P.S.
There will be another chapter at six in the morning today.
Just shh!…
Late Merethic Era.
More than 4500 years before the birth of the Last Dragonborn.
Falmeret / Skyrim.
A few seconds later.
Feator Kaslana.
To say I was stunned is to say absolutely nothing!
Because the beam of flame that erupted from the maw of Aldwin himself, motherfucker, had completely incinerated the entire hall where we had been feasting.
Fortunately, the prince had left the feast a little earlier, and there was still a chance that the Snow Elf people wouldn’t lose their leader in such a critical situation.
I couldn’t vouch for the monarch — he was away from his White Throne, which provided excellent protection to whoever sat on it.
Nevertheless, the Firstborn of Akatosh’s attack sobered all the mages in the city, and we grew somewhat accustomed to his oppressive presence.
As did the other elves in the city, so soon a whole elemental hell flew at the single target, tearing at the huge black carcass and nearly obscuring it in flashes of flame, lightning, and ice.
But it was visible to the naked eye that Aldwin wasn’t particularly worried about this, fixing his gaze on our group, which had instantly split up.
We didn’t need all of us taken out by a single salvo.
Especially since we did have a plan for a dragon attack, even if we hadn’t counted on such a powerful enemy.
However, I’m sure my comrades came up with the same modification of it…
But the Bane of Monarchs, who had probably already killed one such, wasn’t going to pick any one of us.
“Fus…” at that moment, our archer sent a glowing arrow into his maw.
But unlike the other children of Akatosh, Aldwin didn’t stumble over his speech, only turning his horned head back: “Ro-Dah!” The world slowed down.
I sped up.
The River of Time was habitually called upon once again.
But I didn’t notice any difference in Aldwin’s speed, and that made me seriously nervous.
Could the firstborn of the God of Time also…
The next moment, I only avoided being sent flying by a miracle, literally driving my blade into one of the trees growing in the garden I was running through.
Yes, growing.
Because after Unrelenting Force as performed by Aldwin, all of them were uprooted, including mine.
So I had to somersault in the air and somehow land on the ground, barely avoiding landing on my ass.
That would have been shameful, yeah.
And who cares that the opponent here is the toughest you can possibly imagine.
“Jiid!
So!
Daan!” And then I felt like that Dragonborn at the beginning of the game, when that huge thing flies in and looks at you like shit.
And on top of that, it throws huge, motherfucking, flaming rocks!
The capital and the mages suddenly had no time for Aldwin.
Because there were dozens of stones, and they ignored all magic in their path, stopping only against particularly sturdy buildings.
Essentially, a game of cat and mouse had begun, where we were the mice, having killed dozens of dragons before.
Oh, I hope this black monstrosity is so enraged that it wants to kill us personally.
Because if it starts resurrecting dragons — and I couldn’t object to them being brought to the capital — oh…
Then we’re absolutely fucked.
What would I have told the prince?
That Auri-El appeared in a dream and said his son could resurrect his younger brothers?
Yeah, right.
They’d believe me.
Everyone knows that Auri-El’s revelations only come down to archbishops, not to First Swords.
They’d probably suspect me of serving a Daedric Prince, as sure as anything…
Or the investigation would take too long — right up until Aldwin’s arrival.
A fly being swatted with a flyswatter.
That’s what I felt like during these incredibly long seconds.
“Uh, fu…” escaped my lips when several fiery meteors landed right on the roof of a house I was running past.
Causing a significant part of it to start collapsing toward me.
Fortunately, in my current perception, this was a fairly slow process, and I managed to get my feet out of there, desperately thinking about how I could…
Win?
Seriously, did I start thinking about that?
Defeat this killing machine, which was methodically picking apart the defenses of Falmenor, a city almost equal to Alinor, the capital of Summerset?
Probably only the White-Gold Tower in the center of Cyrodiil, currently under the control of the Ayleid witch-kings, is more fortified.
Hmm…
A year ago, I wouldn’t have even dreamed of such stupidity.
And now, apparently, I was inspired by killing dragons, when it was clear that if they stopped being so arrogant, we’d be done for.
And apparently, the eldest son of the chief god of current and future pantheons turned out to be somewhat smarter than his younger brothers, attacking at full power.
He’s hardly holding back now, otherwise people would have no way to defeat him in canon at all.
And if I really go into the weeds and start thinking about how the reality around me is as far from games based on historical events as possible…
then all my foreknowledge can be flushed down the toilet.
So we grit our teeth and hope for the best.
…And it all comes back to how to knock that Khoni out of the sky.
Well, the only thing that will help here is his daddy’s bow, since Aldwin couldn’t care less even about five-meter icicles that just shatter against his light-absorbing black scales.
There…
Another volley — and another tower literally melts under the pressure of divine flame at a terrifying temperature.
Now I understand what the inhabitants of Lake-town felt when Smaug dropped by for a visit.
