Chapter 161: 153. The Shadow Of The World-Eater & The Flesh Of Sahloknir
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(A/N: Don't forget to give those power stones to Skyrim everyone!)
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But, flawlessly maintaining his role as the humble scholar who was merely observing the myth, Aerion did not speak the terrifying truth aloud. He simply raised a hand, pointing a long finger toward the swirling, darkening clouds gathering directly over the ancient stones. "Patience, Aeloria," Aerion murmured, his melodic voice incredibly soft, yet carrying the absolute weight of prophecy. "The beast is not definitely hiding. It is merely doing something we don't know what yet."
The heavy, oppressive silence that hung over the ancient dragon burial mound was suddenly shattered. It began not with a roar, but with a sudden, drastic shift in the atmospheric pressure. The crisp, autumnal air of Eastmarch grew instantly, suffocatingly dense. The swirling, tempestuous gray clouds that had unnaturally gathered above the peak of Kynesgrove began to churn with violent turbulence.
Then, the shadow fell.
It swept over the dense pine trees and the barren dirt of the burial mound like a physical, freezing blanket, completely eclipsing the afternoon sun.
Aeloria's breath hitched in her throat, her grip tightening on the leather haft of her battleaxe until her gauntleted knuckles turned white beneath the steel. Jenassa immediately dropped to one knee, her crimson eyes narrowed as she drew a steel arrow to her cheek. Valdemar and Lydia instantly moved to interpose their heavy iron shields between the sky and the High Elf.
A deafening, concussive THWUMP of massive, leathery wings violently rattled the loose stones of the clearing.
Descending from the churning gray clouds, hovering with terrifying, impossible grace directly over the center of the burial mound, was a nightmare forged of black scales and jagged iron spikes.
The beast was absolutely massive, significantly larger and vastly more imposing than the brown scaled dragon they had slain at the Western Watchtower. Its eyes burned with a malevolent, ancient red fire, and its very presence seemed to warp the fabric of reality around it, projecting an aura of pure, apocalyptic doom.
The black dragon did not immediately unleash a torrent of fire upon the mortals trespassing on the hill. It ignored them entirely.
It hovered over the mound, opened its massive, jagged maw, and let out a thundering, earth shaking string of syllables in the ancient tongue of the Thu'um.
"Sahloknir! Ziil gro dovah ulse!"
The words hit the clearing like a physical shockwave. Valdemar and Lydia staggered slightly, while Delphine visibly gritted her teeth against the sheer acoustic violence.
To the normal mortals present, the dragon's speech was just a terrifying, chaotic roar of guttural noises.
But Aeloria staggered backward, her bright blue eyes wide with profound shock. The divine blood of Akatosh flowing through her veins instinctively, flawlessly translated the ancient language resonating in the air.
Simultaneously, standing in the absolute center of the vanguard, Aerion's newly integrated Dragon Master skill effortlessly deciphered the booming draconic text.
"Sahloknir! Your soul is bound to me for eternity!"
Aeloria lowered her battleaxe a fraction of an inch, her face draining of color as she recognized the specific, terrifying silhouette of the jagged black spikes and the deep, blood-red eyes.
"By the Eight," Aeloria breathed, her voice trembling slightly with a mixture of raw terror and absolute awe. She pointed a shaking steel gauntlet at the hovering beast. "That... that is the exact same dragon. The black one. The beast that attacked Helgen and interrupted my execution! It's the same one!"
Aerion, whose transmigrator mind was actively processing the massive, unfolding geopolitical narrative, offered a slow, deliberate nod.
"Your eyes do not deceive you, Aeloria," Aerion confirmed smoothly, his melodic voice cutting through the roar of the wind. "It is the exact same beast."
He rapidly calculated his next words. He knew with absolute, indisputable certainty that the black dragon hovering above them was Alduin the World-Eater, the Firstborn of Akatosh, the harbinger of the apocalypse.
