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The mortals would never quite understand what it was like to exist outside of time. One could do things, but only if one was already doing them. One could know things, but never learn them.

The timeless state might have been for an eternity, or for a single moment too brief to measure. Or both. It was. And then it was not.

Still, little changed. Each spirit acted according to its nature. Those which had begun close, remained close. Those which had never interacted, never interacted.

The most interesting feature was communication: they could make themselves understood at will, but as soon as one spirit (that which would be Nocturnal) chose to mark its closest allies out from the masses, there was a purpose for codes. A purpose for deliberately poor communication.

Sometimes, the codes offered elegant shortcuts. It had been difficult to express, "This one thinks about that one much because to do so brings pleasure. To learn that one thinks about this one much would also bring pleasure."

In time, it would make more sense - perfect sense, even - to say, "We're friends, right?"

It was on this metaphorical landscape that another spirit (codenamed Lorkhan and Shor and more) offered a new idea. New, and yet familiar.

Making the languages worse had ultimately made them better. What if the spirits attempted to make themselves worse by accepting limitations? What new, as-yet unthought forms would they achieve? How much better could they be?

It was a compelling message.

Lorkhan spoke, and Magnus planned, and a host of lesser spirits pledged themselves to the cause.

One spirit was initially enthusiastic, but the plans said it should always be still and only move when acted on by others. This was too much change too soon, so it asked for a different role.

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Dragons were designed to be like natural disasters: they would eat and destroy and grow in power. When they had nothing to consume, they would languish for a while, then ravage the land again.

The strongest dragon chose its own name: Al-du-in, Destroyer-devour-master.

Alduin claimed it had a special place in the Plans and a special role in the world. It would destroy unneeded corners of the Mundus. "When the time came," it would destroy everything so the world could begin anew.

Alduin claimed dragons were never intended as indiscriminate natural disasters. That lesser dragons should obey because Alduin knew the will of the gods.

Or they should obey because it was strongest. Alduin claimed a lot of things "proven" only by its strength (whether implicitly or explicitly).

Of the lesser dragons, some were stronger and some weaker. Some had always been closer to Alduin, some farther. With two conflicting sorts of "power," it was hard to figure out which dragons one should appease and which it was safe to degrade.

Then Alduin established a single rigid ranking system. To be fair, it needed to put them in some order to distribute names, but it began with its most favored and worked its way down, so everyone understood that this was how status worked now.

Paarthurnax, its lieutenant, was almost perfect: not quite strongest and not quite the most familiar, but close either way.

Alduin seemed to rank the dragons very carefully, but the names all meant basically the same things. Sky, like Odahviing. Domination, like Grahkrindrog. Fire, like Nahagliiv.

One dragon became Durnehviir, Dur-neh-viir, Curse-never-dying. It was a good enough name, if anticlimactic. Of course it was immortal, and maybe Durnehviir wasn't a very effective "curse" yet, but Mundus was an arena for gaining power.

Durnehviir would grow stronger.

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When one thought about it, Durnehviir's name was a bit ambiguous. On whom was Dur meant to be a curse? Presumably, the answer was "anyone Alduin says," but it rather liked the idea of choosing its own targets.

Yes. Its name seemed kind of obvious at first, but the more it thought about it, the more it liked the possibilities.

Some dragons, though, were not so lucky. One might even say they were cursed. (Ha.) As Alduin's creativity waned, the names had become strange.

Nah-fah-laar was Fury-for-water, for which the most obvious (cruelest) interpretation was the undignified unusually thirsty. Nahfahlaar tried to explain it in terms of metaphors: water is memory, memory is knowledge, and knowledge is power. Or, if it happened to be near a coast, it might skim along the waves and explain that water was actually quite dangerous.

("Metaphor" was not a word yet, but the concept existed.)

(The convenient thing about being a dragon was that when you said "water," if you meant "the kind of water which is actually memory," then everyone would understand that you meant "memory.")

Maar-se-lok was Terror-of-sky, which might sound scarier than Nahfahlaar, but was such an extremely bland, unimaginative name that it was actually worse. Ridiculous.

The most hypothetically cliché name (cliché was not yet a word, but the concept existed) might be Maar-lok-yol. ("Yol" was just "fire.") The least meaningful might be Bo-se-ah… no, Movement-of-hunter would still be more interesting than Terror-of-sky.

Sorry, Maarselok.

