The world slowed down.
I sped up.
At that moment, Ysgramor didn’t get stuck in a viscous mass like the giants, but his movements became noticeably more readable.
Still, even so, there was no time for a fire or ice enchantment on the blade.
So I used another, much faster and even more useful in my situation.
Lightning danced along the flamberge’s blade, gradually taking on a golden hue — Auri-El’s blessing continued to interfere with my magic, complementing and strengthening it.
Amazing!
I even became…
Somehow faster?
Or is Ysgramor slower?
Either way, I managed to evade a diagonal swing of the axe and deliver my own swift thrust, forcing the enemy to lean back instead of launching another attack from the lower sector.
The flat surface of the axe blocked the tip of my sword, but I, skillfully maneuvering the blade, jerked it downward, and with the sound of metal scraping against metal, I tried to hit his fingers, even if just a glancing blow.
A-a-and…
A sharp gust of wind, appearing right next to him, slightly deflects the tip of the flamberge, preventing it from hitting the vulnerable part of his arm.
“Troublesome one…” I muttered discontentedly, jumping back from a horizontal swing of the axe.
Yeah, the Harbinger of Men truly fits the definition of a Serious Enemy.
So it’s time to use what Ysgramor doesn’t fully command.
Magic.
Kyne’s blessing, like mine, isn’t absolute.
So a volley of lightning bolts went to dance along the stern Skyrim Viking’s beard, and I launched into a carefully calculated attack, designed with a couple of feints to distract from a specific part of his body I intended to wound.
The clang of colliding metal became much louder, and if my blade began to, ahem, float like a butterfly and sting like a bee, Ysgramor masterfully wielded his axe, using its haft to the fullest.
Even though my enemy’s weapon was unwieldy, the Harbinger managed to make the minimum of movements to block most of my strikes.
He had to dodge some, but the wind helped him greatly there, literally pushing his massive bulk in the right direction.
Or hindering my blade in moments particularly dangerous for Ysgramor.
Overall…
In terms of skill, I slightly surpassed him, but experience somehow ended up on his side.
Apparently, he didn’t stop the civil war in Atmora with peaceful words, but quite literally with this axe.
He hadn’t wielded it before, after all — our scouts at least knew that much before the Night of Tears.
Consequently…
That canonical legend about his tears and the appearance of the axe is true?..
Yes, most likely.
However, enough admiration for my opponent, Feator.
You still have to defeat him without killing him.
Otherwise, my foreknowledge, which is practically an ultimate weapon for a transmigrator, will go flying out the window.
Which I still need, yeah.
“Tch…” escaped me resignedly, and I barely stopped myself from rolling my eyes at the last moment.
This little bastard is testing my patience.
How, just how can he deflect my weapon at the very last moment?
I did everything, dammit!
I bypassed his defense, bypassed his impossibly enchanted armor, intended to inflict a deep cut, but only got a scratch.
This!
Is!
Not!
Funny!
No, I understand that I’m also pretty annoying to my opponent, who hasn’t landed a single scratch on me, but still…
It’s one thing to dodge, and another when a successfully executed attack is negated by, essentially, some automatic defense system.
Ysgramor is hardly controlling the swirling wind currents around him.
Apparently, Kyne really, really dislikes the one using the power of Auri-El, who killed her husband Lorkhan.
Though he was asking for it.
He shouldn’t have deceived everyone and everything.
Deception doesn’t even suit the creators of the world.
Meanwhile, as we tried to inflict at least some serious wound on each other, the battle around us continued.
The Paladins clashed and fell back against the Companions, not particularly eager to trade one of their lives for a single human one.
The people might have wanted to try something similar, but the enchantments on their armor didn’t protect the exposed parts, and the magic of the Knight-Paladins was still with them.
So instead of a brutal slaughter, there were only a few groups of warriors fighting with maximum caution.
“You’re skilled, elf.
But in the end, you’ll fall just like the rest.” The man’s eyes flashed, once again drawing my attention.
His voice began to slow down, but the Aedric energy concentrating around him I really didn’t like.
If Auri-El strengthened his presence within me, enhancing the River of Time, then our enemies are doing something similar.
…A swing.
The horizontal swing of the axe never reached my body.
But I was literally…
Blown away from the spot.
An air gust lifted me almost like a feather and threw me back, tearing me from the ground.
Fully twisting in the air, I managed to land on my feet, only to, right before my nose in even more slowed-down time, evade a swing — Ysgramor’s winds literally pushed him at me, accelerating his lunge to an impossible speed.
Auri-El, clearly not wanting me to lose, likewise applied his control over time, allowing the River of Time to affect my time even more strongly.
This is no longer a battle of mortals, but a settling of ancient Aedric accounts with our modest assistance, honest word!
