29: Alduin's Last Bastion
Sonata leapt off of Odahviing when they arrived at Skuldafn, though she had taken a moment to stare at the undead enemies that were waiting for her as they flew in. She had known that the remainder of Alduin's forces would be waiting for her, and Odahviing had told her so back in Dragonsreach, though she was impressed by the amount of undead that had been buried in this one area. With her friends she knew that she would have cleared this ruin within an hour, two at the very most, but now that it was just her she knew that it would take her some time to safely reach the end. As she thought about how many enemies she would have to fight before she reached the portal to Sovngarde, which she assumed was quite a large number, she also cursed herself for not taking some time to properly prepare herself.
She should have summoned Odahviing when she had learned more Shouts and had some better equipment than her leather armor and steel sword, both presents from the Imperials that had helped her when she first arrived in Skyrim.
"This is as far as I can take you." Odahviing said as they landed, allowing Sonata to climb off before beating his wings once more, "Krif voth ahkrin. I will look for your return, or Alduin's."
Sonata nodded her head and waited until the dragon was in the air, choosing to take a few seconds to watch him depart from the ancient fane before getting started on her fight against her enemy. She looked across the bridge in front of her and spotted two archers that apparently wanted to make her life more miserable than it already was, which was thanks to of all the deeds that Lord Grul had done to the people of Skyrim while she had been there. She even spotted what appeared to be a lone draugr warrior coming her way, wielding an ebony colored battleaxe, so she knew that she was going to have to play this smart if she wanted to get out of here alive.
After all, she still had to fight Alduin and save Nirn from him, before she could even begin to deal with the other evil people that either wanted her dead or captured.
She waited until the undead warrior was close to her and leaned back as the battleaxe came at her, allowing it to pass by where she was standing before she attacked with her magic and blasted the undead creature in the chest. The undead stepped back a bit, as if it was actually surprised that it had missed and wasn't stunned by the attack, before it charged at her once more. Sonata growled as she ducked each of the incoming attacks, making sure that the sharpened weapon didn't touch her or her armor while she thought of something that would bring this one opponent down.
She then got an idea what she knew might fail, but considering that she didn't expect the first enemy to be so hard she decided that something was better than nothing. She summoned her lightning into her hand and formed the Lightning Blade, but as she turned around she focused her magic and sent out a stream of lightning that slammed into the undead creature's chest. The creature went flying into the stone of the bridge in front of her, though that was before the stream of power jumped into the air, separated into two individual pieces of energy, and took out the archers before they even had a chance to loose their arrows at her.
Sonata had no idea why the lightning arced to the other two enemies and took them out like that, but she wasn't about to argue with the results.
She followed the stairs as they led her towards the area that stood before the entrance of the temple, though she spotted two more enemies coming her way. She immediately noticed that one of them was a mage, thanks to the frost coming off of his hands, while the other had to be a warrior that would keep her attention the entire time. Before the fight got started Sonata called forth her magic and threw it at the mage, blasting it backwards and giving her enough time to deal with the warrior. She then ducked and dodged for the next few seconds, making sure that the enemy's weapon didn't touch her, before she planted her foot in its chest and knocked it back as hard as she could.
Her attack didn't do much good, as the undead warrior got back up and punched her in the face, before grabbing onto her ponytail and gripping it as hard as it possibly could. It started to laugh at her, as if she was actually going to submit now that it was grabbing her hair, so Sonata decided to show the undead just how wrong it was. She pulled her sword out of its sheath and sighed for a moment, before she used her left hand to grab the hair in front of the undead warrior's hand. That was followed by her using her sword to cut off her ponytail, causing the draugr to fall back as she rolled forward, though she immediately got up and drove her sword into her opponent's heart.
She left her steel sword in the draugr's chest and picked up the ebony sword that it had been carrying, which she was convinced would be better in the long run. Before she started moving again she touched the band that had held her hair in her signature ponytail and pulled it free, letting her hair fall down to her neck area while she wondered how she would look with short hair. She sighed as she looked at the path in front of her, already wishing that her friends had been able to come to Skuldafn with her, but shook her head in defeat and continued her march forward.
She then entered a courtyard like area, where she could choose to explore a nearby tower of sorts or continue onward, but before she could make a decision a pair of dragons landed in front of her and roared in her face.
"Look, I'd rather not fight either of you right now," Sonata said, as she more annoyed by the fact that she had been forced to cut off her hair and not by the fact that there were two dragons standing in front of her, "so get out of my way and you both might get to live another day."
