed. 

"There were two," said Drethys, "The Dragonborn had that lady with them, didn't they?"

"Yes, there was a Skaal," said Agata. "Sulis saw it all."

She gestured to the throne platform, where shadows clung to the far end of the wall - just enough space for one person to hide. Miraak had made use of it before, keeping a hidden knife there to cut down the foul profaners who came offering gilded promises only to get close enough to make an attempt on his life. There had been many of those too, in the days of his highest power. A trusted spy was an invaluable resource, to weed out the unworthy and steel the true. 

"I wonder then," said Miraak slowly, as he walked along the bodies, "if I should call them strong, or you, weak."

Abashed, Drethys shuffled but did not speak. Leather creaked ominously, but Miraak did not turn around. 

“Uncover them,” he ordered. At their hesitation, he glanced over and scoffed. “Leave, if you are moth-hearted, I do dragon’s work here.”

Judging by Drethys’ baffled face, the idiom evidently did not translate well into Miraak’s awkward Dunmeris. Murmuring, some left; Sadeni ushering Drethys, and Ulf, who took Rofiik and Rufiik with one solid palm on each bony shoulder and firmly steered them out. Rofiik looked back once, in a curious kind of longing, but followed meekly enough. Laataazin’s skeleton drifted closer, prompting a scowl from Hjoti. The door closed on Rofiik’s craning neck, and Miraak clapped his hands.

The sound echoed; Agata flinched. Her canny eyes, surrounded by deep wrinkles, flicked at once to the entrances and exits, and she with studied nonchalance picked a pillar and leant against it, clearly with no intent to help. Instead, she drew out a small knife, and began to cut her nails. 

“Where are my tools?” he demanded, ignoring how his injured hand throbbed with pain. “ Meyye! Attend me.”

“My lord,” Soskro murmured, to his side. 

Miraak fought not to startle, for he had not heard them approach. Soskro had a wrapped bundle in their thin, tattooed arms; the tools of the priests of Miraak's day, the knives and scrapers for embalming, the sharp needles of blessed hawkbone and thread of gut. They were old and worn, but still serviceable enough. 

"Acceptable." 

Soskro dipped their head, greying black hair softening the twilit blue of their cheek, like the brush of dusk into true night. Their face was misshapen by a violent black bruise bulging along their cheekbone. One eye was swollen completely shut, and Soskro held his jaw gingerly, as if it hurt to close it. His head was bowed submissively, but he leant away when Miraak took the offered tools.

Unaccountably, he found himself irritated by their manner, their obeisance, the ripe and raw proof of Miraak's lost temper. For whatever reason, Soskro had not healed himself, had not understood that it had been a temporary knock, nothing more. All priests that survived to become powerful were proficient in healing for a reason. Why had he not healed himself? Miraak knew that he was capable. 

“At least one of you is competent,” he spat to cover his discomfort, and stalked away. 

It did not feel good, watch the loyal and loving elf cringe away from him. He did not care, of course - it was simply … inconvenient. 

Beneath the sheets, the bodies were in various shattered states of decay. He did not recognise them, their dream-selves too misty and their remains warped by great violence, but a chill went down his spine nonetheless. He had seen many victims of a dragon's rage in his time, bodies burnt and bodies ripped, shredded and trampled and torn. The dead members of his cult all bore the wounds of that single minded ferocity Miraak knew lived within himself, if there was any sign of Laataazin's companion, the destruction caused by his foe had obscured it. The corpses had been slain by a blunt weapon, a club or perhaps a hammer, caving in chests and skulls. Post-mortem bruising ripened on clammy, overripe flesh, and most of them had broken or shattered bones, muscles turned to pulp. 

It had been many years since he had needed to fashion servants from such wrecked bodies. He had not even tended a body personally since Dukaan's death. 

In those final days before Vahlok's army had come to dig out Miraak's followers from their dark caves and fortified barrows, the dragons had stormed through Solstheim, hunting where they could. He remembered the devastation of Dukaan's temple through two eyes. He felt again the smoke stinging Krosulhah's nose as it howled in agony and fled, screaming evacuees on its back, the last glimpse of Dukaan herself, standing bravely at the temple steps with her staff in hand. The shape of her there, robes flapping around her ankles and her shining mask turned towards the sky with an imprint of fire dashed across its stormy surface, mixed with Miraak's memory of her, of what they had done to her. 

Crumpled and still, spreadeagled where she hung from a spike, every bone in her body carefully and ritually broken before her head was ripped from her body to end her torment, for the crime of consorting with the dragon-killer, the Traitor. Her long pale hair had been snarled red with her own blood, her soft eyes blank and staring and exposed, her mask taken as a trophy. Naked and dishonoured, her name roared as synonym with treachery, temple destroyed by earth-shaking Shouts and people butchered, she had been left, untended, not even eaten by her masters, not even burnt.

Miraak had come in the darkness when the triumphant hunters had gone, Ahzidal wrapping them in enchantments that slid eyes from their furtive passage at his side, and they had worked together to mend and fix the bodies, raise stern draugr to guard Dukaan and give her the honours she earnt. Blood had been on his blade that night, and it had ended with a dragonsoul between his teeth and a new servant in Kruziikrel, leashed and lashed. He had returned alone with only vanquished Kruziikrel to guard him to return her mask to her corpse, to dress her, to stitch her wounds closed and strengthen her broken body with glittering pieces of finely worked scale forged by Zahkriisos himself.

He had worked through the dawn on her, imbuing in her all his strength and will she had not had by her side when she had needed it most. For Dukaan had died for him to the fury of a hunting dragon, as these cultists had. 

“I will honour them,” he told the remaining gathered, “but you must stand back, when they come; the dragons will eat those we cannot use.”

“ Eat them?” Hjoti repeated, aghast. “Shouldn’t we just… burn them, if we can’t bury them? We can’t bury them, right?” She looked at the mass of bodies. “I suppose not.”

“It is the way,” agreed Mirdein.

“This is how it is done,” Miraak said, blankly. “If you wish for me to tend them, this is how I will do it.”

Soskro shifted. In a very quiet voice, he said, “ Thuri is wise. The smoke from a pyre big enough for them all will draw attention from the whole island, and Hakir and I cannot sustain a blaze like that without wood and coal we can little afford to lose, while Sadeni and Agata cannot resupply. You know this, wife; it is why we didn’t burn them before. We have already done all we can, let our lord honour them as he sees fit.”

Though his statement brought uncomfortable shuffling, no one contradicted Soskro, and eventually Hjoti shrugged and raised her spread hands to show her acquiescence.

“My love,” Mirdein sighed. “I hate it when you quote me.”

“Do not be right so often then,” Soskro murmured. His lips twitched as if to smile, but then at the last minute, he evidently remembered his bruised cheek, and he turned his head away instead. 

Some cold part of Miraak ached and stretched, like a hollowness in the heart of him that forced his muscles and bones to bulge around it. He flexed his hand, feeling the ache of the tight flesh. The scar caught against the inside of his glove, threatening to reopen the ugly wound. Ironing his will, Miraak shook his head and looked down at the corpses once more.

He drew the wretched coolness of a priest's objectivity over his mind, hardening his heart to its callous edge. They had served and died, and now their bodies were tools; his to use, his to spend, as he pleased. They were not Dukaan, these wretched shadows. At best, they were guardians - and failed ones, at that. Still, he would offer them a true acolyte’s burial. 

Decay's implacable march had been slowed by Hakir's enchanted ice, but Namirite insects had been at work, and the corpses were sloughing apart, distinguishable from their neighbours in places only by the ragged robes wrapped around them. The wrappings were spare clothes or scavenged from draugr shrouds, some Miraak even thought were repurposed rugs or Seekers' rags. None were entirely wrapped, and in many places the bodies had begun to liquefy together like molten tar, too much so to make them worth preserving what flesh remained.

Many of the lighter boned fire elves were useless, they had either in panic ignited themselves as they died and so charred their corpses to such a degree that they flaked into soft ash when he tested their skin, or suffered the worst of Laataazin's heavy swings. He set aside with curiosity the few beastfolk he could see, the scaled and furred, whose bodies he knew from study in Apocrypha but itched to turn to personal experience. There were human folk too, large and small, some as small as Laataazin or with pointed ears like his, some that capped Miraak's height and wore the twisting blue inks of Skaal hunters and trappers, seduced away by Soskro at some point or another. 

They were the foullest corpses, wet with the livid release of fluid that had settled into their backs and turned them brackish and bloated. Humans often were the quickest to rot, but they rose into undeath the most ably, without the magic imbued in their flesh that so preserved elves interfering with necromantic spells. It was no trouble to a priest of Miraak’s skill, but he suspected that the acolytes would have greater trouble hooking a spell strong enough to self-propel the animate draugr without a constant connection to the caster’s magic reserves. 

With a gesture, he ordered Laataazin’s skeleton to begin dragging to one side what few corpses were in a decent enough state of preservation to raise as draugr. Ignoring the suddenly increased reek with the skill of much practice, Miraak ran through a scale. 

He was aware of surprised eyes on him, but he ignored the acolytes, focusing instead on stretching his lungs, finding the shivering point in the air when his deep voice dipped into vibrato, relearning the acoustics of the room. He took a moment to breathe, when he judged his voice warm enough, and then gestured to the acolytes. It was a simple sign; The dragons are coming, simple enough that Soskro, and even Hjoti, immediately understood, and ushered the others back against the walls, where they would be safe from swinging tails and careless wings. 

He inhaled deeply of the death reek and found the note of a song for the preparation of the dead, deep, brassy and true. As his dirge rose to the sky the stones about him shivered. He worked the names of his dragons into the melody, heard Kruziikrel’s roar in his bones, Relonikiv’s folded wings whipping up the screaming wind, Sahrotaar’s mournful groan as it rose from the deeps, saltwater streaming from its fins. They needed no instruction, no guide, the bond that Miraak’s will had built between them was firm, and no dragon living did not know exactly where, when, and who Voiced its name.

His heart rose with them as he imagined himself on the wing, arrowing towards the dark temple hidden in the pallid snows, beguiled by the glorious song of a skilful priest. His own dragonsoul thrummed with the music, pulsed and thudded in his veins; for one fantastic crescendo, he felt himself as he always should have been, a master of the skies, called home for the veneration he was due.

Kruziikrel bulled straight through the wall with an explosion of dust, its mighty shoulder set against the crumbling stone. Fire licked blue and gold from its golden throat as it tossed its mighty horned head, its vicious and long teeth limned by the streaming sunlight that gleamed off the slaver of its fearsome jaws. Darkness fell where its enormous shadow touched in the throne room, broken only by orange slants of light through the thick membrane of Kruziikrel’s gold-red wings, like the heart of precious amber. Heat shimmered from its scales as it craned its thick neck to examine Miraak with one lambent, slitted eye. 

There was always a moment, when he met the eye of a dragon, where Miraak was nothing but a child. Just a child in the face of overwhelming might, as he had been the very first time, kneeling before a dragon’s callous inspection in the frigid snows of his homeland. That dragon was dead, its bones long-scattered, but the impression remained of its diamond scales, its ferocious teeth, the absolute and alien intelligence in its slitted black pupils, as cold and inhuman as winter.

Kruziikrel was larger than most, almost twice the size of nimble Relonikiv, and just one of Kruziikrel’s eyes was almost as tall as he was. When it flared its great nostrils disapprovingly the black holes of its breath howled like a superheated gale around the enclosed space. His robes flapped around him, if he had not already been braced, it might have unbalanced him. Some of the cultists were not so aware; Agata swore as she went down hard.

Relonikiv was second, shrieking shrilly as it landed beyond the temple walls. Its cries were louder than his song as it scratched at the stone, scrabbling and kicking for a crack in the wall that Kruziikrel’s immense bulk did not fill. Relonikiv’s hissing cut off with a yelp and a meaty snap of jaws - Sahrotaar, come to silence it, so all three could hear him. Sahrotaar had always loved Miraak’s singing, bent most easily to his Voice and his will.

“ Fah dilon lovaas … ” Miraak sang, palms outstretched towards Kruziikrel. He sang the rites of the dead, consigning their flesh to the service of the undying, bodies to fuel, to guard, spirits to nourish, to wander, to sing of the glory they had seen. It was a simple, repetitive song, meant to ease the working, sung by a hundred loyal throats while the necessary was done.

The dragon’s wings smoothed and its powerful haunches came to rest on the rock. Snow melted like the rush of the tides from its presence, fleeing its scaled bulk and washing down the temple steps centuries of dust. Laying down, Kruziikrel was a mountain range of volcanic fury, flaring spikes curled as ram horns cushioning its barrel chest from touching the rock, its clubbed tail twitching like a cat with prey in its sights. Its eyes glowed gold as Miraak’s mask, but as it listened to his song, their whirl slowed, and their pupils expanded, by slow millimetres. 

Few things could soothe a dragon, but song and flattery were always a given. Trust Kruziikrel to come immediately, when Miraak sang in the old traditions, as if he were a priest, and it were the god, and not the servant to his master. Kruziikrel had yet to accept, even after thousands of years, who was the stronger between them.

“... Moro-se-dovahhe.” He gestured to the unsuitable corpses, stepping back quickly. 

Eyes on him, Kruziikrel lowered its head and let its jaw hang open, showcasing its enormous fangs. It rumbled low in its throat, then deigned to bend its neck and eat. It was a gristly affair, the smacking of the dragon’s scaled lips, the crunch of the bones, the wet sounds of flesh sliding from its mouth to slap against the floor. Kruziikrel had always eaten messily, enjoying the horror it could glean from softer-souled onlookers. It stared at Miraak’s gathered acolytes with a gleam of cold malice in its yellow-red eye, judging how nasty it needed to be to provoke a reaction.

Miraak’s voice swelled louder, distracting Kruziikrel before that gleam could become practised cruelty. “Fah thuri un-laas…”

He held the notes deep before he released them, keeping his movements slow as to not blemish the vibration through his chest. Richly, his Voice echoed off the stone with the strength of a dozen-score chorus, an orchestra to his own magnificence; no Voice was stronger than a dragon’s, and none lovelier than a mortal’s. Miraak, the marriage of both, was unique.

He cried as he cut, sang as he stitched, wailed as he worked, over and over the guttural moans of Dovahzul. Uncertainly, Soskro broke in on the second repetition, having picked up the verses. Hjoti joined him lustily after that, singing sound rather than fluency, but with a pleasing timbre to her voice that had Sahrotaar, nose wedged round a gap in Kruziikrel’s horns, thrum low in its deep chest. 

