Sombra visits Skyrim

by Blackdrag-rose

50: Raika's Torment

"What do you mean she's being held captive?" Luna asked, following the group back to the fungal tower known as Tel Mithryn, "How does someone have the power to hold back the power of the Dragonborn?"

"We're not exactly sure sister," Celestia replied, glad to be out of the ashy area so they could plan their next course of action, "We went to Miraak's temple, found something that we later discovered was called a Black Book, and, when Raika read the book, she was transported to a realm called Apocrypha. We can only assume that Miraak ambushed her the moment she arrived and, seeing the soul of his long dead friend Yolrahtoor inside of her, he somehow prevented her from leaving. All we know is that we need to find the other Black Books so we can somehow open a portal to Apocrypha, of which there are four more of."

"Sounds like a plan," Luna remarked, gripping her battleaxe as she looked down at the map of Solstheim, "So, where are the remaining Black Books and whose going to retrieve them?"

"Unfortunately, I do not know where the other four Black Books are," Neloth said, tapping the map as he thought about it, "Miraak must have found each of the seven at one point, which meant that the Dragon Priests that trained with him might know where they are located. However, I have no idea where any of the four of them are buried, as they went through great lengths to hide themselves from the public eye the moment they fell."

"Wait a second," Sombra said, remembering something that the Skaal leader had told them, "Storn told us that Vahlok and his comrades defeated Miraak, but before they could deal the finishing blow he managed to escape to some unknown location, which we now know is Apocrypha. I think we may have a way to find Vahlok and, as an extra bonus, the other three Dragon Priests that served under him before their master's defeat. Celestia, how long would it take for someone to return to Equestria, find Trixie, bring her back to Tamriel, and then pick up one of the masks she found before coming here?"

"At least half a day," Celestia answered, her eyes lighting up as she realized exactly where Sombra was going with that train of thought, "Do you think that Vahlok will listen to her, even if she was wearing one of the other masks?"

"She spoke to the others just fine," Sombra told her, "but our plan would be ruined if we don't find where Vahlok is buried. While someone goes to find Trixie the rest of us will need to pour over the volumes written about both him and the others that served him. The longer we delay the more pain and suffering that Miraak will inflict on Raika, so we have to be as swift as we can in finding Vahlok, his friends, and the other Black Books. I can only imagine the pain that he's already inflicted on her."

-----------------------------------------------------

"Ah, Miraak, you have returned." Hermaeus said, staring down at his champion as he walked over to where the Dragonborn was chained up, "And I see you have brought a prize with you. Tell me, what do you intend to do with those dragon souls?"

"I intend to awaken Yolrahtoor," Miraak replied, stopping in front of the khajiit as the two souls danced around him, "I will destroy this shell that she has come back in and bring her back as the terror that she was. I shall give her these souls, so that they might power the reaction that allows her to awaken before I start shattering everything that makes Raika who she is. Soon the Dragonborn will be no more and Yolrahtoor will live again."

Before Hermaeus could respond, though he hadn't planned on making one at all, Miraak sent the souls racing towards Raika's body and they were absorbed in a matter of seconds. For a moment nothing happened, but then her body started to convulse and Raika gasped in agony, just as the scales continued to take the place of her fur. Her horns grew longer and there were signs that her arms and legs might be getting ready to reconfigure themselves, to change into what an actual dragon's arms and legs looked like.

"Ugh...not you again," Raika moaned, more in pain as she looked up at her captor, "Why don't you just get this over with and kill me? If you don't kill me then I can promise you that I WILL kill you instead."

"I'll be killing you in a way," Miraak said, placing his right hand on her head as he looked for a powerful memory and found one right off the bat, "Ah, the nord called Ralof, a strong warrior who stands by his brothers and sisters and stands up against a legion of soldiers to protect what he believes in. A fitting target for what I'm about to do to you."

An image of Ralof appeared before Raika, but as she looked up at him Miraak turned around, yanked his sword out of its sheath, and brought it down so hard that the image shattered into mere fragments. Just a few seconds after the image shattered Raika felt a wave of pain hit her hard in the head, though as the seconds went by the pain continued to get worse and she felt like she was going to pass out. Then, as if by some miracle, the pain suddenly went away, but as it did she realized that there was something wrong with her memories and couldn't recall who Miraak had been talking about.