If Durnehviir had been named Maarselok, it thought it might have fled to a distant island and lived all its days in shame. Or, perhaps, it might have been a curse anyway, and made a nuisance of itself until the other dragons had no choice but to respect it. That would be an interesting goal…

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The word "fahlah" was a loanword, cognate with "flower" but pronounced by some dragon (not Durnehviir) who didn't really care which order the sounds went in as long as the result was easy to say and write.

Of course, at this point, Durnehviir wasn't yet familiar with the word "loanword." It didn't even know the concept.

Nor had it yet heard anyone speak of flowers. Tiny soft plant reproductive organs were generally of little interest to dragons.

Dur had, however, admired the tall, dark trees with their softness and their brittleness. It had admired jagged mountain ranges. It had admired Nahfahlaar's beloved waves, smaller and constantly shifting, but with the same sort of ridges. It had even admired grassy plains full of the aforementioned tiny soft plant reproductive organs.

(It would not learn the difference between grains and flowers until it dealt with mortals to whom the distinction was a matter of life and death. However, plains generally had both kinds anyway, so it didn't much matter.)

It had admired the Monah-ven, which stood even above the height it was comfortable for dragons to fly, and which guided and refined all the winds of Keizaal.

It had admired the skies, clear or with the rising drafts that formed fluffy clouds and sudden rain. It had seen when everything moved slower and formed damp gray blankets for days. It had admired pale auroras on clear, bright nights and, of course, the stars.

Had Magnus always intended to flee? It had surely known what would happen, and it had evidently managed to escape, it and all its followers, before they were trapped. Durnehviir could not believe that was an accident.

Nor could Durnehviir believe anyone would want to flee. Some obviously had, but why? How could they fear Mundus? It was beautiful.

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Dragons did not particularly enjoy sitting on the ground. Oh, they couldn't sleep in flight, of course, but it was more comfortable to rest on a cliff or wrap around a boulder than splay across smooth ground. Also, level ground could sometimes be thick mud, whereas cliffs might crumble but at least would not stick.

Some (like Durnehviir) didn't mind sitting on (or even crawling across) level ground too badly. If one wanted to examine something closely, it was a good idea to get as close as possible. Others did mind, and were much more careful to avoid it.

Everyone uniformly despised trying to take off from level ground. It could be worth it, but most of the time, it was much easier to leap off a cliff and catch oneself on the way down.

If there wasn't something interesting nearby, there were only two other reasons a dragon might lie flat on flat ground.

Option one: it wished to hide. The deception-related metaphors practically wrote themselves.

(It would be nice if the metaphors could write themselves. The shades of meaning that were so natural in speech were almost impossible to convey in writing. Even when they adopted an "implies" symbol in the Fourth Era, conveying anything complex would still be very unwieldy and require a great deal of extra writing.)

Option two: the dragon lying on the ground was not doing so by choice. Rather, it had been forced by a stronger dragon to prostrate itself in submission.

And in that case, it would probably do whatever it thought might let it escape the humiliation. It would creep away. It would make false promises. It would disclaim responsibility for things that were really its fault, or take responsibility for achievements that belonged to another.

Therefore, "nok" had two meanings.

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The dragon language had one third-person singular pronoun: "rok."

As the dragons explored Mundus, they added another: "nii." This was "the default state of the world," or a portion thereof. A tree was "nii," but might spontaneously revert to "rok" if it fell.

And then the dragons met humans.

The humans compensated for useless claws with metal tools. They compensated for empty, powerless voices by using more words to convey the nuances.

Communication was asymmetrical at first. Dragons gave orders and mortals tried to appease the giant firebreathing monsters with actions since their own words were incomprehensible.

Gradually, the mortals learned how to use the dragons' words, and in return, the dragons learned to listen more carefully and guess at the omitted shades of meaning.

When the mortals were semi-fluent, they began to suggest "improvements." Durnehviir appreciated having new words for different kinds of plants. However, Dur was much less fond of the mortal concept of gender.

There were (allegedly) two fundamentally distinct kinds of mortals. It was (allegedly) incomprehensible to speak of the two groups with the same words.

From then on, the dragon language had three third-person singular pronouns. "Rok" was for people. "Nii" expanded to include all inanimate objects, even if they were temporarily interesting. And "rek" was for females when it mattered that they were female. To dragons, it almost never mattered. To humans, it always seemed to matter.

Gender-neutral words gained female counterparts. For example, "zeymah" ("fellow" in the sense of "fellow dragon") was joined by "briinah." Worse, distinct words became gendered pairs. For example, "bormah" (creator, parent) and "monah" (guide, shaper) became "male parent" and "female parent."

