part seven: to sovngarde
chapter 25: trapped
The guards at Dragonsreach no longer stopped Annika at the front doors.
The scent of the evening's roast boar lingered in the great hall, but the tables had been cleared and Balgruuf was back on his throne, speaking with a man Annika recognized as the commander of the city guard. She waited at a courteous distance until their meeting concluded.
Balgruuf raised an eyebrow to see her approaching his throne yet again, though this time, she did so alone.
"Dragonborn," he greeted, not without a hint of exasperation. "Here to seek my help again, I assume? Do you wish me to storm the gates of Solitude now?"
"I seek your help, yes," Annika answered, "but not with the war."
"What, then?"
"I need to trap a dragon—here, in Dragonsreach."
Balgruuf's face was impassive for a long moment. And then he began to laugh, long and full and heartily. The steward laughed. The guards laughed. Even Irileth allowed herself a brief smirk.
Annika merely waited.
When Balgruuf took notice of her sober expression, his mirth faded. The rest fell quiet when he did.
"Are you serious?"
"Yes, my lord."
"Are you
mad?"
Her lips tightened. "No, my lord."
"Explain yourself, then. Why in Oblivion would you wish to trap a dragon?"
"I met Alduin the World-Eater in battle, not a fortnight past," she said. "I could not best him, for he fled in fear of defeat, and has since gone into hiding. I need to find him, if I am to destroy him. I believe I can convince one of his allies, Odahviing, to turn against him, and lead me to his lair."
"And you mean to bring this ally here? You mean to bring a dragon into my city, after all I've done to keep them out? After what just befell Rorikstead?"
Annika stilled. "Rorikstead?"
"A dragon attacked the village yesterday morning," he told her, his voice cold and dead. "It now lies in ruins, the same as Helgen."
Her gaze dropped to the floor, and she let out a long breath. "Were there any survivors?"
"Not as many as there were casualties. Those who did manage to escape with their lives have nothing to go back to. All the village's crops and livestock were burnt to ash as well. Rorikstead was the agricultural hub of my hold, and now we face the coming winter with very little to harvest."
Guilt settled heavy on Annika's chest. That dragon had laid waste to Rorikstead only because she had not yet slain it. She was the only one who could, after all. Did that not make her responsible for every death they dealt? But Alduin was the one raising them. How many thralls did he have, flying the skies, waiting for their chance to strike fear into the hearts of men? How many would end their tyranny over Skyrim once she had ended Alduin's tyranny over them?
"Jarl Balgruuf," she said, cordial but firm, "I am truly sorry that your people have suffered such a terrible tragedy. But these tragedies will not stop while Alduin lives. We mourn a village now, but it will not be long before he burns all of Skyrim to the ground. We must not let that happen. Please," she begged. "Help me find him. Help me defeat him."
The Jarl sighed, long and heavy, and where bitter grief had hardened his eyes just moments ago, a dull resignation had taken root instead.
"How do you propose to capture this Odahviing?"
Annika swallowed hard and took an eager step forward in her relief not to be summarily dismissed.
"Surely you know Dragonsreach was built to imprison a dragon—
that dragon, as a matter of fact." She gestured to the skull mounted above the Jarl's head. "Unless it was since torn down, your great balcony should be capable of imprisoning another. I will call him, he will come, and we will spring the trap."
"And if he is not so easily trapped? If he takes the opportunity to attack Whiterun, as his brother did Rorikstead? I notice you do not come with an entourage of soldiers hungry for battle, this time."
"With the heavy losses we suffered in the Reach, Windhelm could not spare any of its strength, but for a shield brother to accompany me here—"
He broke in with a cold laugh. "You think you alone can keep this dragon from burning down my home?"
"Another dragon tried to burn down
my home," she countered. She pulled her bow from her back, and held it up for the Jarl's inspection. "These bones are all that is left of it. I do not need an army of men behind me to slay a dragon. Not anymore."
The sneer on Balgruuf's face withered and died.
"Be that as it may," Annika went on, "I've already taken the liberty of enlisting the assistance of the Companions. Give the word, and they will be ready to defend Whiterun—
if it needs to be defended. I don't believe it will, my lord. I don't believe we will need to slay this dragon."
"How can you be sure?"
"Dragons are vain creatures. Their pride would not let them shy away from a challenge put to them by any mortal, let alone one who speaks with their own Voice. Odahviing will come to meet my challenge, not to ravage your city. He will be too single-minded to bother with anyone but me until it is too late."
Balgruuf brooded for a long moment, picking at one of his many jewelled rings.
"Say we do manage to trap this dragon," he said. "What if he refuses to betray Alduin? What if it is all for naught?"
"Then you will have another skull to mount on your wall."
Balgruuf laughed again, and shook his head at her nerve.
"Brother." Hrongar stepped forward on the Jarl's right, every inch a Nord in his horned armor and ferocious war paint. "The Dragonborn tells it true. Put a thousand archers on our walls, and they may stop a thousand dragons, but they will mean nothing once Alduin turns his sights to us. You know the legends; he is the World-Eater, the bringer of the end times. We can't just stand around and hope the threat goes away. We must do our part."
"If we
had a thousand archers," Irileth piped up from the other side of the throne, "we could summon this dragon in confidence that we could bring it down if need be. But we don't. What strength we do have can't be wasted on this mad scheme; our men need to be ready to meet an Imperial attack should one come. Or have you forgotten what General Tullius—"
"I haven't forgotten, Irileth, thank you."
Annika's eyes flicked back to Balgruuf to find his face flushed with heat. Her hackles went up, the predator within sensing the sudden fear of nearby prey, but she hid any trace of suspicion or mistrust behind a mask of indifference. She kept very still and very quiet, watching the Jarl shift out of his slouch, adjust the gold chain dangling between the clasps of his mantle, fold and unfold his hands in his lap, trying to act as though he was still in control, all the while avoiding her gaze.
"I will consider your request, Dragonborn," he said, his words clumsy and impatient. "Remain in the city; I'll have word brought to you by nightfall tomorrow."
"Thank you, Jarl Balgruuf. Your men will find me at the Bannered Mare."
She made no move to leave, despite her clear dismissal. Balgruuf seemed to grow more uncomfortable with every moment of her lingering presence.
"Is there something else?"
"Yes, my lord," Annika said. "There is one other matter you should be aware of—incidentally, one that may ease Irileth's concerns."
"Yes?"
"General Tullius is not like to siege Whiterun and leave Morthal or Solitude vulnerable to an attack, now that he is no longer receiving forewarning of our actions. You see, we have rooted out an informer in Jarl Ulfric's court."
"An informer? Who?"
"The steward, Jorleif."
Balgruuf leaned forward, his brows rising high. "Ulfric's
steward is working for the Empire?"
"
Was," Annika corrected. "Only his head will return to Castle Dour; the rest is already feeding the crows on Windhelm's great bridge. Jarl Ulfric does not suffer traitors to live."
For a long moment, Balgruuf did not speak, nor move, nor did he appear to even be breathing. And then his eyes grew small and sharp, his nostrils flared, and the color in his cheeks deepened while his lips went white.
Her message had not been missed.
Annika gave a deep bow, her eyes never leaving the Jarl's. "My lord."
Her footfalls were the only sound in the great hall until the heavy wooden doors creaked open to allow her through.
She did not stop at top of the stone steps leading down into the Wind District, but gave a nod to Calder, the Stormcloak waiting for her there.
"The Jarl needs time to deliberate," she told him, starting the descent. "He'll send word to the inn."
They headed to the Bannered Mare, as Annika had promised, where they took a meal and paid for a room apiece. Behind the counter, Ysolda gave a curious look at their request for lodging, but a slight shake of Annika's head cautioned her not to question it.
Once the evening rabble packed the inn and the tumult of their chatter nearly drowned out the bard's lusty crooning, Annika took her leave of the common room. Instead of retiring to her chamber, however, she slipped out of the inn's back door, and under the cover of darkness, crept through the streets to Ysolda's house. She let herself in with the key her friend had given her upon arriving in Whiterun, and locked the door behind her.
It might only have been Ulfric's paranoia rubbing off on her, but she felt safer where the Jarl's men could not find her, should he send any to seek her out while she slept. Still, the knots in her stomach did not unwind. Had they pulled out the weed of Jorleif's treachery only to sow more in its place? Though a reluctant ally from the start, Balgruuf had proven himself true in the battle for Markarth. But if Tullius was issuing ultimatums, if he was making threats against Whiterun, how long would Balgruuf's allegiance last?
Annika settled into her bed roll, and pulled the furs tight around her. She would not find rest easily, as anxious as she was, but she took comfort in imagining Balgruuf tossing and turning in his own bed, in his castle in the sky, haunted by the knowledge of what awaited him should he give in to the Empire's demands.
* * * * *
The view from the great balcony might have taken Annika's breath away, once. But Dragonsreach was a pebble in the shadow of the Throat of the World, and the modest vista it offered could not compare to the scope of the tallest mountain in Tamriel. Still, the rosy glow of dusk painted the plains of Whiterun with an understated beauty she had never seen from its arid ground.
Calder's wide eyes and hanging jaw betrayed his wonder, and even a couple of the Companions appeared impressed. Jarl Balgruuf, however, did not spare the world beyond his castle even a passing glance.
"The chains are rusty and the wood soft," he said, gazing to the rafters high above, "but they will hold. We put it through a dozen trials without issue."
"Except fire." Irileth's mouth twisted into the scowl that was as much a part of her armor as her cuirass or bracers. "All wood burns under fire. Should your dragon decide to unleash its fury on us—"
"It will unleash its fury on
me," Annika cut in. "And my ward will soak it up before it has a chance to burn anything."
"And if you're wrong—"
"Irileth," Balgruuf warned. "I consented to support the Dragonborn in this venture. That should be enough for you."
The Dunmer bowed her head at once, though her apprehension still shone in her red eyes. "Of course, my Jarl."
"Once the dragon is in position," he continued, turning back to Annika, "my men will drop the trap.
If the beast ever lands, that is."
One corner of her mouth pulled up. "He will."
Balgruuf gave her a skeptical look, but said nothing. He went to the balustrade, and the setting sun gleamed off his steel plate. He looked as unseemly in armor as Ulfric did out of it.
"Remember," he boomed across the balcony, "we are here to trap this dragon, not to slay it. It is not to be attacked but on my order. The Dragonborn needs it alive. Now—to your posts."
The group scattered. Two guards manned the mechanism that would spring the trap, three archers took position on each of the galleries flanking the main balcony, and the Companions lined the walls. Farengar lingered back by one set of stairs, eager to watch but ready to hide. Balgruuf, Irileth, and Hrongar remained at the balustrade with Annika and Calder.
"We're ready when you are, Dragonborn."
She gazed out at the plains, the mountains, the skies. She saw no dragons soaring in the distance, no speck of black against the palette of reds and oranges to the west, nor the blues and violets to the east. Would Odahviing hear her call, wherever he was? Would Ulfric feel the echo of her Voice all the way in Windhelm?
She closed her eyes, made a silent prayer to Talos, and drew in a deep breath.
"
Odahviing!"
Her
Thu'um ripped across Whiterun, thunder without a storm. And then the evening fell quiet once more.
They waited, and watched. But no dragon came.
After several minutes, Annika heard whispers strike up behind her, along with the impatient rustling of leather and steel.
"Maybe you should try it again," Calder suggested.
She bit her lip, and pretended not to notice Balgruuf's demanding glare. Her own doubts rose sour in her throat, begging questions that had not even crossed her mind while plotting this scheme. What if Alduin had never raised Odahviing? What if he had, and Annika had already slain him, and taken his soul for her own? Might she have simply been foolish to believe a dragon would deign to come when called?
The soft sigh of flapping wings was her answer.
The dragon soared over the roof with a sharp snarl. He swerved, and in half a heartbeat he was streaking towards the balcony, towards Annika. Her stomach flipped over on itself as the words tore up her throat.
"
Joor zah frul!"
Her Shout hit its mark, but so too did Odahviing's talons. His momentum winged him past the balcony, and Calder with him, his scream whipped away by the same rush of wind that tossed Annika's hair into her face and slapped her with the bitter stench of smoke and blood. Odahviing, caught in Dragonrend's snare, quickly lost his grip on his prey; Calder twisted and flailed as he fell through empty air, and then he was gone.
The dragon careened around and plummeted to the balcony once more. Annika leapt from its path, and stumbled when the stones shook beneath her unsteady legs. She righted herself at the same moment the dragon did. His jaws yawned open, and a torrent of fire as red as his scales surged forth, but Annika's ward was already up to catch it. The searing heat that poured around its edges choked her, but she did not burn.
Somewhere behind her, Balgruuf was shouting for the archers to hold their fire, for the warriors to stand down.
Let them come, she wanted to say,
let them try. This was her battle, a battle of the
dov, not of simple men and simple steel. She would Shout them back if she had to, fling them from the balcony with the force of her Voice alone—
No.
The river of flame ran dry. Annika dropped her ward and stepped back, and back, and back, and hit Odahviing with Dragonrend again. He roared and snapped, writhing against the maddening weight of her
Thu'um, crawling forward on ungainly legs and bony wings to pursue his foe. Though cumbersome, he was swift, every one of his steps making up three of hers, and too soon he had closed the distance she'd put between them, and she could reach out and touch him if she dared. She could count the scales on his snout, smell the smoke curling up from his nostrils, see Calder's blood trickling over the dragon's teeth when he opened his mouth to strike.
"
Feim!"
She closed her eyes and winced when Odahviing's fangs snapped around her, but they did not pierce her, for she was no longer flesh. He reared back, growling, his malachite eyes wide and furious at her trick. She retreated further into the cavern of the great balcony, chancing a glance up to the rafters. Odahviing had eyes only for her, and he followed where she led him.
"Now!"
The slithering grind of rusty chains erupted high above, and then the creak of old wood. The curved beam crashed down over Odahviing, and two halves of a steel vice slid out to lock below his neck.
The dragon bucked against the restraints, and gave a ferocious roar when he found himself trapped.
"
Dovahkiin," he growled. "
Tahrodiis kiir!
Yol toor shul!"
Another wave of flame burst from his mouth. Annika, vulnerable in her flesh once more, threw her ward out, but this time it could not stand against the brutal force of the dragon's fire. Her arm trembled all the way up to her shoulder, and the spell shattered, but her Voice was ready to take its place.
"
Fo krah diin!"
Thu'um collided with
Thu'um in a deafening song of ice and fire, consuming one another until both vanished into the void.
"Odahviing," Annika cried. "
Zu'u laan tinvaak, ni grah. Let us talk, not fight."
"Who gave you my name?"
"Paarthurnax."
The dragon tilted his head to study her, a deep growl rippling through his body all the while, and then he jerked back with a snarl. "You killed Paarthurnax?"
"Alduin killed Paarthurnax."
"But you stole his soul. I sense him in you."
"He
gave me his soul," Annika said. "He gave me his knowledge and his power, to help me defeat Alduin. And he gave me your name, believing you, too, would help me."
Odahviing snorted in what she thought might have been a laugh. "
Mey dovah. I will not give up my soul so easily."
"I don't want your soul. I don't
need your soul. I only need to know where to find Alduin."
A deep sigh rolled through him. "Alduin," he murmured. "He fled in fear of you—of a mortal. Many of us have begun to question his lordship, and whether his
Thu'um is truly the strongest. This is why I answered your call,
Dovahkiin: to test yours. It is greater than I had imagined. So, too, is your cunning, to trap me like common prey."
"You shall have your freedom once Alduin is defeated."
"Then I shall languish here until the end of time."
"Not if you tell me where to find him."
"I could," the dragon mused, "but it would not help. You may have the Voice of a
dovah, but without the wings of one, you will never reach Alduin."
She saw his meaning at once. "How convenient," she said, her tone flat and dry. "And I suppose you will take me to him, if I free you."
"I will,
Dovahkiin."