"I have erased him from your memories," Miraak said, staring at her as he picked around for another memory to destroy, "For every person and event I erase from your mind I shall awaken one of Yolrahtoor's memories, erasing your very existence until only she remains. Ah, I may have found a memory that could save me some time if I destroy it now."

Raika looked up as an image of Ulfric Stormcloak appeared in the area where the previous image had been standing, though she dreaded what was coming next. Ulfric had been in many events across her entire life, so if Miraak destroyed the image of him she knew it would cause so much damage to her memory that she didn't think she'd be able to recover from it. She struggled against the chains that held her, trying to twist each and every way she could so she could get out of them, but no matter what she tried the chains seemed to stay solid. She glared at Miraak in time to watch him spin around and shatter the image of her lord, which was followed by an intense pain that cut its way through her memory and a scream that tore itself out of her mouth.

It went on in the same fashion for an hour; Miraak would pick his way through the ruins of Raika's memory and summon an image of someone important, only to shatter it in front of her. The chain reaction to the image being broken only furthered the fracture that had developed in her mind, deepening every time her memories were broken. He made sure to break the images of the strange nords, the Equestrians as Raika knew them, last, which would have broken her the moment they were all gone. Once all of her images were broken and her memories were erased Miraak began to unravel the memories of his old friend, which had been buried deep inside Raika's mind.

The best thing about breaking through her mind was now neither Miraak or Hermaeus Mora had to listen to the screaming that had come from him breaking Raika apart. Raika's body was limp now, basically hanging in the chains as her mind waited for something, anything, to happen to it so it could know what was happening.

"Don't worry Yolrahtoor," Miraak said, patting Raika's head slightly, "soon you shall return to this world and then nothing will be able to stop us, not even those pesky Equestrians."

-----------------------------------------------------

"Yolrahtoor."

That voice, the rough commanding voice, she knew it well. She pulled her eyes open and yawned, somehow tired from something she had done the previous day, but what it was she did not know at the moment. Sitting before her were two large dragons, the one on her right had scales that glimmered in the light, like they were almost made of silver, while the one on her left had scales that seemed to suck in the light, as they were nearly as black as the night itself. She knew these two, they were Alduin and Paarthurnax, the brothers that ruled over all of dragon kind.

"Rough night Yolrahtoor?" Paarthurnax asked, almost chuckling at her for some reason, "I understand what you are going through, having to fly across the region, punishing those that would dare to rebel against us and making examples of others. Still brother, there are those that show promise of becoming devote followers of our kind. Maybe we can turn them to our side and use them to control the others."

"Maybe..." Alduin replied, though he sounded annoyed with something as he looked over at her, "What do you say, Yolrahtoor? Shall we trust these nords to bend to our will and lead those that are not under our will as we tell them to? Should we bother creating an order of followers, when we could just burn everyone that dares to get in our way?"

That name again, Yolrahtoor. The way they said the name made it sound like it belonged to her, but surely she wasn't who they were saying she was. She looked down at the pool of water that sat between the three of them, finding a third dragon, whose scales were bright red, staring back at her. So she was a dragon after all, which struck her as strange and odd, but she wondered how she could have forgotten someone so important like that. So she was Yolrahtoor, as she recalled all of a sudden, and both Paarthurnax and Alduin had referred to her as a third ruler of their kind, though most knew her as Alduin's enforcer.

"I think the creation of a Dragon Cult could be to our advantage," she said, recalling all the studying she had put into the subject before this meeting had been called, "Yes, there are many dragons all throughout the province of Skyrim, but all of us get tired and we would need someone we could trust to act in our stead. I propose that we create a cult of followers, led by eight of the most talented of them all, to lead everyone while we either sleep our troubles away or plan for what's coming next. We could work out all the details later, once we decide if we're going to go through with this, but I am in favor of creating an order to follow all of our commands to the letter."