Durnehviir hated it. However, by the time Dur identified the trend, it had already become too ubiquitous to fight.

Much like the impending migration north to Atmora.

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It was actually a bit weird to be bribed into not destroying things. Dur wondered if living in peace was betraying the purpose of the dragons.

Eh. Mundus was supposed to change those within. There was no reason Durnehviir needed to follow the initial directives anymore.

Instead of fretting about it, Dur watched the mortals.

It was unpleasant to admit, but they almost had a point about gender being a fundamental difference. Cows and bulls were treated as differently as cows and chickens, in a very matter-of-fact way. Men and women were distinct in subtler ways, but in general, the men did seem to battle more and the women did seem to spend more time caring for young children.

Nobody had adequately explained, though, why humans were in the same categories as livestock, if their categories were so important. Sure, they'd tried, but they hadn't succeeded. (On a completely unrelated note, Durnehviir might have accidentally traumatized some of Lokriikah's villagers.)

Obviously, after extensive review of the evidence, there was only one conclusion to draw: Durnehviir had been right in the first place. Gender was nonsensical.

Reproduction was only half of the weird relationship mortals had with time.

The other half was that they died. In fact, they died extremely quickly. If they managed to avoid dying of anything else, eventually, their bodies would just stop working.

This finite lifespan meant that there was a finite amount of power any given mortal could amass. No wonder mortals invested so much effort in reproduction! It was the only way to avoid completely wasting their power when they died.

Durnehviir could kind of sympathize with that: nobody liked to know they had wasted their time. Dur just had slightly different priorities, like understanding everything in hopes of using time efficiently in the future.

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"Let Malbrenn of Ashhold give unto Grignir of Hengkreath three bushels of grain in reparation for the destruction of his fields by the bull Ysglav," said Ninsuleyk, or words that meant the same thing.

"I speak with the voice of my master," Ninsuleyk continued, because despite the name, Ninsuleyk was not a dragon. He (she?) was a mortal who spoke for Sahrotaar, and over time, his voice had become a little less empty. "Let it be so."

Now, when he spoke in his official capacity as priest, as sonaak, Durnehviir could hear the threat in let, the boredom in destruction that implied he didn't quite believe it but favored Grignir anyway, the hint in three that there had better be no shortcomings.

Outside of his duties, Ninsuleyk (Nin-suleyk, only two words, whereas dragons like Sah-rot-aar had three) spoke perfectly normally for mortals, which was to say, emptily. Durnehviir had spoken with him a time or two, but been disappointed.

Several hundred years later, Dur decided it was clear that mortals could channel the Thu'um, but they were missing something critical to be able to wield it.

The warriors of the Dragon Cult prayed and practiced and, in battle, could unleash waves of force as a dragon might, or tear their opponents' weapons from their hands. Sometimes, they would unleash more exotic effects, but always, always, they used the Voice in no way that did not rebound to the glory of their lord. In everyday matters, they spoke with voices as empty as ever.

Those outside the Cult spoke only in empty voices, even in battle, because they had no draconic lord to speak through them and smite their enemies. It was little wonder that the Dragon Cult had spread so far. Durnehviir imagined it might someday cover the entire world.

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The longer Durnehviir watched the mortals, the more he realized (despite their short lifespans) they were not nearly as unfortunate as he'd initially thought. Oh, he obviously wouldn't want to be a mortal, but they seemed to manage well enough.

As he'd observed before, their weak bodies pushed them to make tools and weapons. Wingless, they built ships. Their empty voices inspired them to use more words to make their meanings clearer. (Dragons had a lot of words, too, but they tended to skew toward obscure near-synonyms nobody remembered to use.)

They couldn't breathe fire (at least, not unless very devout and on the field of battle) but they could use magicka to make fireballs, which was almost the same thing.

And although mortal bodies tended to stop working, this only pushed them to practice necromancy. Durnehviir was not welcome in their catacombs (and anyway, he wouldn't fit, nor wish to crawl in), but he lurked nearby and asked questions, and he spoke with the undead priests. Most draugr didn't maintain enough intelligence to hold a conversation (the process was evidently a bit flawed) but a carefully preserved priest could still be lucid after a thousand years of sleep.

It was not clear why Alduin had given his approval for this, but perhaps it was another way to motivate the cultists? The faithful would live forever, and this promise would make them abandon their homes and families to pursue immortality.

Durnehviir was familiar with the idea of dragons returning to life, but the mortal approach seemed like it would be much more versatile. If only Durnehviir could truly practice it. The magic was fine, but he didn't have hands.