Time slowed down so much that the warriors fighting around us turned into sleepy flies, whom I could, in this state, cut down by the dozens like blind kittens.
Experienced, skilled, damn it, warriors.
Ysgramor himself wasn’t always as fast as I was under the River of Time, but all his swings and body movements were accelerated by the Storm swirling around us.
Thus they reached speeds, in theory, sufficient to hit my body even in this state.
…An instant.
We abruptly accelerate again for everyone around, colliding at insane speeds.
Even the clang of metal is inaudible due to the peculiarities of the temporal anomaly covering my body, and the raging winds, whose sound alternately slowed down and sped up.
Involuntarily, we shifted from the main battlefield towards the forest, proceeding to actively demolish it.
I held nothing back and chopped the flamberge straight through tree trunks, felling them like butter, while Ysgramor’s spinning attacks literally tore fir trees out by the roots, forcing me to work as an acrobat.
Part-time, yeah.
Second followed second.
Blow after blow.
Golden lightning sparking along my sword.
The furious winds surrounding his axe.
I spent all my magic on rare lightning strikes, weakening the winds around my opponent, and recharging the lightning on the flamberge itself when I had to grip its hilt with both hands to deflect particularly fast axe blows.
Because I had this feeling that my blade was holding together solely due to the Aedra’s power, supplementing my magic.
Probably, from the outside, we must have looked like some kind of demigods, impossible for mere mortals to defeat.
Perhaps that was the case — the Aedra turned out to be more emotional beings than I had imagined.
In the games, they didn’t particularly show themselves, unlike their antagonists — the Daedra.
However, for me, all this was happening at a slower pace.
Like in slow motion, trees, their branches, unlucky squirrels flew by…
And in all this, we fought as if at speeds comparable to ordinary people.
That’s not the case, but it helped my perception and reaction immensely.
I don’t think I could have reacted to a tree flying at the speed of a race car.
Any limits on the River of Time’s effect were completely exceeded.
Auri-El didn’t care about the restrictions he himself had imposed.
Ysgramor and I…
Were like…
Like we were turning into apostles, direct incarnations of Time and Light, Storm and Winds.
No matter how I felt about borrowed power that didn’t fully belong to me, breaking that connection now would mean instant death for either of us.
So we continued to fill ourselves with Aedric power, forcing the very space of Nirn to bend and submit to the will of the Gods who had once created that space, sacrificing their own power.
☼+…De..iver, the..
Decei..er’s cho..en one!+☼ I was almost thrown off balance by a voice that rang out in my head, and a rather familiar one at that.
But it seemed the echoes of some speech reached Ysgramor too, since he didn’t take advantage of the lucky opportunity.
But it was only a second.
A long second in our conditions, but a second.
The battle resumed, my skin began to glow faintly with golden light, and the Harbinger of Men’s beard seemed to consist of overly material winds.
An unfortunate bear that crossed our path didn’t even have time to squeak before my lightning passed through it, and then Ysgramor’s axe, still advancing on me, smashed it.
Maybe from the outside it looked like he was chasing me like a mangy dog, but in reality…
With all due respect to Ysgramor’s skills, the supporting deities played a bigger role in our fight now.
And Auri-El was stronger than Kyne.
He has control over the fundamental aspect of Nirn — time.
And here, he is king and god, as they say.
So…
I was faster.
Swifter.
More agile.
The light scratches from sharp wind currents on me were nothing compared to the deep cuts on Ysgramor.
Our bodies were so filled with the energy of primordial beings that any enchantments ceased to be a factor influencing anything.
It’s unpleasant to realize that the efforts of mortals are still worth nothing compared to deities…
But that’s for now.
Later, I’ll try to fix that.
Undoubtedly…
But this will also benefit the cunning Auri-El, because he understands that we will never clash under any circumstances.
But with other gods…
Very, very likely.
But that’s a matter for the distant, and perhaps impossible, future.
…However, the denouement came not as we expected.
Neither of us secured our advantage or struck the other down.
A third party intervened in the battle.
“Fus…
Ro…
Dah!” Even though the Shout was incredibly slow, it was an area-of-effect attack, and neither I nor Ysgramor had time to get out of its range.
So we had to fly a bit.
But it seemed the Aedra did not tolerate interference in their battle, well, and ours a little bit too.
Neither Kyne, who would later help people gain the power of the Voice, nor Akatosh, who ensured the existence of the Dragonborn, clearly liked dragons.
So the thought-command that rang in my head, I understood very clearly.
As if on command, though why ‘as if’?..
Indeed, on command, we stopped fighting each other and hit the dragon, who was stunned by this turn of events.
Not being Alduin, it instantly crashed to the ground, pierced by a golden lightning bolt and Ysgramor’s axe, which was immediately caught by the winds and returned to his hands.