However, directly identifying the mythological god of destruction by name right now would be a catastrophic tactical error. If he revealed that level of highly specific, impossible knowledge, Delphine, who was already deeply, aggressively paranoid regarding his identity, would instantly flag him as a supreme, potentially Thalmor aligned threat.
He needed to feed them the truth, but masked entirely in the guise of brilliant scholarly deduction.
"Listen to the syllables it is speaking, and observe the specific target of its focus," Aerion commanded softly, projecting the persona of a master tactician analyzing a battlefield anomaly. "It is not attacking the village, and it is entirely ignoring us. It is focusing its Thu'um directly into the dirt of this specific, ancient burial mound."
He turned his golden eyes toward the disguised spymaster, ensuring she absorbed his fabricated theory.
"The ancient histories state that dragons were immortal, unaging beasts," Aerion theorized aloud. "Perhaps this specific black dragon is not merely a survivor of their ancient war. There is a high statistical probability that this beast acts as some sort of draconic high priest... a 'resurrecter'. It is entirely possible that this dragon possesses the unique, terrifying authority to actively reverse the death of its fallen brethren."
Aeloria, her mind racing to connect the translation she had just heard with Aerion's flawless logic, nodded her head fiercely. "It makes perfect sense. It's calling out a name!"
Standing in the shadows of the tree line, Delphine's sharp eyes widened slightly. The High Elf's deduction hit her paranoid mind with stunning clarity.
It perfectly aligned with the deepest, most highly guarded secret lore of the Blades. In the ancient eras, the Akaviri Dragonguard had systematically hunted the dragons to near extinction, burying their remains in massive mounds of dirt and stone across Skyrim.
But the lore explicitly stated that a dragon was never truly, permanently dead until its soul was physically consumed by a Dragonborn. Until then, their souls simply lingered in the bones, waiting in eternal slumber.
'If this black beast can actively reverse that slumber...' Delphine realized with a surge of cold dread, 'then the entire continent is completely doomed unless we stop it.'
Before Delphine could voice her agreement, the ancient ritual reached its terrifying climax.
Alduin hovered higher, the red fire in his eyes burning with blinding intensity. He roared a second, devastating command directly into the earth.
"Slen Tiid Vo!"
Flesh Time Undo!
The reaction of the ancient burial mound was instantaneous and violently explosive.
The heavy, packed dirt and massive, moss covered boulders composing the mound suddenly, violently erupted upward, as if a massive geyser had detonated beneath the earth. Heavy stones the size of carriage wheels flew through the air, crashing heavily into the surrounding pine trees.
"Shields up!" Valdemar roared, throwing his heavy iron shield over Aeloria to protect the Dragonborn from the flying shrapnels.
From the smoking, cratered ruin of the burial mound, an absolutely massive, terrifying structure of bleached white bone violently thrust itself upward.
It was the complete, massive skeletal structure of a dragon.
The sheer horror of the sight was paralyzing. The skeletal beast ripped its massive, bony claws from the dirt, hauling its entirely fleshless, hollow ribcage out of the earth. The skull, devoid of eyes or muscle, snapped upward toward the hovering black dragon.
And then, the skeleton spoke.
"Alduin, thuri! Boaan tiid vokriiha suleyksejun kruziik?"
Alduin, my overlord! Has the time arrived to restore your ancient dominion?
The skeletal jaw clacked together, welcoming its dark master, entirely thrilled to be dragged back from the abyss of death.
But it did not remain a skeleton for long.
A massive, swirling vortex of pure, blinding, localized Magicka violently descended from the gray clouds, wrapping entirely around the bleached bones of Sahloknir.
The strike team watched in profound, horrified awe as the absolute laws of biological physics were brutally, instantly reversed right before their eyes.
Thick, heavy ropes of dark red muscle tissue aggressively wove themselves across the hollow ribcage. Pumping veins and glowing arteries snapped into existence, rapidly connecting the massive skeletal structure. Thick, leathery, bronze-colored scales materialized out of thin air, rapidly plating the exposed muscle, sliding flawlessly over the creature's massive neck and wings.