(He envied mortals their hands, if not their mortality.)

(Another impossible wish: freedom from Alduin… no, wait, that was actually simple.)

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There was a certain Ayleid lord whose hobby it was to conduct purely tonal, extremely painful choirs.

Not painful to listen to, but painful to perform in. Therefore, this lord ("the Musician of Siralrol") would probably hurt anyone he thought he could get away with hurting, which meant Durnehviir did not intend to serve him no matter how much he hinted he knew about tonal architecture. No matter how much Durnehviir wanted to fact-check Vulthuryol's claims. It would be too dangerous.

"You see," the Ayleid lord said, completely oblivious to the fact that he'd lost Durnehviir's interest, "if left to their own devices, slaves will scream themselves hoarse. By sealing their mouths shut, we prevent that. However, under the right stimulation, they will still produce shorter bursts of purer sound through their nostrils…"

The nearest slave contorted without warning and emitted a shrill screech. A few of the others made milder squeaking noises in response.

"Some, like Parumil, might speak of the careful molding of each singer in their choirs," the Ayleid continued. "I, however, use only the most natural voices, carefully selected and preserved."

Durnehviir had never thought he would miss the late Miriandoris, but this cruel and utterly wasteful so-called musician had impossibly lowered the bar to new depths.

He still considered that the original plan had been sound.

Dragons tended to consider elves, especially the southern ones, "too much work." They were too fractious to rule over and (although the dragons were reluctant to admit it) too dangerous to rule safely.

Durnehviir had, after he learned all of mortal-style magic that the dragon cultists could teach him, flown over the mountains to learn from these dangerous southern elves.

The plan had been solid except for one problem, a problem summarized thus: talkative, powerful, sane. Pick any two.

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"The Dwemer recognize at least three kinds of endlessness," Vulthuryol said.

Durnehviir couldn't imagine using this information, but Vulthuryol was easy to listen to in a way mortals could never be.

"You are familiar with circular endlessness, where one always returns to familiar states. The Dwemer actually consider this the most complicated because it inherently involves time, whereas the other two can measure simpler things."

"Being in the void versus being the void?" Durnehviir guessed, remembering the Beginning Place.

"Sort of." Vulthuryol bobbed his head in a way that seemed (with reference to Ayleid gestures) pleased. Durnehviir resolved to adopt it in his own dealings with mortals.

"The Dwemer wouldn't say something fills the available space, but would say it is identical to or the same size as another thing. Consider a set of numbers. One, two, three, four, and so on. So it also contains fifty-seven, three thousand, and numbers larger than you have names for."

"All the numbers, then?"

"Not quite. All the positive whole numbers. Now consider another set, skipping half of the numbers: two, four, six, eight, and so on. It includes three thousand, but not fifty-seven. You see? Good. Is this identical to the other set?"

It sounded like a trick question, but being wrong didn't sting like it once had. Durnehviir played along. "No."

"Because, for example, five is only in the first. Are they the same size?"

"No. The first set has twice as many numbers."

"But take the first set and double each element. Then one, two, three becomes two, four, six. This is the same size as the first set, but identical to the second. Anything you can count in order is the same size."

"So what's the third kind of endlessness?"

Vulthuryol laughed gleefully. "Not even they can count it."

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Durnehviir rarely bothered to keep track of events in Keizaal, but as a dragon seeking to master mortal magics, he paid attention when word came of the inverse: a mortal who used dragon magics freely without the prerequisite years of worship.

Now, "dov" was "dragon," of course. "Dov-ah" was "dragon-hunter" was also "dragon," playing on the seemingly inherent enmity between most dragons. This enmity was partly Alduin's fault, of course, but now, it might be only his influence that prevented them all from killing one another.

"Dovah-kiin" was "dragon-born," the priest Mir-aak, first of an unknown number of Nords in the Dragon Cult who would be born with voices, with Thu'um of their own.

At first, Miraak's ambiguous position seemed to merely bestow additional status on whichever dragon he served. This, of course, breathed new vigor into the flames of the argument about when it might be acceptable for one dragon to poach another's servant.

Then Miraak ate the soul of a dragon. Obviously, this was an act of rebellion. Or maybe he, who had not spent eternities as a disembodied spirit, lacked control and had done it by accident.

Either way, Alduin hunted him down to eat him, reclaim Nolrotbah's soul, and resurrect his loyal servant.

