AN: My new Game of Thrones fic, the Sea Wolf is out! The first five chapters are already avaialble. Please give it a read if you enjoy my writing, thank you!
...
4E 202, Sovngarde
Serana Volkihar
Sovngarde opened around them as Vermithor cleared the portal's threshold, his wings spreading wide as he climbed from the transition and into the air above the realm beyond.
She felt the shift in gravity, only slight and nothing she couldn't adapt to. But it was only further proof that they were no longer on Nirn.
The sky above was deep and luminous, threaded with ribbons of aurora even in what passed for daylight here. The mountains that framed the realm rose in formations that no geological process could have produced, seemingly hand carved a divine being.
Below them, rolling terrain stretched between those mountains, stone paths and ancient structures half-swallowed by carved earth, everything glowing with a faint internal light that reminded her vaguely of bioluminescent creatures in the deep caves she had explored once when her mother had taken Serana into places she had never seen before.
"Woah," she said, very quietly.
"So this is Sovngarde," Gerron stated behind her, his eyes getting that particular gaze when he's using his Artificier's Insight. She could tell by now, the way his shoulders would tense slightly whenever he's reading something that came from the Forge Eternal. His face then turned to a small frown. "That's not natural."
She followed his line of sight to the strange mist that pooled in the low-lying places of the realm. Whatever it touched, the supposed 'glow' of Sovngarde turned dim, leaving patches of grey in what should have been gold.
"What is it?" Kiera asked, Vermithor holding steady in a wide banking circle as they all took in the realm around them.
"A soul snare," Gerron said. "It's the same thing he used in the Soul Cairn. The entire realm is in danger, Alduin is threatening to consume all the souls here. The mist is how he does it. It disorients them. Weakens the boundaries between their identities and the open current of energy he's drawing on."
Serana looked again at the mist. It didn't move randomly, she realized. But rather a slow, patient circulation, the same pull in one direction across the whole expanse. Toward something. Toward him.
She had seen how those soul pumps in the Soul Cairn were absorbed by Alduin way back when, it looked very similar to that time.
"He could sustain himself indefinitely if he stays here," she said. "There are thousands of powerful warriors in Sovngarde."
"But this is also the place where he's most vulnerable," Gerron said. "A place like Sovngarde means easy access to souls, but it's also a place where he could be fully unmade."
"He must be pretty desperate," Kiera said with a cold snort. "Looks like we finally have a chance to kill him then."
She pat Vermithor's scales twice, and the Bronze Fury let out a low rumble. He banked toward the great stone bridge below.
Serana's enhanced eyesight saw the massive figure at the bridge's base, slumped against the stone. Even at this distance, the scale of him was clear.
She knew who he was of course, Tsun, the guardian of the bridge of Sovngarde, a being of immense and ancient strength, the shield-thane of Shor. The guardian who had tested every warrior who sought entry to the Hall.
But right now, he looked like anything but, blood covering his ancient nordic armor in his collapsed state.
Vermithor descended as carefully as his injured wing allowed. The scorch damage was still there, the membrane between the bone blistered and burned. But he was still committed, despite the subtle asymmetry in his flying that Serana noticed wasn't there before.
They landed at the bridge approach.
Tsun stirred as they dismounted. His size was even more apparent on the ground. He was massive, a shield and axe beside him that made a regular warrior's weapons look like children's toys. But he was propped against the bridge stone with one massive arm, and the ichor that stained his side was not from any small wound.
"Dovahkiin." His voice was still enormous and resonant despite the look. "You came. As was... written."
"You are Tsun." Gerron said, his eyes wide with surprise. "Guardian of the bridge."
The warrior grunted in greeting as Kiera stood before him, eye to eye at that height only because he was seated. "Can you stand?"
"Not yet." He grunted. "He came through the portal before the mist fully formed. I moved to intercept. He is not what I remembered from before the Ages of Man. He has fed well."
"He won't be feeding much longer," Gerron said.
Tsun's eyes moved to him and a look of recognition passed in his eyes. "The one who does not carry a soul-claim to these halls. And yet Zenithar's mark is on you plain as sunlight." He exhaled. "The Bearer of the Forge walks in the realm of the dead."
"It's been a long week," Gerron said, shrugging.
A small rumble that could only be laughter erupted from the giant man.
"Go," he said. His gaze moved to Kiera. "Dovahkiin. Save…Sovngarde."
Kiera nodded once. She rose, turned, and looked at Vermithor, who had already lowered his head in readiness.