The lizard turned out to be tenacious, and a couple more reptiles appeared from above, so our fight was postponed.
For a couple of dozen seconds.
That’s how long it took for our bodies, charged with energy of a different order, to gut the children of my patron.
Sounds bad, but divine metaphysics is a tricky thing.
From our blows, piercing the scales, flesh, and bones of the dragons, it seemed even their immortal souls were damaged.
As soon as the last flying reptile fell dead, we instantly returned to continuing the fight.
No truce.
No mercy.
No forgiveness, no surrender.
Only death to the enemy.
…Ha.
It seems I’ve finally started to perceive my opponent as an enemy.
Apparently, the influence of Auri-El’s divine energy affects the mind.
And if even I, actively resisting it, fall under it…
Ysgramor, who already hates elves, is unlikely to be open to contact anymore.
Well…
A senseless, utterly wrong conflict, born from the stupidity of some and the hatred of others.
A conflict that cannot be stopped in the near future, and certainly not within Ysgramor’s lifetime.
Sad.
But I want to live more than I want to stop the eternal cycle of bloodshed between elves and men.
Auri-El knew who to make the First Blade.
Even if I’m not a rabid patriot of my race, it still led to me standing up for the Snow Elves more firmly than any fanatic.
Yeah, it’s too early for you, transmigrator-reincarnator, to play against higher entities.
These aren’t stupid goddesses from Japanese porn cartoons; these are truly those who radically and in every way surpass ordinary people, elves, orcs, and so on.
Anyway, the battle was nearing its resolution.
I could already feel my body starting to ache literally everywhere.
And not from blows, but from Auri-El’s energy.
Neither Ysgramor nor I were Ehlnofey, nor dragons, nor the Living Gods who would appear in the future.
And so, from a certain point, the Aedric energy began to have a negative effect.
And Akatosh and Kyne understood this fa-a-ar better than us.
They were one hundred percent indifferent to our lives, but they didn’t want to lose to each other.
I get it, I get it.
I instinctively understood what you want from me.
Trusting my patron, I assumed a stance that allowed me to use a temporal displacement of cause and effect.
Almost immediately, the blade of the axe, wreathed in wind currents, appeared right before my nose.
And at that moment…
Auri-El did not disappoint.
The world froze.
The flow of Time reversed.
Cause and effect swapped places.
A wound was inflicted.
And only then did my thrust occur.
The armor on the left side of his torso abruptly shatters, the fabric tears, the skin is cut, and the flesh is exposed.
The same happens to his slightly grazed arm.
Instead of a hit to the heart, I only got a deep grazing wound.
Kyne managed to pull her chosen one out from under the blow, fully utilizing what she is the goddess of — Wind…
A-a-and, something else.
Something that my gut feels as something…
Wild…
As if the entire essence of the words improvisation and adaptation were condensed into one feeling, sensation, energy.
I don’t know!
It’s complicated!..
However…
Judging by the absence of displeasure from Akatosh in the frozen reality, he was satisfied with the result…
Ah, so that’s it.
You…
Didn’t want to kill her chosen one.
You made her weaken, losing a lot of power by intervening in Nirn to save Ysgramor.
You turned Lorkhan’s wife, who received part of her hubby’s power, into a non-competitive entity compared to his golden majesty, taking advantage of a favorable moment.
Good one!
I approve!
Yeah, you can immediately see how similar we are in character.
Well, as far as that concept is even applicable to a super-entity like an Aedra, and even a de facto descendant of the primordial foundation.
Blinking, I found myself right next to the King of Men, in a lunge position where my sword was in the position after delivering the blow that had occurred earlier.
The world resumed.
However, we didn’t have time to take advantage of the normal flow of time.
The Aedric energy abruptly evaporated from our bodies, giving a painfully harsh backlash.
And even then, I just staggered back, grabbing my head with my free hand and almost dropping the flamberge, which hadn’t broken this time.
Ysgramor, due to his wound, was worse off.
He dropped to one knee, leaning on his axe and breathing heavily.
Well then…
If we consider the fight…
It’s a conditional draw between us, with my victory on points.
And an absolute victory for Auri-El.
“Ha-a-ah…” I sighed wearily, noting with blurry eyes how Vaysi and other paladins were hurrying towards me, and the Companions towards the King-Harbinger.
“Looks like that’s it.” This unusual battle was over.
Even though we were boring holes into each other with hate-filled gazes, both elves and people decided to take their leaders…
And disperse.
Leaning on Vaysi, I couldn’t help but snort.
Yeah, a grown man leaning on a woman…
No, it’s stupid to think that way.
Very stupid.
Right now, there’s only a warrior leaning on another warrior.
Yes, that’s it.
Still…
I gained an unforgettable experience.