Miraak evidently had no faith that he would be restored to life and health after Alduin finished with Nolrotbah, and (if only from self-preservation) chose to rebel.

At first, it seemed like a doomed fight, although Durnehviir knew better than to underestimate the advantages gained by mortal stealth. When Miraak somehow swayed other dragons to his side and showed himself to unexpectedly also be a master of mortal magics, it began to seem he might actually prevail.

In the end, Miraak fell, but Nolrotbah did not reappear, nor most of Miraak's draconic followers.

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Ohtirenya was fascinated by the immortality of the Daedra, and therefore summoned and bound and questioned them. Daedra seemed to have a much deeper connection to their… perhaps to their territory, although in Oblivion, space would be much more mutable.

Much of what Durnehviir learned in Ohtirenya's service, he learned specifically because he was not in control. A sense of solidarity made people (in this case, summoned Daedra) more willing to speak with him. He hadn't actually done it on purpose, but it worked.

The current captive, Xsavireth, favored Ayleidoon, the newest and most versatile of the languages she shared with Durnehviir. And yet, she used idioms Durnehviir had not heard in centuries.

Words and idioms died when their replacements filled their niches and made them unnecessary. In a funny sort of way, by using old words, Xsavireth was a necromancer.

She was still perfectly comprehensible, of course. Words were born and thrived and fell again, but dragons did not forget them, nor did Ayleids, nor Dremora.

Sometimes, you got an old word that had changed its meaning so thoroughly as to wipe out the old one, but echoes of the old meaning usually lingered in the new.

"How do you bear it?" she asked. "I have only been separated from my kin for two days, and already I fear I am going mad."

Durnehviir imagined being trapped for two days in any other dragon's presence. "I may not have kin, not in the sense you mean."

"I thought perhaps you joined my summoner's clan." As always, Xsavireth avoided Ohtirenya's name, not wishing to grant a despised mortal that much respect. "But they die and you do not seem pained."

He forgot, or he replaced them.

Durnehviir rarely felt change so keenly as when he spoke to those who didn't.

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Back up north, there was more strife, but not in any way Durnehviir might have predicted.

A Dragonborn appearing? That had already happened once, and seemed likely to recur.

Paarthurnax going on a crusade? Again, that had already happened once. More than once, even.

Most dragons didn't particularly care what the uneducated masses believed. It was, of course, important that they pay tribute and not make their draconic lord look weak by preaching against his own lord (Alduin) where anyone else could overhear. However, it didn't really matter whether they thought Alduin was a god or merely a powerful dragon.

Paarthurnax seemed to be personally offended by random strangers (or slaves) being wrong.

However, this strife came from neither a Dragonborn (a mortal fitting into the patterns of draconic power) nor Paarthurnax on one of his crusades (fighting a battle nobody else cared about).

This strife was Paarthurnax breaking the entire structure of the Dragon Cult, betraying all of dragonkind, by lending his Voice to random mortals from outside the Cult. If he'd tried to raise a rebellion inside the Cult, that would have been one thing, but bringing in outsiders was almost unthinkable in a way that, upon reflection, Durnehviir supposed had been a blind spot.

And with this power, the mortals invented a Shout of their own, a terrible thing which shook the very bones of the world and was audible even from the banks of the Niben. This went against all established teaching: no dragon could have made that Shout. Perhaps mortals had always been able to Shout in their own voices, and only now realized it?

And then the mortals cast Alduin outside of time, and the air cleared, like the sky on a clear, windy day.

A clever observer might remember that wind heralded storms.

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Durnehviir heard it from Vulthuryol, who heard it from the Dwemer, who heard it from the Nords, who heard it from Paarthurnax: it was allegedly the Hawk who decreed the fall of the Dragon Cult.

With his own eyes, he saw that She did not stop there.

In Cyrodiil, the Ayleids committed no new excesses, but something in the wind was different, and whether because of that or some other reason, the Nedes followed the example of their northern kin.

Durnehviir could not say for sure that Al-Esh walked on clouds and the Ayleids who touched her with cruelty thereafter withered, nor that she could even cast a simple magelight until years afterward.

He could not say for sure that the gem she bore was the blood of Lorkhan, nor blood at all, nor even a diamond until after it was cut, nor even hers.

He could not say for sure that Mori-Ha-Us was the son of Kyne, nor a bull, nor even winged. Or if there was a bull, he could not say for sure that it had any ability to think, although the Ayleids had put human minds in stranger bodies.

He could not say that Pelin-El was heartless and yet moved like a living man, nor that he was pale as drained corpses and peeled briar-roots.