Within ten agonizing, terrifying seconds, the skeleton had completely vanished, replaced by a massive, fully formed, incredibly muscular, living bronze dragon.
Sahloknir threw his massive, horned head back and unleashed a deafening, triumphant roar that shook the leaves from the pine trees, entirely ecstatic to be breathing the air of Nirn once more.
High above, Alduin let out a short, guttural snort of approval.
The World-Eater did not linger to chat. Having successfully accomplished exactly what he had come to the volcanic tundras of Eastmarch to do, Alduin banked sharply. His massive black wings beat the air with concussive force, propelling the god of destruction rapidly into the gray clouds, flying off toward the southern mountain ranges to awaken his next general.
The massive bronze dragon, Sahloknir, remained. The beast lowered its heavy head, its burning, reptilian eyes finally locking onto the six small, heavily armored mortals standing at the edge of the tree line.
Aeloria did not hesitate. The absolute, unyielding heroic determination of the Dragonborn violently overrode any lingering shock.
She stepped out from behind Valdemar's shield, reaching over her shoulder to draw the massive, rune etched Axe of Morthal. The red fire enchantments blazed to life with a loud, magical whoosh.
"The black one is getting away!" Aeloria yelled, her voice booming with raw, Nordic fury. She leveled her blazing axe directly at the massive bronze beast currently stretching its newly formed wings. "But we absolutely cannot let this one leave this hill! If it takes flight, it will burn Kynesgrove and every refugee on the road to ash!"
Aerion completely abandoned his persona of the calm, detached scholar. The time for academic observation was over. The time for draconic fight had arrived.
"Stand your ground!" Aerion commanded, his voice carrying the absolute, terrifying authority of a master general.
He smoothly raised both of his hands. He didn't just summon big fire, he actively tapped into the deepest reserves of his freshly leveled Destruction spells.
Searing, white hot flames instantly engulfed his right hand, while crackling, violent arcs of purple chain lightning aggressively wreathed his left.
Aerion locked his golden eyes onto his strike team, rapidly assessing the terrifying disadvantage of their current tactical geometry.
"Listen to me!" Aerion roared over the rumbling growl of the dragon. "This is not the Western Watchtower! We do not have one hundred heavily armed Whiterun guards to act as our helpers! We do not have Lady Irileth's skill to draw its aggression! It is just the six of us against a fully revived, rested beast!"
He rapidly dictated the combat formation.
"Valdemar! Lydia! The two of are the wall!" Aerion instructed. "Do not let it snap its jaws on the Dragonborn! Jenassa, maintain extreme distance! Blind its eyes with your arrows!"
He turned his blazing, magical gaze upon the spymaster.
Delphine, to Aeloria's profound, genuine surprise, had not cowered in the shadows. The 'simple innkeeper' had smoothly drawn a beautifully forged, slightly curved Akaviri katana.
She held the elegant, lethal Blades sword with the flawless, relaxed grip of a master swordswoman, her eyes locked onto the dragon with cold, absolute hatred.
"Innkeeper," Aerion sneered slightly, acknowledging her unmasking without breaking focus. "If you truly wish to see this beast dead, form up on Aeloria's right flank. Keep its wings clipped."
Delphine offered a sharp, lethal nod, stepping seamlessly into the vanguard formation beside the Dragonborn.
Finally, Aerion looked directly at Aeloria.
"Aeloria! You are the spearhead!" Aerion commanded. "Strike its chest! And use your Thu'um! Every time the beast attempts to breathe fire, hit it with the shout to stagger its lungs! But be warned, your mortal throat can only channel the ancient magic in bursts! Make every Shout count!"
Aeloria nodded fiercely, her bright blue eyes locked onto Sahloknir. "Understood!"