As he stitched carefully an elf's ear back to their slouching skin, he felt Hakir come up alongside him. Miraak did not pause to address him; Relonikiv's eyes were on them both, slow-whirling for now out of pleasure for Miraak's song, but always hiding a spiteful temper. Of them all, only Sahrotaar possessed any patience when it expected to be fed. Miraak knew he was fast enough to avoid a snapping jaw, but given that Soskro, his most competent, had not even thought to dodge Miraak, who had neither Relonikiv's lightning speed nor its shearing teeth, did not fill him with confidence. The softblooded acolytes here had no true experience with a dragon's ways, and Miraak felt the gap keenly, in this.

Hakir remained, watching patiently. He held a scarf over his nose, and flinched whenever one of the dragons noisily crunched down on some bones, smacking decaying flesh down over the temple floors. 

It was only once Relonikiv, the last to eat, withdrew its snout and went to nurse its distended belly that Miraak allowed his song to drift into silence. Cool wind blew in through the hole Kruziikrel had made in the wall. Miraak eyed the bloody sky visible through the dark crack in the temple’s defences, and hissed low between his teeth.

“Saraan, Kruziikrel,” Miraak called, “dein hi.” Wait, you will guard us.

Kruziikrel’s grumble was just shy of insubordination, but it obeyed him, laying its ruddy-scaled bulk against the gap. Its flank was more than large enough to block off a hole wide enough only for its head, and blissful dark fell, warmed by the eternal fire that blazed in the dragon’s core.

Miraak’s throat ached from the exertion, and when he lowered his needle to the cloth beside him his bones hurt and his muscles were tight with agony. His head spun as he tried to breathe, simultaneously too much and too little air in his lungs. Nevertheless, his hands were steady when he picked up the knife, and turned the point of it to the pad of his thumb. His glove was in the way, but he hesitated to bear his skin in front of Hakir. 

“What are you doing?” Hakir asked him, steady and low, but with some concern that he seemed to be making an effort to disguise. A tension had come into him, and he watched Miraak hold the knife with narrowed eyes.

“You recall when my sos-kro added you to the wards of the temple, so the guardians would not attack?” Miraak asked, and Hakir nodded. 

Absently, Hakir drew his palms together and pooled icewater between them. It wept coolness over his skin, drained between his thumbs. He raised his cupped hands towards Miraak, offering him the water for his sore throat.

It evaporated into mist when Miraak leant away, and Hakir said, “I remember. He took some blood."

“To give life to the dead, you must … lun sosaal. Sacrifice,” Miraak explained. As he went on, Hakir's expression cleared, and then quickly became intrigued. In his eyes Miraak saw reflected his own desire to learn and understand. A note of warmth crept into his lecturing tone. “There is power in the memory that lives in flesh, blood and bone. Death is the memory of life, sleeping, but to wake it...” He pressed his palm to his chest. “Here is where your greatest magic waits the pain to unlock it. Come. See how your vigour strengthens this sleeper.”

Hakir followed his instruction, pricking his thumb and allowing a droplet of his blood to fall onto the corpse's chest. It sank into the flesh and disappeared.

Miraak took his knife back, and sent a spark of healing magic into Hakir's hand. The tiny cut closed without a scar, and Miraak turned away before he could see Hakir's expressive face react to it.

“This is very different,” said Hakir, “than anything I have learnt in my country.” He looked torn between disgusted and fascinated.

Miraak kept his gaze away from him, staring into the distorted face of the corpse. “Where are you from?”

“Skaven,” said Hakir, “Hammerfell. It is many miles away from here.”

Miraak tried to place it mentally on a map. “You are Yokudan?”

Out of the corner of his mask's eyeslits, he saw Hakir flash a grin. “In the same way that Hjoti there is Atmoran, yes.”

“Ah.” Miraak groped through his knowledge of these soft new languages that fit so strangely, so ephemerally, on his tongue. “What is the … modern term?”

“The Imperials call us Redguard,” said Hakir, “from Ra Gada, which means-“

“Wave of warriors,” Miraak translated softly, and smirked behind his mask at Hakir’s blink. He rose to his feet and left the man there, checking on the other bodies. Miraak had prepared thrice as many alone as Soskro had managed with Hjoti to help him, but he had done a sufficient job. 

“Good,” Miraak murmured as he passed, and Soskro visibly lit up. Their bruise-swollen, lopsided smile was bright, almost without wincing, and a faint purple sheen wisped over their tattoos, releasing a cloud of near tangible joy that infected the air; Miraak saw Hjoti beam, even across the room, grim Mirdein chuckled to herself. He moved on before he could linger on the confusing welter of feeling that kernelled in him at Soskro’s joy; it was a side effect of their fantastic and unconscious skill with illusion magic, nothing more.

Casting an eye down the prepared bodies, Miraak nodded to himself and inhaled to sing. He sang softly now, for the ears of the dead and attendant living only. Sensing this was not as before, Hjoti and Soskro stayed quiet. 

“Fah dilon lovaas moro-se-dovahhe, fah thuri un-laas - zu'uth alok hi!”

For the dead we must sing the glory of the dragons, for our masters we give our lives - I command you to rise!

Miraak cried again, “ Zu'uth alok hi! ”

As one, the bodies jerked with a horrendous, vestigial gasp. Blazing blue eyes flicked open, two, three, four, and a hollow moan drifted down the ranks. The draugr lurched upright, one by one, groaning guttural sounds without language, without Voice. They were simple tomb guardians, enough to patrol the halls with their dusty feet and dead eyes, searching, always searching. They stood, awaiting direction, like pillars, unswaying, unmoving. 

“Creepy,” commented Hjoti, with a shiver.

“ Effective, ” Agata corrected, “It’ll be harder for attackers to pretend they weren’t people, when they’re … fresh. No one likes fighting the risen dead. Confronts you with your mortality.”

“Hm,” Mirdein agreed. “I hated patrolling the restless cardruhn along the way to the Ghostgate, and the Ordinators paid us well.”

“You will not have to again, wife,” Soskro said, and Miraak heard the smile in Mirdein’s rough voice as she replied, “As you say, muthsera.”

“Personally, I’m with Hjoti,” Hakir added dryly, and Agata snorted.

“ You would be,” she retorted, and Hakir chuckled, as if at an old joke.

Feeling apart from their light talk, Miraak moved among the dead, peering into their spellweaves. He kissed each forehead with the surface of his mask, murmuring soft greetings of “zeymah”, brother, to each one. He fixed their clothes as well as he could, tying knots where fabrics had ripped and strings frayed, and mourned that he had no fine armour or weapons to honour them with. In the clothes they had lain dead in they would have to serve, and armed with scavenged weapons from their fellows they would defend. He checked that each was properly bound to the temple, drawing strength from the ambient magic within it, and then sent off the draugr one by one to patrol the temple with quiet instructions.

Closing his eyes, he ran through the wards of the temple in his mind. He probed cautiously through the layers of rock and spell, feeling the warm bodies of his other acolytes, gathering round the hearth, the heat of the fire against the stone. As a crackle of lightning, he travelled down to the escape hidden behind the exploded shrine, slipped canny as a drop of water between the stairs and through the drainage grills, blew as steam to the open door of the temple- 

Miraak’s eyes flew open just as Hjoti shouted.

“Never should have come here!” she roared, and launched herself towards the - thing that boiled out from the hall that sloped up to the surface.

Miraak staggered back and felt his chest seize around a wordless cry.

Dark purplish tentacles squirmed around the door, rubbery suckers clamping to the frame. A misty, venous glow pulsed and throbbed in each spongy feeler, all in time to a slow, alien heartbeat. With an oily slap Miraak felt in his bones, the tentacles thrust Hjoti aside. She stumbled back and tripped backwards down the stairs with a grunt. He could not spare a second to look for her, for he was utterly frozen as the creature pulled itself through the doorway, its wavering tendrils coiling and uncoiling in thirsty, benthic knots. 

“You aren’t here,” he whispered to the thing that looked like Mora, vengeful, stretching towards him with those grasping tentacles. It was supposed to sound defiant, instead it sounded pleading. Broken. His heart galloped in his chest and he couldn’t move. Couldn’t run. Couldn’t even scream. He could only stare as it reached for him. Reached to grab him, to pull him beneath those ink-dark seas for a thousand small eternities, for every punishment he had earned, for daring to escape, for daring to think he could, for daring to live and defy Mora’s design -

A slick carapace butted his chest and he went down, seeing his own gold mask reflected into infinity by its iridescent beetle sheen. Pale and wan and tarnished by ink and twisted shapes. Would Mora let him keep it this time, to remember himself, to remember what it was? He was nothing without the mask, without the name, without the memory to hold himself upright. He was nothing. The mightiest dragon priest that ever lived and he couldn’t stop the Prince of Fate, couldn’t even fight -

He tasted blood and ink on his tongue, bitter as bile, agony of drowning, wanted to vomit but it was trapped inside him, the ink was inside him eating his body and his flesh and his mind and his memories and Miraak-

A knife sprouted between the creature’s beetle eyes, and its tendrils spasmed once, twice. It went down on its side with an insectoid screech, glistening blood sheeting over its carapace. Agata stood over the fearsome creature, absently wiping her knives clean. 

Back flat against the stone, Miraak gasped for breath. His cheeks were wet, he knew he cried. He shook as if with terrible fever, and he could not tear his eyes away from the still tentacles of the creature, waiting for them to twitch, to move. He scrambled away as quickly as he could, almost running back off the stairs Hjoti had fallen down.

His foot stepped into nothing, and his adrenaline-pumped body seized. His vision whited out as he stopped breathing; one heartbeat, two, three. A bony hand caught his waist before he could fall, and Laataazin’s bound skeleton lifted him carefully back to the solid ground.

Miraak panted. He grabbed onto their chestplate. Metal screeched against bone. Why hadn’t the bound skeleton defended him? Why hadn’t the draugr? The acolytes?

Agata cast him a look over her shoulder, steel-blue eyes arctic as a glacier. She twirled her knives, then sheathed them. 

“Good eating, netches,” she said, her judgement of his shivering discomposure plain in the stern lines of her face. 

He licked dry lips. “Netch?” 

“Usually very friendly,” Agata said bluntly. “This one probably got lost.”

Netches. He knew what they were, he had read about them. He had never seen one, no, but he knew - the descriptions, he’d once seen a drawing - and none of it, none of it had prepared him for a thing that looked like Mora, like a Seeker, come to find him, to drag him back to his cell. He had frozen. Of all the things-! He had frozen, like some weakling in his first fight, ready to be cut down!

But Miraak was no weakling, no trembling victim, he was something better. Something stronger.

He roared, and saw orange light reflected in Agata’s widening eyes. She backed up hastily, but Miraak’s wings swept wide and she only just dodged being knocked over. Blazing with his fear-turned-fury, his Dragon Aspect gouted and flickered around him, his auroral wings and his lashing tail, his fiery horns and his snarling teeth. Claws gouged the stone as he stormed towards the temple doors, lightning magic snapping off his aura. The muted roar of thunder was in his temples, his rushing heart, he was hot and alive and incandescent, out for blood. 

How did it get in? How did it get in?

Behind him, he heard the clanking of armour, the thudding of running feet. He whirled, lightning crackling into his palms, and found Mirdein, sword in hand.

She stopped when she saw him, and shifted her shield, as if to fend off an attack. From him. Mirdein watched him, her stance light on her feet, ready to leap back - or forwards. Resolute, defensive, stalwart, she stood like a dam against a tide, like a legend against a monster, and raised her shield before him. 

“Do you challenge me, elf?” Miraak hissed, his wings drawing up behind him, expanding until all he could see was the gleam of his brilliant blaze-blue wings reflected in her eyes, her blade, the buckles of her armour.

“If I have to,” Mirdein said. Her eyes glittered, fierce as fire. “I’m not going to let you back down there, to hurt the ones who trust you.”

He snarled, animal. “Do you think you can stand against me ?”

She adjusted her grip on her sword, the tip raising towards him; a threat. “The Dunmer have killed their gods before, serjo,” Mirdein said, grimly. “Do not make me break my love’s heart.”

“That is where you are wrong,” Miraak thundered. “I am beyond a god. I am a dragon .”

Footsteps pounding; then Soskro rushed in, drawn by the shouting. His face was drawn under the bruise, and he shook terribly as he took in their poses, the threat that shuddered the air.

“Please,” he cried, “please, please - no-!”

“Come,” Miraak snapped, and Soskro jerked towards him in instinctive obedience.

“ No!” Mirdein whirled - too well trained to give him her back, but sidestepping to look to her husband, her eyes full of grief and rage, “I will not see you hurt again!”

“Come here!” 

Mirdein twitched as if to grab Soskro, but he stepped around her, laying one hand lightly on her pauldron as he passed. She moaned, her shoulders shaking.

“My lord,” he murmured, as he drew close, his eyes downcast.

He gasped when Miraak grabbed the front of his robes and dragged him closer, his tail lashing around Soskro’s legs like a vine. “Quiet,” he hissed, before anyone could think to test his temper even more, and reached for his magic.

It leapt in his hands, caustic and violent, and he forced it into Soskro. Soskro’s back arched and every tattoo on his body lit with swirling purple. He cried out, the force of it burning through him, and his shocked red eyes met Miraak’s through the slits of his mask. He swayed, would have fallen without Miraak’s steadying tail, and grabbed onto him, stumbling into Miraak’s chest in a mockery of an embrace. 

Savagely, Miraak seized his bruised cheek in one taloned hand, his eyes intent on Soskro’s. Soskro gripped him like he would die, pressed into him like he was holy, wept like he was being devoured. The tears ran like cracks from his firelight eyes, this close, his scent of moss and damp was perceptible, the bleed in the intricate knotting of the arcane tattoos over his blue skin. For a moment, he was the only thing that existed in the world, his parted lips hiding inner flesh purple as plums, his teeth stained by the leaves he chewed. 

The way his shorter frame fit against Miraak’s was too much to be borne, too close to the last time he had held a body in his arms, warm, gripping, shaking, clinging to him like an anchor raking along the seabed, leaving scars in its wake. 