Now it was her turn to laugh. "Do you expect me to believe that? To trust the word of a dragon?"
"You trusted Paarthurnax, did you not? He told you to seek my help, and here we are."
"Paarthurnax did not answer my questions with riddles. If you would have me trust you, you can start by giving me the truth. Tell me where Alduin is, that I can't reach him myself."
"He hides in the ruins of Skuldafn," Odahviing replied, "one of his ancient fanes in the mountains to the east. The temple was built by the most devout of his followers,
joorre who ascended on the backs of
dovahhe to rule high above the rest of their mundane civilization."
"We mundane have climbed higher mountains," Annika countered. "We carved seven thousand steps into the Throat of the World."
"Go, then. Carve seven thousand more up to Skuldafn. I shall wait here for your return... or Alduin's."
The dragon bared his fangs in a grin, but Annika gnashed hers together behind tight lips. There they were, the Dragonborn and the dragon she had captured, at a stalemate. Yes, she trusted Paarthurnax, and Paarthurnax had trusted Odahviing. But could she?
"He tells it true, Dragonborn."
Annika whirled about at the sound of Farengar's voice. She had all but forgotten there were a dozen people behind her, bearing witness to this parley of legends. Every face had gone white with shock, even Balgruuf's. His eyes were as bright as the moons and full of something she had not seen in them before: respect.
"You've heard of this Skuldafn?" she asked Farengar.
"I have," he said, creeping forward on careful feet. "But I'm afraid I know next to nothing about it, for there is next to nothing to know. It is very rarely mentioned even in texts dating back to the Merethic Era, precisely because it is impossible to reach, and thus study."
"You see,
Dovahkiin," Odahviing purred. "If you would seek out Alduin, you will need my wings."
Annika pivoted slowly, flexing the fingers of her ward hand.
"And you would take me to him? You would turn against your master?"
"Alduin has proven himself unworthy to rule," he replied. "The time has come for the
dov to seek a new way, and a new master."
"And you would be this new master?"
"No,
Dovahkiin. You would be."
"Me?" She laughed again. "Now I know I can't trust your word. Dragons would never accept a human as their master."
"You think you understand us," he said, "but you don't. To the
dov, power equals truth. We had always been more powerful than humans, so we made them our slaves, and Alduin was the most powerful of us, so we made him our master. We reigned as gods for centuries, under Alduin's rule. But a time came when the
jul began to rise up against us... and some of us began to rise up against Alduin. Paarthurnax was the first. He gave our Voice to those who would wield it, forging something more than human but still less than
dovah."
"The Tongues."
"Yes, the Tongues. Alduin went to meet their challenge, and never returned. We thought him defeated—the strongest of us, defeated by those we believed weak and worthless. This was our first glimpse of the
jul holding more power than the
dov, but not our last. One by one, we fell to them. I met my own death at their hands. When Alduin breathed life back into my bones, I thought I had been asleep for but a night. Yet thousands of years had passed." His entire body seemed to wilt, and his gaze wandered away. For a moment, he almost looked sad. "The world we once knew is no more. Those we once ruled now seek to rule us. And perhaps that is your right. If your power is greater than ours,
Dovahkiin, we will follow you. Such is the way of the
dov."
Annika could not help but smile, for she heard Ulfric in the dragon's words.
"We are more alike than I would have thought," she said. "My people, too, once chose their kings for their strength and their will. Some of us strive to make that true once more."
"Then both of our races stand on the edge of revolution. If either is to come about, Alduin must fall. Free me, and you will be at Skuldafn by the time the moons rise."
"Tonight? You want to take me there
tonight?" Suddenly she had to fight to breathe. "I can't, I—I'm not ready. I need... I need..."
"More arrows?" Odahviing guessed. "A suit of steel? Why should you need the crude tools of mortals when your Voice is your weapon and your armor?"
She shook her head. She already had all the arrows she could carry, and she preferred her mail and leather to heavy plate, but she doubted Odahviing would understand her true reason any better than he did a desire for crude tools.
She needed to say goodbye.
"I need to prepare," she finished simply. "I came here with the intent to capture you, not meet Alduin in open battle. I am not ready."
"Know this,
Dovahkiin," the dragon said. "I would help you for the sake of my own curiosity and ambition, more than the esteem I hold for you. Should you defeat Alduin, I will recognize your rule. But until then,
zu'u ni hin aar—I am not your servant, at your beck and call."
"Give me one day. Just one day. Please."
He regarded her for a long moment, tilting his head to the side and sniffing the air as though to root out weakness.
"One day," he agreed. "One turn of the sun. Call me on the morrow, and I will come. Call me after that, and I will not."
"Thank you." Annika bowed her head in appreciation. And then her eyes jumped back up to meet his. "But know this, dragon," she added, her voice just as hard as his. "If I release you, and you make any move to attack me or anyone else here, you will not live to see the turn of the sun. And if I call you and you do not answer, I will hunt you down. If I cannot have your wings, I
will have your soul."
Odahviing bared his fangs, but it was a smile, not a scowl. A deep laugh rattled through his body, and the tip of his tail flicked back and forth.
"You do not trust me?"
"You are a dragon."
"
Daar los vahzah. But we are not all like Alduin."
No, they were not. Paarthurnax had proven that. And perhaps Odahviing would, too, if she gave him that chance.
Annika turned to the men at the winch. "Release him."
They looked to the Jarl, and after a moment's hesitation, he nodded.
The crank turned, the vice opened, and the beam jerked up off of Odahviing's neck. The Companions readied their arms, and the archers on the galleries notched and drew.
Odahviing twisted about to face the balustrade, and crawled towards the open sky.
"
Zu'u saraan uth, Dovahkiin."
His wings unfolded and stretched out to their full breadth, throwing a great shadow over the balcony. He vaulted into the air and soared over Whiterun. Annika braced her Voice to bring the dragon down, but he made no strike on the city, nor the farms or mills beyond the walls. Instead, he swerved to the east, sailed along the wind, and disappeared into the distance.
Annika let out the breath she was holding. The tension rippling throughout the balcony broke all at once, as swords were sheathed, arrows were returned to their quivers, and an excited frenzy of chatter sundered the silence.
"Well done, Dragonborn."
Annika turned to face the Jarl, and found him smiling. But his mouth was tight, his eyes hollow. He seemed more shaken and distressed than pleased with the evening's outcome.
"Thank you, my lord," she replied. "For everything. Your assistance is, as always, greatly appreciated."
"Good," he said, lifting his chin to look down at her. "Do not forget that when it comes time to repay your debt."
Annika stilled halfway through her bow, her waist bent and her head inclined, before slowly righting herself. Perhaps he was only being vigilant with his promised Thane's loyalty. Or, perhaps, he knew she had become much more than a soldier in Ulfric's army, a trifle to be traded like so many septims. Perhaps he was plotting to forsake their treaty before she could.
She forced her eyes to meet Balgruuf's, so he would not see the betrayal brewing in her heart.
"I won't, my lord."
chapter 26: goodbye
Though it was only the hour of the witch, Ulfric was already abed.
His hearth had died down to embers, their somber glow granting just enough light for Annika to see her sleeping giant, one hand reaching out to the other side of the bed, empty and cold in her absence.
She shed her armor piece by piece, and left her smallclothes puddled on the floor at her feet. The chill air nipped at her skin, damp with sweat after a hard night's ride. She had not eased up on her mare once between Whiterun and Windhelm. If she was to fly to Skuldafn on the morrow, she would spend this night in Ulfric's arms.
He had kicked off the furs, leaving only thin linen to blanket him, and only up to his hips. Annika worried he was cold, but when she slipped in beside him, she felt heat pouring from him in waves; the fire in the hearth may have gone out, but the fire within him never did. She drew as close as she dared, wanting his warmth but not wanting to rouse him yet. She held back the hands that itched to touch him, but allowed her eyes freedom to roam where they would.
Even in sleep his features were tense, brows drawn together, eyes clenched tight, lips pursed in a frown. Was it a dream that tormented him, or only the struggle and strife of the day pursuing him into the night? Would he finally find peace when this war was done, or was peace just a fleeting illusion? He seemed content only in the moments they closed their eyes to the rest of the world and lost themselves in each other, but when the sun rose in the morning, so too did their battles, always waiting to be won. She would forsake her destiny and stay there with him forever, if only it would scatter his burdens and his sorrows to the wind. But he would never let her give up on saving the world, even if it meant saving him.
Her gaze drifted along the mess of flaxen curls spilling down his neck, to the soft slope of his shoulder and the sharper slant of his collarbone, to the trail of hair that led her down the hard muscles of his chest and stomach, only to disappear beneath the sheet. A drowsy groan rumbled through him when she drew the linen away, but he did not wake until he felt her weight upon him. His eyes flickered open, and he gasped to find her leaning over him. Her mouth closed on his in the next heartbeat, and as their tongues danced, she felt him stir beneath her. She took him into herself, and a sound that was half a sigh and half a moan escaped her own throat.
Ulfric sat up to embrace her, to crush her against him until she could barely breathe, and her legs went around him to pull him closer yet. They moved in tandem, his body rising to meet every fall of hers. She buried her face in his neck to stifle her cries, but a hand twisted into her hair and tugged her head back, baring her own neck for his lips, his tongue, his teeth, biting into her hard enough to send a shock staggering right down to her toes, and make her cry out even louder.
They made love as though it was the last time they ever would—and the possibility that it could be loomed over Annika, a dark eclipse against the fire of their passion. She clung to him with all that she was, trying not to drown in the bottomless fear of losing him, of leaving him, of all he would suffer if she never returned. She slowed their pace to draw every moment out as long as she possibly could, and she etched each into her memory, to carry with her once she was gone, to remind herself why she had to succeed, why she had to survive.
She did not let him go even after he had spent himself. She only tightened her grasp around him, knitted her fingers deeper into his hair, kissed him longer and harder than before, and hoped he would not see the shine of tears on her face.
Finally, Ulfric twisted their bodies around to lay her down, and himself beside her, arms and legs still entwined. He gazed at her for a long time, and when he spoke, his voice was a whisper.
"Why did that feel like goodbye?"
Annika bit her lip to calm its trembling. "Odahviing answered my call. He is taking me to Alduin on the morrow."
"
Taking you?"
"There is no other way," she said. "Alduin makes his lair in the ruins of Skuldafn, an ancient temple nestled high in the eastern mountains. It can only be reached with wings." She gave him a tremulous smile. "Odahviing has agreed to fly me there."
The rise and fall of Ulfric's chest stilled beneath her palm, but his heart pounded twice as hard to make up for it.
"This is it, then."
She nodded against her pillow. "This is it."
"Are you ready? You haven't had much time to train your Voice."
"It makes no matter. Odahviing made it very plain that his offer is limited. If I call him past nightfall tomorrow, he will not come."
"Then forget this dragon. We will find another way to get you to Skuldafn... or a way to draw Alduin out."
It was a tempting possibility, running from the gathering storm of her destiny until she was better prepared to face it. The part of her that was afraid and insecure leapt up to take the escape, but another, stronger part of her, the part that had learned courage and hope and what it was to be a hero from the man lying next to her, raised its voice to remind her of her duty.
"This opportunity is more than I could have hoped for," she said. "I can't throw it away. The longer I put this off, the stronger Alduin gets—and the more my courage wanes." She closed her eyes and sighed. "I just want this to be over."
"As do I. But I don't want you to be in over your head." Ulfric was quiet for a spell, one hand idly stroking her back. "Take Ralof with you."
"What? Ralof is your housecarl—"
"And the one I most trust to protect you."
"I can protect myself."
"Against legionnaires and sabrecats, I have no doubt," he said. "But gods only know what lurks in Skuldafn—and there is Alduin himself to consider. I would send an entire army to stand behind you, if there was a way to get them there. Take Ralof with you," he said once more. The corners of his mouth twisted into a wry smile. "I command it, as your Jarl."
Annika could not help but laugh. "Oh, do you? And if I won't obey that command?"
"I'll have no choice but to throw you into the dungeons," he jested. But then his smile withered away, and worry deepened the lines over his brow and around his eyes. "Please, Annika."
She reached up to cup his face, and his whiskers tickled her palm.
"All right," she whispered. "I'll take him. But you keep your army here, where they're needed." She hesitated, wary of tainting their oasis with talk of the war, but he had to know what she'd uncovered. "You've not received word of General Tullius moving against Whiterun, have you?"
"No. Why?"
"Jarl Balgruuf's housecarl made mention of a potential Imperial attack on the city, implying that General Tullius had threatened as much."
"Tullius is getting desperate," he scoffed. "He'll say anything to win back support, because he knows he's doomed without it. But such threats are empty. He doesn't have the strength to siege Whiterun. Balgruuf knows that."
"I'm not so sure he does," Annika replied. "He was quick to silence his housecarl, and seemed rather rattled that I'd heard as much as I did. Whatever threats or demands General Tullius has made, Jarl Balgruuf obviously doesn't want us to know about them."
Ulfric brooded on this for a long moment, and gave a doubtful grunt. "He would be a fool to go running back to the Empire now that we are so close to driving them out of Skyrim. And he would be a fool to betray me when my men surround him on every side."
She shifted uncomfortably in his arms. "What if he means to betray you before you can betray him?"
"What do you mean?"
"Jarl Balgruuf accepted this alliance on the condition that I become his Thane after the war," she reminded him, her voice small. "If he's discovered that I've been sharing your bed... if he believes you won't surrender me to him..."
"He would be right," Ulfric finished. "And he would still be wise to keep his alliance with me, if he wants to keep his throne. I would strike Balgruuf down with my own axe before surrendering you to him. He can take you as his Thane in name, but you will stay here in Windhelm, with me. If that is what you want, of course."
Annika's lips parted, but she could not speak. The thrill shooting through her, setting her entire body on fire, consumed any thoughts she might have voiced, and left her dizzy and breathless. She kissed him instead, long and hard, until words came back to her.
"I've never wanted anything more."
His arms tightened around her, drawing her closer until skin was flush against skin, leaving no room between them, for one perfect moment, for fear or doubt or truth. And then he pulled back to press his lips to hers once more, to her cheeks, her forehead, her eyelids.
"Don't worry about Balgruuf," he said. "Don't worry about the war. You have your own battle to think of, now. After you defeat Alduin, we will defeat the Empire together."
"
If I defeat Alduin."
"You will," he insisted, his voice fierce, but pleading. "You must."
From the very beginning, Ulfric had never wavered in his conviction that she would fulfill the prophecy made so long ago, that the Dragonborn would slay the World-Eater. But for all his faith and all his certainty, he knew that the end to this quest was not written in stone. He knew that she might fail. That she might not survive. She saw that, now. It was in his eyes, her own fear reflected back at her, even as he tried to blink it away, to bury it beneath the cloak of his courage. If he was so determined to deny reason, she would not force him to face it.
"I will."
He drew in a deep breath, as if to take her promise into himself where he could keep it safe from harm.
"You should get some rest," he murmured. "You're going to need it."
After one last kiss, Annika turned over to nestle her back against Ulfric's chest. But sleep was evasive and fleeting. She did need rest, but more than that she needed to savor these moments, for no matter what she promised, there was every chance that they would be her last with him. And so she lay awake for hours, tucking every last detail into the vault of her memory: his impossible warmth, the steady rhythym of his breathing, the beat of his heart, the heady scent of his skin, the strength of the arms wrapped around her and the tenderness of the hand that rested on her stomach. If she was sent to Sovngarde on the morrow, she would take all that she could to sustain her until the day he joined her there.
And still it would not be enough. It would never be enough.
* * * * *
An icy wind tore down the coast, bringing with it the salty scent of the sea and the needles of snow it lifted from the banks. Annika turned her face into the hood of her cloak to shield herself from it, cursing this trick of Kynareth; her
Thu'um would have dispatched any blizzard that beset Skyrim, but it did nothing against the northern wind screaming down from Atmora.