Serana climbed back up.
As Vermithor's wings carried them upward from the bridge and over the slope leading toward the Hall of Valor's direction, she turned to look back at the realm spread below them. The way the mists ate at the edges of the golden light certainly felt eerie, even for her.
A sudden pain then emanated from her chest, which caused her to gasp lightly.
'Looks like the drawback from using Vampire Lord form is still there.'
She took deep breaths, the pain subsiding on each exhale. After her training in trying to balance the three warring energies within her, Serana had certainly grown leaps and bounds in doing so. But the Vampire Lord form was a risk, because it inflamed the energy of Molag Bal.
Of course, Meridia's energy responded to that by asserting itself even more, which caused both things to fight within her like fire and water.
It wasn't lethal. She made sure of it after constant testing, but the pain became unbearable at times.
That's when they hear it in the distance.
"VEN MUL RIIK!"
It was a shout she didn't recognize, but its effects became apparent not a second later. All around then, the mist responded and intensified, thickening in the wake of the sound's passage as if the shout itself was feeding it.
Vermithor crested a rise in the terrain and they finally saw him.
Alduin was in the sky, wings beating as he kept afloat. Blood spilled from his wounds that spilled to the ground like ichor, where dozens of warriors were already busy climbing up the mountains and hills before throwing themselves to Alduin.
"Those are…warriors." Gerron said, "Though it doesn't seem like they can do much damage. As spirits of Sovngarde, they could not injure creatures considered still living."
'So the souls of Sovngarde chose to fight instead of perishing quietly,' Serana mused with a smile. 'As expected.'
Though Gerron's words proved true. The wounds they struck landed without much effect. Either that, or Alduin himself was simply too powerful to be affected by them.
Serana watched a warrior in Merethic bronze throw himself directly at Alduin's neck, axe swinging with full force, and bounce off the scale without even a flinch from the World-Eater.
"Then it'll be up to us," Kiera said.
Vermithor's rumble of agreement resonated through the saddle.
Looking back downwards, her mind did the basic accounting. Vermithor had an injured wing, which meant that an aerial battle put them in an obvious disadvantage. The pain in her chest still refused to subside fully, and she was worried of after effects should she keep entering her Vampire Lord form, which meant it had to be a last resort rather than a first option.
Gerron was still going strong, though his breathing was labored from a full day and a half of fighting, and the only equipment he had now was the Mercury Hammer.
Now Kiera…Kiera was the issue. She had already burned through two Dragon Aspect cycles, would she still have some left in the tank to invoke it again?
The odds were certainly against them, but they had faced much worse before. And this time, losing just wasn't an option.
Let's get this done, she thought, and readied herself.
…
Gerron Ironbreaker
Kiera was the first to move, standing up in the saddle.
"LOK VAH KOOR!"
The Clear Skies shout tore outward from her in a wide cone, tearing apart the mists in the immediate area like fog before a strong wind.
The spirit warriors below reacted to it visibly, all their heads turned up, eyes shining with brilliance. It looked like the change of people who had been fighting in dimness and had suddenly remembered what fighting in light felt like.
It wasn't a permanent solution, for Gerron could see the mist still permeate in the far reaches of Sovngarde, but it was good enough to at least allow them a staging ground to take the fight to Alduin. By Oblivion, it was already even returning at the edges. But it would slow Alduin's harvest.
Kiera raised both blades.
The Dragon Aspect erupted from her once again, which surprised Gerron. The power and soul of two Kruziik certainly couldn't be underestimated. But that was the last, he knew, the final draw on reserves that had been burning since Shor's Stone. The iridescent armor blazed around her, Dawnbreaker's golden flame reflected in it, the Ebony Blade's shadows woven through it.
She looked back at them once.
"This will last less than five minutes," she said, her voice carrying the absolute absence of doubt that was specific to Kiera and no one else Gerron had ever met. She looked at Alduin ahead and then turned back to them.
"Let's kick his ass before it ends."
Vermithor dived.
"JOOR ZAH FRUL!"
The Dragonrend shout hit Alduin from above — he hadn't seen it coming, had been banking toward a cluster of spirit warriors below — and the effect was immediate.
The World-Eater's wings locked and the vast body pitched sideways before the weight took him down and he hit the ground of Sovngarde with an impact that sent a shockwave rolling across the terrain, flattening the spirit warriors nearby before they scrambled back to their feet.