Deathly-quiet, the memory of Laataazin came upon him mocking and cruel. Miraak was forced to bear the warm weight of their head curled into the palm of his hand; the lightning fork scars ranging over their nape were rough, rigid against his fingertips. He smelled charred skin, sweet summer wine, mixing with the cold smell of ruins and dust that clung to Soskro’s robes, the dirt that knotted in his grey-black hair, the secret intimacy of the exposed tendons of his neck, the long-healed horizontal scars on his chest visible through his open robe.

He hissed between his teeth and felt his forked tongue flicker with lightning. Miraak yanked the unspilling thread of his magic out of Soskro and stepped away, his hand coming away from Soskro’s cheek last.

It was pure, unblemished, not a mark to be seen. Soskro touched his cheek, then looked up to Miraak, his eyes shining. The outside world reasserted itself; Mirdein gasped softly. She had come closer, now she touched Soskro without fear, her eyes on Miraak - a strangeness, a knowing, in them that he did not know how to parse. 

“Get out of my sight,” Miraak commanded, “before I think better of my mercy.”

They tripped over themselves to obey, retreating back down the passageway. Miraak breathed out a sigh and collapsed against the wall, his body aching from the spell. His wings flickered away. 

He stared down into his hands to convince himself they were empty. The squirming itch of skin against his gloves, the weight and warmth of another’s body, did not fade. He rubbed at his arms and his chest, but succeeded only in chafing the reawakened nerves to ache and sting. Trapping a growl between his teeth, he pushed himself off the wall and limped towards the doors. 

When he got there, he found them not hanging open but just ajar a crack, as if the wind had blown suddenly and forced the temple doors near to shut. But not completely, not enough to stop a jagged slash of sunlight blazing across the craggy stone, red and bright as blood. He halted before it could caress his hem, his spine prickling in the glacial chill that swept in through the gap - fresh, sweet air, from outside. 

Miraak worked his throat around a swallow, eyes fixed hungrily on the filament of light, the dusty drifts of snow outside he could just about make out. Tamriel, out there, and nothing between him and the door but a bar of light.

One step forward felt like it took a century - and maybe, after all his struggle, it had.

He flinched when it touched him, shielding his eyes under his glove. The reflection of his golden mask spun dizzying, dazzling phantoms against the walls, the floor, like a prism of shattered glass. Gratefully, he let the shadows behind the door envelop him once more, sore eyes waterless in his skull. He inhaled once more, slowly, checking quickly over his shoulder that no acolyte lingered to watch this - hesitance.

Then, cautiously, Miraak pressed his eye to the crack in the door.

Through that tiny portal to the outside world, he saw the sky. The sight - bereft of a dragon to focus on, a performance to play, a power to cling to - hit him like a arrow, tearing through his defences like paper. Tears welled up in his eyes, stinging from the brightness. Painted vivid in the colours of sunset, so deep, so red, so full of a hundred colours - when had he forgotten that sunsets could have pink as fresh as roses, orange pale as cream? When had they flattened in his memory, blurred into one streaky long vision of vague blues and reds mounted by ominous clouds, without that starspring tinge of twilight twining round each fluffy, thick cloud, garbing it in silver?

It beckoned to him, that rippling expanse of ash-spewed violet and citrine. Miraak’s hands white-knuckled on the door with a creaking of leather. His lurching gut was falling upwards, as if without the rocky ceiling he would fall outside himself and be ripped apart in the crosswinds he could see scudding the clouds, knew with a dragon’s eye would be strong and sure off the coast, flecked with salt and the beginnings of rain. 

He stared out, greedy eyes sucking in the sights of the emergent stars, the tussling shadows through the wrought metal coiling up to the Stone. It called to him so passionately he had to hold his breath around the urge to step out, to feel on his skin the wind, the coolness of the chilling air. 

How long had it been? How much was still the same? Would he recognise it, at all, standing on his own two feet in the ashes of his world? Could he stand beneath the absent sun, the stars, the moons peeking over the horizon, all alone? Would it not burn him, like the sallow, paper-thin creature he was now, made of ink and spun from a primordial desire to survive at all costs? What was different? What could he learn?

Unconsciously, he leant into the door. With a squeak of hinges, it creaked open a little further - and Miraak felt something fall against his foot.

He yelped. “What the-?”

The sound died in his throat sudden as an axeblow. The jangled shapes of fear still smoking in his gut fanned to choking; Miraak recoiled. 

Gleaming in the evening sun, the Black Book waited for him. It oozed an oiliness that was all the stronger against stone that had been loved by the air, the sun, the stars, an inkiness, like it was insubstantial, a fake thing in a world suddenly more dreamlike than before, though Miraak knew if he reached down to touch it would be more than solid. He struggled to breathe around the weight of his fury, his disgust. 

“You seek to toy with me,” Miraak growled, at once certain where the netch- creature had come from. All it had taken was a crack in the door left ajar, but it wasn’t a Seeker. It wasn’t a Seeker, this time. Someone had betrayed him, had opened the door to the horrors that dwelt in this vast, different world. Even here, in his temple, he was not free; Waking Dreams winked at him.

“I will overcome you,” he promised, nudging the book out the door with the very toe of his boot, his entire leg trembling with revulsion, “and leave you down in the dark, where you belong!”

Miraak slammed the temple doors shut with a hollow, concussive boom on the sky, the sun, and the Black Book still waiting.

Chapter Text

It did not take long for Frea’s silent watcher in the marketplace to corner her once she had split from Nikulas. Barely had she stepped into a road that wound around behind the forge to a cluster of ramshackle wooden houses then a prickling shiver ran down her spine. Slowly, she reached up and unsheathed Laataazin’s warhammer, eyeing the width of the alleyway. Wide enough to swing, if she had to.

“I know who you are,” said a voice from the shadows.

Frea gripped the haft of the Dragonborn’s hammer, scanning the shadows. “Show yourself,” she said, then, in halting Dunmeris, “I am no enemy.”

“Nor am I yours.” Their voice was impossible to gender, ash-warrior deep but with a rising lilt, and their words were so heavily accented with the salt of Morrowind that Frea struggled to pick them out.  Their figure, when they crept into the faint light, was equally illusive; swathed in ragged robes, they could have been any dirty pilgrim, any ash-strewn refugee. A gleam, a whisper of their crimson eyes darkly glittering among cheeks of purest purple twilight peeked from beneath their hood. Streaked with sooty lines, neat and swirling, leaping and darting in the uneven light, their face wreathed in tattoos was a hearth of black flames. Monstrous and divine, their inkwreathed features had her on the back foot, old Skaal ghostrites rising like undead in her mind. “For now.”

“You were at the gate, with the coins,” Frea realised aloud, “You followed us!”

“You,” the Dunmer corrected. Their hips shifted, and Frea was suddenly, alarmingly certain that the cunning tilt of their hand concealed a drawn knife. The nearby brazier cast a ruddy gleam over their forge-fire eyes. No matter how many times she saw the lowland elves, their uncanny red eyes and bruised skin put her in mind of nightmares, of demons from her father’s stories, skulking wild-eyed and violet-lipped round the Skaal camp and stealing away the unwary to the bowels of their deathless tombs. This one was a finer example than most. “You’ve been asking questions.”

“I have,” said Frea, warily, keeping the hammer steady. She kept her eyes on the Dunmer’s hips and feet, watching for any minute shift of weight that might signal an attack. They stood lightly in the shadows, forward on their toes, like a well-trained fighter. “Do you have answers for me, stranger?”

“Ask,” said the Dunmer, their ink-worked brows flat, “and we shall see.”

“I seek knowledge of Miraak.” The Dunmer’s face remained perfectly still, not a twitch, not a breath to portray recognition. Too still. “You know something! You must tell me!”

“With a weapon like that, I’m sure you can say more than I.” The Dunmer’s ruby eyes lingered on Frea’s white-knuckled grip around the hammer's haft, then flicked back up to her face. In a tone so carefully neutral it could only be a trap, they added, “Wherever did you come by it?”

“It was a gift,” Frea said.

“A gift,” the Dunmer repeated. They tilted their head, the patterns on their cheeks abruptly reminiscent of tears. Their lips, however, smiled, flat and cold as unforged stahlrim. “Your …friend… was generous.”

“Tell me what you know of the Traitor,” Frea pressed, losing patience. She hefted the hammer, its creaking weight surging up into her ready position, the enchantments worked along it tingling into her nailbeds, craving to be used, to be wetted with blood.

The Dunmer flinched, true fear flickering over their laconic face. Blades flashed, quick as cutclaw moons, poised to rend the air. A tense breath caught behind their tongue, they hissed, as if with great difficulty, “I do not wish to fight. You have the better of me, warrior.”

Their teeth gritted audibly as they lowered their blades.

Frea did not lower Laataazin’s warhammer, no, not when it was working. Instead, she took a heavy step forward, chasing the Dunmer against the wall, and raised the blunt, brutal head until she could see the silvery metal reflecting in the Dunmer’s wide, frightened red eyes, like a blooded knife.

“Then speak,” Frea growled. She heard herself as if from far away, felt in some distant place appalled at her own behaviour, but the greater part of her clamoured with rage, boiled over with hatred for that cursed name and the grief he had caused.

The Dunmer licked their dry lips, turning their cheek from Frea’s display. They said cryptically, “I know dragons have come again to the ashlands.”

“You have seen them too?” She couldn’t help but step closer, almost crowding them, feeling answers so close she could taste it. Their hands came up as if to ward her away. Their nails were lacquered a royal purple, the colour of poison.

“They roam far over Solstheim’s skies!” said the Dunmer, eyes on Laataazin’s hammer. “Of old, I know this: Miraak was served by three great dragons, and three I have seen.”

“Where?” Frea demanded. “At the temple? Elsewhere?”

The Dunmer seized the advantage of her distraction to slip under her arm and away, quick as a fox. Frea spun, but the Dunmer was shaking their head, stepping back into the shadows. “Old tombs sleep lightly,” they warned, melting into the darkness, “the dead will have their vengeance, warrior.”

“What do you mean?” Frea demanded, but as she took two steps forward she found on the wall. She circled round with a curse, searching for a hint of ruby red, but there was nothing. She was alone, the Dunmer gone as if they had never existed. She kicked a stone, ineffectually, her anger dying a sullen and chill death.

Ash in her throat, Frea swung the hammer into its strap on her back, placing a hand on the splintered wood of a nearby house for support.

“I’m sorry,” she said to the empty shadows. “I wouldn’t have hurt you, I just need to know.”

---

After her run in with the mysterious Dunmer, Frea wandered Raven Rock, sticking to the pools of firelit torches. The afternoon was deepening, bruises fleeing across the sky like the heel of a godly hand pushing slowly into the horizon until the sun sunk under its weight. She spoke to what few she could find on the streets, but few stopped to look her in the eye, and none answered her questions. The name Miraak brought nothing but glazed eyes and mild confusion, the occasional comment about dragons, Dragonborns, and the banes of living in interesting times. One young woman, rosy of cheek with lips of fresh lavender, caught Frea’s hand and pressed it to her breast, and in a soft voice entreated her to be careful beyond the walls, for all the mountain-people had been taken over as dead, and walked as ash-men now.

Frea had thanked her and left, not in the mood to correct her with her skin tingling from the softness of the other woman’s hand, and her heart sore from the fear she had placed in the mysterious Dunmer’s eyes. It was then with exhausted hope and stumbling feet that Frea overshot the tavern and made her way instead into the temple.

She had not meant to come in, and hesitated at once in the doorway when she smelled the richness of the burning incense the Dunmeri used in their rites. It was smoky and pungent, full-bodied as myrrh. The walls gleamed with the chitinous pearl of classic Dunmeri architecture, smooth as a babe’s skin and lit with thousands of small candles floating in liberal pools of wax. They were smokeless, but Frea’s eyes itched from the heat, the incense, the multitude of worked-soft orange tapestries threaded with Daedric symbols. She recognised the language by dint of its dissimilarity to her own; where Skaal-tongue was, though infrequently written, harsh, spiking lines made for ease of chiselling, closely mimicking the dragon-tongue carved in the rockfaces of their old settlements, Daedric flowed and oozed, curved and coiled, demanded the luxuries of brush and thread to shape.

The soft call of the priest embarrassed her as she thought to flee, and instead Frea brushed aside the beaded curtain, already sweating in the heat of the numerous fires. It was bright enough to almost have her wish for her snow-goggles. There was a presence within the temple, watchful and cold, that preyed upon her awareness like a frost snap foretold by closing flowerbuds. This is not for you, it said, and Frea could not help but agree.

“Welcome to the temple of the Reclamations,” said the priest, warmly. He turned from where he knelt immersed up to the elbow in the hearth, and when he caught sight of her, he blinked a little. “Oh, hello – Skaal.”

“Aye,” she said, an answer to his non-question, and the priest raised a brow. It was peppered with grey, unusual enough for one of the ageless elves. His hair was all steel, and his face had a creased quality to it, like twine too kinked from years of use to ever lie straight.

“We don’t worship your All-Maker here, Skaal,” he said, “I must ask you take those practices outside. The shrines of the True Three have been profaned enough by the false prophets.”

“I did not come here for worship,” Frea said. Something of her annoyance, her discomfort with the many presences within Raven Rock, must have crept into her voice, because he gave her a look. Deflated, Frea worried at the string that held her gloves to her belt, the rough knots lumpen and familiar under her touch.  “I came for – information.”

“Information?” the priest stopped his communing with the fire, and rose to face her. He flicked his fire-stained fingertips like Frea would with water, scattering sparks that glowed cherry-red on the smooth floor for half a heartbeat, like tiny stars. “What lore does a Skaal shaman-in-training need of a temple Dunmer?”

“You know I’m a shaman?” Self-consciously, Frea undid the toggles that held her fur hood to her neck and loosened it, grimacing as it peeled away wet with her sweat. She took a sip from her water-skin, the cool water a balm to her heat-muddled mind.

The priest fearlessly dipped his hand into the heart of the fire, rolling the embers around his knuckles. He said something in a strange dialect of Dunmeris she did not know, and then smiled at her confusion. It was a kind smile, grandfatherly, but Frea cast her eyes away, ashamed by her rudeness. She had come here to Raven Rock seeking information, yet been curt and cruel with its people, simply for not being Skaal, for not being her father. The priest’s patience felt undeserved.

“I know your father, if you are Frea of the Skaal. He described you to me many times. They call me here Othreloth the Elder.”

“Oh,” she said, absorbing this.