Sahloknir, entirely unimpressed by the tiny, shouting mortals organizing their ranks, let out a massive, deafening roar of pure, arrogant draconic superiority. The beast lunged forward, snapping its massive, razor sharp jaws.
The battle for Kynesgrove began.
"Charge!" Aeloria bellowed, her Dragonborn blood igniting.
The heavy vanguard, Aeloria, Valdemar, Lydia, and Delphine, sprinted directly across the cratered dirt of the burial mound.
Sahloknir reared back, his massive chest expanding as he drew in a deep, vibrating breath. The air around his maw instantly began to violently shimmer with intense, building heat.
"Now, Aeloria!" Aerion roared from the rear.
Aeloria planted her steel boots into the dirt, sliding to a halt. She took a massive breath, channeling the ancient magic directly from her soul.
"FUS RO!"
The sharp, devastating cone of raw kinetic force violently erupted from her lips. The invisible shockwave crossed the distance in a fraction of a millisecond, slamming directly into Sahloknir's lower jaw just as the beast attempted to unleash its fire breath.
The kinetic impact was flawless. It violently snapped the dragon's head backward, forcefully interrupting the breath attack. A small, pathetic burp of fire harmlessly erupted toward the sky as the beast staggered, completely off balance.
"Strike!" Valdemar yelled, rushing into the opening.
The heavy vanguard clashed violently with the beast. Valdemar and Lydia bashed their heavy iron shields against the dragon's scaled shins, creating openings. Delphine moved with terrifying, blinding speed.
The spymaster danced under a sweeping claw strike, her Akaviri katana flashing like silver lightning as she drove the razor sharp blade deep into the softer scales of Sahloknir's foreleg, drawing a massive spray of boiling, dark red dragon blood.
Aeloria leapt forward, bringing the blazing Axe of Morthal down in a devastating overhead cleave, burying the red hot ebony steel deep into the dragon's collarbone.
Sahloknir shrieked in genuine pain, thrashing violently. The sheer physical strength of the beast was overwhelming. The dragon whipped its massive, spiked tail in a brutal, horizontal arc.
Lydia saw the strike coming. She stepped into the path of the tail, bracing her heavy iron shield and digging her boots into the dirt.
CRACK!
The impact was utterly deafening. The heavy, spiked tail slammed into the Whiterun steel with the force of a battering ram. Lydia was violently thrown backward, flying ten feet through the air before crashing heavily into the dirt, her shield arm completely numb.
Before Sahloknir could follow up the strike and crush the fallen Housecarl, Aerion unleashed his artillery.
"Lightning!" Aerion commanded.
He thrust his left hand forward, unleashing a massive, continuous, violently crackling torrent of Chain Lightning.
The purple electricity struck Sahloknir directly in the side of the head, violently electrocuting the beast's nervous system. The dragon roared in agony, its muscles spasming uncontrollably as the high voltage magic arced across its bronze scales.
Jenassa capitalized perfectly on the distraction. The assassin fired three heavy steel arrows in rapid, flawless succession, burying the steel tips deeply into the fleshy, vulnerable webbing of the dragon's right wing joint.
Sahloknir, realizing the mortals were vastly more lethal than standard prey, decided to change the combat geometry.
The bronze dragon slammed its massive wings against the air, the concussive force kicking up a massive cloud of dust and loose dirt, temporarily blinding the vanguard. With a powerful leap, Sahloknir abandoned the ground, taking violently to the sky.
"It's airborne! Scatter!" Aerion ordered, his tactical mind calculating the immediate threat of a strafing run.
The team rapidly broke their tight formation, spreading out across the clearing.
Sahloknir banked sharply against the gray clouds, circling rapidly over the burial mound. The dragon opened its maw, tracking the scattered mortals below.
A massive, continuous, roaring torrent of superheated fire violently erupted from the sky.
The dragon strafed the clearing, laying down a devastating line of absolute destruction. The intense heat instantly vaporized the autumn leaves and turned the dirt into bubbling, molten glass.