Kiera dropped from Vermithor's back while he was still eighty feet above the ground and free-fell, Dragon Aspect carrying the impact through her legs as she hit the earth running, Dawnbreaker already sweeping up from the low line.
Gerron came off Vermithor a half-second after, Serana beside him, Vermithor banking away to gain altitude and angle for his first pass. The Mercury Hammer was in his hands while he was still in the air, and he landed in a roll before rushing to shorten the distance between him and the World-Eater.
The ranged blasts were useful, but they were not enough. Against Alduin's hide at range, the magicka discharge scattered too much on impact, no doubt an effect of some kind of natural resistance to magic imbued within his scales.
But blunt physical force was different.
Alduin was divine, but he was also physical. A creature with mass and momentum and bones that could be stressed under sufficient load. And the Mercury Hammer in its melee form was a physical weapon with the weight of a forge behind every strike, augmented by the Battle Smith perk and the half dozen enchantments Gerron had layered into it across the years of its development.
When faced with the most stubborn of steel, beating it repeatedly was always the answer.
The first blow landed on the base of Alduin's left wing joint as Kiera had his attention from the front, and the sound of pain that Alduin mustered was music to his ears.
The wing buckled, allowing Serana's lightning to come and hit its marka half-second later.
The white-tinted lightning bolt hit a muscle group at the moment of extension that helped disrupt the movement. Frost chains then formed on a foreleg that slowed the ground pivot.
That's when Gerron realized what she was doing. She wasn't trying to hurt Alduin, but to make sure Kiera's hits landed clean, and it worked.
The two blades together were doing something to Alduin that nothing else had managed in the battles since Shor's Stone. Everywhere the Ebony Blade's shadow drove in, the wound stayed, the shadow eating at the immortality in the scales rather than letting the flesh simply repair itself. And every place Dawnbreaker followed, the golden fire poured into those shadow-held wounds and burned deep, reaching the old divine matter underneath.
Alduin was taking real damage, which of course made him furious.
"ZU'U ALDUIN! FIRST BORN OF AKATOSH!" The bellow shook the ground, emanating across all of Sovngarde. He turned from Kiera mid-exchange and his tail swept in a horizontal arc that would have taken Gerron off his feet if he hadn't already been moving. He ducked under it, felt the displacement of air across his back, and drove the Mercury Hammer upward into the underside of the tail on the follow-through.
"FIIK LO SAH!"
The Phantom Form shout made Alduin's outline shimmer and distort, duplicates appearing around his real position. Six phantoms of the World-Eater appeared then, occupying slightly different positions simultaneously.
Though to Gerron's surprise, Kiera picked the real one immediately, probably through some Dragonborn instinct that Gerron had no idea about. What was made obvious right after was that the phantoms weren't merely illusions, but also some kind of physicality enough to interfere with the physical world.
Serana's next lightning bolt jumped from the first phantom to the next three and discharged them harmlessly into the air, but it did allow Alduin to shed the icy chains from his legs and leapt, landing on a higher shelf of terrain to the north, and the mist thickened in a pulse around him.
"FUS RO DAH!":
Gerron dodged left as the Unrelenting Force slammed to where he was previously, catching whatever spirit warriors present and dispersing them into the mist.
Gerron reached the other spirit warriors as Alduin descended again, landing among them — and here was the first place the battle's dynamics shifted, because the spirit warriors on the ground, ineffective as they were against landing blows on Alduin, could function as physical obstacles. They crowded him. They forced his footfalls to account for them. They were in the way, a thousand years of Sovngarde's dead refusing to yield the ground of their afterlife.
Gerron planted himself in the middle of them.
"We need to push him back from the mist source!" he bellowed at the warriors. "Drive him up! Keep him moving! Don't let him stand still long enough to pull through!"
"My Jarl! We'll fight with you!"
A voice he recognized screamed, and Gerron turned to see Captain Renly rushing to his aid.
The former Captain of the Shor's Guard stood twenty feet away in his armor. Behind him, spreading out in the ordered formation that Gerron had drilled into them years ago, were several dozen members of the Shor's Guard.
He recognized them all.
His people. The ones who had died in the months of the dragon war, in the numerous sieges and the raids and the battles that had consumed Skyrim. The ones who had given their lives for the freedom of others.
They were here now, and they were looking at him.
"We've been waiting for something to hit," Renly said with a grin. "Lead us, Jarl Gerron."
Gerron looked at them for another second before a half grin took over his face.
"FORWARD!"