She had not known that Storn had kept contact with the daedra-worshipping temple priest of the lowland elves. No Skaal trafficked with daedra, knowing that Herma-Mora was always watching, waiting for a moment’s opening to trick their elders and steal their youths, with his liquid-eyed demons and their violet tongues. She wondered why her father had chosen to invite such scrutiny on himself after his dire warnings to her, so oft repeated it had given her nightmares. The temptation to ask pressed at the tip of her tongue.

Yet, she did not want to learn from Othreloth things about her father that she had not known, and there was no polite way to ask why Storn had excused the risk of consorting with daedra this elf revered. She should have learnt Storn’s reasons from him, if she ever would. But all Frea had now was memory of the lessons he had been able to give her, and the mysteries of men who had known parts of him she had not.

She spoke through a lump in her throat. “My father is dead.”

Othreloth’s hand stilled, his bony wrist licked by flame that would never burn him. A tired divot cut his forehead into a ripple of wrinkles, his depressed mouth downturned like wax melting from the base of a candle.

“I am… grieved to hear that,” he said, quietly but with a sincerity that made Frea immediately warm to him. “May your god keep him.”

“Aye,” said Frea. A stilted beat passed, lost to Frea’s vivid recollection of Storn’s grisly death between the pages of Herma-Mora’s cursed book. ‘I am Waking Dreams,’ it had whispered to her, as her father opened it, ‘do you ask the True Enquiry? Do you seek revelation, or puppetry, by forces beyond your ken?’ In horror, she had turned away, and so missed the first appearance of Herma-Mora. But the Prince’s sepulchral glee, the horrible sounds of his tentacles stabbing through her father’s body, the wet gurgle to his gasp – that, that was engraved upon Frea’s very soul.

 “I did not answer your question,” Frea said at last, shaking herself free with bitter determination. She was holding her mind-warding amulet when she came back to herself, and brought it to her lips to kiss its smooth surface.

“No,” said Othreloth, heavily.

“Tell me, what do you recall of Miraak?”

Othreloth’s spine stiffened, and his cherry-red eyes sparked. The fire behind him rippled with ominous pops and cracks, its lambent tongues fierce as the sudden doubling of the attentive presence Frea felt, lurking in the cracks of the temple like spiderwebs. Othreloth strode to the beaded curtain Frea had passed through and checked behind it, as if he feared the Traitor stood right there, waiting to pounce.

“He has not … returned?” Othreloth asked her, in a hurried whisper. “I do not know if Councilor Morvayn can deal with that as well…”

“I do not know,” said Frea, honestly. “Since my father’s death, I have sensed … strange passings in the world around us, and not days past I saw dragons roosting in the temple. We came to observe the Stones.” She hesitated, because as she spoke the priest looked more and more stricken. “Have you seen anyone enthralled by them?”

“No,” he said, relaxing a little at a question he could answer. “We have had no trouble at all, nor have I heard of any, since that Dragonborn came through. I believe that if any could stop that creature, it would be he. The gods would not let such a quest fail; a hundred and one incarnates rose to take the challenge, but there was only one Nerevarine, when the Sixth House swept plague across Morrowind... You are too young to remember, Skaal, but I know the god-touched when I stand in their presence, and I felt it when he came to our temple, to offer his sorrow for disturbing our ancestors.”

“I believe Laataazin was true,” said Frea. Hesitantly, she unstrapped the hammer and held it out, as if an offering, thinking of the mysterious Dunmer’s fear of it in Frea’s hands. “They gave me this, to protect my people, while they did battle against the Traitor.”

“An evil weapon,” said Othreloth, eyeing it with distaste. “But a noble cause.”

Frea was not unblooded, she had killed reavers and wildfolk before, but lodging an arrow into a coughing man’s throat or splitting a temple with her ice-axe was nothing like what Laataazin had done with this hammer, easily as breathing. Bodies simply shattered when Laataazin – when the Dragonborn – had fought to kill as they swept through Miraak’s temple, like the world reordered itself around their wake, unknitting bone and tearing muscle almost before they had a chance to. The cultists that lurked there had been dead from the moment Laataazin had stepped on Solstheim, but their awakening to that fact had been bloody and brutal.

Like a war machine, like the gods’ perfect instrument of death. Yes, Frea understood what Othreloth meant, when he called the Dragonborn god-touched.

Try as she might, Frea had never quite regained her youthful, careless confidence in battle after watching that. Then, she had thought that the worst potential conflict could offer was injury or death, and not the systematic dismantling of anything that did not hold the shape of suffering, and nightmares so rich it truly felt like she dream-walked to some other reality. Yet, Laataazin had fought on Frea’s side, for the sake of Frea’s people. She did not feel guilty about doing what she had to save them, about bringing Laataazin to the temple, it was her duty.

The hammer was supposed to be heavy. A reminder, that she would always do what she had to do to protect the Skaal, no matter the cost. But what was she protecting the Skaal from? Yes, there were mutterings at the Stones, but she had never purified them, never drawn Herma-Mora out of the network written under Solstheim he had perverted. Dragons flew, but they had flown before Miraak had risen. Laataazin had left no cultist they had seen alive, and none had been seen exiting the temple since by Skaal hunters and scouts. Frea could not believe so evil a creature as the Traitor would not seize the opportunity of Laataazin’s absence to cause havoc.

“I found someone, who said something about the dragons …” She trailed off, looking at the grooves carved into the metal, where blood would flow, the thirsty shimmer of the soul-fuelled enchantments, and wondered for the first time whether carrying the weapon that slew gods and dragons was affecting her. A renewed burst of shame at her threat of the mysterious Dunmer she had met in an alleyway, menacing them as if she meant to fight to kill closed her throat. She was a shaman, a Skaal, meant to live in harmony with the All-Maker, raising a blade only when called for. She wasn’t a godkiller. A shaman’s path was not that of a warrior’s.

“I do not know if I am looking simply to have an enemy to fight, or to be sure,” Frea confessed. “I cannot … I know my friend would not fail, after my father’s sacrifice.”

Othreloth approached her and laid a comforting hand on her shoulder. His other covered her grip on the haft, his soot-stained palms warm as sunbaked rocks. “The Skaal lost much, did they not?” he asked gently, and Frea nodded, expression tight. “Grief can make the wisest heart see signs that are not there, Frea of the Skaal.”

“I know what I have seen,” Frea began defensively, but he shook his head and gave her another one of those achingly kind smiles, as gentle and as unthreatening as thistledown.

“I do not doubt you,” he said. “Do I think it might not be what you do? Yes. These things take time.”

He supported her to lay the hammer down against the wall, and then took her hands as she rolled her shoulders back, marvelling at being free of its weight. Barely a day she had carried what the Dragonborn had, and her back ached. Othreloth met her eyes, and spoke earnestly, his accent strengthened in his passion.

“It took many years to disband the temple of the false prophets, even when the Nerevarine slew the false ones and drove off the Liar Poet in the wake of Baar Dau’s fall.” Othreloth squeezed her hands, then slowly rubbed her arms and shoulders. His clever fingers, lit with heat from the fire that burned in his elf heart, soothed pains she had not even noticed were there. Frea sighed, rolled her head to one side so he could reach her neck.

“This … Miraak, from what I know, was no small creature. Death leaves … echoes in its wake. Perhaps his spirit has not yet found his way to his new beginning. We live again in a time of legends, and the dead are restless, these days.”

“Aye,” said Frea, quietly. She turned her chin to permit him to reach the other side of her neck, to soothe it with the press of warmed knuckle to her muscle. Glancing over the many urns that lined the wall, squat pots of ashes with names Frea could not read written on them in spidery inks, Frea absently tried to count them and stopped when she numbered above ten-and-twenty.

“The dead wait to be interred,” said Othreloth, and she started. He had followed her gaze and offered her a smile hollowed by sorrow. “There are only two of us here at the temple, too few.”

“You have lost many,” Frea said, moved to grasp his shoulders as she would a Skaal who suffered, who needed comfort, the anchor of touch and companionship, and Othreloth nodded, his eyes grave. He did not push her away, but Frea released him quickly, his birdboned body raw with the deep internal heat of an ember an unutterably odd sensation when she felt only a thin layer of his robe covering his skin.

“And we will lose more to this curse,” he said, returning to stare into his fire. Gently as a lover, Othreloth slipped his hand into the embers and drew out a handful of white-hot coals, wreathed in fire up to his shoulder. It snapped in his eyes like a memory, like a final exhale, when he glanced over his shoulder to meet her eyes. “Raven Rock is troubled, Skaal. You would do well to not linger here, if you could.”

“Thank you for the warning,” Frea said, truthfully.

He held her gaze for a long, silent breath. “Come,” he said, at last. “Tell me the names of those you lost, and I will speak them to the fire.”

Grasping her amulet, Frea closed burning eyes. Othreloth did not push, but waited for her to master herself, his silence that of the crackling cookflame, earnest and life-giving, fending off the snows. Forcing space round the lump of coal in her squeezing throat, Frea whispered, “Miraak took from us much, Elder.”

“You know as well as I that it is a heavy burden we carry,” said Othreloth. “But we are no more free to refuse the care of the people than we are the call of faith. It is in times like these that we need our people around us, Skaal. The mer alone at his campfire cannot stand forever against the tiding of the dawn.”

“Aye,” said Frea. With a watery smile she sat at his side by the fire he lit to his gods, and spoke the stories of the dead Skaal.

---

Frea ended up being very late to meeting with Nikulas at the tavern, but with a lighter heart. Her time with the temple priest had softened the hard rind around her heart, and now her tears had flowed freely, she longed for little more than a flagon of cold ale and sleep. She hoped to find him quickly, though she knew that regardless they would be overnighting in Raven Rock, crammed beneath lowlander roofs that blocked the All-Maker’s chilly breath.

The tavern’s warm hit Frea like a blow, heating the tear trails on her face. She swiped them, sniffing, and looked around. The Retching Netch was dim and smoky, smelling strongly of spilled alcohol and sweat, and packed with patrons. More than a few were huddled together with a particular look of shellshock in their eyes, nursing one cup between a group and casting fearful glances towards the doors. The mood was equally raucous and sombre, unreal and over-vivid with the grim pall of penniless desperation.

 Frea’s nose wrinkled. It had been some time since she had last time to visit the tavern, and she could not say she had missed it. Laataazin had swaggered up to the bar and drank through half the night while Frea rolled herself in her too-hot furs and wished to be beneath the auroras, fallen into restless nightmares about knife-eared demons prowling the shadows of the village cookpit, taking the minds of her people one by one while she howled voicelessly at them to run.

Politely toeing off her boots at the door and leaving them on the rack provided, Frea mournfully glanced around and offered a silent prayer to the All-Maker that they would still be there when she returned. The house shoes provided were too small for her large feet, and pinched at her toes as she padded downstairs in search of her missing companion.

“Hail,” she said to the barman, who squinted at her with the bloodshot confusion of the overworked and under-sober.

“Welcome to the Retching Netch, sera,” he said, “I’m Geldis. What can I get you?”

“Ale,” said Frea, leaning against the counter despite her better wisdom. She glanced around vainly while Geldis rooted about under the countertop for an unopened bottle. “I’m looking for one of my people…”

“Ah, the northman lad?” Geldis interrupted. “Couple of copper, for the ale. Boy’s off in the back, with that conjurer who hired Teldryn. Say, what have your people have need of old Teldryn? Not his sword, I hope, if I had the coin I’d be all but tying him to the doorstop, with these deadwalkers about.”

“Thank you,” said Frea, squinting in the direction he pointed and spotting the fringe of Nikulas’ messily braided hair. “I’ll go find out.”

“Good luck to you, friend.”

She found him sequestered away with two strangers, his pale face gleaming with sweat in the candlelight. It was stoked to unbearable heat in the Netch, and Nikulas had ditched both his furs and his shirt, squatting next to a blushing elf in carefully pressed sunshine yellow robes. Another Dunmer, grizzled with tattoos on his cheek, sat against the wall, clad in full chitin armour with his helmet cocked over his thigh, grinning wryly around the rim of his sujamma as Nikulas flexed to the delight of his young new friend.

“Nikulas!” called Frea in her sternest voice, unable to stop her own smirk when the boy leapt out of his skin. “Who’re your friends?”

Red from his ears to his waist, Nikulas bolted to his feet and yelped out a greeting, so much the sheepish hunter caught fraternising instead of tracking that Frea could not help but laugh. He bore it with good humour, red-cheeked but smiling, and greeted her with a kiss on her cheek when she finally recovered her breath.

“Shaman Frea,” Nikulas waved between the four of them, “this is Talvas, he’s from a mushroom tower across the ashlands, and this is-“

“Teldryn Sero, best damn swordsman Morrowind’s ever seen,” the chitin-armoured Dunmer broke in, eyeing Frea foot to chin and offering her a lazy wink that had her own cheeks warming. She disguised it with a gulp of her ale, hurriedly looking away. Teldryn chuckled, a low, gravelly sound that made Frea’s gut twist into startled knots.

“All Maker’s blessings,” she said, pointedly to Talvas, whose pinked ears twitched, endearingly sheepish.

“I’m sorry,” he said quickly, “I’ve – um. Hired Teldryn. Already, sorry. I’m not looking for more swords… unless,” this was said with a nervous look at Teldryn, “do you think we will need more?”

“Serjo, if you aren’t careful, I’ll start taking offence,” said Teldryn drily. He drank deep of his cup, his glittering eyes visible above alert as a hawk’s, laconic as a great cat’s.

“Right,” said Talvas, “Sorry, then.”

“We are not for hire,” Frea said, casting an amused glance at Nikulas, who flushed up red at her implication. She squatted next to him, shrugging off her top layer of furs and swinging Laataazin’s hammer against the wall. She pressed the ale to her forehead, savouring the cool glass against her flushed skin. “We are Skaal, passing through.”

“I told you that,” Nikulas muttered.

“Oh – I thought all the Skaal were…” Talvas stuttered, but Nikulas steamrolled over him.

“Frea, they’re going to investigate the walking dead spawn. Talvas here is from the other side of the island, right? Where the mushroom lord lives. I thought he would be worth – talking to.”

“… Master Neloth is a Telvanni wizard, not a mushroom lord,” Talvas corrected in a sulky undertone.

Teldryn abruptly took a gulp of sujamma and stared at the ceiling like a man trying very hard not to laugh. With his eyes crinkled up merrily at the corners, the high arches of his tattoos pulled high along the blade of his cheekbones, accentuating the shadow of his jaw. He had full lips, for an elf, just barely shaded by the dark crinkle of facial hair, presently slightly dampened by an errant drop from his drink.