The dragons roared again and each loosed a stream of flames at her, but Sonata spun her new sword around and pulled the flames into a vortex of sorts. When the dragons stopped using their flames on her, and noticed that Sonata was unharmed, she swung her arm and used their own attack against them, using the power of their flames to cut a gash into each of their sides with ease. The two dragons roared in pain as Sonata continued her advance, using both her magic and her new weapon to inflict as much damage as she could to both of the beasts before she made them collapse on the ground in front of her.
She wasn't sure if they were truly dead or not until she watched their souls escape from their respective bodies and was absorbed into her own body, granting her more knowledge on the dragons, their language, and the various Shouts that she might be able to use in her quests. She was also surprised by how easily she had taken on two dragons and beat them, with so little effort on her part, but quickly decided that they were likely the weakest dragons that Alduin had resurrected before coming to High Hrothgar for their duel.
"Oh thank the Nine that those beasts are dead," a voice to her right said, causing her to turn and find a male altmer, wearing Thalmor robes no less, emerging from the tower she had spotted, "For a while there I was beginning to think that the only reason they bothered to remain in this place was to finish me off, despite the fact that all of the draugr that have come at me have been destroyed. Though judging from how you managed to take their souls, and prevented them from returning to life once again, that must mean that your the Dragonborn that I've heard about."
"That is correct. I am Sonata Dusk, the Last Dragonborn," Sonata replied, introducing herself to the altmer as something came to mind, "Wait... don't the Thalmor hate the notion of saying 'by the Nine' or 'Thank the Nine', because they don't see Talos as an actual Divine and are dedicated to rooting out all worship of him?"
"You would be correct in your thinking, but I cannot explain this out in the open," the altmer said, beckoning Sonata to follow him inside the tower for a moment, "I'll try to explain this as quickly as possible... and then we'll see about getting out of this draugr infested ruin before we end up dead."
Sonata knew that she should just decline the offer and see to her task of tracking down the portal to Sovngarde, but the idea of a Thalmor agent worshiping the Nine, and not the Eight that they insisted on making everyone else follow, made her see why this one altmer was different than the others she had come across in the past. She sighed and followed the elf into the tower, where she discovered a few more dead elves that had likely been brought here at the same time as the altmer.
"These are all that remain of the Thalmor that had been assigned to me, as the rest had been either eaten by that dragon or torn apart by the draugr," the altmer said, leading her up a ramp, where she found a makeshift table and a pair of chairs waiting, to which he sat in one of them, "Now then, I had better answer the question; yes, I worship Talos despite the fact that I was employed by the Thalmor and rose to the rank of Second Emissary to Skyrim. I know, how could I join the very organization that wanted to destroy all worship of Talos and still believe in him... but I truthfully had no idea what the Thalmor's methods were until I joined them.
I was naive to think that we were in Skyrim for any other reason than to help the people of this province, by whatever means the First Emissary desired. It wasn't until we arrived in this land that I discovered that we had come to eradicate all worship of Talos... which is why I ensured that most of the agents went out on false information and failed to find most of the shrines that had been brought to my attention. Unfortunately Rulindil, the Third Emissary, caught wind of my schemes, how I'll never understand, and delivered to me a message that told me I was to take a squad out and find a shrine located in the mountains near Eastmarch.
Here's something you may not know about Elenwen, the First Emissary; she never bothers to fully read anything that's given to her, she just skims it for important information and signs papers accordingly. She should have known that the Third Emissary doesn't have the power to order the Second Emissary around, but she was so caught up in her search for a Blades agent that she ignored that fact. My men and I traveled to Eastmarch, where our carriage was captured by those dragons and we were deposited here, either to die by the hands of the dead or become food for the beasts that you killed.
Elenwen likely thinks I've either run off on her or was killed by someone else, so I guess there's no reason in calling myself the 'Second Emissary' anymore. I am Kael Sunstrike... and right now I just want to leave this forsaken place, so I can head back to the Embassy and burn that fool Rulindil to the ground."
Sonata felt sorry for Kael, because he had likely lost the job he had worked hard to hold onto for so many years and all of the soldiers that had been sent out with him were dead. At least he would be happy to hear that Rulindil was dead, though she didn't know how well he would take the news about how she planned on getting back to Skyrim once she was finished with Alduin.
"Then you'll be happy to hear that Rulindil is dead," Sonata told the elf, noticing that a look of relief washed over his face for a moment, "though I'm afraid that the only way back to Skyrim, save for climbing down the side of the mountain, is to move through Skuldafn, reach the portal that will take us to Sovngarde, and defeat Alduin the World-Eater. Then maybe the Divines will send us home, so that I can turn my focus on the other evils that are plaguing the land of Skyrim."