During her speech she had noticed that she had been speaking in the dragon language the entire time, though she wasn't sure how she had slipped into it in the first place. It was clear that her partners were also speaking in the same language as she was, so she could understand what they were saying and they could understand what she was saying.

"Very well then," Alduin replied, still sounding annoyed despite the fact that she had agreed with his brother, "I shall speak to the rest of my generals and see what their opinions are. I shall call upon the two of you at a later date, when I may iron out the details for myself. We are done here."

-----------------------------------------------------

The next thing she knew she was flying through the air, though she felt that some years had passed between the time she had that fateful meeting with Alduin and Paarthurnax and what she was doing now. From what she could recall she was flying to her perch, where she could land and get some sleep from the harsh day she had just been through. She always enjoyed having the wind blowing across her wings, though from what she was feeling she suspected that something was going to happen before she got home.

She was right in some way, as something hit her back, just between her wings, hard enough to knock her off her course, but she corrected herself and stopped in her tracks, her eyes scanning for what could have hit her. That was when she spotted three smaller dragons flapping their wings in front of her, each of them looking as if they wanted to do harm to her.

"What is the meaning of this?" she demanded, growling at the three young dragons, "Do you have any idea who you attacked?"

"Oh, we know who you are, Yolrahtoor," one of the dragons, a dirty brown scaled dragon, replied, "and frankly we've had enough of listening to you and your orders. So the three of us decided to strike when you were weak and cut you out of the equation, so that way we could be reassigned to Alduin's command and kill those that oppose him."

"Very well then traitors, come and get me!" she roared, flapping her wings and soaring right towards the three of them, scattering them before she could grab one of them.

One of them, a light blue dragon, darted behind her, but she spotted the third dragon, a dark green one, coming right at her and understood what their plan was. She grinned and spun around, her wings clipping each of them hard in the face and knocking them backwards, causing them to growl in annoyance. The other dragon came at her head one, but her tail whipped around and hit him right in the chest, piercing an area between his left wing and body that knocked him out of the air completely.

The other two tried another pattern they had developed in their spare time, one of them coming at her from above while the partner came at her from below. She suspected that, after their cowardly attack at the beginning, that they might have more tricks to show her and she was beginning to see that she was right. Instead of trying to figure out a complicated method to dodge the attack she simply flared her wings hard enough to propel herself backwards, allowing the two of them to crash into each other. They fell halfway to the ground, where their comrade was laying, but they regained themselves after a few moments and came at her again.

This time the blue dragon decided that he'd try freezing her solid, so that the crash of her frozen body against the ground would kill her, but she was not about to let that happen. Flames danced around her body and a gout of fire erupted out of her mouth, catching the dragon square it his chest and blackening the scales around where she had hit him. For a moment he seemed to have withstood the entire attack, but then his wings stopped beating and he fell out of the sky, crashing against the ground near his comrade.

"I will enjoy killing you," the last dragon shouted, trying to circle around her and get the drop on her, though it was ruined by him even speaking and gave her the chance to end the fight.

She spun around and flexed her claws, raking them across the back of the dragon, cutting into the skin so hard that she actually ripped several chunks of scales out in the process. The dragon roared in pain before crashing against the ground, though this one landed some distance away from the other two, both of which were too broken to try moving away. She landed beside the fallen dragon, staring at him as he coughed blood from the impact and from the cuts on his back, though she did not feel any pity towards him.

"Alduin will never let you get away with this," the dragon chuckled, coughing in the process.

"He will when I tell him that you three attacked me first," she replied, flexing her claws as she prepared to end the task, "I'll suggest bringing you three in for trial, but knowing him he'll just say that you three will need to be put down for treason, so I'll spare you the torment of waiting for me to return."

She raked the life out of the fallen dragon, ending it quickly so he didn't suffer more than he deserved, before turning to the other two that laid near each other. One of them spotted her coming and tried to lift himself up so he could run away, but she leapt onto the dragon's back and crushed him against the ground. She made sure to do it hard enough to crush his heart, though he would have felt several of his bones crack before his life ended seconds later. The final dragon just laid there in pain, but instead of crushing him as well she let another gout of flame erupt from her mouth, burning the dragon alive and charring the ground around his body.