"Aeloria! Deflect it!" Aerion yelled.
Aeloria looked up at the descending wall of fire. She could feel the familiar, thrumming heat in her chest, but the magical pathways in her throat were still agonizingly raw from her initial Shout. The cooldown was still in effect.
"I can't!" Aeloria shouted back desperately, her voice cracking. "My throat needs a few more seconds!"
The wall of fire swept directly toward the right flank.
Valdemar, entirely caught in the open, raised his heavy steel shield in a desperate, ultimately futile attempt to block the descending inferno. Delphine, utilizing her incredible Blade reflexes, violently dove sideways, rolling frantically across the dirt to escape the blast radius.
The fire washed over Valdemar, the intense heat immediately scorching his heavy steel armor and searing the flesh beneath. The Housecarl let out a deep, agonizing grunt, dropping to one knee as the flames passed, his armor smoking heavily.
Delphine had narrowly avoided the direct blast, but the ambient, superheated air had severely burned her left shoulder and arm. The leather armor had melted slightly, searing painfully into her skin. She gritted her teeth, refusing to scream, but her grip on her katana faltered significantly.
Lydia, who had just recovered from the tail strike, was limping heavily, her left arm hanging uselessly at her side, the bones in her forearm likely fractured from the impact.
The vanguard was heavily damaged, and Sahloknir was banking around for a second strafing run.
Aerion did not panic. He did not retreat. He simply adapted the matrix.
"Hold the line! I will heal your wounds!" Aerion commanded, his voice projecting absolute, divine salvation over the roar of the dragon.
Aerion dropped his Destruction spells. He rapidly channeled the absolute maximum output of his vastly augmented, max level Restoration magic into both of his hands.
He didn't cast single target healing spells. He cast Grand Healing, an area of effect wave of pure, concentrated holy life force.
A massive, blindingly bright, radiant golden sphere of divine energy violently erupted from Aerion's body, instantly sweeping across the entire clearing and washing over his battered team.
The effect was instantaneous, miraculous, and completely reality defying.
As the golden light washed over Valdemar, the horrific, blistering burns covering his face and arms completely vanished. The seared, blackened flesh instantly knit back together, leaving flawless, unblemished skin behind. The deep, agonizing pain entirely evaporated, replaced by a surge of revitalizing stamina.
Lydia gasped as the golden light enveloped her broken arm. She literally felt the fractured bones in her forearm violently snap back into perfect, seamless alignment, the torn muscles and bruised tissue healing in a fraction of a millisecond.
But it was what happened after the flesh healed that caused Delphine's sharp, paranoid eyes to widen in absolute, profound, terrified disbelief.
As the golden magic washed over the spymaster, the agonizing, searing burns on her shoulder and arm instantly disappeared. But the magic didn't stop at her biology.
Because Aerion's system registered their equipped gear as an intrinsic part of their character models, his overpowered Restoration magic actively extended to their inanimate armaments.
Delphine watched in sheer, unadulterated shock as the melted, ruined leather of her pauldron actively stitched itself back together. The scorched, blackened steel of Valdemar's heavy breastplate physically un warped and polished itself, returning to pristine, forge fresh condition right before their eyes. The massive dent in Lydia's shield simply popped out, leaving smooth metal behind.
He isn't just healing flesh, Delphine realized, her mind reeling in absolute terror and awe as she gripped her katana with a perfectly restored, painless arm. He is actively reversing the physical destruction of inorganic matter. That is not Restoration magic. That is the power of a god.
Who in Oblivion was this High Elf?
But there was absolutely no time for the spymaster to demand answers.
High above, Sahloknir let out a deafening, furious roar. The dragon, seeing that his devastating strafing run had inflicted absolutely zero permanent damage upon the mortals, folded his massive bronze wings.
The beast initiated a terrifying, high speed, vertical dive, dropping out of the gray clouds like a massive, bronze meteor, aiming directly for the High Elf who had dared to undo his destruction.