Kael went silent for a few seconds, as if the reality of his situation was finally returning to him, before he pulled himself out of the chair and walked down to where he had left the remains of his dead comrades. Sonata followed him down the ramp, wondering if he was even going to try and aid her or if he was going to stay here and accept his fate, because she knew that any help would be grateful at this point. She watched as the altmer picked up what appeared to be a sword that had flames on the blade, more like a detail than actual flames, before he attached it and its sheath to his belt. Kael then moved to one of the soldiers and started removing the intact pieces of armor, which he eventually did to the others until he was carrying a completed set of elven armor in his hands.
"Here, these should fit you," Kael said, handing the pieces of armor to Sonata, who accepted them without making any comments about them, "Look, your the Dragonborn that the nords of Skyrim believe will stop the World-Eater from destroying Nirn, so I'd rather make sure that you reach the end of this ruin and not die on the way there. This armor should last you until you find something better to replace it, though to be completely honest I know that there are better armors out there than the armor that the Thalmor gives its soldiers."
Sonata nodded and took the armor from Kael, though she noticed that he moved away from where she was standing and went to a different part of the small tower to give her some privacy while she changed outfits. She liked the leather armor she had been wearing up until this point, because it had served her well through everything that Grul had sent her way, but she knew that it was time that she replaced it with something better. The elven armor looked like it could protect her more than the leather armor, but she knew that the draugr had weapons that could cut through it considering that some of them had killed Kael's companions. She quickly removed what she was wearing and replaced it with the elven armor, which she fiddled with for a few seconds to be sure it fit her and wouldn't fall off the moment something hard hit her.
Once the armor was on, and she was satisfied with how it fit her at the moment, she returned her new ebony sword to her belt and let out a sigh, before steeling herself once more.
"Okay Kael, I'm decent," Sonata said, watching Kael walk out of the area he had been waiting in, "We had best get underway before more of those dragons show up to hinder our progress."
"I am eager to get some vengeance for the soldiers that the draugr killed," Kael replied, pulling out an elven sword while some flames danced in his left hand, "so let's go show those undead warriors the might of the Dragonborn and whoever aids her in her quest to save Nirn from being destroyed."
Sonata nodded and the two of them walked out of the tower, following the path she had been taking before she had been rudely interrupted by the pair of dragons, whose corpses they passed by on their way to the entrance of the temple. As they turned around the corner Kael held up his hand and stopped Sonata before she could walk out just a bit, to which she noticed two arrows fly by where she would have been standing if he hadn't stopped her. She guessed that he had taken notice of the draugr's methods in the entire time he had been here, developing a way to keep himself safe until he could find a way home. She was grateful for the assistance, because if those had hit her she could either be seriously wounded or dead, neither of which would be good for the people of Nirn.
She spotted a draugr walking on the wall that was across from where they were standing, its bow pointed at them as it readied an arrow, so she summoned lightning into her hand and struck the enemy in the chest, knocking it backwards and ensuring that it wouldn't get back up again. Kael, seeing several of the other draugr coming their way, raised his hand and set some of them on fire, causing them to burn until they fell to the ground. It was understandable considering that the first enemies that came at them were the lowest of the undead draugr, which made Sonata wonder what would happen when the Deathlords came at them.
Unfortunately there were two Deathlords walking down the stairs in front of them, both wielding large ebony weapons that would hurt if they hit their targets, but Sonata would not be stopped in her quest to save Nirn. Sonata snapped her fingers and her lightning flew through the air, slamming into one of the enemies and throwing them into the wall as Kael dealt with the other Deathlord with his own fire magic. The rest of the draugr turned on them as they ran up the steps, which was why the two of them used some of their other spells to force their enemies back as they entered the actual temple. The instant they were past the door, and it was closed behind them, Sonata summoned more of her magic and shattered the ceiling above them, collapsing it on top of the door to prevent enemies from following them inside.
Once the deed was done, and she was sure that none of the draugr would follow them inside, Sonata took out one of the potions that Saerza gave her and uncorked the bottle, as she actually needed to restore her energy after everything they had been through already and was thankful that there were two more for her to use if she needed them.
"You want the rest of this?" Sonata asked, not knowing if Kael had been able to recover his own magicka over the number of days he had been trapped here or not.
"No, I'm good on magicka for now," Kael replied, shaking his head as he looked around the area they were in, "Go ahead and finish that bottle off... I'll see what our choices are for moving forward."