Irritated with herself for noticing, Frea pulled herself together and sat forward on her heels. “Tell me, wizard. What of the Stones?”

“The Skaal Stones?” Talvas blinked. “Well, they’ve not been doing much. Whispering, mostly. But they’ve been rather annoying, obstructing my master’s attempts to triangulate…” He stopped, his hands flying to his mouth.

“Triangulate what?” Nikulas asked, oblivious to Talvas’ pallid cheeks and pinned-flat ears.

“Well, never mind that,” said Talvas, hurriedly, “Just – certain, nexi of…”

“Nothing?” Frea interrupted, stopping Talvas’ freewheeling panic. “There can’t be nothing. Did you not scry at the Stones…?”

“-Why,” said Talvas, indignantly, “what kind of wizards do you take us for, ignoring magical anomalies in our own backyard? The Telvanni have quite disavowed this Stones business as nothing more than fancy – a collective delusion…”

“-I care not for the mushroom lords,” said Frea, scowling at Teldryn when he lost the battle for composure and barked out a laugh, “tell me – have you had any dreams? Felt the presence of the enemy closer?”

“You can’t expect me to talk of all my master’s movements and research!” Talvas cried, “Why – you could be anyone, you could be Redoran spies, Master Neloth is quite firm, quite firm, on this point…!”

“I -!” Frea broke off, and inhaled slowly, reaching for the composure she had reached with Othreloth besides the fire, her resolution to be kinder. She smoothed her hands deliberately flat against her knees, and tried again.

“Forgive me,” she said, meeting Talvas’ eyes. “I am the shaman of the Skaal, it is my responsibility to watch for the movements of the Traitor Priest Miraak, who corrupted the Stones to cause the plague of dreamwalkers. Believe me, I have no interest in the power squabbles of your people, I wish only to save their lives from a threat they may not see coming. That it is why it is important that you must tell me if you have seen anything amiss. Have you heard anything at the Stones? Seen dragons – one with a lame leg?”

Talvas shook his head, and Frea sighed. In the silence that followed, Teldryn slurped his drink loudly, grinning when they both blinked at him.

“What a crowd,” he said. “To think, the mummers have me paying pennies.”

“The threat of the Traitor concerns you too!” Nikulas flared, and Frea closed her eyes and exhaled through her nose. She grabbed the back of his neck, the locks there unpleasantly damp against her palm.

“Nikulas,” she said. “My apologies, friends. This has been a trying time.”

“Yeah, and everyone keeps saying we’re dead,” said Nikulas heftily. He quelled when she shot him a look, and Frea removed her hand to steady herself against the grimy tavern floor as she drank deeply from her ale.

Watching this interaction with some bewilderment that Frea could not place, Talvas steepled his fingers carefully.  “I am sorry too. So – you haven’t been having trouble with the walking dead at all?”

“No,” said Frea, “We met an ash-spawn on the way down.” Nikulas shuddered illustratively. “Have you?”

“Some,” said Talvas. “Actually – we,” he gestured to Teldryn, “are going to go have a look at one of the old draugr nests. I have to … find something for my master.”

“Not that we aren’t glad to see you still kicking, Skaal,” said Teldryn, raising his cup as if to toast her. “But there’s a lot more barrows up north.”

Rocking back on her heels, Frea took in the tavern around them. Knots of skinny, tired people, even a few off-duty guards, drinking like they had no wish to remember the day, all packed in together. The urns along the temple wall, dozens of dead yet unburied, and Othreloth’s kindness. There were little walking dead along the high rise of the mountain passes where the Skaal hunted, yes, but Frea was a shaman of the All-Maker, and where his sun shone and his winds blew, she walked.

It might not be the Traitor she had set out looking for, but there was a problem here, and it would not be right to walk away.

She sucked her teeth regretfully, then sighed. “I will go with you to this tomb. I wish to see what is happening with the dead.”

“Teldryn has the rights to the loot, except what I need,” said Talvas, but she saw his eyes brighten at the idea.

“I don’t need payment,” said Frea. “And I have no interest in the tokens of the dead. My concerns are the living and the land.”

Teldryn’s ear flicked, but he made no protest when Talvas looked to him, seeking permission.

“Alright,” said Talvas. “Well… alright.” He slumped with relief, some deeply held anxiety uncoiling. “Come and be welcome then. The more the merrier, in a draugr tomb.”

“So,” Nikulas asked brightly, “when do we leave?”

Chapter Text

The next day dawned cold and clear over Raven Rock, heralded by a stiff and chill wind blown over the clawing peaks of the Moesrings. Frea gratefully kept her hood down for the soot-speckled snowflakes to kiss her hair and ruddy cheeks with flecks of welcome coolness. She was the only one; the dark, narrow streets of Raven Rock were utterly deserted despite the egg-yolk warmth of the pallid sun creeping over the churn of the seaspray out the harbour. Distantly, she could hear the mighty puffing of the forge bellows; old Mallory had seized an early morning start to his work. The night lamps were still alight, flickering with arcane-ruby warmth in the sunken recesses of the sullen houses with their glistening chitin shells.  

Stamping on the ale-soaked and ashy slush ringing the Retching Netch’s gutters, Teldryn ran chitin-plated gauntlets up his armoured arms with hair-raising screeches that jangled on her nerves.

Nikulas, stubbornly wrapped up tightly in his furs, was turning a slow, bilious red. “I’m not going,” he said, obstinately. “You can’t expect me to leave you here! Farani told me to go with you, to keep you safe!”

“Nikulas.” Frea couldn’t help the cut in her tone, they had been arguing since full dark when they’d woken in the bowels of the Netch. “You must, I need you to take word of what I am doing back to the Skaal. I will be days behind you at most, but I need you to warn them to keep away from the Tree Stone until I can return to cleanse it.”

“Frea…” His nut-brown eyes, shrouded by the fur of his hood, were deep and drawn under the furrow of his brows. “You are our only shaman.”

“And I will return,” Frea repeated as soothingly as she could, “Not long after you.”

Nikulas shifted his weight between his feet, thumbing at the seam of his glove. His breath misted like that of the frost-spitting dragon Frea and Laataazin had faced at Nchardak, streaming trails of icy mist even as it raised its glossy royal-blue and silver wings and fled howling into the great cup of the sky. Dragons seen flying over the temple of Miraak, the restless dead stirring from their tombs, the whispers that even now boiled from the Stones too far to hear but just close enough to sense like a tongue on the neck; myths and mysteries were stirring out of the unquiet earth, waking monsters enrapt by some unknown call to life resounding through every bone and stone of Solstheim.

Frea needed to protect her people, arm them with what she knew. The Skaal could not be caught unprepared by a disaster like this again, there were too few of them to lose. He knew it, as well as she did. They needed this knowledge and the awareness of threats on the rise.

“The Traitor turned to our people first for a reason, Nikulas,” Frea urged him, taking hold of his fur-covered shoulders. He avoided her gaze, cheeks reddened, but Frea tucked a lock of hair behind his lightly pointed ear, encouraging him to look at her. “He picked us off out of our village, familiar hunters, trappers and outriders disappearing from the icy paths, knowing the lowlanders would not know before his army was too strong. The lowlanders already think us all dead. Will you make us pay the price of our isolation a second time? Time to prepare alone will grant us the advantage, will firm our steadfast hearts against the whispering of the enemy.”

“…All right,” Nikulas said unhappily. A true Skaal, through and through, blood of the mountains. “I will return to the village.”

She exhaled. “Thank you.”

He glanced away from her, frustration written in the taut line of his shoulders, and she could not let them part in anger. Tugging his arm, Frea pulled him into an embrace, the fur of his hood tickling the snow in her hair as she pressed his forehead to hers. Something in her slotted into warm completion when he did not push her away, but closed his eyes and leant back into her, the heat and smell of his breath scented with onion from their hasty breakfast brushing over her cheeks like a caress from the concept of home.

He was warm and solid and there in her arms, her kin, her people, and in her burnished heart grew a fierce and loving desire to protect. No more Skaal would die. No more.

All it would take would be Frea to be separated from her people for a short while. It was agony, but it was a short price to pay. She had done it before, with Dragonborn Laataazin. This time, the victory against swelling threat would be absolute; she would ensure it herself.

“Be safe, brother,” she murmured.

“Shaman,” Nikulas said back, with equal reverence and quietude. “… Frea.”

His warm brown eyes found hers, steady as the deep heart of an oak. The warmth of his skin, the smell of his stringy hair, the streaky kohl under his eyes to protect them from the snow; desperately she tried to memorise him, pull him closer into her until the bones of their skulls ground through their foreheads, like if only she could try hard enough she could bring this fledgling part of her people with her, down from the mountains into the warm ashlands where the elves roamed, with their restless dead.

The hammer across her back dug painfully into the meat of her shoulder. Rolling it against the yoke of the strap, she ruefully stepped back. Nikulas turned to face the mountains, and it was as if the sunlight came into his eyes as he looked into the stony breasts of rock and snow where deep amongst the peaks the village awaited him. He was a son of the mountains; the sweat of the lowlands did not belong on his brow, the soupiness of the air was not meant for his lungs.

Without another glance back, Nikulas adjusted his strung bow over his shoulder and set off at a hunter’s easy lope. Amongst the houses and the rising kiss of dawn, he was briefly silhouetted against the sun, the furs of his hood glowing gold. The raking tip of his bow over his shoulder seemed to draw orange fire through the creamy twilight blue, like a god from Storn’s old legends of the Hunter Fox, whose ears were so sharp they rent the All-Maker’s veil between the living and the hall of the dead. All the old heroes came tumbling out, with gods-ale on their breath and dragon-song in their bellowing voices to root out the heresies striding the icelands that birthed Frea’s people, long ago, before even the Guardian and the Traitor, before even when Solstheim was a bigger land, unsundered by sea, in the old age of dragons and gods.

But those were simply stories of the heroic past, just as the Traitor would be again – a footnote, in the Skaal’s legend.

Behind her, Teldryn was packing crushed herbs in his pipe. With a flick of his finger, he lit it and puffed deeply. He hummed low in his throat and the gravelly sound seemed to travel all the way through Frea’s spine down to the soles of her boots. His hair gleamed with oil like brushed night, his grey skin stippled faintly with blues and yellows, carded through by the stark lines of his facial tattoo. His lips were wet with balm that kept them from cracking against the sharp, ashy air. His fingers were long and graceful, arched like the great ribcages of whalebone washed up on the rocky shore, harvested and picked clean by the wildfolk. Frowning, she glanced away before he could catch her looking at him, tugging at the straps of her gear.

“That’s the stuff,” he murmured to himself, then, “Ready to go, Skaal?”

“My name is Frea, Dunmer,” Frea sighed, and he grinned at her impishly. His smile made his red eyes sparkle like rubies in firelight. “Where is Talvas?”

“I’m here!” the elf in question cried, dashing out of the Retching Netch. He had half his buttons done up in the wrong holes on his sunshine yellow robes so they hung off him like a strange, colourful tent. His arms overspilled with papers and there was sauce on his cheek. “Oh – you would not believe – you see, at Tel Mithryn, I – well…” His grey cheeks purpled at the sight of Frea’s impassive expression, stony as the Bulwark. “… I overslept.”

“Lead the way,” she said, gesturing to the well-trod path out of town.

“Oh, right, yes of course, we should be heading…” He turned round and round, holding his map up to the rising sun until the squiggles of ink were backlit, as striking as Teldryn’s tattoos.

“White Ridge Barrow?” Teldryn intervened, not without a cynical glance to Frea that had her pressing her lips together in a refusal to smile, “It’s this way.” He pointed.

“Right,” said Talvas, again, and blushed. “Well, off we go then.”

He set off, made it three paces, and stumbled over the hem of his unfastened robes. Maps and papers went flying. Talvas yelped.

“By Azura,” Teldryn muttered.

“Aye,” sighed Frea.

They shared a look, then Frea bent to help the hapless mage gather his papers.

After their slow start, it proved to be a gruelling trip. Barely had they stepped out of the gates than they were attacked by more of the shambling, eyeless ash-spawn lurching out of the dusty grey soot. The early morning chill and calm proved evasive under the humid ash-cover, and Frea had to rewrap her eyes and mouth with damp cloth that stuck unpleasantly to her skin every time they stopped, lest she choke to death on the dust. Bitterly, she envied Nikulas his ability to take the switchback Skaal hunting paths up the mountains, quicker, safer, and cleaner, to boot.

Teldryn seemed entirely unaffected, strolling through the ash clouds as if his boots did not kick up plumes that roused the ‘spawn, at times even smoking his pipe. His atronach followed them at a distance, heat simmering off it like the fire round a cookstone. It was a slim comfort that Talvas appeared just as miserable as Frea; the young mage clearly struggled to keep up with Frea’s mountain-bred stride or Teldryn’s apparently indomitable stamina. He shrouded himself in magical flames that no matter how hot they burnt never seemed to touch his robes or the rings he wore on his bare hands, but still shivered even with sweat on his brow.

The Dunmeri sellsword refused to keep his mouth shut, turning every quiet moment into an opportunity for aggrandisement. If the best damn swordsman in Morrowind wasn’t making sly jokes or complaining, he was bragging. A headache quickly took root behind Frea’s eyes and stayed there, but she gritted her teeth, thought of her people, and marched on.

It all began to go truly downhill after the sixth time they were attacked on the road. This time, reavers, a band of four skinny and ragged, one elf mage and three humans; Nords, Frea thought, by their salt-rough accents as they swore at her. One had a tattered mask hooked to his belt, still glowing faintly with enchantment, pale as bone and as striking as the very first time ones like it starred in Frea’s dreams, when the cult of Miraak had begun swarming around the Tree Stone, stealing free minded Skaal with their purple-tongued lies.

Immediately, Frea had gone for the ex-cultist, swinging Laataazin’s hammer as hard as she could. The momentum was intense; the wind whistled and shrieked, and the hammer all but leapt eagerly through the air, its brutal blunt face a vision of crushing evisceration. The cultist danced back, and the hammer met nothing – arrested by its weight Frea continued to spin, and narrowly avoided a rusty axe in the back.

Afterwards when the reavers were corpses bleeding dully into the ash, Teldryn rounded on her and snapped, “Is your sentimentality going to get us killed, Skaal? You don’t know how to use that damned thing!”