Ralof and a small contingent of soldiers awaited them at the shrine of Arkay in the hills north of the city.
"We had to chase off a couple of wolves," he said in greeting, giving a nod and a smile to Annika, "but there was no other trouble. I doubt even an assassin would brave this wind."
"A man will do anything for the right reward," Ulfric countered. He looked to Ralof's men, and to those in his own guard. "Stay vigilant until we are back in the city. Wolves and assassins will be the least of our worries should this dragon turn hostile."
When he turned to Annika, her stomach seemed to fall through her feet. She bit her lip and nodded to the question he had not asked, trying to convince herself more than him that she was ready, that it was time. Yet her Voice was as frozen as the crust of ice along the river's shore. One more hour, one more day, another year... then, perhaps, she would be ready. A wedding, children, a life together... then, maybe, it would be time.
She drew her cloak tighter around herself, but it did not help quell the chill that had settled into her heart.
"
Odahviing!"
Her
Thu'um was all but lost to the roar of the wind. Would the dragon even hear it? Was this gale perhaps not Kynareth's trick, but her wise hand guiding Annika away from Skuldafn and back into Ulfric's arms? They waited, watching the cold blue skies for Odahviing, and every moment that passed without sign of him, the weight on Annika's shoulders seemed to lift a little more, to blow away with the wind.
But then a speck of a shadow drew closer and closer, until she could see the wide spread of the wings that would take her to her fate.
Odahviing landed heavily on the plain, high drifts of snow swallowing his gnarled feet.
"
Drem yol lok,
Dovahkiin," he greeted. "I am glad you heeded my words."
"I am glad you heeded mine," Annika returned, only half a lie. "My shield brother will be accompanying us to Skuldafn."
Ralof came forward, one small step at a time. His eyes were wide, but full of awe, not fear.
A low rumble rolled through the dragon. "I agreed to take one, not two."
"And I agreed not to slay you, in return for your help."
His shining green eyes studied her for a long moment, and then he snorted a laugh, a thin wisp of smoke rising from his nostrils.
"You certainly have the arrogance of a
dovah," Odahviing said. "It is fortunate for you that I admire arrogance in my friends. Very well—your companion is welcome. Now, let us be off. Alduin awaits."
"A moment. Please."
Without waiting for the dragon's consent, she turned to Ulfric, and threw herself into his embrace. He held her for much longer than a moment, but she did not care.
"It should be me, going with you," he whispered. "I should be the one keeping you safe. I should be the one by your side, if..."
"No," Annika cut in, so he would not have to finish his thought. "Your place is here. Skyrim needs her king."
He took her face in both of his hands, and his eyes, so blue yet so red, pierced hers with the very same pain that was tearing her apart inside.
"You come back to me," Ulfric said through gritted teeth, his voice raw and strained. "You come back alive. Skyrim needs a queen, too."
Annika shivered when his lips touched hers, begging her, pleading with such desperation she almost lost herself in it. And then he pulled away, and took a step back, as though he didn't trust himself to ever let her go if he held onto her for even one second longer.
She forced herself to smile before she turned away from him, to remind him that she had the heart of a Nord, brave and mighty and true.
Odahviing leaned down to allow his passengers to mount. Annika settled herself between two of the spikes that ran the length of the dragon's spine, taking care not to crush her bow or quiver; Ralof sat in the crevice behind hers, and hesitated before putting his arms around her waist. It was not all that different from sitting a horse, though she would have preferred having reins to grasp rather than the bony thorns Odahviing's neck provided.
"Once you fly the skies," the dragon purred, "your envy of the
dov will only grow. Hold on tightly,
Dovahkiin.
Mu bo kotin stinselok."
Odahviing's wings unfurled behind them, and caught the wind at once. With a great push against the frozen ground, he launched into the air. Annika gasped, and then she could not breathe at all.
She looked back to Ulfric, growing smaller and smaller as she was lifted higher and higher. Was she only imagining the tug on her chest, or was that her heart leaping against her ribs, trying to get back to his? She had to crane her neck to keep him in her sights when Odahviing banked south, though she could no longer tell Ulfric apart from the other tiny figures that might have been men, or rocks, or trees. And then all of it was gone, and she finally let fall the tears she had not wanted him to see.
Annika turned her gaze down to her hands, gripping the dragon's spikes so tightly a seam in her glove had started to split, yet it seemed they would slip off at any moment. She struggled to steady her breathing, to push back her harrowing thoughts, to focus on her tenuous hold on the beast below, lest the weight of her grief drag her back down to earth. Her arms and thighs already ached, her stomach churned, and every tear she wept froze to her face, but none of it mattered. Nothing mattered now, but getting home.
"By the gods," Ralof breathed behind her. "Annika, look."
She did, and found the entirety of Skyrim laid out before them. Odahviing had taken them even higher than the Throat of the World. The wild beauty of their savage garden stretched out in every direction as far as the eye could see, across golden plains and rolling greens, over rivers and lakes and crags, all the way to the wall of rock in the west, the shimmering spire of the White-Gold Tower far past the hazy ranges bordering the south, and the smoke and ash that dominated the horizon to the east.
"We must be the only people alive who've seen Skyrim like this," Ralof shouted over the howl of the wind. "This is incredible!"
Yes, it was incredible. It was what the gods saw when they looked down from Aetherius, and perhaps what their ancestors saw when they looked down from Sovngarde. It was more than any man or woman could ever hope to see.
And Annika would have traded it all to see Ulfric's smile, one more time.
chapter 27: the darkest chapter of our history
They flew south and east for perhaps half of an hour before they approached the mountains, and Odahviing began a slow descent through the clouds that ringed the peaks.
Annika searched the cliffs and ridges for Skuldafn, but found no ruins, no barrow, no ancient dragon laying in wait. There was only rock. A cold panic rose up within her. Had Odahviing played her for a fool? Was he flying them into a trap of his own making? But then she saw it, carved from the mountain itself and seeming to fade back into it every other moment, a trick on her eyes that left her unsettled. It was massive and sprawling, at least half the size of Windhelm, and the tiers upon tiers above ground were only the tip of the iceberg. This wasn't a temple... this was a city.
Odahviing swooped into the valley of the barrow, and landed on a flat stretch of stone. Annika jumped down at once, eager to be back on solid ground and to feel the protection of her bow in her hand.
Something moved at the edge of her vision, but when she whirled about, hand already reaching for an arrow, she saw nothing but stone arches and stone walls, stone steps and stone bridges. Nor did she hear anything. The silence was unnerving after the steady howl of the wind, and her heart beat harder to fill it. The hair on her neck and arms stood on end beneath her cloak and armor, as though half a hundred eyes were on her.
"This is as far as I can take you,
Dovahkiin."
"This will do," Annika replied. "Thank you, Odahviing."
"If you find victory over Alduin, summon me once more, and I will come to kneel before you. If you do not... I will know that our revolution is not to be.
Krif voth ahkrin."
The dragon raised his wings and lifted off. He flew west over the ridge, and then he was gone, leaving them in the heavy silence of the dead.
Annika turned in a slow circle, her eyes darting to every corner and every crevice, and still not finding anything but stone, some patches of snow, the odd sprouting of weeds from cracks in the hard ground. Yet she could not shake the terrible foreboding that they were not alone.
"Ralof... do you get the feeling that we're being watched?"
He already had his axe in hand. "Glad I'm not the only one."
She stopped looking for the menace, and listened instead. A faint hint of wind in the distance, the light rhythm of Ralof's breathing... and a soft buzzing, somewhere close, that struck a familiar but ominous chord in her. It was not unlike the hum of the spriggans she had encountered more than once in the forests of Valenwood, but why would a spriggan dwell in a vale made of rock and all but devoid of life? An ice wraith, perhaps, though she had never known the vicious creatures to hide. A chill far worse than theirs crept over her skin when she remembered the chronicle of wispmothers she'd found in the library, and the description of their otherworldly hissing screams.
Gods only know what lurks in Skuldafn.
Annika stepped forward on careful feet, following the sound to a crumbling archway. She notched and drew, and pointed her arrow ahead of her as she rounded the corner.
It was only a cloud of fat black flies.
She let out the breath she was holding, and lowered her bow. And then she saw it at her feet, the bloody, ragged stump of the human leg that fed the droning swarm.
She cried out and recoiled from the carnage.
Behind her, Ralof sucked in a sharp breath. "I thought men couldn't reach Skuldafn on their own?"
The leg had once worn simple roughspun trousers; a farmer, perhaps, snatched up as a dormouse by a hawk.
"They can't."
There was a great rush of air to her right, and from the corner of her eye she saw a piece of the barrow break away and rise up into the sky. For half a heartbeat, she thought the stone had come alive. But there was no mistaking those wings, or the roar that tore from its jaws.
Annika answered with one of her own.
"
Joor zah frul!"
Snared by her
Thu'um, the dragon swerved and dove for the ground. It hit hard, throwing both Annika and Ralof off balance and knocking the arrow out of her hand. The beast's jaws stretched open, and Annika saw a scrap of bloody roughspun snagged on a fang a moment before a wave of flame burst forth to incinerate it. She threw her ward up just in time to catch the fire.
When it died down, she stumbled back to put distance between herself and the beast's snapping fangs. It followed, snarling and slavering in anticipation of another meal with every clumsy step.
"
Skuldafn fen kos dinok!"
Annika pulled another arrow from her quiver and drew her bowstring. A wave of wicked pleasure quickened her blood when the dragon saw she wielded the bones of a brother.
Skuldafn will be death.
"Yes," she answered. "Yours."
She loosed, and the barbed forks of the arrowhead sunk easily into the dragon's golden eye.
It reared and roared. Ralof shot forth to duck beneath its writhing neck. With one wide swing, his axe sliced into soft flesh, and a bright splash of red followed in its wake.
With one last sputtering roar, the dragon collapsed, and the fire of its soul kindled to consume its flesh. Light and wind poured into Annika, leaving only bones behind.
She turned to find Ralof staring at her as though she'd grown a second head.
"What is it?"
"You... you took its soul."
She smiled. "Did you forget I was Dragonborn?"
"No, it's just... seeing it for yourself is quite different—"
An arrow ripped through the air between them, close enough to ruffle the hem of Annika's cloak.
She grabbed Ralof's arm and pulled him behind the archway.
"Are you
sure men can't reach Skuldafn?"
Her eyes found the arrow on the ground ahead of them. Brittle, graying wood, ragged fletching, and a roughly hewn iron head. The same sort she had taken from the rotting quivers of corpses in Bleak Falls Barrow.
"They're not men," she replied. "They're draugr."
She peered around the corner of the pillar, hidden by the shadow of the stone above. Across a churning river and one tier up the barrow, there it was, stalking back and forth, looking for the prey it had lost. Keeping her bow close to the wall, she notched and drew, training her sights on the draugr. The moment it stopped, she loosed.
The draugr fell away and out of sight.
Annika waited five breaths before deciding she would not need to take a second shot.
Where there was one, there would be more, but her sweep of the barrow's face turned up nothing. She took advantage of the momentary reprieve to shed her cloak; it was warmer in the mountains than the tundra, and the long wool would only get in her way.
"Good idea," Ralof said, following suit. He had one arm out of his when he stopped, his eyes wide at the sight of her armor. "What is
that?"
The scaled hide was suppler than any leather she'd ever touched, yet its strength was tenfold, and, crafted to her measurements, it fit like a second skin. The breastplate and faulds were unfamiliar but not uncomfortable, and lighter than she would have imagined dragon bone could be.
A sad smile touched Annika's lips. "A gift from Ulfric. Dragon scale and dragon bone."
She had almost expected it to go up in flames the moment she touched it, but it seemed the dragon's soul did not live in its hide. The mages of Winterhold had slain the beast a week past, and along with its soul, its flesh and blood had remained; Ulfric had sent an envoy to procure what he could of the reaping, and tasked Oengul to craft a full suit for her. Gloves, boots, and a cowl were yet to come, but Annika felt untouchable in the body armor alone. It was hard not to, clad in the skin and bones of her greatest foes.
Ralof walked a circle around her. He knocked on the backplate, stroked the smooth scale of a sleeve, and almost pricked a finger on the tiny spikes of a pauldron.
"It's incredible," he said. "Jarl Ulfric had a gift for me, too." He held out his axe, and Annika saw what she hadn't before: it was not his usual steel, but a shard of pale bone, sharpened to a fine point along the blade, with a deadly spike at the other end. "I think he meant it for himself. This is an axe fit for a king."
"It fits you fine. Keep it at the ready," she added, throwing her quiver back on. "You're going to need it."
They crossed a stone bridge carpeted in lichen and slick with mist from the river below. A great wall of rock met them on the opposite bank, along with patches of spiked grass, a few withered snowberry bushes, and a fallen tree trunk, half rotted out and crawling with ants. To their right, a short flight of steps led up to another archway. The tattered red banner hanging from the stone flapped in a gentle breeze, and when it fell slack, Annika could just make out the sigil, faded from centuries of sun. It looked a sinister cross between a man and a dragon.
A dry, rattling cry came from the top of the steps. A draugr in crumbling rags that might've once been leather came barreling down, wielding a black sword furry with moss. Two more were close on its heels.
Annika dodged the first's swing and planted an arrow into the center of its skull. Ralof took on the second, parrying the draugr's axe with his own. The third wore plated armor and a heavy helmet, leaving little room for arrows to find what was left of its flesh. It rushed Annika, warhammer arcing wide and missing her by no more than an inch.
"
Zun... hal viik!"
The warhammer hit the ground, and Annika kicked it away. The draugr chased after it with an angry snarl, and a gap opened between helmet and backplate when it bent to retrieve the weapon. The curve of Ralof's axe bit in to sever the thing's head cleanly from its body.
He wiped the blade off and grinned at Annika.
"We're tied," he said. "Two and two."
"I didn't know this was a competition."
"Why not? Couldn't hurt to have a bit of fun."
She rolled her eyes, but couldn't help but smile back. So long ago, it seemed, she'd pleaded with Ralof to come to Bleak Falls Barrow with her, not because she'd needed protection, but because she had wanted companionship. Perhaps that was why Ulfric had insisted on sending Ralof to Skuldafn. So she wouldn't be alone. So she would have one friend amongst a hundred foes.
They continued on through the ruins, up more stairs and under more arches, dispatching two more draugr each before another dragon descended. This one breathed ice instead of fire, but it was all the same to Annika's wards, and frostbite healed more easily than burns. When the beast's soul joined hers, she wondered if Alduin felt its loss.
There was no sign of the World-Eater, no hellish voice taunting her, no obsidian wings shadowing the gray clouds that had begun to bruise the sky. Annika was less concerned about where he was hiding than why. She had assailed his territory and slain two of his brethren, all on a hunt to destroy him. Why did he not try to stop her?
A wide stone courtyard and two towering archways gave way to a grand staircase that climbed so high they could not see the top from the bottom. But they did see the draugr that poured over the crest, dead eyes glowing, dead voices growling, dead hands hefting swords and axes, conjuring flame and frost.
Annika shot two down before the horde had even reached the last step, and danced back to keep loosing into the fray. Those who came too close were Shouted away; none of their blades touched her, and their spells dissolved against her wards. Ralof was a blur, dodging and blocking and striking, hacking off limbs and heads as though he'd been born to it.
The last draugr fell, along with a quiet calm. Ralof wrenched his axe from the corpse's chest, and started up the steps while Annika salvaged what she could of her arrows.
"Nine to seven by my count," she said, twisting one out of a decaying cuirass. "You're falling behind."
Her teasing was met with silence instead of laughter. She looked up to find Ralof rooted to the spot near the top of the staircase, his back to her, his hand tight around his axe.
"Come here," he called down. "You need to see this."
"See what?"
But by the time she had reached him, her question answered itself.
A great iron door engraved with the intricate likeness of a dragon loomed before them, set in a wide stone wall that was twice as tall. But it was not the door that put a flutter into Annika's stomach. Above and behind it, a twisting beam of light flowed up into the darkening sky.
