The flow of Time reversed.
Cause and effect swapped places.
A wound was inflicted.
And only then did the blow follow.
One of the dragon’s two horns suddenly snapped off.
The blade in my hands shattered into pieces.
The bones of my right arm broke in a dozen places.
And the temporal flow realized that something had happened that contradicted the entire reality created by the Aedra of Nirn.
So it tried to restore the usual course of time on its own, adjusting the temporal framework to the desired ideal.
Thus, I instantly found myself above the frozen dragon’s snout.
The world unfroze.
The divine dragon, suddenly roaring beneath me, sharply jerked its head, flinging me to the side and carving a scratch above its right eye.
I managed to curl up, but the pain from hitting the ground and rolling across it didn’t pass without a trace.
I instantly felt like a beef patty.
Everything…
literally everything in me was screaming about its injuries.
My nerves were howling, sending signals to my brain and making me grind my teeth as if I were once again a man with an untrained pain threshold who’d ended up at the dentist without anesthesia.
“Gr-r-r…” I managed to get to one knee, growling, remembering my training.
To reduce pain, you need to distract your brain from it.
With strong emotions, for example.
Forcing my gaze up, I began to watch the battle.
A somewhat disoriented Aldwin was being kicked by five people.
Fingolfin was desperately tanking all the powerful blows, not using his full skill, but also not allowing the dragon to use its Shouts to destroy the other members of the Dragon Slayer group.
Earwen decided to show her worth, disrupting the dragon’s aim whenever it tried to Shout past Auriel’s Shield, while also preventing the black reptile’s wing from recovering.
Her help in this battle was simply invaluable.
Then vials of potent poison flew down from above, being drawn into the reptile’s powerful nostrils — Zilvana had finally reached a convenient position with her sizable bag.
Vaysi, who wasn’t playing the proud fool she’d never been, was passing vials of Magicka Restoration potions to the archmage.
Thanks to this, the archmage, chugging them like there was no tomorrow, managed to maintain a sufficient pressure of freezing cold around Aldwin, preventing him from using his speed advantage even with his Shout.
Not to mention that the remaining city defenders had finally arrived at the battlefield and, forming a semicircle from the city side, began helping to freeze the beast.
It seemed, it seemed…
Everything was going relatively well.
It seemed that hundreds of not-weak mages could overcome a strong, but still not unkillable — like some Daedric Prince — dragon.
…But as was already clear, it only seemed that way to us.
For a moment, our eyes met.
A brief, in any other second meaningless, eye contact.
But…
It was enough to make me flinch like an impressionable child.
It…
Makes you freeze.
Freeze, forget that you need to breathe.
In that moment, he proved to me that this creature shouldn’t be compared to some pathetic game counterfeit, a fake of a true monster among monsters.
One who truly has the potential to devour all souls in Nirn and, in the end, even consume himself.
And he understood that I understood.
I don’t know how I saw it.
But instead of hatred, his gaze was…
Ordered.
Calm.
Calculating.
In that brief moment, I didn’t want to think about how that fit together.
I just wanted to lose consciousness like a pampered maiden, just to get as far away from him as possible.
Understanding came instantly.
Dragons were among the last beings of the Dawn Era.
The era of eternal wars between omnipotent beings.
And he was its veteran.
A survivor.
A god-killer.
A soul-devourer.
One who can only be killed by the spiritual descendant of Lorkhan, Padomay.
And I…
I’m closer to what stands before me now.
Closer to a descendant of Auri-El.
And I was planning to defeat this…
What a fool.
I must…
Submit…
Accept the higher will of a distant relative…
…Is that what you wanted to hear from me, you stupid reptile?!
In the dragon’s crimson eye, a familiar feeling flickered for a moment.
Anger.
Anger that some elf had rejected the offer-command of the Firstborn of Akatosh.
Pride once again took hold of Aldwin.
And, eating away at him from within, it forced him to manifest all his fury into reality.
And I had no time to react.
The world slowed down.
I sped up.
…And I still couldn’t make it.
An incredibly long second flashed by, and then, as if in slow motion, a powerful Fus-Ro-Dah completely demolished the building on which Zilvana, who had been about to throw another set of vials, was standing.
Tons of marble and steel flew to the ground, burying the girl’s figure, which had lost its concealment.
With an equally swift lunge, Aldwin’s snout turned toward Archmage Eregion.
“I am flame.
I am Death!” the black dragon growled, his voice rasping.
The flame that flared in his maw swiftly reached the wizard, who hadn’t had time to react.
His magical shield couldn’t handle the brightest stream of fire, which was literally broken through by raw power, and Eregion himself, burned, was thrown awkwardly onto a protruding sharp stone shard.