“I know enough,” she spat back, hot, tired, and angry. “If you’d not been distracting me all the way – what’s that?”

For Teldryn had scrabbled in the bloodsoaked dirt and come up with the ex-cultist’s rusted axe. “Here!” he thrust it at her, “Use this, and maybe we won’t all get killed.”

“No!” Frea hefted the gory-headed hammer, its threatening weight a solid and steadying burden. Reminding of her purpose, her people. What she was doing all this for. And Laataazin’s gift, to protect her people. She had to keep it safe for them, until they returned.

“Why carry around that thing?” Teldryn demanded. “It doesn’t make you the Dragonborn!”

His scorn hit too close to home, and Frea blushed hotly with anger and embarrassment. She slung the hammer off her shoulder and stepped up to him, squaring off against the shorter elf until his face was in shadow from her broad shoulders and looming height.

“You do not understand, elf!” she told him, jabbing him in the chest. “I was charged with using this weapon until its rightful master returns to claim it!”

Teldryn’s red eyes burned like coals. “Grow up,” he snarled, “Are you truly waiting for that drunken s’wit to come back and save you? They’re not coming back, Azura be praised, they’re dead in a ditch!”

“You may think the worst of the world, but I don’t,” Frea hissed back, “I believe in my friend. I believe the All-Maker sent us what and who we needed. I believe in all the sacrifices we have made to reach this point!”

Teldryn started laughing before she was done, bitter and raucous. His atronach did an uneasy flip behind them. “Tell me, Skaal – what kind of warrior leaves their best weapon to fight a would-be god, in the hands of someone who doesn’t even know how to use it?”

Frea hardened with fury, but he only shook his head at her, the poison in his fiery eyes so disappointed it seared her. “Face it, I knew it when that fetcher, rat-faced off more sujamma than Geldis’d sold all year, swaggered into the Netch looking for a local to take ‘em up to that temple, and I told them: no amount of money’s worth that death-wish, and I knew it when they came back with some pretty, brainless Skaal in tow with a blindspot as big as your precious fucking honour!”

“How dare you-!” she began to hiss, but he cut her off with an impatient swipe of his hand, the silver ring on his finger glinting like a star.

“The Dragonborn’s abandoned us to whatever the fuck’s going on now. Get used to it, kid, the heroes don’t care.”

“Enough!” a clap of lightning, and Frea looked at Talvas. His eyes were red rimmed, he was shaky and pale. “We just killed four people, and you two are arguing about – what, how you could have done it faster? No –!” He raised his hands, forestalling their objections. “Shut up! It doesn’t matter! Both of you, shut up and help me find this damn barrow, so I can go home!”

He turned away, his breath rising on nearly a sob. Frea glanced down at the four dead bodies, cooling slowly besides the path. Blood sprayed liberally across the dirty ash, dripped slowly from the head of the hammer over her back. She could smell its iron tang even through her cloth, feel its warmth against her back. Talvas held the sleeve of his robe to his mouth and shuddered, like he was going to be sick.

Silence.

“Fine,” said Frea.

With one last glare at Teldryn, she shouldered the hammer again and went to Talvas. She tried to reach for his arm, to comfort him, but he shook her off, marching away with his arms crossed tightly over his chest, like he was keeping himself held together. His cheeks were very pale; Frea suddenly saw how very, painfully young he was, even through his elven features and strange, luxury-softened skin. He stood out in his cheerful yellow robes like a butterfly pinned to a board, a familiar hollow misery tense in his eyes.

Dropping her hand, Frea fell back. The first were never easy. Had it truly been so long since her own that she was numb to the brutal cost of violence?

In the dust behind them, Teldryn searched the pockets of the dead and rolled them into a pile. He tossed a flame spell into the corpses and left them there to burn, the pillar of greasy smoke like a trail marker in the sky.

They reached White Ridge Barrow after one long, tense night spent camped out in the wilderness, huddled up against the ash-blown trees. On the morning of the second day, snow had started to fall heavily, slowing their progress. Frea went ahead, breaking the snow with her sturdy legs for the smaller elves. Teldryn walked behind Talvas now, in case the mage stumbled and did not rise; his flame cloak had long flickered out, and he shivered like a sad plant in the harsh gusts. Unable to bear the pathetic sight, Frea had leant him her cloak which presently swallowed him in a mound of furs, until only his black hair and chilly, red-pinched ears peeked out the top.

Frea could not help the rise in her mood as they worked their way higher into the mountainous, rugged landscape. The air seemed easier to breathe, fresher and clear. The snow was dirty grey from ash, but the further they got from the warmer lowlands the less they found. The path was not hard to find, either, broken by wandering feet; perhaps a herd of wildfolk had come through this way, leaving no trace of their presence but softened snow over hard-packed, pressure-crushed ice.

Not hard to find for Frea, anyway, the two elves followed her like sooty ducklings, complaining about the chill on their boots. But Frea heard the earthsong of the All Maker in the rock and snow, in the playful wind that tossed at her hood and pinched her cheeks. The All Maker smiled down on them from the chilly sun, and Frea was at peace.

The ruin itself crouched like a squat reikling in the lee of a rocky cliff, the hump of its stony back gathered with wicked icicles. At first it was nearly invisible, a hulking shadow of black rock nestled resentfully against the sturdy lip of unhewn stone, but Frea felt it, that stillness in the air that whispered of the resting place of the old elders. The elements here were poisoned by ancient magics, necromantic spells and dark, twisted energy bent to the service of dragons and their priests, gods amongst men. It manifested as an eerie chill that crept up Frea’s spine. The All Maker’s presence in her blood dimmed, a couched warning she did not need.

There was darkness here, ancient and slumbering.

They approached in cautious silence, Teldryn recasting his flame atronach for some needed light. The daedra’s crackling face stared eyelessly forward, the graceful arcs of its soaring body sending twists of light across the old stone, painting the ice with rubies. The vast porch of the ruin was held up by a wavering column of ice-packed brick, blackened by the remnants of some ancient fire and thousands of years of scouring. A hollow coolness enveloped them as they stepped beneath its shadow and faced the wrought-iron doors, sealed against intrusion. Talvas clustered uncertainly close to Teldryn’s atronach, seeking the heat.

Frea glanced at her companions. “Ready?”

Talvas swallowed, but nodded, his grey face pallid and blue. Teldryn only smirked, flipping his sword easily in his hand. Facing forward, Frea pulled the hammer off her back. With a creak, she pushed the door open, and then as one, they stepped into the abyss.

The first thing Frea noticed was the cold. The second, the silence.

It was deathly still, so cold that her breath plumed in front of her as she stared into the slick, icy darkness. The tunnel’s mouth was ringed with ice, sleeting over the steps down into the dusty ruin. There were no whispers, no skitters, no uneasy shivers in the rock with the presence of watchful eyes – nothing but silence, and cold, and death.

The frost-choked walls stretched on and on into the bowels of the earth. Not even dust fell in the wobbly, watery gleam of light through thick ice. It was like the whole place was suspended in time, caught between one breath and the next.

Frea’s boots handled the slippery ice well, but Talvas and Teldryn had to crawl at points, easing themselves down smoothened steps on their hands and knees. The fire atronach Teldryn kept behind them as to not weaken the ice they scrambled over. Her passage left little runnels of melted icewater, dripping clear over entombed shadows of what looked like hundreds, thousands, of tiny, spidery bodies.

Entire cobwebs had been plastered against the wall and frozen solid, egg sacs had ruptured in the howling cold and frozen mid-explosion, spiders trapped in perfect form, some still curled up in their webs, beneath the ice. Their eyes gleamed, bright and dead.

“I hate this,” Teldryn announced, “In case you were wondering, I truly hate this.”

He eased himself round the frozen-solid corpse of an uncomfortably translucent spider the size of his torso with a grimace Frea could all but feel even behind his chitin helmet.

“This ice is not natural,” said Frea, “I wonder if we will meet the mage who cast it?”

“By the Three,” Talvas moaned, and no one said anything for a little while.

Eventually, the cramped, winding tunnels opened out into a hall, and the spiders began giving way to bodies, instead. Mostly human, a few others, and all absolutely dead. Some were frozen still sat in chairs or in beds, abandoned games of dice stuck to their cold, frost-bitten flesh. Others had fallen, their expressions twisted up in terrible shock and horror. Whatever had come for them, they had not expected it.

“Loot’s still here,” said Teldryn, prising some coins off the table with his dagger, “No one cleared this cave.”

“Then where are the elders?” asked Frea, and an uneasy silence fell. Numbered among the dead, they had seen no draugr, no walking dead, but plenty of niches, tombs, and resting places. They had been here – but where were they now?

“Where’s this artefact you’re looking for?” asked Teldryn, and Talvas shrugged uneasily. “Experience tells me its probably at the ass-end then,” sighed Teldryn.

They proceeded further through the ruin, into the sanctum of White Ridge Barrow. Here too, it was dark and still and silent, but there was barely any ice. Only a trail of frost, oddly familiar, blazed the way down through the ruin like a clairvoyance spell. It was only when Frea’s eye landed on Teldryn’s atronach doing a lazy flip that she realised what the frost trail reminded her of; the fire that played at her ankles, blurring and burning along behind her in a smoky line.

Frost atronachs did not float with ice trailing under their feet, though, they stomped. Their ice, though it felt different to true ice, did not feel as rigidly unnatural, as dead as this ice did. This ice was near-sentient with a palpable aura of sorrow and the rigid, static anger of the dead. It seethed, crunching bitterly under Frea’s boots like it resented her and every living thing that passed over it. With a subtle and malignant glitter, it reflected the shine of their weapons, the elves’ glowing eyes, like it watched them.

And in the distance, a soft scratching started. Nearly inaudible, like a grating against the inside of Frea’s eyes.

Scratch, scratch, scratch, it went.

Squeezing the grip on the hammer, Frea swallowed around a dry throat. She kept her eyes on the ground in front of her and edged forwards, wishing that Teldryn had taken the lead. Talvas behind her cleared his throat.

Scratch, scratch – silence.

The scratching paused.

Frea froze in place. With a grunt, Teldryn collided with Talvas, and they both hit her. She lost her grip on the ice and slid, and with a hoarse yell all three of them tumbled down the sloping staircase to the icy bottom. Teldryn swore loudly the whole way down, his fire atronach flickering after them with the smug air only the flighted could, at the flightless.

They landed heavily on Frea, crushing the breath out of her. She started to complain, but Talvas shushed them both impatiently.

Scratch, scratch, scratch. In the silent darkness, the scratching started up again.

“Can you hear that?” Frea hissed, and she felt Talvas nod against her shoulder.

“Let me guess,” Teldryn said, dourly, “We are going towards the creepy noise.”

“We have to investigate,” said Frea, shaking them off her like puddles of sulky, armoured rainwater. Teldryn groaned in resignation.

The scratching got louder the further down the trail of ice they went. They edged round the corner into a wide hall capped by a magnificent subterranean wall, carved with strange, archaic words that bit at Frea’s vision, demanding attention. She scanned the darkness carefully, but nothing moved.

“I don’t see anything,” she whispered, and felt Teldryn press up behind her. His warmth tickled at her nape as he came up behind her with a creak of leather and the soft rasp of chitin on chitin. She waited in taut silence while he judged the room ahead.

His closeness made the pit of her belly shiver and roll over itself. She was near enough to smell the musk of leather and sweat, armour oil and soot that clung to him. His lips brushed her ear as he settled forward on his toes, leaning into her space. Her heartbeat picked up.

With a flick of his fingers, he gestured his flame atronach forwards. She drifted past, a pillar of gracefully twining flame. Insouciant, unbothered, she made her way into the centre of the room, and executed a single, lazy flip.

Then, quite promptly, she exploded.

Teldryn’s hand clasped immediately over Frea’s eyes, pushing her back against the stone. She yelped, but he shushed her, his warm voice catching in her ear like smoke in her throat. Her toes curled. She felt the strength of his grip, his fiery heat, the tough wiriness of his arms, his compact chest. He was like no man she had ever touched; no Skaal with their sensible layer of padding and hair, no, he was all raw, lissom elf, blazing with rude heat.

Quite against her will, Frea’s face flooded with pink.

“We’re good,” he said.

Teldryn released her, and she yanked out of his arms and stormed away before he could see her bright blushing cheeks. She did not want to deal with his teasing. And she knew, she knew he would have something to say about this. It was just – blood. It was warmer next to him than it was anywhere else, it was just a simple reaction to temperature. She was still angry with him.

It didn’t mean anything.

She was distracted by Talvas’ loud cheer. “This is it!” he darted over to examine the rock wall, fingers trailing over the jagged carvings. “There should be a stand…”

He turned, and his face palpably fell. The towering lectern Talvas was approaching sat directly across from the wall of dragon words and the large tomb between them. It radiated a fearsome aura of darkness. Tentacles squirmed forever just inches away from their goal, hidden eyes nestled between their thick, oily strands and glistening wetly, even as immobile stone and metal. It loomed threateningly, just tucked out of sight of the entrance, but planted opposite the silent tomb of the barrow’s most powerful elder like a terrible, ominous watcher.

A vicious black stain scarred the top of the lectern, where a Book should be.

Scratch, scratch, scratch, went the eerie noise.

“This isn’t right,” he said, “No, no, there’s supposed to be…”

He started forwards, but Frea grabbed him by the scruff of his neck. His sunshine yellow robes bunched up around her hand and he wheezed indignantly.

“Stop,” said Frea, “That looks like Herma-Mora’s work.”

“It’s not…” Talvas grimaced. “Fine, it’s the artefact I was sent to retrieve for Neloth. He knows how to study the Books! There are no safer hands for them than his.”

“No,” Frea snarled at once. “Those Books are evil-! We should be so lucky that they have all gone, back to their dark master.” She spat on the ground, like it could shake the image loose of her father’s body, pierced through with Herma-Mora’s writhing, hungry corruption.

“I’m more concerned about where the dead are,” broke in Teldryn diplomatically. “Perhaps one took the other?”

He had wandered off to the side during Talvas and Frea’s exchange, and now as she turned to face him, he kicked the front of a coffin. The eerie scraping redoubled itself, along with a faint, nasty snarling Frea swore she could feel on her throat. Teldryn flipped his sword, grinned at them, and wrenched the coffin open.

A desiccated draugr fell out.