Ralof gazed up at it, his eyes bright with awe. "What do you think it is?"
"It's—" But her mind was suddenly blank, as though she had woken from a dream she could not recall. She closed her eyes and tried to pull it back, but it was gone. She shook her head and sighed. "I had it a moment ago, I swear to the Nine."
"What do you mean?"
"The dragons," she said. "They knew what it was. Their knowledge passed to me with their souls. It's there, somewhere, but I can't grasp it."
She looked to the funnel of light again. It reminded her of the Time-Wound on the Throat of the World, but this was brighter, stronger, and somehow more ominous. The Time-Wound was just that, a tear in the flesh of time. Could this be the same? Had Alduin found a way to open that door himself? The thought quickened her pulse. That wasn't quite it, but she was getting closer. That light was wrong, unnatural, a profane abberation; it was a breach of their world, of their realm. That much she knew, as well as she did her own name. The very sight of it reached into her chest and squeezed her heart with cruel hands. She tore her eyes away from it, but she still felt it, the pull, the lure, the silent song that spoke to the darkest parts of her own soul.
Ralof walked the length of the landing, but found no other steps or bridges, no other doors.
"Looks like this is the only way through," he said. "Shall we?"
Annika nodded and followed him to the door. The iron eyes of the dragon carved into it seemed to be watching her.
* * * * *
She had seen barrows before, but nothing like Skuldafn. It dwarfed Ustengrav and Korvanjund; the antechamber alone was a cavern, gaping so high and wide that a dragon could have rested comfortably within, though she couldn't imagine how one would fit through the door. More red banners hung from walls and rafters, along with rusted iron cages just big enough to hold a man. A dozen braziers lit the room with enchanted fires that flickered off lacquered urns and bronze effigies of grotesque creatures. Even in ruins, it was a temple to rival the most opulent in the Imperial City.
But the great altar in the center of the chamber set it well apart from any temple to any god. Instead of herbs or incense, gold or gems, swords or shields, the altar bore an offering of blood. The body had long since dried out, black skin shrivelled around brittle bones, but the shape of it was unmistakable. This had been a place of human sacrifice.
Each chamber they passed through offered similar horrors, along with living corpses to protect the dead ones. The draugr were less of a challenge than the heavy stench of rot and decay that shadowed their every step. Annika sniped as many as she could from a distance, and Ralof made quick work of the rest.
When they came to the Hall of Stories, Annika stopped short, a wave of dismay crashing over her.
Ralof looked back. "What's wrong?"
How could she have forgotten this most vital detail of the barrows she had explored before? Had they come this far only to be thwarted by a single door? It bore the same engraved iron rings as the others, and the same pronged keyhole for which they lacked a key.
"Do you remember the claw we found, in Korvunjund?" she asked. "We'll need another like it to unlock that door. And I haven't seen one."
He squinted down the long, dim corridor. "It's got to be around here somewhere."
They roamed the hall, kicking aside the skulls and bones that littered the floor, reaching blindly into urns and basins, scouring every corner where an archway met a wall. They found nothing more than dust and cobwebs.
Annika passed beneath the final archway before the door, and rasping growls erupted from both corners. Two draugr melted from the walls they had all but faded into, their desiccated flesh and ancient armor the same ashen brown as the stone.
One of the creatures wielded a bow, but Annika drew hers faster. It crumpled like a child's doll when her arrow sunk into the withered hollow of its cheek. She reached for another, but her fingers never found it.
"
Fus... ro dah!"
The draugr's
Thu'um hit Annika and Ralof with the force of a hundred fists, and they flew down the corridor.
She hit the ground with a sickening crunch, and for half a heartbeat she thought her own spine had cracked, but it was only the skull she'd landed on. She panicked again to find her hand empty, and her bow well out of reach. She scrambled to her feet and lunged for it, noticing a moment too late that the living draugr had already grabbed up the dead's bow.
A searing pain split her leg apart, and a savage howl that could not have been hers tore up her throat.
Ralof's arms went around her, and he swept her out of the hall and around the corner a moment before the second arrow shot down to clatter against the ground.
The shaft of the first jutted out just above Annika's knee, in the gap between her fauld and boot. She gritted her teeth, clutched at Ralof's arms, and writhed wildly to break out of the net of her pain, but there was no escaping the fire spreading up and down her every vein. It was her anger that kept her anchored. This couldn't be how her story ended. This couldn't be how she died. She would
not let Alduin win so easily.
"Ralof," she gasped, "pull it out."
"But the draugr—"
"Will shoot you down long before you reach it, and this tomb will be ours. Now pull it out, before the arrowhead comes loose." She ripped the slice in her breeches wider, wincing at the fresh agony that lanced through her, and stuffed one of her gloves between her teeth. "Do it."
Ralof took a deep breath. He pressed one palm against her leg for leverage, and wrapped the other around the arrow. His eyes flicked up to hers. She gave a sharp nod, and he pulled.
The pain was white hot and blinding, flaying the full length of her leg, shredding every muscle and every nerve. She bit down hard on the glove, her throat convulsing with screams, and her entire body went as rigid as a corpse for a long moment before she could breathe again. Her fingers managed to find the arrow Ralof had dropped, and she held it up to look at its bloody tip through the haze of her tears. It was intact. The gods were not done with her yet.
Annika cast the first healing spell that came to mind, and moaned with relief as her flesh knitted back together. When the wound was closed, she took a deep breath and struggled to her feet. Her knee and thigh still burned with pain, but they would hold her weight. And her wrath.
She pulled an arrow from her quiver, though her bow still lay in the Hall of Stories.
Ralof threw his hands up to hold her back. "You're not going out there—"
"It won't hit me again," she said, her voice hard and raw. "Trust me."
But he did not move to let her past. His Jarl had charged him to protect her, and she had no doubt that he would do so to the death. After all, she was his someday queen. But perhaps he had, indeed, forgotten what else she was.
"
Feim."
Annika dissolved into air and light, and walked through the man who could no longer stop her.
The draugr loosed the moment she came around the corner, but the arrow sailed through her. It shot another as she stormed down the corridor, and another, and another, but to no avail.
Annika stopped two steps before the draugr. Her smile was colder than the soulless blue eyes that flashed furious at her trick, at her arrogance.
"
Zun hal viik!"
Her
Thu'um brought her back to flesh and blood and tore the bow from the draugr's hand. She dove for it, and in one swift motion, drew and loosed. Her arrow plunged into the soft flesh between the draugr's eyes, and their infernal light sputtered out.
She tossed the bow down and turned back to retrieve her own.
"It's done, Ralof."
He came around the corner, his axe at the ready, but he lowered it when he saw the draugr lying in a heap at the end of the hall.
Annika found the claw slung from one's belt. At first glance she thought it carved from glass, but when it caught the light of the many candleabra scattered about, it gave off a brilliant shimmer that spoke of diamonds. She spun the gyres in the door to match the symbols on the claw's palm, thrust its fingers into the keyholes, and turned.
The door opened into a vast and frigid chamber, silent but for the scratching echo of iron grinding against stone.
The wide foyer narrowed into a passage between two great crypts, lined with roaring braziers and stone thrones seating brittle skeletons. Annika readied her bow, but a kick to one's leg only broke the shin away from the knee. There was no life here.
But then she heard it, the whispers, the chanting, the crackle of the power buried millennia ago and waiting ever since for someone to reach out and take it. The dais stood at the end of the passage, hugged by the wall that curved around it. A faint blue light illuminated one cluster of runes etched into the stone.
"That's a word wall, isn't it?" Ralof asked, reverent but excited. "What does it say?"
Annika stepped up into the hollow, and read the inscription. And then she turned away from it.
"Nothing I don't already know."
Ralof followed her past the word wall and through the dark and winding hall beyond.
They chased a dim yellow light that promised fire to small chamber warmed by a blazing hearth. It looked entirely out of place in sprawling ruins inhabited only by draugr, who had no need of fire. But they had not always been draugr. The ancient dragon cult had left more than sacrificial offerings on grisly altars as a monument to their existence. They'd left fire, in hearths and braziers, in lamps and candelabra, enchantments that lasted throughout the ages to remind Annika that all draugr had, once, been human.
Finding no other doorways that lead out of the chamber, she started back towards that whence they'd come.
"Hold on," Ralof said. "Let's rest here for awhile."
"I don't need to rest."
"You're limping."
She took another three steps before realizing he was right; she was favouring her left leg, and any weight she put on her right thrust a dagger into her knee. In her haste to kill the draugr before it could kill them, she hadn't healed herself as well as she could have. She sighed and turned back into the chamber.
"All right," she said. "Ten minutes, no longer."
Ralof helped her up onto the stone table before the hearth before taking a seat himself. He dug into his waistpouch as Annika cast a steady stream of magic on her leg, the throbbing ache lessening every second.
"Eat this," Ralof ordered, handing her a strip of dried salt pork. "It'll keep your energy up."
This time, she did not resist, though she did raise an eyebrow when he offered her a flask.
"I hope that's water."
He gave her a withering look. "You truly think I'd meet Alduin in battle drunk on mead?"
"You do like your mead."
He cuffed her on the shoulder, remembering too late the small but sharp spikes that covered her pauldron. Annika couldn't help but laugh as he cursed and pulled his hand away, trying to shake out the pain. Her laughter was more healing than any spell, and more filling than any meat, and for those precious few moments, she almost forgot that they might be some of her last.
"So, any ideas about that light?"
"I think it's some sort of portal," Annika replied, "though to where, I couldn't say."
Ralof gnawed on a bite of his salt pork. "You don't think it could be an Oblivion gate, do you?"
She shook her head. "I doubt it. I saw paintings of them in Cyrodiil, and they were always depicted with a ring of fiery red light, not a beam of pure white. Besides, dragons are invading Skyrim, not daedra."
"I hope you're right. I don't fancy a trip to Oblivion... though it'd make for a good story."
"Battling Alduin the World-Eater alongside the Dragonborn isn't enough of a story for you?"
He chuckled. "By the Nine, just being here in Skuldafn is a story unto itself! We're right in the middle of the darkest chapter of our history, encountering the last vestiges of the dragon cult that almost conquered our world. We're the first humans to step foot in this temple in thousands of years... and no one else is like to ever come here again."
"Hopefully," Annika said, "no one else will have reason to."
"I'll second that. I'm glad I had the chance to, though, despite the circumstances. I'll never forget this. I can't wait to tell Ysolda about it all."
"Oh, I'd almost forgotten!" Annika dipped into her own waistpouch and withdrew a small scroll. "She sent a letter for you."
Ralof's eyes lit up, and he quickly unrolled the parchment.
Annika focused on healing herself while he read, casting her strongest spells to great effect. When she was done, the dull ache of an old bruise lingered, but flexing her knee did not cause it to scream in agony as it had before, and there was not so much as a scar left where her skin had been sliced open. Wuunferth would be proud.
When she glanced to Ralof, she found his face pale and his mouth open in shock.
"What is it, what's wrong?"
He only stared at the letter, wide-eyed and thunderstruck. After a long moment, he looked up at her with a smile blooming slow but bright.
"Ysolda's with child," he said. "I'm going to be a father."
"Oh, Ralof! How wonderful!"
She threw her arms around him, both of them laughing with joy and delight.
"She says the baby will arive at the end of spring. She's already looking into selling her house in Whiterun, so she can be settled in Windhelm before then."
"You're going to purchase Hjerim, then?"
He shook his head, his grin growing even wider. "I discussed the idea with Jarl Ulfric, but he insisted Ysolda and I make our home together in the Palace of the Kings. Just think—our children will grow up side by side, like true brothers!"
Annika's hand went to her stomach with a will of its own. Her moon's blood had only just left her, but perhaps Ulfric's seed was quickening in her womb even now. Her elation faltered, shadowed by the fears of what sort of child her tainted blood might sow, but she pushed them back and cloaked them with a smile so great she almost believed it herself.
"I'm so happy for you, Ralof."
"And I for you." He gave a sigh staggered with laughter. "Can you believe how far we've come? I was born a miller's son, you a miner's daughter. And now I'm housecarl to the man who will be king, and you... you will be
queen."
Her eyes skipped away from his. Her heart should have soared with the thought of it, but it only shivered in knowing such a fragile dream might not come to pass. She hopped off of the table so Ralof would not see the doubt and the dread she could no longer hide.
"Not if I don't defeat Alduin." She grabbed up her bow, and tried to draw courage from the bones of the beast she had slain. "We have to finish this, or there won't be a Skyrim left for any king or queen to rule."
"Your leg—"
"Is fine, I promise. It's time, Ralof."
He nodded, and after tucking Ysolda's letter into his armor, right over his heart, he took his axe in hand. "Lead on, then."
She strode across the chamber and into the corridor beyond. They followed it to a wooden door overlaid with ironwork. The golden glow of the dying day trickled in where the wood bowed and split, but there was no telling what darkness waited for them on the other side.
Annika had, indeed, come a long way from being born a miner's daughter, from growing up in a tiny cottage that was never quite warm enough, from eating scraps stolen from dogs so she wouldn't go to bed hungry. She had come a long way from losing her home, her family, all she had in the world, from wandering about Tamriel, looking for something she could not name, an answer to a question she did not know.
She had come a long way, but there was still so far to go. And if she looked back, she would be lost.
She pushed the door open.
* * * * *
The sun was a violent lick of flame peeking over the mountains to the west, and it nearly blinded Annika when she stepped outside.
Squinting down at the stone, she caught sight of movement to her right: a draugr, patrolling the plateau. She notched, drew, and loosed, and it toppled off the edge, leaving a raspy growl in its wake. Another sounded to her left, the second sentry alerted to the first's demise. It met the same fate.
And then she heard it, the same rattling purr that had stricken her with fear at Whiterun's western watchtower. Now, it only stoked her anger. Annika turned her eyes skyward, and found the dragon slumbering atop a high stone plinth behind them. Its scales were a ruddy gold, not black, and its head was tucked beneath the blanket of its wing.
Just beyond, that ominous beam of light rushed up into the clouds.
They crept away and around a corner. At the far end of the plateau, a long set of stone stairs rose up towards the light, guarded by another draugr that ate another arrow and fell out of their way.
Annika notched and drew as she stole up the steps, but stopped dead when she heard chanting. It was not the chorus that called to her from word walls, nor the dry rasp of a draugr, nor the deep booming of a dragon's speech. This was something else entirely, something cold and corrupt, something unnatural and perverse. She inched closer, holding her breath, until she could make out the words.
"
Zu'u uth naal thurri dein daar miiraak. Zu'u uth naal thurri dein daar miiraak!"
My master commanded me to guard this portal.
The shape of a man came into view over the crest of the stairs, arms outstretched in supplication, ragged cloak fluttering too slowly, too lightly, though there was no wind to lift it at all. One more step and she saw the narrow stone pulpit silhouetted in the twisting light, and the man's feet, bony and black, hovering inches above it.
This was no man.
It ceased its chanting, and the light sputtered and died.
It turned, and where Annika expected to see the glowing blue eyes of a draugr, there was only the expressionless face of a mask.
A dragon priest.
She loosed, but the creature waved the staff in its hand and a bolt of lightning streaked out to knock the arrow away. Another flash, and this time the bolt hit her; her dragonscale soaked up the worst of it, but the aftershock ricocheted through her body. Her ward caught the next blast, and her arm trembled with the effort to hold it steady.
The priest ceased its attack but started towards them, gliding on air though it lacked wings to fly. Annika drew in a deep breath and loosed her Voice.
"
Yol!"
A rush of fire burst forth, but fizzled and died against the priest's own ward.
For half a heartbeat, she was engulfed in the most profound terror she had ever known. She was powerless against this thing, this abomination. Her
Thu'um was nothing to it, her arrows even less.
And now the dragon was awake and circling overhead. Its roar echoed through the valley... but when Annika glanced up, she saw that it wasn't an echo at all. It was a second dragon, scales glinting silver in the dying sun, answering its brother's call.