Sonata nodded and downed the rest of the potion, feeling her energy return to her within a matter of seconds, before she put the bottle away and followed Kael further into the ruins that she had trapped them inside. Apparently the two paths ahead of them appeared to lead to the same area, so it honestly didn't matter which way they went, so she followed Kael down the path on the left and kept her sword at the ready. Three draugr, all Scourge by the looks of them, were waiting for the pair as they entered the next chamber, so Sonata switched to cutting down those that came at her with a lightning charged sword while Kael used his fire magic to burn them to cinders.
Sonata had noticed that her new companion liked to play with fire more than any other type of school, which told her that she had found a pyromancer and, judging from the amount of damage he was doing to his enemies with both his spells and his elven sword, he happened to be a very powerful one as well.
The moment the three draugr were dealt with they walked up the stairs and entered a larger chamber than the one they had just left, though Sonata immediately noticed that there were three spinning pillars waiting in the middle of the room, which told her that there was a puzzle to solve. The draugr that were guarding the area didn't like the fact that they had come into their territory, as they pulled themselves from their coffins, picked up their weapons, and begun their attack. Sonata, seeing how many undead warriors were coming their way, summoned more of her magic and started throwing spells at the enemies that Kael wasn't focused on, though they had to back up quite a bit as to avoid being hit by their enemies.
When the last draugr fell to the ground, and joined the heap of bodies that was now littering the floor, Sonata turned her attention to the puzzle in front of her, looking for clues that would allow her to solve this so they could move on once more. She spotted a pair of carvings on the wall opposite of the chamber they had entered from, one of which was a snake and the other was an eagle, though she also noticed that the eagle passage had collapsed. On the chamber's right wall she noticed another carving of a snake, while on the left side she spotted a whale, but in her mind she had already solved this puzzle. The pillar on the right was moved until it displayed the snake symbol, while the one of the left was moved until she had the whale facing the wall, leaving her with the one in the middle.
She quickly changed the middle pillar to a snake and pulled the lever in front of the pillars, to which she watched as the gate beneath the snake symbol opened and allowed them to move forward.
With the way open they climbed up the two flights of stairs that they found until they came to another chamber, smaller than the last two they had visited, that had three more draugr blocking their way, but Sonata frowned when she noticed that they had little armor to speak of and that their weapons looked like they were about ready to fall apart. She didn't bother to raise her sword or use her magic against them, allowing Kael to burn them all to the ground before they followed the pathway through a coffin, though it brought them to an area that was covered in webs.
They followed the twists and turns of the passage as they tore through all of the spiders that happened to be in their way, to which they used their swords to cut their way through the infested halls until they reached a large wooden door. A group of five draugr were waiting for them on the other side of the door, who immediately started attacking the moment they opened the door that connected to the room. Sonata and Kael summoned their magic once more and continued attacking the undead enemies that were standing before them, either blasting their lifeless bodies into the walls around them or turning them to a pile of ash.
As they fought through the room they were in Sonata noticed that there was a pillar the moment they entered the area, though the symbol she believed to be tied to it happened to be behind the platform that was in the middle of the room. She left Kael to fight the rest of the undead warriors that were in the room and approached the pillar she had spotted, to which she took a few seconds to turn it around until it faced the snake symbol. As she did that she noticed two more symbols resting above where Kael was standing, though she found it hard to believe that the ancient nords would place the required symbol right above the pillar it went to. If she had designed this room she would have at least switched them around, so that the answer would be diagonally across from the one it belonged to.
Once she had all three of the symbols in the correct order she returned to Kael's side, who happened to be standing next to the lever she needed to pull, though she was pleased to find that it lowered the bridge in front of them so that they could continue forward. They quickly walked over the bridge and passed through the door that it had been protecting, where they followed the passage that the door connected to until they came to a small chamber with three more draugr. Kael charged at the enemy standing right in front of them, leaving Sonata to call on her magic and fight the archers who were on the platform above them, though she had to wait until they showed themselves before she could actually hit them.
This fight took a bit longer for them to finish, on account that Sonata's enemies hated coming into her line of sight, but eventually all of the draugr were returned to their rest and Sonata and Kael moved forward yet again.
After some more twists and turns, and climbing up a circular staircase, they came to a room where the draugr were standing in what appeared to be oil, so Kael smirked as he set the floor on fire and burned their enemies alive within seconds. Inside that same room Sonata spotted a lever that opened the gate on the opposite side of where they were standing, though they had their weapons drawn in case something happened. They followed the passage, and navigated through the twists and turns that it threw at them, before they reached what Sonata knew was the Hall of Stories, which told her that there had to be another Dragon Claw in the immediate area. As they rounded the next corner, however, Sonata spotted the person they would have to fight to get the claw they needed to move on, though she wasn't surprised to find a Deathlord carrying the item.