The Shor's Guard, ancient Nord warriors, fallen nord legionnaires, all charged forth against the form of the World-Eater. Gerron even saw the spirit of High King Torryg himself leading the flanking push, one hand on a war horn.
The arrival of over a hundred organised warrior-spirits at a full run from multiple directions changed the shape of the fight immediately. They couldn't wound Alduin, but they could restrict him — forcing him to devote attention to clearing them away, to protecting his flanks, to the physical management of space that even the World-Eater couldn't simply ignore when bodies were pressing from every angle.
In the space those spirits bought, Gerron hit him.
And in the space Gerron's hits created, Kiera worked.
Alduin turned, twisted, shook spirit warriors from his flanks like a horse shaking flies, but every turn exposed a different angle, and there were always more of them filling the spaces he cleared. He tried the Cyclone shout and scattered a full wing of them, the ones who perished feeding Alduin's strength once again.
Vermithor slammed himself to Alduin's right, his talons raking wounds upon the World-Eater's flesh as a roar of pain emanated from his maw. Gerron slammed his hammer upon the back of Alduin's leg once again, regaining his attention as Vermithor took the chance to fly.
"YOL TOOR SHUL!"
The fire breath swept wide and it came right for him and a cluster of Shor's Guard spirits in the same arc.
The Spell Shield came up on pure reflex, both hands slamming together as the magical barrier expanded from the shield's runic surface to five times its normal size.
The ward caught the fire breath as it arrived, the orange flames hitting the barrier's face in a roar of heat and light that pushed him back a step, then another, his boots carving furrows in the soil as the sustained blast tried to fold the ward flat.
Hot.
When was the last time he felt that way? With Caraxes' scales and the Crown of the Rift, no flames should have been dangerous enough to harm him. Yet now, he was proven wrong once again.
The warrior souls around him were scorched near instantly, but the ward was holding. But this was the full fire breath of Alduin at close range and the temperature on his side of the barrier was climbing.
That's when a chill emanated from his left side.
Serana had closed the distance in the moment the fire breath engaged him, placing herself at his flank with both hands raised, pouring frost magic into a cold ward that layered over his.
The temperature dropped immediately, her cold counter pressing back against Alduin's fire on the other side of the magical barrier. Ice crystals formed on Gerron's vambrace where her ward met his.
Together they held it as long as they could, until Kiera came in and stopped the flames by slashing both swords onto one of Alduin's eyes, carving it out.
A roar of pain came out of the World Eater as Gerron finally allowed himself to lower the shield. His arms were shaking from the sustained hold and he could already feel the rivets of sweat forming from the heat.
But they were alive, and that's what mattered.
"Thank you," he said briefly, taking out the Mercury Hammer once more.
Serana was already repositioning, though a smile was visible on her panting face.
Loud footsteps had Gerron turn to a massive warrior moving through the press of spirits. The man's voice cut across the battlefield in the old tongue, rallying the ancient dead around Alduin's southern flank as the World-Eater wheeled to deal with Kiera descending from above again.
"I, YSGRAMOR, SHALL NOT STAND BY WHILE YOU DESTROY THIS PLACE ALDUIN! STUHN FAHDON! FOR HONOR! FOR SOVNGARDE! PUSH HIM BACK!"
The charge he led from the south hit Alduin's side as Gerron and Serana followed in from his right. Kiera charged right from the front, exploiting the moment of Alduin's divided attention.
Alduin stumbled.
His left foreleg went out to the side to catch his weight and for one full second he was off-balance on the terrain of his own intended hunting ground.
More Nord heroes chose that time to make their appearance. Gerron saw Felldir the Old, — one of the three who had cast Aldion through time — standing upon one of the higher hills as he shouted into the skies.
"LOK VAH KOOR!"
Two voices joined him simultaneously. Gormlaith Golden-Hilt from the east, Hakon One-Eye from the west, all three voices combining that parted the coming mist like a blade.
For a moment, Sovngarde blazed with its own light. Golden and complete, the aurora blazing above, every surface illuminated from within, every spirit warrior present in full brightness. Alduin recoiled from the light, and Gerron saw something in the remaining red eye that he had not seen in any of the prior fights.
Hesitation, and fear.
It did not last, for a snarl came not a heartbeat later.
He spun, launching Ysgramor and his party back from the force.
Alduin threw himself upward—not flight, but a high jump—and used his weight to flatten the rest of the spirit warriors who weren't fast enough to dodge.