Ralof tugged her up the last steps and towards the wall to their left. They ducked into a passage carved through the rock; it would hide them well enough from the dragons, through the priest would be on them before long.
"You have to distract it," Annika said.
"What about the dragons?"
"They're the lesser threat right now. If I don't get that staff away from the priest, we won't have a chance."
Ralof hesitated for only a moment before giving a single sharp nod. He barrelled back into the courtyard, bellowing a war cry to rival the roar of the dragons. He was halfway across when his body lit up with electricity.
The priest came into view, its back turned to Annika as it advanced on its prey.
She darted out and took three long strides towards it.
"
Zun hal viik!"
Her
Thu'um hit its mark this time, and she swelled with triumph. But when the priest swiveled to face her, she saw the staff still in its hand.
She was too stunned to block the bolt of lightning that licked out of it, but she did catch sight of the dragon streaking over the opposite side of the ruins, its jaws already yawning open.
"
Joor!"
Thrown off balance, the dragon's fire poured down onto the priest instead of Annika. It hissed and pulled back, and the great golden beast crashed down between them.
Annika ran as hard as she could, catching up with Ralof just as he staggered into the archway.
"Are you all right?"
He could only nod as he gasped for breath.
She pulled him through the pass and around the other side of the wall before healing him. His armor afforded him more protection than she'd had against the justiciar in the Thalmor Embassy, but it lacked the natural resistance of her dragonscale. There was no telling how many more jolts he could sustain... and there was no escaping them, either.
"I couldn't disarm it," she confessed, her voice shaking. "My arrows aren't fast enough and my Voice isn't strong enough. I don't know what to do, Ralof."
"Isn't there a Shout that would just—kill it?"
She stilled, the words screaming at her from inside her own head.
Krii lun aus. Such small things, yet they could indeed kill. They would eat away at the priest's strength, its vigor, its very life—or whatever passed for life to something so dead. But of all the words Paarthurnax had given her, these frightened her the most... for they also tempted her the most.
Arngeir had warned her, once, about giving in to the lure of power.
That has been the downfall of many Dragonborn before you, he'd said. Yet no Dragonborn before her had tasted
this much power, given to them in one fell swoop. They'd only had their own weakness to fight against, not thousands of years of suppressed rage and malice and hunger of a being born to dominate, to devour, to destroy.
And no matter how corrupt this priest was now, it had been human once. It had been born with a human soul and it had lived a human life. And when it gave in to the lure of power, it traded that life for this terrible immortality.
Where we differ, Ulfric had told her,
is that we also feel compassion, and joy, and love. As long as you have that, you have your humanity. If she put aside her humanity to embrace the evil that fought to vanquish it, how was she any better than the priest? If she started using such dark sorcery against human souls and human life... how would she ever stop?
There had to be another way. Another Shout.
The word wall buried within Skuldafn had not taught Annika anything she didn't already know. But someone had put it there, eras ago. Someone had carved those runes into that stone and imbued it with their own power—power Paarthurnax himself had gifted to men, to use against Alduin. Was it a warning? A tribute?
Or a hint?
"Stay hidden beneath the arch," she ordered Ralof. "You'll be safe there."
"Safe from what?"
"What I'm about to do."
"And what about you?"
She was already halfway through the passage, and she did not look back.
"My own Voice can't hurt me."
The dragon she'd grounded was in the air once again, circling Skuldafn with its brother. The priest had retreated to the far end of the courtyard to hover over the spot whence the beam of light had surged only minutes before.
Annika did not give them the chance to strike first.
"
Struhn... bah qo!"
The clouds that veiled the sky swelled and grew and darkened to turn the gray dusk black, swallowing up the last of the sun's light. In its stead, a flurry of lightning lit up the ruins, streaking down from the heavens to scorch whatever it hit—stone, snow, the red banners snapping in the sudden gale. Blinding white bolts caught both dragons, but Annika could not hear their roars over the booming thunder that shook the ground beneath her feet, or the angry hiss of the rain that drove down in waves.
The priest paid no mind to the storm, but began its eerie drift towards Annika. She stalked forward to meet it, readying an arrow instead of casting a ward. Let it hit her. Let it do its worst.
But her lightning hit the priest first, and it let out a shrill, unearthly shriek. She loosed, and her arrow sunk into the stringy gray flesh at its side, drawing out another cry. The priest retaliated, sending a sizzling bolt her way; the impact threw off her aim, and her second arrow sailed through the tatters of its cloak to bounce off the stone beyond. It knocked the third arrow out of the air with a quick flick of its staff, but took another hit from the storm itself.
The silver dragon swooped down, snarling and snapping, and sent a torrent of frost down upon Annika before she could cast her ward against it. Her armor soaked up most of it, but the tender skin of her face stung for one vicious moment before going numb, and her muscles stiffened beneath her mail and scale. She loosed an arrow after the dragon and caught the sinew of a leg, but took two more jolts from the priest as penance for her distraction.
Before she could catch her breath, the dragon swerved back around for another assault, but its flight curtailed when lightning ripped through its wing. Annika dove out of its path, narrowly missing the wild thrash of its tail as it slammed into the wall. The ancient rock exploded under the dragon's weight, and a landslide of rubble rushed over the other side, along with the broken body of the beast itself. She could not see the light of its soul burn through its flesh, but she felt it filling hers.
Drenched and shivering and jittery, Annika ran for the pulpit and ducked behind it. Her storm was serving well against the dragons, but would it be enough to fell the priest? Would the next bolt strike it down, or would it withstand a hundred more? Even if it did, it mattered little and less; all she had to do was outlast it.
She peered over the stone and spotted the priest on the other side, gliding closer. It staggered with another hit of lightning, and when it recovered, its height seemed to have dropped an inch. It was weakening.
Annika rounded the pulpit in time with the priest, keeping the stone between them. Another bolt hit it, and then another, and then its cowled head slumped down, and its bony hand slackened on the staff. She heard its rattling wheeze in the calm before a clap of thunder startled them both. The priest's head snapped up, and the eyes hidden behind the mask found her.
And so had the surviving dragon. It tore over the wall opposite Annika, its roar shaking the ground as much as the thunder, a swirl of flame already swelling up its throat.
Perhaps her Voice would not be enough. But hers wasn't the only Voice making itself heard.
"
Feim!"
Annika dissolved into nothingness, and ran for the priest.
Blind with rage and desperation, the dragon unleashed its fire on the courtyard. It blasted right through Annika, but the priest, only an arm's length away, caught like the wick of a candle. It shrieked and writhed and burned until the rain quenched the flames. But the damage had been done. Its withered flesh was blackened and peeling, its cloak mere cinders. Only the tiered columns of dragon bones it wore over its shoulders and down its front remained unscathed.
The priest swung its staff, but the lightning that burst from it could not touch Annika.
The bolt that shot down from the clouds, however, caught the priest in the back, and it reared with a bloodcurdling howl. Another bolt crashed down onto its mask, leaving a smoking patch of char across one side. A third stabbed into its chest, where its heart would have been, if it still had one.
Annika watched the thing crumple and fold. She could not see its eyes through the mask, but she knew it was staring into the misty spectre of hers. One skeletal arm reached to claw at her, but found nothing but air. By the time she returned to flesh and blood, the priest was a heap of bones in scorched rags, drawing sharp, shallow breaths like a stag in the throes of dying. She stared down at it with pity for the man it had once been, and with pride in herself, for resisting the thirst for power that that man had not.
One final streak of lightning turned what was left of it to ash.
Only the dragon remained.
She searched the skies, but found only billowing clouds, though the storm had begun to subside. Lightning flashed less frequently than before, and the rain had ebbed to a soft sprinkle. The thunder was no more than a dull rumble, not quite enough to mask the heavy sigh of wings behind her.
The dragon rose over the crest of the stairs and dove, its talons leaving long gouge marks in the stone as it skidded over the courtyard. Annika reeled back towards the broken wall and threw her ward out before her, but the beast thrashed so wildly that its fire poured over and under and around the shield, searing her boots, the bare flesh of her wounded knee, a long lock of hair the wind had pulled from her braid.
It snapped at her as soon as the flames died, and she jumped back to dodge its fangs. Her feet found rubble instead of ground, and she stumbled, twisted, and collided with a chunk of broken masonry, sending a flood of wreckage over the edge and onto the tier below. She managed to steady herself, but when she whirled back to the dragon, it was already lunging for her.
In the next heartbeat, she was bathed in blood.
The dragon roared, but instead of fire, a hot red spray poured from the gaping gash in the side of its neck.
It whipped its head around to find its attacker, but Ralof dodged and swung his axe at the beast's face with a primal bellow. The blade sliced down over an eye, and another burst of blood followed.
The dragon careened back and lifted quivering wings, but Annika pinned it down with Dragonrend. Ralof hacked at it again, and again, and finally it collapsed in the lake of its own blood. A wet bleating churned up its throat in lieu of a roar, and then it fell silent.
Death ignited its soul, and its soul burned through its flesh.
The blaze nearly blinded her, but it was not quite enough to eclipse the flash of lightning that ripped down from the dying storm.
Ralof's strangled cry was not unlike the dragon's. His body went rigid, and then folded and buckled.
"
Ralof!"
Annika fell to her knees beside him and took his head in her hands to steady its erratic twitching. His eyes, wide but unfocused, stared blindly up into nothingness, and his chest heaved for air he could not seem to breathe. She cast her spells in a frenzied rush, shielding his body with her own against any lightning that would try to strike him.
Only when his lungs finally filled did she breathe herself.
She lifted her face to the storm.
"
Lok vah koor!"
The rain ceased at once, but it took a few moments for the clouds to dissipate, leaving the sky a velvety cobalt dotted with the evening's first stars.
A bout of dry and ragged coughing seized Ralof, but he caught his breath before Annika could panic again.
"Are you all right?"
He sat up, not without some effort and a pained groan. "Never better. Guess I'm not much of a Stormcloak after all, though." His lips stretched into a grin. "Get it?"
Annika could not help but laugh as she threw her arms around him, and when she pulled back, she gave him a playful shove.
"I told you to stay hidden."
"And Jarl Ulfric told me to keep you alive." He looked her up and down, and shrugged. "Luckily, he said nothing about keeping you clean."
"You're one to talk."
They were both drenched; the last of the rain had washed some of the dragon's blood away, but they both still looked a fright. Annika wiped what she could from her face, and slicked Ralof's hair back off of his forehead.
"Maybe," he said, "Alduin will take one look at us, covered in the blood of his brethren, and surrender."
"Somehow, I don't think Alduin is the sort to surrender."
Ralof looked over his shoulder. "Still no light. What if that priest sealed the portal?"
Annika helped him up, and they rounded the dragon's skeleton together. She climbed the steps of the pulpit and looked out across the courtyard, seeing what she hadn't before: a great circle carved into the stone, along with the darkened silhouette of a dragon's head and wing curved around the smaller seal in the middle. The ground was solid and unbroken, lacking any breach through which the light might have shone.
But there was a similar seal in the rock at her feet, and a small niche within it, deep and narrow and round. A keyhole.
"Ralof—get the priest's staff."
He gave the heap of ash a wary look before gingerly plucking out the staff. He held it at arm's length until Annika relieved him of it.
The wood slid easily into the receptacle and locked into place.
A deafening crack rent the air, and the courtyard split open. The circle fractured into half a hundred pieces of stone that sunk down to funnel around a swirling blue void. Cold white light streaked out and rose up into the sky.
"By the gods," Ralof whispered.
Annika shook her head. "The gods had nothing to do with this."
Perhaps it was intuition, or the souls of the dragons within her warning her away, but she knew without a doubt that this was a profane corruption, a gateway that should never have existed. Yet she could not say to what dark realm it led. It made no matter, one way or another; she had long been caught in the current of fate, and if she tried to resist it now, she would surely drown.
Ralof went to the edge of the circle, squinting against the brilliance of the light.
"Shall we?"
Annika hesitated. "Ralof..."
"I know what you're going to say," he cut in, "and it won't change my mind, so you might as well not waste your breath. I'm coming with you, and that's that."
She sighed as she stepped down from the pulpit, but said no more. When she came up beside Ralof, his hand was pressed to his chest, to the letter he had stowed beneath his armor.
High above, a swathe of watery light stretched across the sky and the two moons still rising, rippling like sunshine on the bottom of a pond. The aurora. Annika had forgotten how beautiful it was, after so many years away. There was nothing like it in the deserts of Hammerfell, or the forests of Valenwood. This was a gift of the north. And it reminded her of what was at stake. Skuldafn seemed a realm unto itself, as detached and desolate as it was, but the aurora made its graceful dance over the ruins as much as it did over the rest of Skyrim, over Ulfric in Windhelm and Ysolda in Whiterun. How many other sons and daughters did it weave together on this pivotal night, when their world would either be saved or doomed?
Annika reached out to take Ralof's hand in hers.
"For Skyrim," she said, and together, they walked into the light.
chapter 28: sovngarde
Annika was not flying, but merely rising, as though she had lived her entire life at the bottom of the sea and was finally floating to the surface. She saw only white light, and heard nothing but her own heartbeat. But she felt rain and blood and sweat trickling down her skin, her chest swelling against her armor with every breath, and her quiver resting across her back, every sensation a promise that it wasn't only her mind traveling, as it had through the Time-Wound, but her entire self.
It might have been minutes or it might have been hours before the light faded into a palette of dark and dismal blues and grays, and Annika found herself standing upon solid ground, before a host of giants. She flinched and cried out before realizing they were only statues carved from stone, massive and faceless in their cloaks. A long set of steps led down into a valley between them, lined with gaunt pines and dotted with braziers, though their fires were weak, snared in a battle with the tendrils of fog that rolled in from the surrounding mountains. Far in the distance, the dim silhouette of a castle rose out of the mist, and the familiarity of something so human filled her with relief.
Thunder rumbled high above, and when Annika looked up, that relief turned to dread.
The sky was not a sky at all, but a funnel of clouds that twisted and swirled up to a cold imitation of the sun. They were not fleecy and white, nor even the heavy gray of an oncoming storm, but a roiling blend of fiery red and poisonous violet, a deadly miasma veiling the countless stars trying to blink through. Annika had never seen anything more beautiful, or more terrifying.
She turned to Ralof, but he was not there.
"Ralof?" She whirled about, frantic to find him, to see his smile and hear his voice, to know she was not alone. "
Ralof!"
Only the thunder answered her, and the sound of her own panicked breathing.
And, somewhere down amidst the fog, the ferocious roar of a dragon that could only be Alduin.
Annika rushed to hide behind the nearest statue, pulling her bow from her shoulder and an arrow from her quiver. She waited, still and silent, for several minutes, but Alduin came no closer, nor did Ralof suddenly appear on the plateau, nor was there any sign of the portal that had brought her here. She was alone, and trapped in this strange place that looked a grim and sinister mockery of Skyrim, while her greatest enemy awaited her in the valley, poised to destroy her, to devour her soul. Her only hope to escape this realm was to destroy him first.
Gathering her courage, Annika left the statue and started down the steps. At the bottom, stone gave way to dry and dusty earth, dotted with patches of brown grass and wilted flowers. The trees, too, were withered and haggard, half of their needles sapped of color, the other half already fallen to the ground. Every living thing was dying. There were no sounds of life, either, no birds singing or crickets chirping. Only the rolling thunder, and a stray howl of wind, and the faraway flap of wings.
She crept through the valley, following a faint path through the great knots of fog that engulfed her, an arrow notched and ready to draw at any moment. But she met no threats. She met nothing at all, until a dim figure shivered through the mist, and a deep voice called out from the gloom.
"Is someone there?"
Annika's breath caught in her throat. She knew that voice.
She moved towards the shadow until it became a man, nearly as tall and broad as Ulfric, and wearing a bear's head helm.
"Galmar?"
He turned, and the world spun with him.
"Dragonborn?"