And added a little more fire…
Yeah, no matter how majestic and beautiful creatures dragons might be, in reality they turned out to be nothing but bloodthirsty beasts that need to be killed, killed, killed.
And killed!
To paraphrase the words of one great man, a good dragon is a dead dragon.
The scaled ones are certainly bigger than goblins, but their level of reasonableness is about the same.
So long live the good old slaughter!
I have a feeling the Tsaesci and I will get along, if I live long enough to meet them.
“Earwen!” I called out to the elf, veering straight toward her.
I spoke deliberately slowly to synchronize the flow of time for her and for me.
Yes, all this time I’d been trying to catch up to her, as she too weaved wildly through the streets trying to avoid the dragon’s bombardment.
“First Sword!” she nodded curtly, knocking down another meteorite with an arrow from her bow.
“You’re more experienced than me…
So…” she paused, dodging debris from Aldwin’s attack along with me.
“Give the orders!” Now it was her turn to rattle off in her own time stream so I could hear her in mine.
We’d practiced this well, both in the palace and in battles against dragons.
“Not that I’m more experienced…” I muttered under my breath, quickly starting to think.
“I’ll explain everything later, there’s no time!
Try to hit his wings during the next mage attack!
First the left, then the right!
We have to bring him down to the ground, at any cost!” If I’d learned anything from the dozens of dragon battles that had swept by like a rapid wave over these past few months, it was that we couldn’t let them use the advantage of flight.
Our strong mages can fly too…
But there’s no cover in the air, and nothing blocks Aldwin’s gaze.
“Understood!” the girl said briefly.
She should have at least a rough idea of my plan…
Right, now for the second candidate to bring the beast down.
At the very least, she’ll serve as a diversion.
I’d never complained about my memory, which is why my path now led toward our resident archmage, who had wisely hidden himself and conserved his strength, seeing how useless the magic of the other elves was.
He’s his own man, and generally lives in a somewhat different world than we do, but you can’t deny the archmage has brains.
Complete idiots don’t get such ranks when you have a mass of competitors.
This is Skyrim in the Fourth Era, after all, when there was only one wizard of such power in the entire province.
Pushing myself to the limit, I tried to make as much use of the River of Time as possible.
It wasn’t a conscious, carefully calculated action…
More like an animal instinct, a primal desire to influence the time around me even more.
In this state, it was much easier for me to play the part of an extreme parkour artist, jumping across collapsing rooftops and dodging gifts from the sky.
Aldwin’s eternally powerful Shout couldn’t hold, and the onslaught of falling fiery boulders gradually weakened.
“Eregion!” I gasped, even using the River of Time, catching the attention of the long-haired archmage.
“Left wing!
During the next defenders’ attack!” “Understood.” Having been convinced over our battles that I actually had gray matter in my head, the mage didn’t argue, beginning to prepare his magic.
“Here, you’ll need this more.” Catching the vials of stamina-restoring potions, I nodded gratefully.
Using them in such quantities would cause a backlash, but surviving comes first — I can worry about my health later.
Tch!
Why haven’t mages invented portable magic phones, or at least radios?
It would make things so much easier…
But no, we only have stationary communication devices between cities, which you can’t exactly use to coordinate the defenders’ forces.
If I had communication with all the city’s mages right now, we’d bring Aldwin down to the ground in no time, executing my plan on a larger scale — that is, distracting him with magic that works like a sort of flashbang, plus arrows from Auri-El’s Bow, which can pierce the World-Eater’s scales.
Twisting like a circus acrobat and leaping over a fallen section of wall into the gap between it and a long white stone column that had collapsed right after, I surged forward again.
Oh, my lungs are about to burst, but…
I’m the only one here who can properly coordinate the actions of the elven people’s strongest warriors.
I’m basically the fastest messenger.
Just don’t die at the end, like that Greek who brought news of the victory at Marathon.
“Fingolfin!” I called out, completely dropping formality.
No time for pleasantries, and this man would be the last to reproach me for it now.
“If everything goes as planned, we’ll drop him to the ground!” “Understood.” The warrior understood me at half a word.
“I’ll land four blows on the shield.
That’ll make fourteen…” “Understood.” I returned the word, perfectly remembering that Auriel’s Shield accumulates charges from blows.
And the stronger they are — but no more than fifteen separate ones — the more impressive the counterattack will be.
Catching the shield he threw to me, I immediately assumed a stance, instantly taking four powerful blows from the guard commander, then returning the weapon to him.
In a game, they’d call this kind of trick an exploit of mechanics, but in reality, it’s called the effective use of a powerful and extremely ancient royal family artifact.
My words were also noted by the girls, Vaysi and Zilvana, who, following the original plan of scattering and then gathering the melee fighters at one point, had also ended up here.
…We didn’t have to wait long.
The city’s mages took another swig of magicka-restoring potions and once again hit the dragon with all their might.