With all three dead she sighed and knew that she needed to speak with Alduin, though she knew he would be irritated by three of their underlings attacking her like this.

-----------------------------------------------------

She felt the time skip again, as if she was remembering the key pieces of her life, but this time she knew that it had been at least a decade between instances. Alduin had asked her to travel north to the island of Solstheim, where she would find five initiates that could have the potential to become Dragon Priests. Before she had begun her flight to the island she had studied up on who she was going to be meeting and found that one of them, named Miraak, was not only a scholar, but was lightly skilled in both magic and weapons. She decided that he might have the most potential of the five, but even as she flew to the island she knew that her opinion might change over time.

She eventually reached the island, where she landed near the water and stared up at the approaching robe wearing cultists, of which she counted five of.

"Greetings Mistress Yolrahtoor," one of the cultists said, speaking in the dragon language to impress her with his knowledge of dragon culture, "we have been awaiting your arrival for the last week. I trust that your journey was not too harsh on your body?"

"Not at all, I had the wind at my back so I could glide here without much effort," she admitted, staring right at the cultist that had spoken, "I see that you have learned the proper way to speak in the dragon language, which means I will not have to teach you much more than other words and their meanings. Tell me initiate, what is your name?"

"I am Miraak," the cultist said, bowing as he answered her, "and these are my fellow initiates Ahzidal, Dukaan, Zahkriisos, and Vahlok. We are prepared to start training immediately, but we also know you might require some rest after such a long flight and will not hold anything against you if that is what you choose."

She stared down at the group of initiates and wondered what the one known as Miraak had meant, but knew that taking a rest would do her body some good after her flight. She studied the other four initiates, taking in each and every movement they made while she considered what her next course of action would be. She could always start training the five of them immediately, just as her Lord Alduin had commanded her to do, but she had no desire to waste her energy when she was tired from the flight.

"I would like to rest from my flight," she declared, making her decision and catching a glimpse of joy on the faces of three of the initiates, "however, I will leave you with a small bit of studying to be completed before tomorrow morning. I will leave what you want to study up to each of you, but I expect a small report tomorrow morning when our lessons begin."

The five initiates bowed to her and made their way back to the temple, leaving her alone on the beach to enjoy the air before she even considered heading to her designated sleeping area. Alduin had planned out her entire visit to the island, outlining what he wanted her to teach the initiates before he called upon them to deal with the rebels. There was a faction out there that wanted to see Alduin, Paarthurnax, herself, and the rest of their kind hunted down and eradicated until only the nords and the other races were all that remained. She, on the other claw, knew that there was no force that could stand against her master Alduin and the might that he commanded, be it the dragons that followed him or the power that coursed through his body.

She yawned and shook her body, realizing that she was more tired then she had told the initiates and flapped her wings so she could get to her resting area. She could consider the threat after she had some sleep, but she'd be prepared to fight any rebels if they came to take Solstheim from her and her comrades.

-----------------------------------------------------

It had been months since her last visit to Skyrim, where the last time she had met with her master Alduin and his brother Paarthurnax she had been charged with the safety of Solstheim, until the time when she was ordered to return. She had spent those months training her initiates, giving them the knowledge that Alduin wanted her to share with them and becoming pleased by who well they were adapting to her at their teacher. The initiates in Skyrim that she had seen were all scattered in their abilities, making it difficult for those training them to uncover who had the skill and who didn't.

Last she had heard there were nine initiates that might have the skill to become the Dragon Priests of Skyrim, though she knew, from Paarthurnax himself, that Alduin desired eight priests and not nine.

"Mistress Yolrahtoor," one of the servants said, bowing before her as she turned to face him, "I have news. The dragon you ordered to watch over Master Miraak's area of Solstheim has not reported in since yesterday. Would you like me to send out another dragon to see where he might have disappeared to, or would you like to take charge of this yourself?"