The glare he'd always had for her was supplanted with wide-eyed shock and dismay, mirroring her own. This could not be. She had watched him die in Ulfric's arms, witnessed his body put to rest in the catacombs of the Palace of the Kings, mourned his death and celebrated his new life in Sovngarde—
Sovngarde.
Galmar closed the distance between them in three long strides.
"Dragonborn," he cried. "By the gods, what happened? Did Ulfric—is he—"
"Ulfric is fine. He's alive. This...
is Sovngarde, then?"
He gave a solemn nod. "Not quite the one the stories spoke of, but yes."
The truth was a fist to her stomach.
"Am I... dead?"
It hadn't felt like dying, when she stepped into that ethereal light in Skuldafn. She was still breathing, and her heart still pounding a violent beat against her ribs; how could that be, if her soul had left her body behind? And if the price for passage was her own life, why had the portal not taken Ralof's, too?
The fog shifted and parted around them, and Annika noticed that Galmar seemed to be partly fog himself. His entire form was pale, a portrait drawn in watered-down paints, and she could see the faint outline of the rocks behind him right through his armor. She looked down to her own body, but she was as solid as ever.
Galmar saw the difference, too.
"You don't look like the rest of us," he said. "But if you haven't died, how can you be here?"
Annika shook her head. "I don't know, but it doesn't matter right now—Galmar, Ulfric knows you didn't betray him."
In the time she had known him, Galmar had been a hard and intimidating man, to whom smiles were rare and tears did not exist. And so the storm of emotion that passed over him now turned him into an entirely different person, one who was vulnerable, who had doubts and fears, who loved.
"He does?"
"You gave your life to save his. After that, he knew you'd always been true to him."
"Thank the gods," he breathed. "That was the worst of it, that he believed me a traitor. That he hated me. Death was nothing in comparison."
"He hates himself for ever doubting you," she told him. "Losing you tore him apart."
"It was worth it, if it saved him. I would die a thousand deaths for that man. I've loved him as a brother my entire life."
"He knows you did."
"And you? Does he know
you love him?"
Annika hesitated only a moment, stunned that he, her greatest critic, had known the truth of her heart the whole time.
"He does."
"Then, if you
are still alive, we need to get you back to him."
"You can't imagine how badly I want that," she said with a sigh. "But there's something I need to do first."
As if on cue, Alduin's roar rippled through the fog to shake the very ground beneath their feet.
Galmar's eyes went wide. He hurried to take cover behind a small rocky hill on the edge of the path, waving Annika to follow. She ducked down beside him, and shuddered when another beastly bellow tore across the sky.
"Is
that what you need to do? Kill that damned bastard?"
"Yes. Ulfric believes it's my destiny."
Galmar snorted a laugh. "He always was a sentimental fool," he said, though his voice was wistful, not derisive. "Destiny or not, Dragonborn—slay that dragon. Legend didn't name him the World-Eater for nothing."
"What do you mean?"
"Look around you. Does this look like the Sovngarde the priests of Arkay always preach about?"
Annika had thought nothing of the bleak landscape before the realm had a name, but now that she knew where she stood, the browning grass at her feet and the the wilting pines across the path took on a terrible meaning. This was not at all the paradise promised to brave and valiant Nords; this was a garden of squalor and blight, struggling to survive, and failing.
"Everything is dead," she murmured.
"Aye. Alduin's hunger is insatiable. He hunts the souls who wander lost, but when they are not enough, he drinks the life from the earth itself." Galmar reached out to touch a flower, its weak stem drooping under the weight of a shrivelled bud. What petals remained fell away at his touch. "I saw a patch of these wither under Alduin's shadow. He's turning Sovngarde into his own little corner of Oblivion."
Annika took a second look around, and noticed what she'd missed before: the silence, the stillness, the utter desolation.
"You said I didn't look like the rest of you," she mused. "Are there others?"
Galmar hestiated, turning his gaze away from hers. "There were—men who died in Markarth, Stormcloaks and Imperials both."
"Where are they all now?"
"The Imperials went their own way. Some of our men wandered off into the fog and couldn't find their way back. The rest..."
The echo of a roar carried through the mist, saying what Galmar did not need to.
A memory peeled off the wall of her mind: Alduin, descending on the Throat of the World, even as the Elder Scroll still burned in her hands.
I have fed my hunger with the souls of your fellow mortals, he'd said. She had never imagined that he'd meant it literally, that he had invaded this most hallowed realm and corrupted it to his own ends. He'd given a similar warning to the Tongues, too; had Sovngarde languished in this cursed state all the years Alduin had been adrift in time?
The Tongues.
"Galmar, has Alduin breached the Hall of Valor?"
"I don't know, I haven't found it yet."
She blinked up at him. "You've been lost in the fog all this time?"
"It hasn't been that long," he said, his tone defensive. "And I've spent most of it trying not to be devoured."
"Hopefully the Tongues did the same—they might be able to help me defeat Alduin." She stood up and strode back to the path, though it was almost completely obscured beneath a rolling blanket of mist. "The Hall of Valor is that way," she said, pointing. "I saw it from atop a hill."
"I saw it, too," Galmar muttered, coming up beside her. "But here I am, lost all the same. The fog plays tricks on you, throwing you off course just when you think you've found your way."
Annika bit her lip. "I could get rid of it."
"What? What in Shor's stones are you waiting for, then?"
"I'll need to Shout," she told him. "And if I do, Alduin will know exactly where we are."
Galmar's eyes went wide, his mouth tight. It was strange to see such naked fear in a man she had always thought of as fearless. And then she understood—he
had been fearless in life, because he'd always known Sovngarde awaited him. What awaited him now, but the blackest depths of nothingness?
But then his features hardened, he pulled his shoulders back, and he gave a firm nod.
"Do it, and get to the Hall of Valor as quickly as you can."
"
We'll get there," Annika said. "Together."
One corner of Galmar's mouth curled up. She had seen that smirk before, when she'd gone to him for her initiation into Ulfric's army, and he'd remarked that she might be worth something to him.
"Do it," he said again.
A cold finger of dread trailed down her spine to make her shiver.
"Galmar, please—"
"If you don't find the Tongues, you'll be facing Alduin on your own," he said. "Can you do that? Can you defeat him alone?"
She hesitated for a long, uneasy moment. "Possibly. Defeating him is supposed to be my destiny, after all."
"
Possibly isn't good enough. If you fail, there are no second chances. You
must not fail."
Annika's mouth opened and closed on air, her mind racing to think of some excuse, some reason for Galmar not to do what he meant to do. But he spoke the truth, as desperate as she was to deny it. She would have but one chance to slay Alduin. And with the Tongues' Voices added to hers, her chance for victory would be that much greater.
She peered into the fog once more, but saw no more than a couple of yards ahead in any direction. If Galmar had been wandering lost for weeks, what chance did she have of escaping the haze, or coming upon the Hall of Valor by blind luck? What chance did she have of destroying Alduin before he could destroy Sovngarde, and turn his hunger to Skyrim?
When she looked back to Galmar, it was through burning tears.
"I've already had to watch you sacrifice yourself once," she sobbed. "I don't want to do it again."
He only smiled. "I meant what I said. I would die a thousand deaths for Ulfric."
"Ulfric isn't here—"
"But you are. And I can't let him lose someone else he loves."
Annika closed her eyes and sighed. She could not argue with that, not when she, too, would do anything for Ulfric... even if
anything meant letting the man he had loved as a brother give up not only his life, but his soul, to help her get back to him.
She turned towards the Hall of Valor, and drew in a deep breath.
"
Lok vah koor!"
The fog slowly dissipated, revealing a sprawling field of decay as far as she could see, and the looming silhouette of the Hall of Valor, a startling distance away from where she'd thought it was.
"Go, Dragonborn," Galmar said.
But she did not move. The mist may have gone, but that eerie silence still lay heavily over the valley, broken only by her own shallow breathing. She turned slowly in a full circle, looking out across the horizon, and saw nothing.
"He's not coming," she whispered, a small smile daring to curve her lips. "He didn't hear it—"
And then a roar split the sky, and a black shadow tore over a copse of pines, turning their rich green a sallow brown. Alduin's scarlet eyes burned bright amidst the coal of his scales.
"Go," Galmar shouted. "Run—
now!"
This time, she listened, and tore down the path with such haste she stumbled and nearly fell. She chanced a look back and saw Galmar racing the other way, leading the dragon away from her. Alduin swerved and dove, and a torrent of blinding flame poured down to light Galmar up like the sun. And then Alduin's jaws closed around him, and he was lifted into the air. She never heard him scream.
Annika ran as fast and as hard as she ever had. She ran until she could barely breathe, until a knife of pain stabbed into her side and her legs threatened to give out. But there was nowhere to hide, there was nothing but open field and a few withered bushes, so she pushed herself to keep going, to keep running. Another minute, or perhaps an hour, and she saw it—up ahead, atop a sloping hill, a gray stone wall like so many others she had found before, though this one was dark and silent, as dead as everything else in Sovngarde.
She flung herself behind the curve of the wall and pressed her back flat against the stone. She tried to catch her breath, but she was sobbing too hard. Her hands clamped against her mouth to stifle the cries that might draw Alduin to her. But even if he did not hear her, or see her, he might sense her soul in some other way. She could not linger there and let Galmar's sacrifice have been in vain.
The fog was rolling in once more, great billowing waves swallowing up ground and sky alike. The Hall of Valor lay ahead, so close yet still so far, and the fear of losing sight of it again was enough to push her back to her feet.
"Go," she told herself through gritted teeth. "
Go!"
Annika did not look back when she heard the roar chasing after her.
She did not stop when she reached a bridge made of bones so gargantuan she could not imagine from what beast they had come, nor when she glimpsed the bottomless chasm to either side of it, a mere foot's slip away from being her death. There was no room for fear of falling in a heart so consumed with terror of the beast behind her, gaining on her, every flap of his heavy wings worth a dozen of her clumsy footsteps.
"
Yol toor shul!"
The bridge trembled under Alduin's
Thu'um, but she felt no flame burning her flesh, nor even licking at her heels as they hit flat stone.
She whirled about to find Alduin circling away from the bridge, away from her. She wasted no time wondering why.
"
Joor zah frul!"
Her
Thu'um flew over the abyss and crashed into its target... but Alduin only flinched, faltering just slightly before righting himself and soaring into the cover of the fog.
His Voice could not reach her. And hers no longer had any effect on him.
She turned back to the Hall of Valor. It bore no signs of damage or disorder, no evidence that Alduin's corruption had touched it at all. Instead, it was everything the songs had said it would be. Built of the smoothest stone and the lightest wood, it rose half a hundred storeys into the sky, its windows aglow with golden light that promised warmth, and solace, and sanctuary.
And, she hoped, everything she needed to destroy Alduin.
* * * * *
The color that had been drained from Sovngarde was alive and thriving in the Hall of Valor. Everything golden flamed in the glow of the massive hearth that spanned half the hall, and everything stone took on the watery cobalt of the light streaming in through soaring windows. The countless figures milling about the long table were more vibrant than Galmar, but were made of the same delicate gossamer, thin enough to see right through.
For a moment, no one noticed her. They went on talking with one another in hushed tones, or gazing down into their jeweled goblets, or listening to the bard playing a mournful song on her lute. Then one man's gaze lit upon her, and his companion looked up to see what had distracted him, and the man behind her turned at her gasp. Soon every eye in the chamber was on her, and every voice had fallen silent. Some took to their feet while others stayed rooted to their seats, but every face shone with the same hopeful anticipation, the entire chamber holding its collective breath, waiting for her to speak.
A man came forward, his head held high and his shoulders squared, clad in a style of armor Annika had only ever seen in history books. He looked ready for battle, but what she could see of his face beneath the wilderness of his beard was warm and gracious. She stepped down into the hall to meet his approach.
"Dragonborn," he greeted with a slight bow. "Welcome to the Hall of Valor. Long have we awaited your coming."
"You know who I am?"
"Indeed. By Shor's promise, we knew a hero of the dragon blood would arise from the vale's deadly mist to deliver us from Alduin's torment. And here you are at last." He smiled, noble and proud. "I am Ysgramor."
Annika stared at the man for a long moment, her eyes wide and her mouth slowly falling open. Then she dropped to a knee and bowed her head.
"It is an honor, my lord."
Ysgramor laughed. "There is no need for that, my child."
"But there is," she replied in a rush of breath. "I was born and raised in Eastmarch, where you settled the first men on Tamriel. I live now in the very castle you and your Five Hundred built, and the man I love sits your own throne."
"The Dragonborn
and the consort of a Jarl?"
"He is not only a Jarl, my lord, but the rightful king. He means to wrest Skyrim back from the grip of elves, just as you did in your time."
"A fine match for one fated to wrest Skyrim back from the grip of dragons."
Annika rose, but her gaze fell from Ysgramor's in shame of her failure, until she remembered that he, too, had needed support to fulfill his purpose.
"That is my wish," she said, "but I fear I cannot do it alone. I have come seeking the ancient Tongues—Hakon One-Eye, Gormlaith Golden-Hilt, and Felldir the Old."
Ysgramor smiled once more before turning aside. Behind him, two men and a woman strode forth. They seemed smaller, somehow, than they had in her vision atop the Throat of the World. And yet these people had shaped her destiny, her very life. Had they not brought Alduin to battle, had they not cast him forward through time with the Elder Scroll, Annika would not have been the Dragonborn. She would not have had a dragon's soul, nor the weight of the world resting upon her shoulders. Ulfric would have had no reason to trust her, or need her, any more than he did anyone else.
They bowed to
her, these legends, these heroes, and laid their steel at her feet.
"
Dovahkiin," Gormlaith greeted. "Our Voices are yours to command."
"I am glad to hear it. Alduin has grown strong enough to resist my own, but with any hope, our Voices joined might be enough to bring him down."
"Just speak the word," Hakon said, "and with high heart we shall hasten forth to smite the beast. For a hundred lifetimes, my heart has burned for revenge too long delayed!"
Felldir held up a hand. "Patience, friends. We cannot rush blindly into battle. Alduin's mist is more than a snare; it is his cloak and shield. We must first Shout together to dispel it, and put to test our strength united, before we face our foe."
"We shall Shout," Gormlaith said, a smile stretching wide across her face. "And we shall prevail. The fields will echo with the clamor of war this day!"
She took up her sword, and the others retrieved their axes, though their expressions were grim instead of eager. Annika, however, did not draw her bow, but peered past the warriors to the rapt crowd beyond, seeking out a different weapon.
"Are there any other Tongues here who might add their Voices to that clamor?"
The heroes shared an ominous look.
"Those who would fight have already gone forth to do so," Hakon said, "despite Shor's behest to sheathe our blades and venture not the vale's dark mist. We three alone heeded his command."
Annika stared at him for a long moment, hearing the words he did not say in those he did.
"And those who would
not fight?"
It was neither Hakon nor Gormlaith nor Felldir who answered, but another man still seated at the table.
"They hold fast to their devotion to the Way of the Voice."
Hakon's features hardened in plain indignation. "Do not forget, old man—your way is not
our way. We find no honor in apathy."
The man rose, but kept his shoulders drawn, his back hunched, his hands folded together in perpetual supplication. His robes were the same simple roughspun as the Greybeards, his face the same collection of lines and somber tranquility.
"Trust and faith in the gods is not apathy," he countered. "And
they find honor in my way, else they would not have welcomed me into Sovngarde."
Annika had never seen a portrait of him—the Greybeards were too modest an order to allow such pride—but she knew him all the same.
"You're Jurgen Windcaller."
"Yes,
Dovahkiin."
Her lips tightened in what might have passed for a smile. "It should please you to know your successors won't lift a finger to help defend the world, either."
A laugh bubbled out of Gormlaith, and Hakon's eyes went wide with wonder.
"It is not our right to meddle with the will of the gods," Jurgen said. "Do not doubt that their hands guide the fate of the world. If they deem that fate is to end, it shall end. I would walk with the gods; would you stand against them?"