Blood sprayed into the air from his pierced chest.
Centuries of experience were nothing against overwhelming power.
Then the black beast’s gaze fell on Vaysi, making me snarl and raise my left hand.
Together with the volleys of the remaining city mage-defenders, we somehow managed to disrupt Aldwin’s aim, and the girl was only caught by a glancing blow.
But it was still unpleasant, because even though I didn’t hear the crunch of the Knight-Paladin captain’s skull bones, a concussion was guaranteed.
Angered by our combined magical strike, which even seemed to have dented the scales on the side of his snout, the World-Eater swept a prolonged blast of fire across the targets behind me…
And almost immediately, a Fus-Ro-Dah slammed the archer, who had been aiming at the dragon, into a wall.
The arrow of Auri-El that had been loosed at that moment was simply swept away clean by the Unrelenting Force, perfectly embodying the name of that Shout.
Then Fingolfin, stricken by the swift deaths of his comrades — with whom he had spent entire months exterminating, as it turned out, the murderers of his daughter and three grandchildren — screamed in fury and launched a suicidal, completely useless attack.
He should have retreated, withdrawn, regrouped…
But the greatest warrior, for the first time in all the time I’d known him, decided to lose his composure.
Aldwin tried to swat him away like a fly with his wing, but spinning in place, the guard commander of the dying kingdom deflected the blow with a powerful swing of his arm bearing Auriel’s Shield.
Charged to full again by the many previous attacks of the World-Eater, it literally twisted the reptile’s limb.
This allowed the commander of our squad to reach the lowered head of the Firstborn of Akatosh.
And then a demonstration of all his skill began.
Even with the River of Time activated, I could barely keep up with his countless swings, which began to tear at the chin of the scaled monster.
“Dir,” Aldwin growled weightily, ignoring the blade of the bastard sword that scraped across his scales…
He sank his giant teeth into Fingolfin’s body, piercing his armor.
In some places, the Scourge of Kings’ teeth slid across Auriel’s Shield, but it didn’t affect the overall effect of his bite.
Lifting his head to the sky, Aldwin began to shake it like a shark, tearing the greatest of warriors’ body in two, while also sprinkling his own scales with elven blood.
“Gr-r-r…” For a few moments, we stared at each other, locked in an invisible duel.
The mages, fallen silent behind me, didn’t dare interfere as the truly divine beast approached me almost point-blank.
Run, or fall onto my back to get as far from the dragon’s maw as possible?
Yeah, right.
I didn’t train this much just to die a shameful death.
If I’m going to die a second time, I’ll do it with style.
…But instead of a quick bite, it started…
Talking.
“I hate you, mortal.
You caused me pain.
You turned the Father’s power against his son,” he began, with rumbling notes, shifting his head slightly and looking at me with his right eye.
At that moment, I felt like Bilbo Baggins in front of Smaug.
“And what of it?” I said, banishing fear.
“But you also taught my younger brothers an important lesson.
A lesson that the Father is no longer on our side.
That the Father has abandoned us,” the unexpectedly talkative Firstborn of Akatosh said without moving.
“Their memory is short.
So they need someone to remind them that only I, and only I, can save them from the mortals chosen by the Father.
He must have decided to use you as a tool to show us our weakness.
But I will destroy this plan of his as well.
You will live, elf.
I took your triumph.
I took your comrades.
I took your female.
I took your city.
I avenged every murder of my brothers, I avenged every wound of mine.
But you will live.
Live, realizing that you have lost everything.
And when you become disillusioned with my Father, you will crawl to me on your knees, mortal mer.
And you will become my faithful slave.
My priest.
But until then…
Serve as a frightening bogeyman for my disobedient brothers!
Fasnu Falil!
Zam Borma!” Flapping his two gloomy wings sharply and sending tons of frosty dust into the air, the giant dragon’s carcass soared into the sky, into the cold.
Into the clouds.
Into the heavens.
…Casually noting that the reptile’s wings had healed during its own speech, I collapsed onto my back in relief, spreading out like a starfish on the frosty grit.
I bared my teeth, somehow turning my head toward Vaysi’s hand, clenched into a fist.
You were wrong about one thing, Shadow of the Ancient Ages.
You didn’t take everything from me.
But for everything else, for everything else…
Oh, that’s an idea!
Hee-hee…
Heh-heh-heh…
Yes, a wonderful idea!
I’ll give you to good Uncle Sheo as a lapdog.
Where you’ll be fed cheese instead of mortal souls.
Oh ye-e-e-es, that will be a magnificent, unforgettable revenge!
Right.
Stop.
And what’s that nasty giggling in my ears?
The voice doesn’t sound like mine…