She sighed as she thought about the missing dragon, which was the third dragon to have suddenly gone missing from the island as a whole in the last week. The first dragon was supposed to have been protecting the area where Ahzidal had started the beginnings of his own temple, while the second dragon had been to the west of that location, protecting Dukaan's lair until he also vanished. Now Miraak's protector had gone missing, as if something, or someone, was hunting down her kind and was slowly taking the island away from them all. She knew the course of action that she needed to take, but that didn't make she had to enjoy leaving to find out the truth for herself.

"I shall head to Miraak's summit and see if he has any information for me," she said, straightening up to her full height before making her way to the gates she used to enter the chamber, "Please inform the others that I shall not be in for the lesson this afternoon and that they are required to practice their Master level elemental spells by themselves. When I am done with my investigation I shall return to them and judge how well they are doing in their training."

"By your orders Mistress," the servant replied, bowing again as he waited for her to leave the chamber first.

Before any of the other underlings could come up to her and request an audience with her, she spread her wings and took off, heading towards the sky and away from the temple. As she corrected her course and headed towards Miraak's summit she caught sight of one of her comrades, who roared in acknowledgement as she passed him. She cast a look at the sky as she flew, noting the lightning that coursed from one cloud to another and wondered if that was an omen, one that made her feel that she was going to find something wrong at the summit.

Eventually she reached the summit, where she landed and immediately noticed that there was a dragon standing guard, the same one that she had assigned to the area in the first place.

"Hail brother," she said, greeting the dragon and getting absolutely no response from him, "I was informed that you had gone missing and I had feared that you would end up like the others, but here you are, alive and well..."

She got no further as the dragon collapsed in front of her, giving her the chance to finally see all the cuts and gashes that had been etched into his back. One of her worst fears had been realized, someone on Solstheim was hunting her kind down and, by how much the dragon had been through, was torturing them as well. Before she could even inspect the wounds, so she could determine what had killed her fellow dragon, his body burst into flames and his soul literally escaped from the broken body. Her eyes widened as she understood what this meant, as she had been warned by Alduin that his father, Akatosh, might have created a warrior called the Dragonborn to stand up against him and the rest of the dragons.

As she thought about it she realized that she might have found the whereabouts of the First Dragonborn in all of existence, though it seemed like the warrior was not on their side at all.

The soul floated in the air for a few seconds before heading into the summit, which made her suspect that she would find whoever did this act in no time. It also seemed like whoever had done this had studied the whereabouts of her five initiates, so they could decide who was the best one of them to frame for the murder of the dragon that rested before her. She debated if she should follow the soul into the summit and find whoever did this, or head back to the temple so she could sent a message to Alduin and warn him that that Dragonborn was here on Solstheim.

Against her better judgement she followed the soul down the mountain side, following the pathway that Miraak had crafted into the landscape when he had first created the summit. She wished that she could have visited the summit under happier conditions, but dragons were disappearing and she needed to get to the bottom of who the Dragonborn was. The only sound she could hear was the sound of her claws against the ground, which made her worry that whoever had slain the dragon outside may have already killed Miraak. If someone had managed to kill her star pupil then she would take great pleasure in making sure that person never saw the light of the sun again.

She eventually came to the inner sanctum of the summit, the place where Miraak had set up his own personal library and would spend most of his time these days. She spotted the dragon's soul curved around the corner and disappear into the study area, where she turned towards the moment that she was in front of it. To her horror the soul she had been following was being devoured, but while she suspected that the Dragonborn might be there nothing could have prepared her for what she saw; Miraak devouring the soul of the fallen dragon.

"Miraak?!" she gasped, not believing what her eyes were showing her and causing her star pupil to turn around, "How could you betray my trust and kill one of our own?"

"Ah, Yolrahtoor," Miraak said, his voice stronger and colder at the same time, "My new master has shown me that the dragons are not the absolute power that they believe themselves to be and has offered me the power to change the world as I see fit. With my eyes wide open and my mind now clear I shall raise my army in Solstheim, preparing for total war against the might of Alduin and the empire that he has built. And you, my dear Yolrahtoor, shall be the instrument of my will until such an army can be created."

"You are a fool if you think that, even for a moment, that I would even consider betraying Alduin," she snapped, flames gathering in case Miraak decided to attack her.