"I would use the gift they bestowed upon me. Why would they give me the strength and the power to defeat Alduin if it was not their will that I do so?"
"The Voice should be used to worship the gods, not to slight them with fancies that the savagery of killing brings them pleasure and glory. The very dragon who gave the Voice to mankind showed me this path, after he put aside his own destructive nature to take instead peace into his heart."
Hakon whirled about, once again seething. "Paarthurnax gave the Voice to
us, not to you—and he meant us to slay Alduin, not to sing songs to the skies until death came for us. Do not presume to know his heart better than we did."
"He was consumed by anger and hatred when he gave you the Voice," Jurgen said. "You knew naught of his heart, but for the bleeding shred that held the evil he sought to overcome."
"Paarthurnax gave me a gift, too," Annika cut in, her voice as hard as the gaze she pinned to Jurgen. "The gift of his soul."
They looked to her with naked horror, the Greybeard's calm broken by a sharp crackle of fury, the Tongues's tenacity fading under sudden grief. They had all loved Paarthurnax, and had likely thought him eternal. And he might have been. He might have lived forever, were it not for the destiny he so deeply believed was Annika's to fulfill.
"He waited atop the Throat of the World for millennia," she continued, "waiting for the chance to rid the world of Alduin for good and for all. And when he could not, he gave his life so that I might succeed where he failed. He gave his life in hopes that it would bring about the end of Alduin's. Do not for a moment think that he would counsel us to yield at this crucial hour." She swallowed hard and took several deep breaths to calm the fervor of her indignation—and Paarthurnax's. "You may all have known his heart, but I hold his soul within me—his anger, his sorrow, his guilt, and his longing for a peace we will never know while the World-Eater lives."
She strode past the Tongues, past Jurgen Windcaller, and stood before the other souls whose own heroics had led them there.
"Alduin made a grave mistake in coming to Sovngarde," she said to them. "In seeking power, he rallied the very men and women best able to fight him—the most valiant warriors Skyrim has ever seen. I am asking for your valor now. I am asking for your help, whether you wield Shouts or steel."
She swept her gaze over the crowd, hoping they would see the fire in her eyes, hoping it would kindle one in them.
"It is said that I am destined to defeat Alduin. I don't know if that is true prophecy or just desperate hope, and I don't know whether or not I will succeed. But I do know that I
cannot succeed if I do not try." Her breath hitched in her throat as she remembered Ulfric's words to Jorleif, words she had admired him for then, and would make her own now. "I would rather try and fail than lay down and let this evil destroy our world," she said. "Who amongst you is willing to do the same?"
The hall was still and silent. Few eyes were left on her; most had skipped away as she spoke, perhaps in fear that she might single them out, perhaps in guilt that they would not rise to her challenge. They stared down at their hands, or glanced around at each other, these heroes, Skyrim's supposed best. Annika's heart fell. Had she been so wrong to think that they would stand with her?
A figure rose slowly from the table. He was more a boy than a man, so young had he been when his life was taken from him, and though there was fear written on his face, so too was there hope, and spirit, and courage.
He stepped forward. "I will fight with you."
Another came forth, and another, and another, until more than half of the hall was standing before Annika. A scant few of them wore robes similar to Jurgen Windcaller's, but the Greybeard and the rest of his disciples remained in their seats, holding fast to their piety. They mattered little and less, and soon she could not see them at all beyond the crowd of brave men and women who
would fight.
Annika beamed back at them with a tremulous smile, and a teary haze over her eyes. She had her army.
"I thank you all," she said, "and should the gods see fit to restore me to Mundus when this is done, I will see that all of Skyrim thanks you, too."
She drew her bow, and at her cue the rest unsheathed their own weapons: at least two score swords, axes, maces, and bows, and a handful of Voices, all sworn to her and her cause.
"Alduin's doom is ours to seal," she declared, her voice ringing throughout the hall. "He is
not a god, and he is
not immortal; he bleeds the same as any beast. Today, we will make him bleed for every life and every soul he has taken! Today, we will reclaim our world for all those who will come after us!"
Her heroes answered with a cry of righteous fury and vengeance, and thrust their weapons high into the air. A thrill leapt up within her heart, and she swelled with the same confidence she imagined Ulfric felt when he led his own men into battle.
You are a warrior, and a leader, and a hero, he had once told her, and for the first time, looking out at those who would follow her into the final chapter of an ancient war, she believed it.
For the first time, she believed that she could triumph, that she could prevail, that she was, truly, the promised Dragonborn.
chapter 29: the world-eater
The valley was once again veiled in fog. A long, low roar echoed over it, shaking the bridge of bone beneath their feet. Annika tried to follow it, but it seemed to emanate from the air itself, above and below, ahead and behind, without beginning or end.
She stopped at the edge of the mist, the Tongues behind her and the rest of her army after them. Gormlaith bashed her sword against her shield with a snarl, and the others followed suit. The clang of steel on steel rang through Sovngarde, and beneath it, the low thrum of two score voices singing an anthem. She would not have understood the Draconic two moons ago, when Ulfric told her of the song that stole sleep from him the night he learned she was Dragonborn, but she knew every word now.
A day shall arise when the dark dragon’s lies will be silenced forever, and then, fair Skyrim will be free from foul Alduin’s maw... Dragonborn, be the savior of men.
Annika hoped Alduin would hear it, wherever he was. She wanted it to rattle his bones. She wanted him to know the fated hour was upon him at last.
She held her head high, and raised an arm to give the signal.
"
Lok vah koor!"
Their Voices sliced through the fog, and it melted away.
Annika's fingers tightened around her bow, her eyes swinging from one end of the horizon to the other. But there wasn't so much as a rustle in the grass or a shudder in the woods, only a few pebbles and stones tumbling down from the word wall on the hill ahead, and the slow swirl of the eerie clouds that choked the warmth from the sun.
Had Alduin fled yet again? She looked to the massive statues that had met her arrival, no bigger than her thumb from this distance, but there was no beam of light rising between them, no sign that the portal had been opened to allow Alduin to escape.
They waited, hearts hammering, breath held. A minute passed, then two, every second feeling like an hour, until finally Annika huffed a sigh and began to storm over the brittle grass.
"Let him hide," she muttered. "I'll find him myself."
She made it six strides before she felt it: a rumble beneath her feet, a shudder in the air.
Black wings burst up from behind the word wall, and Alduin shot towards her like an arrow.
The smoldering coals of his eyes locked onto hers, his jaw gaping and the razor edges of his fangs gleaming. The possibility of her death being be mere moments away, of losing both her body and soul in one fell swoop, suddenly became much too real. She went cold all over and her stomach churned with the urge to run, to hide, to find some other way back to Tamriel, some other Dragonborn to be the savior of men.
But it was too late for fear or doubts. It was too late to run. And there was no other Dragonborn. So she reached for the faith that had shone in Ulfric’s eyes every time they’d spoken of this moment, this battle she was born to fight.
The battle she was born to win.
"Now!"
“
Joor zah frul!”
Their Voices hit Alduin like a hammer, knocking him off course but not hindering the fire that flooded down to turn the world into blinding light. It licked at Annika’s face before she could throw her ward up against it, and even then it found her elbows and legs and breathed searing heat down her back as Alduin arced overhead and away, scorching the grass and leaving a third of her warriors ablaze.
As soon as the fire abated, she dropped her ward and drew an arrow. It sank into his underside, with half a dozen others right on its tail as her archers followed her lead. And then a thundering crash shook the ground, and Gormlaith, Hakon, and the fighters still standing charged for Alduin with a bellowing war cry. Annika joined her spells to Felldir’s and did what she could to heal the souls who had not already succumbed to the fire.
It took perhaps a minute for Alduin to shake off the weight of Dragonrend and take to the skies once more. This time they didn’t make of their Voices a snare, but a sword.
“
Fo krah diin!”
The beast bucked and snapped against the blizzard, but was quick to answer it.
"
Yol toor shul!"
Gormlaith ducked behind her shield, Hakon dove out of the path of the flames, and Felldir soaked them up with a ward. Annika took it full force, gritting her teeth against the pain as she readied an arrow, and her Voice once more.
"
Tiid klo ul!"
The world around her dragged almost to a halt, Alduin seeming to crawl in the sky. She nocked and loosed, nocked and loosed, sending arrow after arrow on a course straight and true, right to the dragon's heart. They sunk in between the sharp peaks of his obsidian scales, slow enough for Annika to see blood mist up around each shaft.
Time snapped back to its natural pace, and still Alduin flew. Still he breathed. Still he lived.
Back and forth the battle raged, a blur of fire and frost and wind, a din of Shouts and roars and cries. Each time the Tongues brought the beast down with Dragonrend, the warriors threw all their might at him while the archers shot arrow after arrow down from the word wall. They aimed where Annika had told them to—his eyes, his neck, the joints under his wings, the back of his throat when his jaws yawned open to release another torrent of fire.
But none of it made a difference. Alduin barely noticed the blades, the arrows, even the Voices, so feeble were they against his own. He withstood it all as he thrashed against his invisible binds, roaring and snapping and sinking his fangs into anyone brave and foolish enough to get within reach.
And still he survived.
He was too strong.
Annika lowered her bow, and dug deep into her mind, into her soul, into all the words she had never asked to know.
They are both your weapon and your armor against Alduin, Ulfric had insisted.
That is why Paarthurnax gave them to you.
And how would Paarthurnax wield these words? Paarthurnax, who condemned himself to isolation atop the Throat of the World precisely so he
wouldn't wield them. Would he cling to the goodness he spent so long nurturing within himself... or would he let it die so that Alduin might, too?
She looked to the sky. He would notice lightning ripping through his wings, shattering his scales, scorching his heart. He would feel it. He might fall to it.
But so would every soul in Sovngarde.
The dragon within her, lusting for power and prestige, whispered that they were nothing compared to what was at stake, that her soul was more than all of theirs combined, that she deserved to emerge victorious no matter the cost. What humanity she had left, desperate to survive and escape, whimpered that it might be her only chance, that it would not be her own life she was saving, but that of every man and woman in Skyrim, and every generation yet to come.
She had to do it.
Her lips parted, and she drew in a shaking breath.
And the words tangled in her throat, and hung there unspoken.
Her eyes dropped to find Alduin's locked on her, fire blazing behind them. His mouth curled back to bare his fangs, not in a snarl but a smile, before opening wide to do what she could not.
"
Toor mah lok!"
The frozen sun flickered out, the sky ripped open, and hell rained down on them.
A chunk of fiery rock hurtled down into a cluster of men still hacking at Alduin. Their screams were almost as harrowing as the sound of steel collapsing, of bones shattering beneath.
The rest broke rank, stumbling back from the flames that burst and spread, fleeing from those still rocketing down—but half were slammed into the scorched earth before they could clear the stretch of Alduin’s wings as he vaulted off the ground.
Light flared in the corner of Annika’s eyes, and she whirled in time to see three of her archers thrown from the cliff, fire trailing in their wake.
In mere moments the air was thick with black smoke, the sting of brimstone, and the cries of the dying.
Just like in Helgen. Just like in the the nightmares that had haunted her ever since.
But this time, she had an answer.
"
Lok vah koor!"
High above, the furious clouds shivered, slowed, but did not fade. The storm raged on.
Except around the Hall of Valor. The raining fire seemed to swerve away from it, just as Alduin had when she’d first approached it.
“Get back to the Hall,” she shouted to the remaining archers, already dashing down the hill. She raced past souls running wild in shock and fear, and called out to every one she could. “Fall back!
Fall back!”
Some heard her, and made for the bone bridge. She could not wait to ensure the rest followed.
She blinked against the burning air, her gaze digging through the plumes of smoke and flares of fire. There
was an answer to this nightmare—she just had to find them. And it wasn’t hard. They were the only ones standing still.
“Gormlaith!” The name tore up her throat and rang in her ears, yet was swallowed up in the roar of the storm. “
Gormlaith!
Hakon!”
She was nearly upon them when Gormlaith finally spun to her. Hakon only stared up at the chaos, his eyes wide, his face paler than even a spirit’s should be.
“We have to Shout together,” she cried, breathless. “Where’s Felldir?”
Gormlaith wiped a smear of blood from her face as she turned to hail the old man from where he knelt among the fallen. Hakon only shook his head, dazed, looking more like a lost little boy than one of the greatest warriors in Skyrim’s history.
“We struggle in vain,” he murmured. “Alduin’s might will never end.”
Annika stilled, and so too did her heart. His words echoed her thoughts, her fears, and they threatened to smother her—and then she remembered the Tongues’ last battle with Alduin, millennia past. She remembered this same storm beseiging the Throat of the World, Hakon howling as dragon fire consumed him.
This is how he died. How they all died.
Gormlaith grabbed his face and pulled it towards her.
“
His will,” she vowed. “
Ours won’t. Now Shout.”
Hakon blinked at her, at Felldir as he joined them. It wasn’t until he turned to Annika, the life amongst the dead, the future amongst the past, that he finally nodded.
They looked to the sky, and Shouted as one.
"
Lok vah koor!"
Their
Thu’um lashed out to the shattered sky, and stilled the clouds. The darkness lifted, the thunder calmed, and the fire stopped falling.
Annika went weak with relief, but it lasted only a moment before she tensed again. This was not victory, only a reprieve; it wouldn’t take Alduin long to summon another storm—or something even worse. Yet his Voice did not break the silence, nor did his shadow mar the sky.
The men and women at the valley’s edge stopped, turned, and gripped their weapons with revived resolve, and those on the bridge or already across it started back to fight once more. Their number was perhaps half of what it had been, yet those who prevailed were still willing to risk everything to bring Alduin down—if they could find him. It wasn’t until Annika stopped searching the swirling clouds that she realized the others weren’t.
She turned to follow their eyes, and there he was, perched atop the word wall. Despite being free to fly. Despite the binds of Dragonrend having broken what seemed like ages ago. Despite so many foes standing right before him, ready to attack.
Confusion swamped her mind for half a heartbeat, for the time it took for Alduin to cock his head and flaunt another smile.
And then she knew.
She sucked in a sharp breath, but the words left his mouth before they could hers.
“
Fus ro dah!”
The blow struck the air from her lungs and her feet from the ground. Annika and her army flew over the edge of Sovngarde, and into the abyss below.
chapter 30: victory with sacrifice
The souls flew as slowly as lazy summer bees, caught in the spell Annika had cast on time without feeling the words pass her lips.
The ribs of the bone bridge dragged by. Her hands lashed out for them, fingers fumbling on one before catching another. She saw other hands snag onto other bones. Hakon dangled from one, while Gormlaith clung to the sword she had buried into the ground before the blast hit. Felldir, though, flew too far from the edge, too far from the bridge, too far to reach.
He and so many other souls drifted down, down, down, sinking in water rather than falling through air, slow enough for Annika to see the terror twisting their faces.
Her legs thrashed below her, seeking purchase and finding none. Every muscle and tendon in her arms screamed as she hauled her weight up onto the bridge. She scuttled over the bones, panting, every breath drawn out into a sigh, until time pulled free of her
Thu’um. She threw herself onto the ground, and only when her hands hit the soil did she realize her bow was missing from them.
A snarling purr wrenched her heavy head up. Alduin's eyes caught hers, and burned brighter as she dragged herself to her feet, coughing against the smoke still rising up from the fires smoldering across the plain. He had come down from the word wall, but remained on the ground instead of taking to the sky—and why shouldn’t he? There was not much left there for him to fear.
He only laughed as Annika staggered forward, arms aching as she reached for a crude wooden bow someone else had lost, for one of the arrows miraculously still in her quiver.
"You are bold,
Dovahkiin," he said, "but a fool. You cannot best me, you must see that."