The tail caught Gerron across the chest the moment he landed. The spiky tip caught Gerron across the breastplate with enough force to send him off his feet and into a tumbling roll across the terrain.
The motion stopped him as he lay on the blades of grass in Sovngarde. Some of his ribs had broken from that, but the ebony plate did absorb the worst of it despite its current sorry state.
It hurt to breathe, and getting upright sent stabbing pains up his back and neck.
He spat blood and got his knees under him. Gods, he was tired. He was running on the last drop now, a reserve past the reserve
Up above, Alduin began circling above them, the Dragonrend having fully left his system, eyeing the battlefield.
And yet to Gerron's utter surprise, the damn dragon had his focus razor trained on Serana.
It made sense in a way. She had been the most persistent irritant the entire battle. Kiera wouldn't have landed as many hits if she wasn't there to harass him.
Yet all the same, it filled him with anger and dread in equal measure. His legs were already moving before he could register it, the fire breath leaving Alduin's maw as Serana turned to look at it in shock.
He was already moving before the fire breath left Alduin's maw.
The flames came down in a column, aimed precisely, and Gerron put himself between it and Serana with his last clear thought being that there had never been any other option here.
The Spell Shield came up.
The fire hit it.
And this time there was no ward in reserve, no secondary enchantment to draw on. There was no time for the full ward to emerge, it was just the shield itself and Gerron's will holding it flat against the incoming column of the World-Eater's fire breath.
"Gerron!" Serana's voice, immediate, present, directly behind him.
The cold came an instant later. Her hands at his back, frost magic pouring forward over his shoulders into the ward's face — the same improvised layering they had done before, her cold against his ward against Alduin's fire, the temperature difference visible in the air between them as steam erupted where the opposing forces met.
He chuckled despite it all. Despite moving to protect her, it was Serana who kept saving him once more.
He leaned into the cold.
Gerron's legs were braced, arms were locked, and every part of him that was still capable of forming thoughts was focused on keeping the ward flat and the cold flowing through, until the sound cut off and the light faded and the pressure released.
He lowered the shield, his knees dropping once more to the ground.
"Gerron." Serana's voice was very quiet, her hand was on his back
"Still here," he said through raspy breaths.
"QO SPAAN LOK!"
Vermithor's voice echoed as the black lightning hit Alduin broadside in midair. The World-Eater was driven sideways, wings losing their strength, and he came down hard on the high shelf above them.
Alduin shook his head, still trying to rise again despite all the damage they gave him.
But this time, Kiera was there.
She had been tracking Vermithor's approach, had been positioning since the fire breath ended, and the moment Alduin's wings lost strength, she moved. She had eleven seconds left on the Dragon Aspect — Gerron counted without meaning to, the Artificer's Insight noting the fading quality of the iridescent light that still blazed around her. Eleven seconds of Dawnbreaker's amplification and the Ebony Blade's full capacity.
She held both blades behind her, bringing the resonance back as the dark-and-gold braiding that had made the air vibrate when she first combined them reappeared. But this time doing so in Sovngarde's own light the effect was something that pressed against the eyes.
The golden flame and the shadow didn't just coexist, they amplified each other, the fire giving the shadow direction and the shadow giving the fire depth, and the combined quality of the two together was something that had no name in any language Gerron knew.
"WULD NAH KEST!"
The Whirlwind Sprint at full Dragon Aspect strength carried her the distance in a fraction of a second, a streak of dark-gold light across the terrain of Sovngarde, and she hit Alduin mid-rise with both blades pointed forward, aimed directly at the center of his chest, right where the scar would be.
Both blades drove in, the old wound and the new meeting at the same point, the shadow flooding in through the damage that was already there as Dawnbreaker came in a half-second behind, the golden flame following the shadow's path into the reopened wound.
Alduin's roar was not defiance.
It was the sound of something that had believed it could not end confronting the possibility that it might be wrong.
His single remaining red eye blazed still with fury. Even near death as he was, the damn lizard refused to believe he could perish.
The eye narrowed down to a slit, fixing itself on the Dragonborn standing at the hilt of both blades.
Gerron watched, chest heaving, one arm over Serana's shoulder, as both blades went through Alduin's chest.
…
AN: The final battle to end it all. I wrote this literally on fumes so I don't know how good it ended up being, but I hope I got it right.
Including Torygg, Ysgramor, and Captain Renly was something I thought to do for fun, and I really enjoyed doing that Ysgramor war cry.
This should be the last two or three chapters before we go to the Epilogue. What a crazy ride this has been.