"He is diving!" Jenassa warned, firing an arrow harmlessly against the descending scales.
Aerion looked up at the rapidly approaching, multi ton beast, his golden eyes flashing with lethal anticipation.
"My Shout is ready!" Aeloria bellowed, raising her blazing axe.
"Hold it, Aeloria!" Aerion roared back, dropping his Restoration magic and rapidly funneling pure, absolute zero Frost magic into his palms. "Wait for the impact!" Sahloknir opened his massive jaws, the wind screaming past his bronze scales as he plummeted toward the earth, ready to crush the entire vanguard beneath his immense weight.
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[Main Panel]
Name: Aerion
Race: High Elf (Altmer)
Health: 540/540 Stamina: 560/560 Magicka: 750/750
Level: 158
Skills: Animal Affinity (MAX LEVEL), Fast Skill Levelling (MAX LEVEL), Fast Magic Mastery (MAX LEVEL), Instant Shout (MAX LEVEL), Dragon Master (MAX LEVEL), Destruction (Fire(+3)/Lightning(+1)/Frost(+1)) (Level 67/92/56), Restoration (Healing(+1)/Purify(+2)) (Level 52/50), Alteration (Level 35), Illusion (Level 50), Conjuration (Necromancy/Summoning(+1)) (Level 37/38), Persuasion(+1) (Level 89), Smithing (Level 22), Sneak (Level MAX), One Handed(+1) (Level 72), Two Handed (Level 81), Lockpicking (Level 35), Archery (Level 72), Enchanting (Level 66), Light Armor(+1) (Level 18), Block (Level 70), & Pickpocket (Level 8)
Shouts: Fus Roh Dah (Force Balance Push), Tiid (Time), Krii (Kill), Feim Zii (Fade Spirit), Su (Air), & Laas (Life)
[Inventory Panel]
1x Small Sack, Poacher's Axe, Mammoth Tusk, the Golden Claw, Calm Spellbook, Arvel's Journal, Inkwell & Quill, Thief Book, Scroll Of Summoning (Wolf), Scroll Of Healing, Weak Potion of Paralysis, Golden Staff of Flames, Parchment Rolls Of Mammoths Farm And Loan, Ebony Claw, Orcish Dagger, Jagged Crown, The Mirror, Ring of Pure Mixtures, Grand Soul Gem (Filled), Reanimate Corpse Tome, Staff of Lightning, Deed to Tundra Homestead, Sapphire, Ruby, Dawnbreaker, Traveling Backpack (Supplies), Potion of Minor Magicka, Vampire Armor, Vampire Boots, Movarth's Golden Ash (Unique), Dwarven Sword, Hide Boots Of Sneak, Gold Ruby Ring of Fortify Magicka, Iron Garnet Ring of Fortify Conjuration & Magicka Regen, Elven Dagger, Potion of Healing, Honed Ancient Nord Sword of Sparks, Gold Emerald Circlet, & Scroll of Fire Storm, Ring of Archery, Hide Boots of Stamina, Ancient Nord Sword of Absorbing, Iron Garnet Circlet, Iron Sapphire Circlet, Grand Soul Gem (Filled), Glass Boots, Dwarven Sword, & Dwarven Shield
2x Common Soul Gem (Empty), Black Soul Gem (Empty), Elven Sword, Amethysts, Potions of Plentiful Magicka, Scroll of Conjure Familiar, & Scroll of Magelight
3x Glowing Mushrooms, Potions of Minor Stamina, Flawless Sapphires, Gold Necklace, Iron Necklace, Petty Soul Gem (Filled), & Potions of Minor Magicka
4x Spider Eggs, Garnets, & Common Soul Gem (Filled)
5x Lesser Soul Gem (Filled)
7x Vampires Dust
8x Iron Arrows & Ancient Nord Arrows
9x Potions Of Minor Healing
12x Black Soul Gem (Filled)
Weight: 95.21 KG / 580 KG
Septims: 83,177