He could not say for certain that where the Nedes fought, mountains of corpses rose under their feet as fast as mammoths startled from sleep. Perhaps there were no mountains of corpses, or perhaps they were built only after the battles. Built by mourning freedom fighters searching the faces of fallen conscripts, inking names into their skin, and burning them in great heaps before the vultures came.

He could not, would not say, because no telling could possibly do it justice.

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It felt as though a hundred years of blood and smoke had been condensed into a single year, but when the skies cleared again, Durnehviir thought they might truly get a century of peace.

The surviving Ayleids were more numerous than some of Alessia's council might have wished, although fewer than Durnehviir would have. But perhaps this, too, was for the best. The survivors were the diplomatic, reasonable ones.

Or patient enough to close their gates and wait for the winds to steady before choosing a side. It was these with whom Durnehviir associated. They found him useful: it was somehow less terrifying to have a dragon land at your gates with word from your former rival, than to have your (hopefully former) rival teleport into your throne room.

Alessia reigned for approximately two decades, then died. It was a tragically short span for an elf or even a Nord, more in line with the unfortunate fate of a Nedic slave whose usefulness depended on their physical strength.

Perhaps it was Ayleid-honed paranoia, but Durnehviir suspected she shouldn't have died so soon, and knew her son Belharza (barely out of childhood) permitted things his mother would have quelled with a gesture.

He even saw who benefited most.

The Nedes chafed, the Ayleids schemed, and Durnehviir, in a personal milestone, committed his first true betrayal.

Unfortunately, Belharza found it inconvenient to pardon a citizen who had eaten another (even an allegedly treacherous Ayleid) without more proof than Durnehviir could offer.

Durnehviir flew north. Nords (even in Cyrod, let alone Keizaal) had little love for dragons now, so he learned that, unlike Vulthuryol, he could not tolerate the narrow, crowded, sunless halls of the Dwemer.

That was fine. He had an entire continent to explore. Perhaps he would begin with Resdayn's Telvanni.

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Resdayn was nice enough, especially the raw magic flowing from Vvardenfell, but the Chimer ultimately a little too strange. In the southern marshes, the lizardfolk were feathered and beaded as Ayleids, but had trees instead of Princes. They built eternity up from the ground instead of scavenging fallen starstuff. Southwest, and Kaalgrontiid made him unwelcome. West again, and Valenwood would have felt like coming home if only it had more open places to land.

He arrived in Volenfell only a little after the Dwemeri Rourken Clan did. They had not come from Keizaal, as he would have guessed, but from Resdayn through the Heartland. They had faced suspicion at every turn, and seen Imga but no bull-Emperors.

North, and Altbal, separated from Cyrodiil by a mountain range, kept the old traditions of the Ayleids. In Keizaal, the Dwemer, having dug everything there was to dig, looked beyond the stars.

These four hundred years were just as full as the ones before, but disjointed and ultimately overshadowed by their ending.

Where were you when the dragon–

There was another answer, but for now Durnehviir's was this:

I was at Xal Thak again.

The Resdaynian traders from the north, that morning, told him that one of their Architects had reached a breakthrough, discovered how to truly escape entropy. (This time, for certain!)

Durnehviir thought no more of it until they vanished amid loud, discordant noises.

He flew north for explanations.

Resdayn had neither Dwemer nor Chimer, only Dunmer staring aghast at their newly ashen hands.

Keizaal had sleeping Nords and empty brass turrets.

At the lift at Mzark, Durnehviir called, "VUL-THUR-YOL!"

There was no answer.

Twice more, and he heard his own voice echo up the empty lift, but Vulthuryol's name was the only part of his best friend to come back.

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Where were you when the dragon–

–vanished? Like dragons shouldn't? Xal Thak.

No, where were you when the dragon broke?

Durnehviir might have answered, I think I broke.

He remembered finding himself underground, but was that before or after his wings were cut by bright, spinning metal?

He carved patterns into a glacier, but could not be certain what they had been.

He remembered carving letters, but when he looked again later, the patterns were nonsensical shapes like bleeding wounds.

He knew that other dragons still flew the skies, but couldn't remember how he knew, nor why he hated them for it.

Eventually, as he watched ice slowly melt under the sun, he remembered the world kept moving no matter what. No matter how long he sat on a mountain or how many xanmeers his Saxhleel friends built.

That thought drew him south again, where he found that in the time he had been gone - it hadn't been that long, surely? - something had changed.