Darting to one side, Teldryn raised his sword for a killing blow, but the draugr did not attack him. It did not even look at him. Instead, it dragged itself forward on its skeletal arms, its blue gaze burning with a ferocious and unspeakable purpose. Teldryn’s glittering red eyes tracked it crawling across the floor towards a dark passageway.

He raised an eyebrow. “Don’t suggest following that,” he said, “That’s creepy shit, that way.”

“We should follow it,” said Frea, and Teldryn groaned. “It could be a trap.”

“Exactly!” said Teldryn, “That’s why we shouldn’t follow it!”

“Wherever its going could be where the rest of the draugr are,” suggested Talvas. “Maybe they have the Book?”

“For the record, I don’t like this,” Teldryn grumped, but fell in line behind Talvas anyway.

“You don’t like anything,” Frea snapped.

“Nothing that’s likely to kill me, no,” Teldryn retorted.

Ignoring them, Talvas forged on after the draugr fearlessly, conjuring a magelight that floated above his head. Frea brought up the lead, glaring at the back of his head. She remembered being pressed against his chest in the passageway and fought the spreading warmth in her face. Her own blush roused a sour taste on her tongue, remembering the bitter flash in his eyes as he mocked her for her belief in her friend.

She looked down at the hammer she held. It was too heavy to carry it without an immediate threat present, not like Laataazin had, hoisting it on one powerful shoulder like it weighed nothing at all despite having a head almost bigger than theirs. For all her size, her strength, Teldryn was right. She was used to her dual hand axes, quick and biting and good for scaling cliffsides in a hurry. She wasn’t a warrior, like he was.

But she was a shaman, and she would always fight for her people.

She felt the touch of the All Maker in the sun that pierced shyly the long tunnel, warming her cheeks. It was wan and pale, but all their steps picked up with palpable relief. No one wanted to linger here.

The passageway was steep and dusty, winding up to the surface. In places they had to scramble up on hands and knees, goat-hopping up collapsed stairways. A chill, fresh wind wisped past them, ruffling the sweat on Frea’s brow.

The draugr was unaffected by the ice and had already made it out onto the broken snow by the time Frea scrambled out of the half-collapsed exit. The snow here was crushed and spotted by dozens of walking feet, spotted with decayed fragments of cloth and rust. A skeleton was sprawled across the path, its rat-gnawed bones ancient and brittle. The dead had passed through, heading inexorably away from the ruin, into the snow.

“Where are they going?” Talvas asked.

Frea did not answer. She frowned at the skyline. The tracks were headed loosely southeast, towards the heart of the mountains. Were the missing deadwalkers of White Ridge Barrow planning to go through the mountains to the lowlands, or worse, to the temple that lurked in its centre? What was the likelihood that Frea’s suspicions of the Traitor’s murky and incomplete defeat had something to do with this as well?

A glacial wind picked up as they followed the draugr, scattering snowflakes and bites of icy hail. A roiling fog lingered at the peaks of the mountains, obscuring the glittering snowfields. The broken snow stretched on, punctuated by the detritus of death; fallen organs pickled and dry, scraps of skin and bone. The snow fell, swift and remorseless, threatening a gathering blizzard. Above, clear and unconcerned, the sky was smooth and untroubled by clouds.

“It is magical,” Frea called over her shoulder, reaching back for Talvas’ hand. He took it, his grasp hot and sweaty against her glove. “I cannot feel the All Maker in this.”

“Great,” Teldryn muttered, gripping onto Frea’s belt.

“We must be getting close!” said Talvas.

They kept close to her as they pressed on, using her taller body as a wind break. Frea pulled her scarf up over her nose so the wind had less of her cheek to bite. Bending her shoulders to the unnatural wind, she grit her teeth against the sting of prickly, defensive magic that steered the wind’s howl. It almost pushed them away with intangible hands, protective and malignant.

Teldryn saw them first. With a hiss, he pulled on Frea’s shoulder, halting her in her tracks, and pointed. Through the thickening snow, Frea glimpsed a knot of strange, tattered figures, standing motionlessly in front of a collapsed cliff as if uncertain. A few draugr were braving the climb up the ice-slick rock, tumbling back down again almost as soon as they got up.

In their centre, a great and terrible figure hovered. Not in the way Teldryn’s atronach had, as if buoyed by its own flame and heat, but like an image, pasted onto the world after the rest had already been drawn in. It did not fit, hanging there listlessly like a corpse from a tree, at once too animate to be truly dead, and not enough to be alive. Forewarned by some arcane sense, the figure turned towards them, the blizzard swirling around its tattered robes. The mask on its face gleamed coldly, cruelly, with ancient and deathly darkness. It spoke, in a rumbling, inhuman voice, guttural and harsh, its skeletal hands gesturing in front of it. Icy blue scales guarded its shrunken chest, royal blue and white.

Though the wind was harsh, its dead voice carried clearly through the air, echoing with an uncanny resonance like the wind loved its words too dearly to let them die. Dragon-tongue, and dragon-words.

“Bronze balls of Seht! That’s a dragon priest!” cursed Teldryn, “We need to get out of here.”

The words were familiar, tickling the back of Frea’s mind. It almost sounded like old Skaal, the tongue of stories and myth. She picked up odd words, here and there, and when the dragon priest stopped it extended its hand and beckoned to them. That was a gesture she did know.

“Drem. Bo-aav het, mal-briinah,” the undead priest rumbled. Its bleached white hair blew softly about its mask, escaping from holes in its ragged hood.

“It’s not unfriendly,” said Frea quickly, and Teldryn scoffed disbelief.

“It’s an undead,” he hissed.

“These are her ancestors,” said Talvas, peering uncertainly round Frea’s shoulder. “By the flame, shut up and let her handle them.”

“Los Frea,” she said, mustering herself, and clapping her palm across her chest.

The dragon priest drifted forward a step, the light shimmering over the icy scales on its chest. Closer, she made out the intricate details on the frayed and tattered robes, fractal patterns that reminded her of snowflakes. The mask gleamed coolly, like the reflection of a still pond under moonlight. Unholy blue eyes blazed out from behind the mask. It radiated wrongness, an offence to the sky that held it.

“Zu’u Dukaan,” the priest, Dukaan, growled back, imitating her. “Koraav hi drog-Krosulhah? Bo mu krii se munax nau golt. Zu yah thuri-Miraak. Aav-mu, Frea-briinah?”

“What did it say?” Teldryn asked her urgently. He was gripping his sword, staring at the dead with terrified hatred.

Frea recognised only one word, Miraak. She bared her teeth, reaching for the hammer. “Traitor!”

“Vahlok-aar!” The dragon priest screamed back, and summoned its staff to its hands. “Alduin rel ko Solstheim fen al! Mu fen stin! Aar – krii daar wo krif thuri-Miraak!”

“Mu fen stin!” a deathlord bellowed, and the fight was on.

There were too many of them. The draugr swarmed them like locusts across the snow, blown back by Teldryn’s fire and Talvas’ wild, explosive spells. Frea guarded their front, swinging Laataazin’s hammer like an instrument of doom. But they kept coming, and all the while Dukaan tossed chunks of ice and pure force at them, forcing them to run behind rocks.

“We need to run!” Teldryn shouted as one such temporary shelter shattered around their heads, sending chunks of razor sharp rock rocketing through the air.

“Miraak!” Dukaan wailed, as if in answer. “Faal Dovahkiin bo! Rok aak mu!”

“We can’t outrun that!” Talvas yelled back, “it’ll shoot us down from behind!”

Teldryn swore loudly. Frea swung Laataazin’s hammer into the chest of a draugr, grunting as the hammer nearly spun out of her hands in its eagerness to maim.

Teldryn shot across the ice and parried the blow, jarring Dukaan’s staff from its grip. It dropped the staff and retaliated with a blast of frost that he dodged nimbly, his sword dancing out flickering with fire. He traded swings with the priest for a minute, and then hastily scrambled backwards as his atronach bulled in and exploded in flames, its summon expired.

Dukaan seemed unfazed, and blasted him backwards. Teldryn collapsed into a snowdrift, but Frea could not spare a second to check if he was alright, she was already charging forward to re-engage. The draugr knotted around Talvas, who yelped.

Lightning forked – a sudden, hard flash of stark purple. A ring of draugr collapsed into fire, and a powerful storm atronach swirled up from the ashes, tossing thunderbolts. Talvas was screaming, somewhere, but magic was snapping over the sky, frostbolts and thunder crackling among the fire.

“Zahkriisos!” Dukaan howled with such clear grief that Frea bit her own lip, hard. “Ahzidal! Aak hin fahdon! Krosulhah! Hon-ni dii zaan?!”

Frea closed with it, going for an overhead strike. Dukaan swayed back out of the way, its eyes glowing fiercely with magic. Its scale armour glinted wickedly.

“Your people are dead!” she taunted the priest, “Your time is gone! And soon, so will you be!”

Dukaan’s guttural snarl was her only reply.

Dodging a blast of frost from Dukaan aimed at her head, Frea squinted over the battleground. Teldryn, there – sword in hand, back to back with someone – Talvas? But then – who was that, on the ridge, graceful arms upraised like a conductor, hurling thunderbolts like snowballs?

She had no time to question it, because sensing the battle turning, Dukaan flung itself at her with an immortal screech of rage and grief.

The dragon priest pushed her down, its skeletal hands going for her neck and squeezing. She coughed for air, pushing at the intractable arms. Dukaan’s masked face loomed over her. This close, Frea could almost see hints of what Dukaan had once been; alive, mortal, like her and her people. Before the gruesome pact with power, following the traitor past death. Stringy, brittle white hair poured out from around the hood, a veritable mane when it was alive. Dukaan had Nikulas’ small pointed ears, Farani’s thick hair, but harsh blue eyes that glowed with fierce undeath. Whatever colour they had been was wiped away by the cursed magic that animated it now.

Its hands were icy cold, fighting for purchase on the thick furs around her neck.  She knew, somehow without knowing, that the dragon priest could not even see her, that some other foe had gripped its deathless mind. It screamed as it choked her, insane with rage and a brutal sorrow that burrowed into her heart like an ice spike, aching and chill. Frea writhed under its hollow-boned grip and wheezed for breath, dark spots appearing before her eyes.

She was going to die. It was going to break her neck, and she was going to die here, without ever going home again.

Uselessly, her fingers twitched for the haft of the hammer knocked out of her hands. Hot tears squeezed out of her eyes, blurring the gruesome visage of the dead priest, the rasping gasps of her final exhales muddying the icy visage of the scalloped mask.

A spell rippled over her head and struck Dukaan in the chest like a clap of thunder. The dragon priest was blown backwards by the force. Frea’s ears rang. She scrambled to her feet and lurched for the hammer, grabbing it and swinging it over her head. She still couldn’t breathe, wobbling for steadiness around crashing, discordant colours.

Dukaan’s eyes seared her, wrought in horrific agony, a grief so potent it ached. A second spell clipped the edge of the mask and it spun, pinwheeling away from the rotten face. Laataazin’s hammer crashed into the weakened skull half a breath later, shattering it into an explosion of bone fragments. The awful blue gaze winked out, but she kept going, couldn’t stop. The hammer lurched in her hands like a living thing, directing her, moving her, driving her to a final and brutal vengeance. She kicked the dragon priest’s body off the hammer and struck again, pulverising the chest this time, ancient bone and scale cracking under the fierce warsong of the hammer like eggs.

Dukaan’s deathless body began to flake and ash. Her next swing scattered the ash into an explosion of mothwing softness, arcane remains glittering in the foul snow. Dukaan’s mask, empty and still, lay a short distance away. Abandoned there among the blue-purple shimmer, it was almost beautiful, like captive silver in the heart of the aurora.

Breathing heavily, Frea raised her head, sweat stinging into her eyes. She blinked it clear – and saw the impossible.

A stone stood, pulsing with power, around the chest of a she-elf, whose fingertips dripped magic. She lowered her hands, her flaked-blood eyes throbbing with that terrible, wicked glow. Her summons flickered around her, the shapes of one – two –  three storm atronachs, standing at her shoulders like sentries, like bodyguards. Her body looked wrong, moved wrong, the joints stiff and unrolling, a blank, voidlike spot in the world where a normal body should be. The red stone sat in her chest like a disease, lurid, livid veins crawling up round her ears, into her brain like a cancer.  

“Friend or foe?” Teldryn called from somewhere.

Frea hefted the hammer over her shoulder but fell before she could get it up past her elbow. She wheezed for breath, tugging at the collar of her furs. A slow agony spread over her shoulders and spine, starbursts pinwheeled angrily behind her eyes. Dukaan’s hands were still around her neck, clenching on, cold as the grave. The snow was wet against her knee, which throbbed with a distant ache – the forewarning of a mighty bruise.

The elf’s eerie glow died, and she pulled her robes around herself, shivering faintly. Through blurring eyes, Frea watched her stumble over to them, her gait uncertain and unsure, like the recently blind or terribly cold. She leant heavily on her lightning staff like it was a walking stick, burrowing into the shawl wrapped around her shoulders and face as if it were a security blanket. Her summons winked out as if they had never been there at all.

She reached for them like a child for comfort, her small grey hand crusted with ice crystals and snowflakes. Talvas met her, cautiously, and took that outstretched hand, gasping at her coldness. He gathered her against his chest, a flame cloak flickering weakly to life, despite his exhaustion.

“Frea.” It was Teldryn, Teldryn, coming up next to her. His warm hand clasped around hers, the other wrenching at his gauntlet. The chitin came off and he tossed it carelessly into the snow, his shimmering eyes red and concerned. “Frea, breathe. Where are you hurt?”

She wheezed, voice stoppered in her throat. He hovered above her, alien and handsome face twisted with some expression she couldn’t identify. Though he was gentle, the first touch of his fingertips to her throat made her hiss a strained objection.

“Azura,” murmured Teldryn, not a curse but somehow a prayer, and at once the pain in her throat dissolved to warmth.

Frea choked, and then coughed. She curled over herself, his restoration magic tingling in her bones like glitters of starfire, licking the inside of her skin. She could taste the goddess in the back of her throat, impersonal and twilit, a cold kind of glow that spoke of the gaps between the stars. A terrible knowledge and potent, esoteric grief ebbed at the agony Dukaan’s scrabbling madness had left behind, soothing the bruising of her throat with a coolness like a stranger’s chilly hand to her skin. Teldryn supported her onto her side in the wet snow, rubbing her back smoothly to ease her breathing.