"Oh, but we are friends aren't we?" Miraak said, not even bothering to comment on her remark, "The teacher and her star pupil. I guess that I should simply just show you exactly what my new master has taught me. Gol Hah Dov!"

As experienced as she was in all forms of combat nothing could have prepared her for the intense pain that followed once Miraak uttered those three Words of Power. It was as if he was enforcing himself on her mind, causing her to hit the ground where she had been standing and the flames she had been preparing just went out like a light. As she struggled against his power she wondered if he had been born with this much inside of him or had his new master given him even more power than he had had originally, which is what she suspected was the case.

After ten minutes of feeling his presence in her mind Miraak was no closer to claiming her than he had been when they started the fight, but she knew that, if he continued his efforts, she would fall in time.

"I knew you had a strong mind," Miraak commented, staring into her eyes for a moment, "and I can tell that it will take some time before you open up to me. I shall spend as much time as I can to help you see that my plan for me and my army ruling all of Skyrim is not as foolish as you made it out to be."

-----------------------------------------------------

A month. That was how long Miraak tortured her mind, implanting his ideals into her mind and trying to break her unwavering loyalty to Alduin, before she finally broke. She had fought him off easily during the first week, but that seemed like a feint on his part as he continued to come back even stronger every time. The second week cracks started to form in her mind, places where Miraak was trying to break her so she would eventually forsake everything she had stood for. The third week he managed to open a fracture in her defenses, giving him the entry he desired and began to pour his betrayal into her mind.

It wasn't until the fourth week that her defenses finally shattered and Miraak had complete control over her, but at the moment of his victory he backed away from her completely.

"What do you choose Yolrahtoor?" Miraak asked, staring at her from across the summit, "Will you choose to further the agenda of Alduin, who wants nothing more than to destroy Tamriel as we know it, or will you choose to side with me, so that we might conquer all of Solstheim and Skyrim?"

She had started to wonder why he had pulled out of her mind so suddenly, but as she pondered the question she began to realize exactly what he had done. He had implanted his ideals into her mind, letting them take shape and grow, but instead of forcing her to follow him down the path of insanity he wanted her to do something different. He had pulled out for one reason and one reason alone; he wanted to give her the choice in her destiny, so she could decide, for herself, to she was going to side with. It was an evil plan on his part, one that he must have been planning since he fell into his new master's lap, but she knew that at this point the other dragons might have given up on her and she was all alone now.

"You win Miraak," she weakly said in defeat, her stomach growling as she barely looked up at her former student, "do with me whatever you have planned."

Whatever Miraak had said to her was lost, as she closed her eyes and let the exhaustion take her for the moment. When she next opened her eyes she awoke to the smell of something, which she thought she could identify as a cow, being cooked over a fire. She moaned slightly and thought she might be able to be left alone, but then something slid up to her and she turned to look at it, finding a rather large iron plate with a chunk of cow laid on top of it. She turned her head in the direction it had come from and found Miraak sitting by a fire, cooking a piece of the cow that had not been given to her.

"Good, your awake," Miraak said, tearing a piece out of what he had cooked before devouring it, "Go ahead, eat up. I wouldn't want my old friend to starve herself before we got started on our work across Solstheim."

She knew exactly what he was talking about, as he had imprinted several pieces of his master plan in her mind while he was trying to break through her defenses. She had gone over the plans during the small breaks he had given her, finding that Miraak had been planning to betray Alduin and the rest of the dragons ever since he found something called a Black Book. He had gone into detail about how he was going to subdue the entire land, creating an army of mind controlled soldiers that would follow his orders without question. If she had refused his offer and stayed loyal to Alduin she knew that he would have either erased her mind of the last month and sent her back to her teaching, or he would have slain her on the spot.

She also recalled that, in the moment that Miraak had shattered her defenses and left her mind bare for him to do what he pleased with her, he asked her whose side she would rather be on and she had, to her immediate horror, forsaken Alduin. Miraak must have known she would have been horrified with her choice, because he had a spell in place that calmed her to the point where she couldn't feel any regret for what she had done. She sighed and knew that she had better get started on whatever Miraak had planned for her, which he had left out and she needed to know before she left.