Xal Thak was empty, and even in the few xanmeers where Saxhleel still lived, there was no metalwork, no elaborate sacrifice to Sithis, no striving for immortality. They were born in the Hist and lived in the Hist and died in the Hist and nourished the roots of the Hist.

(Vulthuryol was gone, vanished like the Dwemer, not merely dead. His body was not here and could not nourish anything.)

The cycle of decay and rebirth was almost beautiful. Some days, almost was enough, and he watched.

Other days, Durnehviir sulked atop Xal Thak, remnants together of a time the Hist chose to ignore. The clamor of the insects made it feel almost alive again.

Where were you when the Dragon broke?

Really, the answer was always the same: I was at Xal Thak again.

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Time stopped working. Durnehviir could not realize what happened, because he already knew.

The mortals are somehow breaking a fundamental force. Perhaps it was already fraying?

Durnehviir remembered being a nameless spirit in a void when time took shape.

Time does not take shape: He simply is. Durnehviir does not yet exist.

Durnehviir remembered Lorkhan's plans–

The One in His wisdom needs no plans.

Durnehviir remembered–

The firstborn son of Aka-Tosh, of Ak-at-Osh, is named Alduin. He is eldest, strongest, most venerable, the crown of creation. His name means Destroy-devour-dominate and is a riddle that he must solve to learn his purpose.

By the will of the One, all things come to pass. In time, each of his younger brothers is born and, as a birthday gift, receives a similar riddle: Paarthurnax, Odahviing, Grahkrindrog, Nahagliiv, and more. In the perfect, timeless, unchanging language of Ak-at-Osh's sons, all these are riddles, or perhaps prophecies.

By the will of the One, all things come to pass. In time, Durnehviir is born (to whom?). His name means Curse-never-dying, and it is both riddle and prophecy.

The world exists. How can it not?

There is a bending of the light. Daedra invade, defile the perfect harmony of the world.

Some remain outside, reaching in with long-fingered hands. The One grants them names and names and names. They are the Acceptable Blasphemies.

Some enter the world like Durnehviir's brother creeping into the halls of the Dwemer, and are welcomed. They commit the heresy of naming one another. They are the Aldmeri Taint and must be expunged.

Durnehviir remembered–

War comes. The Aldmeri Taint festers and is cleansed. The world drowns in blood, floats to the surface like a corpse, and breathes again.

The song stutters. Ends.

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"It's worst when a word changes its meaning," Durnehviir had complained when Xsavireth laughed. "I only remember the new one."

In the aftermath of the ritual, Durnehviir no longer quite remembered what being a dragon originally meant, but he knew the world had changed, and he knew to look for inconsistencies.

He easily discarded the concept of the "Aldmeri Taint" as too cohesive, too emphatic. It had probably been the chanters' primary goal.

The side-effects were harder to sort out.

He remembered tinvaak with Saxhleel death-priests atop grand temples, so perhaps the Dragon Cult had once ruled even in the south, but now the region was nothing but trees and ruins and huts, like someone had seen a single border village on the marshy banks of the Niben and refused to imagine anyone with thermoadaptive blood could ever be anything but hopelessly primitive.

Truly incalculable damage, and all for… what, removing a few Aldmeri terms from the lawbooks?

He remembered speaking with his brother Vulthuryol about the judgement of Belharza, but also that Vulthuryol had, long before, been stolen away by the Dwemer and never returned.

The chanters hated the elves, so the second part was probably a malicious lie.

He remembered serving dragon-crowned Alessia and bloody-handed Pelinal, but this did not explain how he knew to twist flesh, shatter bone, and silence screams.

Had Durnehviir sided with the Ayleids? Or had the Alessians been equally cruel?

If he had been cruel enough to make his changed self feel such horror, how had the chanters done that? Had they tried to change dragons (whose names were bywords for fire and domination) into wise, gentle healers who merely picked up the pieces of shattered time?

Too bad. Durnehviir's name was still Curse-never-dying, and do-vah, of spring, was also dov-ah, dragon hunter.

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Durnehviir missed his brother.

He missed his brothers.

They had lived in the north, so north he flew, past human watchtowers guarding human farmlands, past ancient Ayleid spires jutting from a sea of leaves, north until the Velothi Mountains ended abruptly in jagged cliffs.

Venahrol, riverside fortress of Falmer masonry and proto-Nordic angles, had become a seaside port. The footpaths beside the White River (where it was too rough to sail) had grown into a road spanning its entire length.