Her arrow slipped off its rest when something snagged against her boot. A gauntlet. An arm. A soul snuffed out, just like the promise of eternity in Sovngarde. Bodies lay strewn across the plain, pale and fading as they waited to slake Alduin’s hunger. Countless more had plunged to whatever fate awaited them at the bottom of the chasm. The handful left standing were as battered and breathless as she was, and the light that had shone so brightly in their eyes had gone out. Even Gormlaith and Hakon looked lost and defeated without Felldir at their side.
Alduin was right. She could not win this battle. Not with so few hands to help her. Perhaps not even with hundreds, or thousands. Ulfric had been wrong—
she had been wrong—to think that some prophecy made in an era long past by men long dead meant that she would do what so many others could not. That she would do the impossible.
Yet she could not give up.
Not when there was another way to end this.
She could pay for victory with sacrifice.
She could put aside her honor and integrity. She could embrace the darkness that lived inside her, so that others might cling to the light. She could, at last, let loose the evil that had made its nest in her heart when she was awakened as the Dragonborn... or perhaps it had been there all along, from the moment she'd taken her first breath.
So long ago, it seemed, Ulfric had tried to temper her fear of herself, to convince her that she had the strength to control the devastating power she had never wanted. He’d insisted that she had a choice—
a choice to be good, or to be evil.
What makes you so certain, she had replied,
that I'll make the right choice?
She had tried. She’d tried so hard to rein it in, to keep it caged, to deny it the blood it thirsted for. She’d tried so hard to make the right choice.
And the right choice had led her to defeat.
A low growl rumbled through Alduin, and his eyes narrowed with devious glee. He could sense it, Annika knew. He could feel the struggle between her human side and her dragon side. He could feel the malevolence within her, reaching up, reaching out, reaching for what she had too long withheld.
And he gave it something to grab onto.
"You have proven yourself a worthy adversary,
Dovahkiin… and that would make you a worthy ally." His jagged mouth curled up into a smile. "Join me."
Annika did not so much as blink. "Join you."
"Yes,” he hissed. “It was eras past for you but mere yesterdays for me, when the
joorre revered the might of the
dovahhe, and bowed to us instead of fighting against us. Join me, and together we will bring back that peace. We will take our rightful place beside the god that created us in his image. We will bring all of Tamriel to its knees in worship of us.”
She almost smiled. It was the same offer he had made to Paarthurnax. For all his insistence that he could not be defeated, Alduin certainly was eager to finish fights with a truce rather than a victory.
An alliance wouldn’t be a victory for her, either, but a concession for mankind, a trade of their freedom for their lives. The same trade they had been offered by the Empire, by the Dominion. The same trade Ulfric had been fighting so hard against.
But Ulfric had a chance to win his war. What did Annika have but a few arrows, a few words, a few disheartened heroes?
And her soul, burning to crush her spirit.
She had her virtue. Her empathy. Her humanity. So hard to hold onto. So simple to surrender. It would corrupt her, condemn her, change her irrevocably. Of that she had no doubt.
But it would save every other soul in Skyrim.
It would save Ulfric.
And it would be worth it.
Annika lowered her bow.
Alduin grinned and growled as she started towards him, her head hanging and her shoulders drooping under the weight of defeat.
Cries erupted behind her, pleas and prayers, demands and denials.
Dovahkiin, Dovahkiin, Dovahkiin.
She walked on.
“Perhaps you are wiser than I thought,” Alduin said. “Wiser than Paarthurnax and all the
dov who turned against me. Wiser than the imbeciles behind you whose Voices are but a whisper against the thunder of mine. Wiser than all the miserable mortals who thought to rise above their rulers.”
Annika stood before him, so close she had to look up into the searing embers of his eyes. She swallowed down the uncertainty wedged in her throat, blinked against the shroud of dread that hazed her eyes. A violent shiver seized her hands, her legs, her stomach, even as anticipation boiled through her.
Alduin sneered. “How you tremble,
Dovahkiin. How you doubt.”
“It is not an easy thing,” she replied carefully, “to surrender to something you’ve been fighting for so long. To take the path you swore you never would.”
“You will forget these misgivings once you have held
true power in your hands. Not the souls you stole, nor the
rotmulaag you found etched on rotting stones, but domination—the true birthright of the
dov.” His smile widened, darkened. “Take your first taste right here, right now. Prove to me that I can call you my
grah-zeymahzin, and let me prove to you that this is what you were made for.”
Her gaze flicked to the sky before she could hold it steady.
Tendrils of smoke seeped from the dragon’s mouth as he laughed. “You see? You already think like a
dovah. There is a darkness within you, as there is in all of us. Seize hold of the heavens themselves,
Dovahkiin, and let out that darkness. Join your Voice to mine and rid this realm of the
gaaffesejul who dared to resist my might.”
A volley of protests struck her back, and slid right off.
Their voices
were but a whisper, and she would not hear them now. They could stay and curse her, they could seek sanctuary in the Hall of Valor—it made no matter.
They made no matter. They were so few, and there were so many still in Skyrim, waiting to be saved.
When she first heard the prophecy that named her the savior of men, she hadn’t thought it would mean
this. She had never imagined that her greatest act of heroism would be to give in to the very thing she fought. To give up so much of herself. In all the songs and stories of her youth, heroes were noble, honorable, good. Heroes defeated evil. They didn't embrace it.
You have a choice—a choice to be good, or to be evil.
Right or wrong, she had made her choice.
Annika nodded, and closed her eyes.
She drew in a breath.
And let out the darkness.
"
Krii lun aus."
The words burned her throat, her tongue, her lips. Words that had both tortured her and tempted her, scared her and seduced her. Words she had resisted for so long, trying to rip them from her mind like a sliver from a finger. Now she knew how vain that had been. They threaded through her as though she’d been born with them carved into her heart.
When they crashed into Alduin, he reared back and choked on his own
Thu’um, his Voice lashing out in a wordless roar instead as he writhed and wilted.
And Annika smiled, as wickedly as he ever had.
Malice and cruelty and vengeance flared to life within her, a dying fire fed fuel. She didn't tamp it down, snuff it out, as she had at the inn in Ivarstead and the dungeons in Windhelm and every other time it had reared its terrible head.
This time, she embraced it.
It was hot spiced wine setting fire to her veins, the summer sun thawing the long winter from her skin, Ulfric driving her to the brink of passion. It was lust and laughter, rage and rapture, power and perfection. It was all of that and so much more, and it was
hers.
Alduin was right. Now that she held reins of this war, her fears and doubts fell away like brittle leaves. Now that she saw his strength waning, his body sagging, the infernal fire in his eyes dimming—and knew that
she had done it, that she could seize and stem life itself with but a few words—she felt as mighty as the gods.
Mightier.
No god had ever done
this.
The ground trembled when Alduin pushed off from it. With hands steadier than they had ever been before, Annika drew her stolen bow and loosed an arrow, then another, and another. The barbed bones sunk into the dragon’s underside, and he flinched and faltered before righting himself and tearing away.
She turned to follow and found Gormlaith and Hakon at her back, both fealty and fear in their eyes. She gave a single sharp nod, and they Shouted as one.
“
Joor zah frul!”
No dragon had ever fallen faster from the sky.
The Tongues were already barreling after him, along with the warriors that had not been lost to the chasm. Eight blades left to tear the beast asunder. Eight souls, as there were eight gods—and one mortal among them, greater than all the rest.
Her meager legion did their part, but she didn’t see them. She didn’t see the fires. The sallow grass. The roiling sky. She saw nothing but Alduin’s blood, as red as his scales were black. She felt nothing but thirst for it, and the thrill that swelled each time another rent opened to spill more. She heard nothing but the dragon’s yelps of pain, the sweetest music to ever sing in her ears.
Arrows flew from her fingers as effortlessly as breath from her lips, ripping into Alduin’s wings and neck and chest. But arrows wouldn’t slake her thirst. She wanted to skin him like a rabbit, feel that blood slicking her skin, hold his still-beating heart in her hands before crushing it to pulp.
She reached back for another arrow, but found an empty quiver. She might’ve panicked, once. Now she only smirked as she slung her bow over her shoulder. Perhaps she would have to use her hands after all.
Annika strode across the plain, through fading fires and over cold souls, her eyes locked on the prey that was weakening with every breath. She made it halfway there before Alduin saw her coming, and summoned what little strength he had left to throw off his attackers with one great thrash of his shredded wings, one wide swing of his ravaged neck. His jaw yawned wide.
“
Yol toor shul!”
The flames were not as bright as they had been, their heat not as hot. Yet at such close quarters the heroes were engulfed, their silken shells filled in with fire, the steel of their swords and axes turning white hot. They wailed and writhed as Alduin leapt into the air and careened away.
Annika let the souls burn, and the dragon fly.
It had come down to the two of them, as she’d always known it would. As she knew, now, that it should. This was a battle mere mortals could not hope to win—nor did they deserve to. This was a battle of the
dov.
The thread that tied their fates together pulled taut at last.
And now that it had, Alduin would break it. He tried to flee, but his bones were too battered and his wings too mangled to keep him aloft. He tumbled back down to the ground without Annika uttering a single syllable.
But then, she did.
She stalked after him, her Voice lancing out in frost, then fire, then a violent cyclone that foiled another sad attempt to fly away. When Alduin replied in kind, she cast a ward with both hands to snare and stifle his feeble
Thu’um. He could not touch her. Not anymore.
“
Dovahkiin,” he snarled. “Do not delude yourself that such a treacherous trick will spell my end. I am Alduin, firstborn of Akatosh!
I am eternal!”
Annika only looked at him for a long moment, at the cracked scales and split flesh and runnels of blood coursing their way down to feed the parched earth. And she smiled.
“No, you’re not.
Krii lun aus.”
This time the words slipped over her tongue like honey, made all the sweeter when they struck Alduin and choked a frantic howl from him.
He vaulted clumsily into the air. A laugh scratched at Annika’s throat as he pitched and tilted overhead, and when his Voice proved little more than a whine.
“
Ven mul riik!”
The fog gathered, swelled, blotted out the world before her, but could not mask the rolling rumble of a dragon crashing to the ground once again.
She turned to the sound, and whispered her own Thu’um.
“
Laas yah nir.”
A rich red glow bloomed through the haze, the rough shape of a dragon swaying, staggering. Dying. But not yet dead.
Annika followed the light with the languid gait of a sabrecat stalking a wounded deer. The fog shifted around her, baring slices of Sovngarde as she went. A brittle bush. A clutch of rocks. Here and there a fallen soul, vague and fading, too tenuous to appease Alduin’s hunger.
A brilliant blue leapt up against the palette of grays, pulling her eyes to the ground. The feather fletching of an arrow, dyed the color of a summer sky. The color of Eastmarch. An antic some Stormcloaks used to leave their mark on the Imperials they put down. Loosed and lost by one of the men killed in Markarth, perhaps, or any of the other bloody battles fought against the Empire. Annika’s hands clenched into fists. Even after death, the sons and daughters of Skyrim had to fight for their freedom.
The arrow was crafted of wood and steel. The weapon of man, of mortals, not of dragons or gods. It was beneath her, unworthy of her, a trifle in the shadow of the strength of her Voice.
But it was the war yet to be won. It was home. It was Ulfric.
She picked it up.
The rage coiled within her shifted, changed shape, lost its sharp edge of wanton cruelty and filled instead with noble purpose. Some tiny part of her, buried deep where no light could reach, grabbed onto it, rose with it, and whispered to her in Ulfric’s voice.
We also feel compassion, and joy, and love. As long as you have that, you have your humanity.
Her eyes stung and her chest ached as she stared at the blue feathers.
Until a smear of red jolted at the edge of her vision.
It wasn’t the soul of something ancient and evil that shrugged the bow from her shoulder. It wasn’t the will of the gods that guided her hands to draw the arrow. It was only instinct, fostered by years of hunger and hunting, by a lifetime of being human.
The embers of Alduin’s aura ignited. A searing blaze sliced through the fog and swallowed up the arrow that Annika let fly. The dragon streaked past, a blur of shadow there and gone again. A drag of wind staggered her in his wake, and a long, low howl trailed after him.
The ground shook and the air shivered with his crash, and the ruddy glow that bled through the haze guttered out.
Annika stood still, not breathing, not blinking, not feeling the burns that blistered her face and fingers. She only waited, and waited, and waited, for another roar that echoed only in her head, another flood of fire that never came.
Finally she followed the silence, the emptiness where Alduin’s rasping gasps and splintered snarls should have been. She found only the cold kiss of mist, the thick scent of blood hanging in the air, and her own heartbeat throbbing in her ears.
A candle flickered to life, small and smoldering, then bursting into a blaze that cut through the fog to needle her eyes.
And then the veil lifted, and Alduin’s body lay still and silent, darker than night against the sun of his soul.
The World-Eater was dead.
Black scales shed off like cold ashes blown from a hearth, rising slowly into the funnel of the clouds. Beneath lay not the pale bones of other dragons but a framework of black rot, the fallout, perhaps, of an eternity of dark deeds, of imbibing the souls of others to balance the lacking of his own. Soon even that crumbled and scattered to the phantom wind, drifting up and up and up before dissolving into nothing. All that remained was the pyre of Alduin’s soul, but instead of pouring into Annika, it too rose up and away, pulled by the snare of the sky above.
A sky that shifted before her eyes. The twisting clouds slowed, stalled, and faded away, taking with them their lurid reds and noxious purples to leave the sky a blue so deep it edged on dusk. A million tiny diamonds sparkled around a silver sun, making the heavens over Tamriel seem something painted by a blind man who had only heard stories of stars.
Below, the withered pines that peppered Sovngarde swelled as though taking a deep breath, their drooping branches suddenly strong, their lost needles reborn. Every blade of wilted grass flushed and flourished and every patch of barren earth ripened with verdure, turning dry plains into lush fields that glistened with dew and shone with sunlight. Flowers bloomed in a halo around Annika, velvet petals falling open to scatter shades and scents she had never before known.
This was the Sovngarde of the stories and songs, the paradise promised to the souls of valiant Nords, and Annika sighed, not for its beauty, but for its emptiness.
There was a shimmer across the valley. A shadow made of light. It crystallized into the shape of a man, and turned towards her, blinking, then beaming. A second was taking form beside him, a woman with a sword a shield and a smile as bright as the sun. And then another and another and another, manifesting from all the places their souls had fallen dark, until Sovngarde gleamed with gossamer and sang with sound.
They flocked to her, a beacon of life in this kingdom that came after. The Tongues reached her first, Gormlaith, Hakon, and Felldir, too, then all the others who had followed her into battle, and then faces she did not recognize… but for one, grinning under the growl of his bear’s head helm.
The Tongues thrust their blades high into the air.
“
Dovahkiin!”
Three voices became three hundred, three thousand. The chant rippled back and back through the crowd until all of Sovngarde echoed with her name.
“
Dovahkiin, Dovahkiin, Dovahkiin!”
Annika turned in a slow circle. They stretched as far as she could see, the souls that Alduin had stolen—the souls she had stolen back. Her eyes lit from man to man and woman to woman, all of them smiling, all of them crying her name like a prayer. She didn’t know she was looking for something until she found it.
A face so like her own, only a few years separating them now. Another, so much younger, but with the same eyes, the same lines sketching out her brow and cheeks and jaw, the same blonde braid hanging heavy over one shoulder. The years had left her memory of them faded and threadbare, no more than shaky silhouettes at the edges of her mind, but now, she knew them at once.
Sovngarde opened its doors for humbler heroes, after all.
Her hands fluttered up to reach for them, the mother who had died protecting her child, the child who’d followed only after meting out her own justice, and they broke the crest of the crowd to come to her—
But the world fell away, without moving at all. The pull was inside of her, a sudden momentum in her head and heart, a swoop in her stomach as though she were falling. She looked down to find light emanating from her core, growing brighter with every beat of her pulse, fading in just as it had faded out before.
“No,” she cried, “
no! Mother! Anya—!”
And then all of Sovngarde was light and silence, and Annika felt nothing but the tears scalding their way down her face.