"So, whats the first step of our plan?" she asked, tearing a chunk of meat out of the cow and devouring it as her hunger got the better of her for the moment.

"There are a few rebel villages on the island that don't support Alduin," Miraak told her, staring into the night sky, "so I plan on visiting them and seeing if I can 'convince' them to join us instead. Here's where you come in my friend, if they refuse my offer I'll call you down and have you annihilate them from the face of Solstheim, to show the other villages what will happen to them if they choose to side against us."

She wasn't exactly sure if she was going to like burning an entire village full of innocent people down, but now that she was sworn to aid Miraak she would do for him like she had done for Alduin.

-----------------------------------------------------

She sat, alone, in Miraak's summit, reflecting on all the destruction she had caused in the last few months. Miraak had approached seven of the nine settlements that defied Alduin already, but each of them had basically spit in his face and told him to get lost. In return she had swooped out of the sky, gouts of fire jumping out of her mouth and hitting the small houses that the resident nords had constructed, lighting the fires that would eventually eat the village as a whole. She had thought that she would have regrets about killing innocent people, but as she thought about it for the first time she realized it was the exact same thing she had been doing for Alduin before she came to Solstheim.

That, and she quickly realized that she enjoyed slaughtering people and burning everything they owned to cinders, charring the ground wherever her flames hit.

"You know he's coming here," Miraak said, slipping on a mask that his new master, who she had learned was the Daedric Prince Hermaeus Mora, had gifted him some time ago, "Vahlok found my plans a lot sooner that I had planned for him to and he's already informed the others that neither of us are to be trusted anymore. I have word from a reliable source that Alduin should be here in the next few minutes, so I hope your prepared to face him down like we had planned."

"Go Miraak," she told her friend, nudging him with her snout, "make sure that our plan is in place and prepare to destroy Alduin when he arrives, for only one of us shall escape this area alive."

The plan had been for them to create an army so they could stand against Alduin and his forces, but there were too many variables that existed across the island. They were nowhere near ready for the onslaught that was coming their way, but Miraak was determine to hold his own so she could defeat Alduin when he arrived. Her friend would be facing the might of dragons, their soldiers, and the four Dragon Priests that she had been training alongside Miraak, all of who were united with the dragons. The plan had been ruined by Vahlok, who Miraak was determined to kill before the whole ordeal was over with, though he was quick to leave her alone as she waited for Alduin to arrive.

She waited for a good ten minutes before she heard the sound of beating wings, a single pair she realized, and a roar from a dragon she had not spoken to for half a year.

"YOU DARE DEFY ME YOLRAHTOOR?" Alduin shouted, appearing above her and causing her to look up at him, "I, WHO HAVE GIVEN YOU POWER AND RESPECT AMONGST OUR KIND! YOU DARE SPIT THAT IN MY FACE AND BETRAY ME LIKE THIS? I SHALL REND THE LIFE FROM YOUR BODY AND RIP YOUR SOUL INTO THOUSANDS OF FRAGMENTS, SO THAT YOU WILL TAKE THOUSANDS OF YEARS TO BE REBORN, IF AKATOSH WILLS IT SO!"

She roared and took to the air, barreling into Alduin's chest and scratching at him almost immediately, hoping that she could wound him enough for Miraak to kill him. Alduin rolled around and threw her off of him, tossing her right into the side of the summit and cracking the ground around her, though she wasn't hurt too badly. She gathered the flames in her mouth and then sent a gout of fire up at Alduin, who countered with his own set of flames and let the two gouts meet between them.

She knew it would have remained a stalemate between the two of them, but as their duel stretched on something icy hit her back and broke her concentration for a moment, allowing Alduin's flames to approach her before stalling. She growled and redoubled her efforts, but the moment she did some a spake ran across her body and let Alduin's flames get even closer to her before she shook it off and stopped them yet again. She attempted to hold back the flames for the third time, but just as she was about to do so she cut off her attack and jumped backwards, just in time for a fireball to pass by where she had been standing.