Durnehviir turned westward, too worried to care if the Hawk-cultists would see an ancient enemy or mistake him for a very large bird himself.

Keizaal's heart, Monahven, looked the same, but atop it bled a gaping, twice-stabbed wound. Its guardian, faded and missing a horn, would not let it heal.

Paarthurnax.

Brother.

Every time he told his students "Alduin was merely cast outside of time," it was a promise of Alduin's return. And the world listened.

Perhaps if Paarthurnax had died in the rebellion…

Or maybe he only reinforced what had always been true. Too late to tell.

Too late, also, to tell whether Paarthurnax truly heard Kyne on the winds. Mortals fell to deceit, to Herma-Mora or Sheogorath or Boethiah; surely dragons could?

As for the students… Durnehviir was not impressed. They were grey little scraps of humanity, grey-robed and grey-bearded, with voices like landslides. In a metaphorical way, they spent all their days sharpening swords they lacked the training to wield.

Ro, Durnehviir would have said. Balance in all things. But Paarthurnax had a different form of balance, an unstable balance of every muscle striving against the others, never at peace. Durnehviir leaned into the wind's caresses; Paarthurnax huddled like a precarious wayside cairn.

Whatever Durnehviir had hoped to find with his brothers, it would not be here.

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Krahjotdaan attempted on purpose what Paarthurnax did by accident: "When Alduin returns," he repeated again and again, the phrase worn and meaningless like a vivisected slave's delirious "when I am free."

Slaves…

Durnehviir summoned Xsavireth.

She glared up at him and spat a Nedic interrogative.

Durnehviir hesitated for a minute, because he was not fluent enough to give whatever response she desired, but he could not choose another language. To use a language he knew and she did not, or worse, to insist on Ayleidoon, would be unpardonably rude when he had already intruded by summoning her.

He uncomfortably reverted to ancient Ehlnofex, every word meaning at least three different things, the sounds almost unpronounceable. "Your tongue is not mine."

She answered with sarcasm, half the consonants elided, and a complex sentence structure that might have been elven.

"Also not mine."

Mercifully, she then switched to Ayleidoon, although it was a dialect that sounded strange to Durnehviir's ears now. Had they really spoken like this?

"It haileth from High Rock," she said. "And thee, I thought thou would'st speak Cyrodilic now. Dwellest no more in Cyrod?"

"No, not since Alessia's son Belharza reigned."

"Mean'st thou the first Alessia? Perrif Alessia?"

Who else? Durnehviir wanted to ask, but it would be too easy to demand.

"The first one I know of," he answered honestly, recklessly assuming her goodwill. "I think I must have served the Ayleids for a time, but I remember fighting them at the end. Afterward, I went among the Saxhleel until time broke." What happened then? "Since it mended, I have sought answers."

Her answers were first wary, then speculative. She probably learned more than Durnehviir did.

And yet, this carefully imbalanced game was far more comfortable than navigating the fundamental, irreconcilable differences he faced in his brothers.

Chapter Text

Long years later, Durnehviir heard a Voice.

Not the distant murmur of Nords weaving tales about their hunts and hearths, nor of his brothers arguing the same questions again and again. (Complacent. Static.)

No, this was different.

New.

At first it meant, "Go away." Then it meant, "Follow me."

Durnehviir wasn't answering the call when he flew east. No, he was just curious, or so he told himself.

He found a massive encampment of two kinds of mortals, mingled.

The people of the Red Diamond used mismatched tents, similar to one another but not identical. Like when a forest of mushrooms sprang up after a rainstorm.

The others were not not people of the Red Diamond, for that banner flew proudly above their unnaturally uniform tents and polished metal, but they also had other banners: taller, narrower, and marked with unfamiliar writing.

And then there were the hunts: a new order of warriors slithered over crags with crossbows on their backs and dragon blood in their mouths.

At first, Durnehviir thought they were only hunting him. Then his brothers began to go silent, and the remainder suddenly wanted to roost in frozen, barren mountains not even goats could climb.

The new Voice continued to speak. It meant, "This world is mine."

It is yours for now, Durnehviir thought. Your followers will grow complacent, and you will fall.

He could afford to be patient. His brothers, apparently, could not. Hiding hurt their pride, and they tried to salve that pain by asserting mastery over one another.

They had never learned to fight in whispers. The hunters came, again and again.

The pride of keeping a lair, keeping a territory and treasure, was their downfall, again and again.

Durnehviir kept silent. Fled when threatened. Not dragon but mage. Not hunter but beast.