Sonata decided to get this over with as fast as possible, so while the Deathlord advanced to where she was standing she used her Unrelenting Force Shout to stagger the undead warrior, as apparently the high ranking undead couldn't be thrown back by the full power of the Shout. It was fortunate that the Deathlord only wanted to kill her first, because it ignored Kael until a sword erupted from its chest, to which he burned the creature until all that was left was the armor and the claw. Sonata grabbed the claw and approached the wall that it went to, quickly spying the combination on the bottom of it before she started to move the rings into the proper order; first a fox, then a moth, and finally a dragon.
With the door out of the way the two pressed on yet again, only this time they entered a chamber that had the largest Word Wall that Sonata had seen in her entire time in Skyrim. They quickly crossed to the other side, as they were concerned by the fact that there weren't any enemies that wanted to kill them in the room just yet, to which Sonata stepped up to the wall and let the Word of Power enter her body. The Word she found was Strun, which happened to be the first Word in an entirely new Shout, which made her chuckle for a few seconds before they followed the passage out of the room they were in. They followed the path until they came to a door that led them outside, though as they took in the rays of light again Sonata noticed three Deathlords coming their way.
Instead of dealing with them, and wasting more of their time, she engaged her magic and threw them off of where they were standing, leaving her and Kael to turn around the corner and walk up the stairs that they found... only they discovered a floating robed figure that had a dragon on either side of it. Behind the floating draugr was the portal to Sovngarde, but as the draugr removed its staff the portal was sealed before their very eyes, though Sonata knew that they'd have to get the staff if they wanted to get out of here.
"So this is where Nahkriin was hiding," Kael said, beckoning to the undead in front of them, "He's supposed to be one of the most powerful Dragon Priests to ever serve the dragons, though stories I've read claim that there might be others that are even stronger than him. I'll hold him off while you deal with the dragons... and then we'll get that staff."
"Actually, I'd rather get this over with," Sonata replied, allowing her power to enter her body for a few seconds, to which she added her lightning abilities to the Shout she had just acquired, "This ought to be interesting."
Sonata turned to the sky and loosed the new Shout, though she snapped up a shield as the sky above them turned into a full blown storm in a matter of seconds. Lightning flashed from the sky and struck everything around where the two of them were standing, either blowing holes into the stonework or striking the dragons that tried to take off. The Dragon Priest seemed to have a better time dodging the lightning, and it even raised its staff at them at one point, but the lightning zeroed in on it and delivered the full power of the storm to its core. The undead priest turned to ashes as the lightning blasted the dragons into the stonework around them, frying them alive until Sonata was sure that all of their enemies were dead.
As she called off the power of the storm, and collected the souls of the slain dragons, she fell to her knees for a moment, which was followed by some huffing and puffing from the amount of power she had called forth.
"I guess I need... the second potion," Sonata commented, pulling out the second magicka potion she had been given, while tossing the third one over to Kael, "Be ready... because somewhere on the other side of that portal is our enemy."
Kael nodded and they both downed the potions, regaining most of the magicka that they had used throughout the temple, before he helped Sonata back onto her feet. He then approached the corpse of the Dragon Priest and collected the mask that the creature had been wearing, knowing that many mages would hand to get their hands on the mask of Nahkriin, before picking up the staff. Kael then handed the staff to Sonata, who approached the area that the priest had been floating before they arrived, to which she slammed the base of the staff into the indent she had found on the platform.
The magic happened immediately, as the portal was opened before their very eyes as the stone was ripped apart in front of them, though Sonata grinned as she approached the entrance to Sovngarde. All she had to do now was find Alduin and put him down, so that she could turn her focus on the remaining enemies that were waiting for her to find them.
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Is Kael an actual character in-game or is he created?
7617326 He's likely a created character, because only the player appears in Skuldafn. The author likely added him in to give Sonata a companion to travel with.
7617384 I'll hafta assume that of future friendlies.
7617404 The author seems to be following how Black wrote Sunset's adventure, and by that I mean the placement of allies in areas where there weren't any in the actual game.
Still, an ex-Thalmor agent... don't think I've seen that before.
7617526 I'm assuming that you put it on the last chapter. It is more appropriate for this chapter, because the next one is definitely Sonata vs Alduin.
7617545 Yeah, I did.
Well hello there Kael Sunstrike (he reminds me of the Lord of the Blood Elves from WoW).
Now for Alduin.
I don't know what she was craving for, but it sure as hell wasn't carvings
7650916 I have absolutely no idea why that error managed to slip by me
But thanks for finding it and telling me so I could fix it.
This Kael character is definitely an interesting one... for a oc that got shoved into the game.
Oh well, time to see Sonata wreck Alduin.