"I know this formation like the back of my claws," she growled, turning to the shadows while keeping an eye on Alduin, "show yourselves, Dukaan, Ahzidal, and Zahkriisos."

Sure enough the three priests she named stepped out of the shadows, though each of them now bared a uniquely colored mask that was different from the masks that the Dragon Priests in Skyrim wore. Her suspicions had been right, they were here with their master and were prepared to fight whatever and whoever his enemies were, even if it turned out to be their teacher. She growled again and turned to face Alduin, though in her fury she failed to see the priests wrap heavy chains around her, so when she saw them it was too late to do anything besides trying to shake them off.

"So you can't face me alone?" she asked, directing the question to Alduin, who just stared down at her, "Am I not worth that much?"

"You are not worthy of a fair fight," Alduin replied, flames gathering before him as he prepared an attack, "and as such I shall destroy you without an ounce of hesitation. I will, however, give you the honor of speaking your last words. Tell me, what shall your last words be?"

"I can promise you one thing," she shouted at them, making sure to gather the attention of everyone who had gathered to see her be executed bu Alduin himself, "even if you kill me now I shall return one day, far in the future, and I shall have the pleasure of destroying you. So go ahead, kill me where I stand, I shall just come back one day and give back what you give to me."

I'm sorry Miraak, she thought, hoping that he might hear her last thoughts before Alduin destroyed her, I hope you create the world we both longed to create.

The was the last thought that ran through her mind as Alduin unleashed his attack, a giant fireball that rushed down to where she was chained and collided with her body. She could feel the power behind the attack, tearing at her scales and the muscles underneath them, almost as if it was separating her soul from her mortal shell. The pain was unbearable, but it eventually disappeared as she drifted off into the abyss, where she assumed she would reside until something brought her back. After that she truly remembered nothing more.

-----------------------------------------------------

Hermaeus had ignored the screaming from most of the time that Miraak had been working on the Dragonborn, but as he studied the crystal he had been given he eventually noticed something; the Dragonborn had stopped. He looked up from the crystal and began to fade from where his private study area was located, crossing the length between himself and where Miraak's chains were in a matter of seconds. Once he appeared he looked around for his champion, finding him standing in front of the area that he had chained the Dragonborn in, with one major problem.

"Miraak?" Hermaeus said, his champion not even turning around as he called out his name, "What have you done?"

He was referring to the fact that the Dragonborn was no longer the khajiit that had been chained up in the area the last time he had seen her, which was earlier that morning. In her place was a fully grown red scaled dragon, about the same size that Alduin and Paarthurnax were if he could trust the stories Miraak told him whenever he asked. Unlike the khajiit, who had been chained, this dragon bared no chains at all, so Hermaeus wondered if it would flee the moment it awoke or if it would stay like Miraak hoped.

"The Dragonborn known as Raika Snow-Heart is no more," Miraak replied, a grin appearing under his mask as he gazed upon the large dragon, "and in her place is Yolrahtoor reborn."

Comments

[Sonata Blaze]

Great, now Miraak has a large dragon whose likely determined to burn everything to ash.
I'd say our heroes, what's left of them, need to hurry before things really get out of hand.

[HB_DS2013]

Does this mean that Yolrahtoor and Raika switched?

[Sonata Blaze]

5980849 I believe that Yolrahtoor has claimed Raika's body for herself. So yes, i think they have switched. Though it sounds like Yolrahtoor might have devoured everything that defined who Raika was.

[HB_DS2013]

5982442 Whoa. I wonder if Sombra considers Raika to be a friend?

[Sonata Blaze]

5983420 I have no doubt that Sombra considers Raika as a friend, though none of them are going to like the fact that Yolrahoor took over.

[HB_DS2013]

5983463 I've noticed early on that Nightmare is more of a title in Tamriel compared to a corrupting entity in canon. Do you think that Yolrahtoor's a corrupting influence?

[Sonata Blaze]

5983494 Its possible. It might be because Nightmare Moon showed Cyrodiil that she wasn't a villain, so they honored her name along side the Hero of Kvatch. Time will tell as they say.

[Vigilant of Stendarr]

Great... now the dragon has control of Raika's body...
Stendarr preserve us all.