“Thank you,” she rasped out, eventually, and his hand hesitated on her back.

“Think nothing of it, Skaal.”

“Travellers.” It was the she-elf. She spoke the mainlanders’ Cyrod thickly, through a grating voice. She lingered against Talvas’ chest, who brushed her down with a gentle, distracted air. After a stilted moment, her own Dunmeri fire began to lick against her skin, outlining her in a glowing wreath. Talvas smiled at her encouragingly, and stepped back, his own flame cloak as bright and boyish as he.

Teldryn rolled his shoulders back and matched them, his own fire strong and hot. She felt it from where he crouched next to her, the arcane birthright of his elf-blood burning like pitch in his veins, warming him with the hearts and ashes of his ancestors.

“Who are you?” Talvas asked her, curious but not unfriendly.

“Pardon my interruption,” continued the stranger, as if he had not spoken. Her fire was muted and dim, as shifting and strange as she was. Beside the brilliant bright yellow of Talvas, the rich and fierce heat of Teldryn, it reminded Frea of embers recently splashed with water, the faint memory of heat amongst sodden, silent ash.

Teldryn shifted beside her, groping for his gauntlet in the snow. His flaming hand cut a path through it, melting the thickly packed snow like it was freshwater. The light from the three elves blazed against the gathering teeth of the storm, outlining them like pillars, like beacons against the dark. The snow whipped at the robes of the mages, dusting the rich black of Talvas’ hair like dots of stars. Around them the ice was softened, dampened, gleaming with its own watery blood and the smoking remains of the dead draugr. Dukaan’s ashes shimmered.

Feeling human and alone, Frea gingerly pushed herself to kneeling. Her chest ached at the movement but surrounded by fey elves burning with their own magic, she did not want to lie dead like a corpse in the snow. Besides, it was getting cold, even for her.

“Sadrith accent if I ever heard,” he muttered. “Mainlander Telvanni,” he clarified for Frea, in an undertone.

Frea nodded. She wasn’t quite sure what a Telvanni was, but Teldryn spoke as if it was a bad thing. One of the Dunmeri clans, perhaps, a rival one to his own? The Dunmeri fought like scrapping foxes, always snapping and snarling. They warred with one another like they did not fear the winter.

“Are any of you … injured?”

“Thanks to you, nothing that magic can’t fix,” Frea managed. Her voice still sounded strained, but at least she could breathe easily. “May we know your name, stranger?”

“… Sarothril,” she said, slowly, as if struggling to recall.

“Sarothril?” Talvas repeated, “That’s funny – I saw, that is…” he trailed off, and then cleared his throat, “It’s just, I could have sworn I’ve heard that name before. Oh!” He snapped his fingers. “Ildari Sarothil. Any relation of yours?” He beamed up at her.

“Ildari,” she repeated. “Ildari Sarothril.” She lurched a step closer. Her movements seemed wrong, sickly, as if she shivered with a vicious premonition none of them could see. “I am Ildari Sarothril.”

“Oh…” Talvas’ eyes widened. “I have to tell Master Ne-!” Her eyes gouted with red flames, and Talvas backpedalled hastily, as if thinking better of mentioning his irascible, often unfriendly mentor to a powerful stranger. “I mean, maybe I’ve made a mistake, I just, I swear – I swore I saw your name… somewhere at Tel Mith- uh, never mind. Are you a mycologist? An author?”

“I … was … learning,” she said, with great and painful effort.

“A researcher, then, I must have read one of your books, you are impressive with conjuration,” said Talvas. “Are you quite well, Miss Sarothril?”

It was a question Frea couldn’t fault him for asking. The conjurer may have helped them with powerful magic, but now the battle was over she stood hunched over, leaning on her staff, and looked nothing so much as lost. There was a dullness in her red eyes, more brown than the vibrant glitter of Talvas’ and Teldryn’s, and her skin was greyed with pallour. She looked half-erased, like charcoal washed by the waves, all blurred lines and silent misery. Her fire kept close to her body, like it was shy.

Uncomfortably, Frea was reminded of Dukaan, of the silence in the Skaal who were taken by Miraak, beating away at the Tree Stones. It was the expression of somebody who was transfixed by a darker, higher calling, perverting their mind and stealing their senses.

She had no doubt this elf was more than she seemed. Simply insane, or dangerous?

Frea was not willing to bet a sick woman’s life to a magical snowstorm to find out.

“Come,” said Frea kindly, “Sit by our fire tonight, mage. Your help was timely. I am Frea, of the Skaal.”

Not to mention, Dukaan’s conjured storm had not blown itself out yet. It would not last long without its caster to sustain it, but Frea could feel the snow soaking through her furs, and she had no desire to be out late in it. She would not leave a stranger who had aided them out to freeze – let alone a sickly, strange one, who she was not certain had the wherewithal to find shelter on her own. Where had she come from?

“Sero. What were you doing up here?” Teldryn asked her flatly, and her lip pursed at the thought that their minds had followed a similar track. “Isn’t anyone taking care of you?”

“Niyya,” offered Ildari, dazedly, as if that meant anything to them. A name, perhaps? It sounded human. “Timely.” She looked down at herself, as if surprised by the concept that she could ever be something so convenient as in the right place in the right time.

“I’m Talvas,” said Talvas, brightly, and took Ildari’s hand. It seemed as if he meant it to be a brief gesture, but she clutched onto him like a lifeline. Talvas’ smile wavered, but he bolstered himself with kindness, and leant into her as if granting her his heat. “Don’t worry, we’ll help you.”

“Are you Telvanni?” Frea heard her ask, voice soft as ash on snow. “You look just like Master Neloth.”

“I – oh, well,” Talvas stammered back, “I don’t – really, I’m just an – do you think so?”

He sounded as if he couldn’t decide if he were flattered or insulted by the comparison.

Ignoring this interaction, Teldryn grunted, pocketing what looked like a necklace from the corpse of a draugr, stripping them of their valuables with the efficiency only a mercenary could have. Teldryn scooped and picked up Dukaan’s mask, flipping it in his hands.

“Cursed thing, this,” he said. “Probably worth some money.”

“Cursed,” said Ildari, and extended her hand for the mask. Talvas took advantage of the distraction to step away, resettling Frea’s cloak around his shoulders like it could hide his blush.

“Hey,” said Teldryn. “First pick of loot is mine.”

Frea planted the head of Laataazin’s hammer in the snow and used the haft to lever herself to her feet, blinking away spots. Her legs ached, and there was cold snow clumped on her knee and hip, where she had lain against it. Thinking of the Dragonborn’s warm small palms folding against hers as they scrambled over the mountain paths together, she ate some of the cold-staying berries from her pouch, their tartness popping over her tongue like kisses.

“Come on Teldryn,” said Frea. “She probably just saved our lives.”

“Your life,” said Teldryn, churlishly, but gave the mask to Ildari anyway. “Suppose it saves me the trip to Skyrim to find a decent buyer,” he said.

He heaved his pack onto his back, squinting round the half-circle of light the flaming elves made. “That’s everything.” He turned to Frea. “Where to, Skaal?”

She would have been irritated at the assumption that she had planned out the route for them already, but she had spent the walk up keeping a weather-eye out for shelter as a matter of instinct. She was Skaal, and he was a lowland elf – off the beaten path, it was her word they followed. She refused to admit to the small kernel of pride that his deferral conjured in her; it was practical, nothing more.

She cast an eye at the sky. “Come,” she said, “I saw a cave not far back.”

They set off, Ildari trailing after them like a ghost. Talvas hung back to speak with her, his chattering bright and interspersed with her awkward, confused replies. When Frea glanced back, she saw them huddling under her borrowed cloak like a pair of orphans, her white hair on his shoulder like a splay of bone. Teldryn walked closely behind Frea, letting her break the snow for him. The cave Frea had in mind was not far, a crack of shadow against the ice wall. She had stayed here once with Laataazin, nestled in the heart of the earth as a freak summer storm shook the peaks. The Moesrings were a haunted place, unquiet with the memories of long unburied dead and whispers from beyond. It was not uncommon to find cracks in the mountains, like the pressure of the stubborn, strange presence from beyond had tunnelled into soft rock.

In its shelter, Frea set to lighting a fire from the rolled fuel she carried with her, compact dung, quick to catch and slow to burn. Teldryn helped her, sticking his hands fearlessly into the young fire to rearrange it to a perfect shape to hold the heat all night. He kept his helmet on. In the dim light, from beneath, the shadows made the shell glimmer like living snakes across his body.

Talvas sank to his seat and groaned, rubbing his calves. “So much walking,” she heard him mutter. Ildari more fell than sat next to him, as if she had forgotten how to bend her body. She didn’t seem bothered by the graceless descent, but instead watched them all with wide, too-still eyes.

Frea set snow to melt for water, idly brushing at the frost still clinging to her hood from one of Dukaan’s misplaced attacks. Teldryn roped Talvas into helping him set out their bedrolls and break into the rations for their meal. In quiet agreement, no one asked Ildari to do anything. She curled her legs against her chest, staring at Frea with a divot between her brows, like she was trying to work out where she’d seen her before.

After an uncomfortable moment, Frea sighed and rose to her feet. She went to the elf and tucked her cloak firmly around Ildari’s shoulders, encouraging her onto her side. Ildari, pliant, went without a fight, letting Frea cover her up in the furs. Her skin was very cold to the touch, like stone, and her eyes absorbed the light rather than reflected it.

“I’ll bring you some food in a moment,” Frea told her kindly, resisting the urge to brush her straggling white hair away from her forehead. “Will you be alright here?”

Ildari stared at her. “Alright here,” she repeated, and then bit her lip, a darkness creeping into her gaze. She touched Frea’s cheek, her nails digging into the meat of her jaw, then lightly dragged a fingertip down the bruising of Frea’s throat.

Gently, Frea caught her hand, and replaced it under the blanket. “Try and get some sleep,” she said.

Obediently, Ildari closed her eyes and went limp. In moments, she was breathing softly, rhythmically. Feeling eyes on her, Frea looked up to see Talvas watching her, his unfathomable red eyes liquid and dark in the firelight. She felt at once a strange and sudden distance from her travelling companions, and missed Nikulas so strongly it ached.

She turned away, setting out her own bedroll. Their rations warmed on flat stones by the fire, and she busied herself poking at them. She did not look up when Teldryn hunkered down next to her, but blinked in surprise when she saw his bare arms, unarmoured, in the corner of her eye. His forearms were corded and lean with muscle, the right trailed with the dark shapes of another tattoo that disappeared tantalisingly up the sleeve of his shirt.

“Need warming?” he asked gruffly, after some time.

Realising he was referring to the frost that still clung here and there to her boots, Frea replied ruefully, “No. My people do not mind frost. Besides, it will remind me to duck an ice blast faster, next time.”

Teldryn chuckled. It sounded like stones grating in his throat – an unpleasant descriptor for a sound that made the tips of her ears warm. “Have it your way, Skaal.”

He did not move away, despite the conversation lapsing. His closeness brought a prickle of first awareness and then a stilted kind of guilt. She had been so angry at him all day for daring to question her, to poke so brazenly at her grief, but he had remained patient. Protecting her from the fire in the tunnel, healing her from the dragon priest’s attack, even now, lingering by her side in case she needed the benefit of a Dunmer’s powerful internal warmth.

Grumpy, irascible Teldryn shamed her with his kindness.

After a moment, a tentative kind of peace offering, Frea said, “Laat took a sword and shield with them, to fight the Traitor Priest.”

It was difficult to get the words out. The press of memories was hard to ignore, her father’s body pierced through with tentacles and horribly mutilated, bleeding wetly into the snow. Laataazin’s grim, resolute eyes, crimson in the dying light of the sun. The plume of their breath misting before their scarred lips as they pressed their hammer into Frea’s shaking hands.

“For your people,” their unreal, too loud voice whispered, dual-toned and throbbing with godly power. Frea’s ears cracked and bled and her nose streamed ruby, but she had leant forward into them regardless, too pain-stricken to stop them from leaving, too furious to want them to stay.

The Dragonborn had given them a strange, wry smile that had reached nowhere near their flat, sad eyes, and ducked into the cabin they had been sharing with Farani while they worked with the Skaal. The last Frea ever saw of them was their short, stout frame cresting the top of the hill, the shield on their back blazing like a molten eye in the setting sun.

Teldryn eyed her warily, as if uncertain what to make of this strange offering. He snorted softly. “A shield would have been useful today.”

“Aye,” Frea sighed, glancing down into the fire. A shield, to block Dukaan’s powerful magic attacks, without needing to run and duck behind rocks? Yes, it would have been better than the hammer. If Ildari hadn’t been there, Frea would have died from the need to get close enough to use it properly without a good defence. “It would have. Or my axes – you were right. I am not made for this weapon. It could have killed me, today.”

“I often am,” he said slyly, and when she glowered at him, he gave her a roguish smirk. Then his countenance shifted, became more serious. “A Dragon Priest – we were lucky. Nothing would have changed that. And,” he admitted, “that strike on the lich’s head was a good move.”

“Your parry, across the ice?” Frea countered, “I’ve never seen anyone move so fast.”

“Hah!” he grinned. When he smiled like that, his tattoo bunched strangely over his cheek, drew attention to the softness of his pale grey lips against the rasp of his stubble. The line of his cheekbones, the gleam of his teeth in his cheeky smile, transfixed her.  “Best swordsman in Morrowind, what did I tell you?”

She rolled her eyes, face warm from his teasing, and then made to move.

“Listen,” he touched her arm to hold her back. “I don’t trust that mage.”

“Nor I,” she said. “She is hiding things from us.”

“Glad we agree,” he said, and released her. His eyes were gimlet in the firelight. He glanced down at his hands, turning a strange ring round his finger. The embossed moon and star glittered silver with strange power. “Watch the kid’s back.”

“And who will watch mine?” she retorted.

“I wouldn’t mind the view,” he replied without missing a beat, and had the temerity to grin when she shoved him.

Though their teasing had made her smile with a lingering and strange softness, a knot had formed in her stomach, tense and uneasy. She went to bed that night with hazy dreams blurring to a backdrop of the Dragon Priest’s betrayed screams and the haunted look in Laataazin’s eyes. In the dream, she begged Laataazin to come back and help them, but the Dragonborn only shook their head, placing hammer after hammer into Frea’s arms until the weight dragged her down, down, into a sea of inky, writhing tentacles, and Teldryn’s warm, laughing red eyes.