The black beast was roasting the magical shield of the palace’s right wing and practically ignoring the return fire…
Falling into the trap of its own overconfidence once again.
Having decided that if Auri-El’s Bow hadn’t disrupted its Shout, then it was completely useless.
But Earwen didn’t stop at one arrow, drawing another at a furious speed.
I’ve seen how she can work at full speed.
Pistols are left quietly smoking on the sidelines.
A-a-and, my simple plan worked!
A series of powerful light explosions, plus a few icicles from Eregion, didn’t destroy Aldwin’s wing…
But they twisted it into an unnatural position, preventing him from flapping his wings with the same balance.
And so, like a wounded bird, the giant reptile’s carcass crashed down somewhere near the city gates.
Without hesitating for a moment, we rushed straight toward where the divine dragon was already rising from its belly, casually incinerating a significant portion of the buildings and elves around it.
Not the most pleasant sight, but right now my brain was focused only on the giant beast, towering considerably over us.
A beast we were now fearlessly charging at, the three of us, surely making the World-Eater question our sanity.
However, he quickly demonstrated that his brain wasn’t absent, not waiting for ultra-close combat.
“Fus-Ro-Dah!” he bellowed quite promptly, but our ranger had gone around the side and wasn’t hit, while we…
Vaysi and I huddled directly behind Fingolfin, who thrust Auriel’s Shield forward, taking the fifteenth and final blow.
It blazed with a bright golden light.
Sensing something was wrong, the giant reptile tried to pull back — but it was too late.
We were too close.
A powerful shock shook the ground beneath us, forcing us to balance on our feet…
But Aldwin had it worse.
He couldn’t block the direct effect of his father’s artifact, and our rather cheated item released all the power of several meteor strikes, Fingolfin’s full-strength blows, and, as the cherry on top, a full-power blast of Unrelenting Force from the strongest of Akatosh’s children.
…From such a counterattack, the black reptile even rose onto its hind legs, spreading its wings to the sides to keep from completely losing its balance.
“Insolent mortals!” the black-assed one exclaimed in a rather clichéd phrase — may the Redguards forgive me — but genuine surprise was indeed audible in his voice.
The pose was…
ambiguous, to say the least.
Fortunately, he couldn’t continue talking with more dangerous words.
With a precise shot straight into the dragon’s neck, Earwen managed to finally topple him, not to mention the magic that struck such a beautiful target again.
However…
Our triumph didn’t last long.
Because as soon as we rushed forward, intending to press the advantage, three syllables came from his prone position, making my eyes widen in shock: “Tiid-Klo-Ul!” The world slowed down.
Aldwin sped up.
Our temporal anomalies collided with each other, flaring with the most powerful emanations, creating temporal fluctuations.
In one moment, Fingolfin was beside me; in the next, he was ten meters behind.
Twisting like a snake, accelerating even faster than me, the dragon ignored my direct blow to its snout, which left only a small notch on its head, which was the size of me.
And a moment later, it tried to bite my head off…
I dodged, of course — I’m smaller, after all — and managed to partially negate its jaw’s lunge with a fireball…
But continuing its movement and jerking its head forward even harder, the dragon knocked me back a dozen meters with an almost gentle nudge of its nose, immediately preparing to breathe fire.
Fortunately, I wasn’t kicking this beast solo.
And the arriving Fingolfin took the blow, fully absorbing it with Auriel’s Shield.
“Foolish mortals.
Using the Father’s power against the son?
Pathetic measures,” the Scourge of Kings spoke in a rumbling, vibrating voice in our language.
“Buy me time,” I whispered to the guard commander.
“A temporal displacement of cause and effect…” “May Auri-El be with you,” the man said just as quietly, thus wishing me luck.
Still, this method of controlling the blessing of the aforementioned Aedra isn’t so easy for me to activate.
And if I mess it up, which has happened sometimes — I’ll be left with nothing, not an ultimate attack.
I abruptly assumed an unusual stance, unsuitable for normal strikes, with my sword pulled back and its tip pointed directly at the enemy.
My left hand rested on the hilt, gripping it firmly, while my right hand grasped the end of the same hilt, squeezing it tightly.
Again, an impossibly uncomfortable position, but not for what I’m about to do.
Fortunately, Aldwin didn’t pay me any attention, continuing to eagerly try to break through the almost perfect defense of his daddy’s artifact, casually swatting away the magic hitting him.
I managed to signal our archer, and she kept a low profile.
But Zilvana continued climbing onto one of the few remaining tall, undestroyed buildings, intending to drop her alchemical concoction right onto the wings of the dragon, who was in no hurry to take off again.
Focus.
Remember the words of the God of Time himself.
Feel the River of Time.
Dive into it headfirst.
And let it submit to me!
The world froze.
For a tiny fraction of a second, for an elusive moment…
But the principles of time’s flow changed, yielding to the conduit of the power of the Lord of Time and a descendant of one of reality’s primary entities.