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After the dragonblood had manifested in Freya, he’d been able to sense her soul. Not like with his kin, no. From the moment she entered Skyrim he had been so acutely aware of her, almost like she’d been there all along. He tried to kill her off, tried to scare her into backing down, yet no matter what he tried their paths remained entwined. It wasn’t until the battle at Monahven, Paarthurnax’s favourite little thinking spot, that he got a taste of how powerful she truly was. It was reminiscent of the Tongues, on that very same spot, Gods only know how long before, when they rendered a devastating wound in Time itself to banish him. An atrocity against Akatosh that he could not forgive. Alduin was left so weakened by her battle prowess that he actually had to retreat to Sovngarde in an attempt to regain his former strength. He’d fully intended to consume the souls of those three mortals and punish them for their hubris, their insult against him.
Something in Aetherius had other plans, however, for she showed up once more. She had followed him across the barrier of mortality and stepped foot into the realm of Shor himself. Alduin had to admire her tenacity. If she weren’t such a thorn in his side, she’d have made for an excellent priestess.
Their final battle raged for hours, a back and forth of him attempting to obscure the view with a thick fog, only for those maddeningly ever present Tongues to keep him at bay. Her Voice cut through Sovngarde’s skies with another piercing Thu’um, those evil words.
Joor Zah Frul. That was painful enough the first time, having his eternal self pummeled with incomprehensible thoughts of dying, of being reduced to nothing. Mortality. The concept was so foreign to him, to all Dov, that Alduin couldn’t fight the pain it drilled into his skull and was forced to land, lest he fall from the sky. This was how they had done it. This was how they had brought him down.
But unlike his brethren, her final strike didn’t have his soul wrenched from his body to fuel her power in some sick, twisted imitation of his purpose. No, he didn’t die. Instead, Alduin saw the face of Kyne, the Mother of Man. The betrayer, who had gifted mortals with the dragon tongue. She was smiling at him. Shor’s warrior-wife was smiling at the one who’s very existence had come about in order to destroy their creations. Her ethereal hand reached out to him and brushed his cheek, and the next thing he knew was a deafening wind soaring past his ears as he could feel himself being quickly pulled downward. No, not pulled. He was falling. Falling from the very heavens themselves. Quick, you fool. Fly. He scolded himself, only to realise he could not feel his wings. Alduin floundered in the sky like a slaughterfish on the sand. What was happening to him?
He fell down, down, down. The ground below rapidly approaching, he had just a few seconds to think. He opened his mouth and drew a deep breath, ready to bellow out a Thu’um, but nothing happened. Not even a meek little whimper. He had lost his wings, and now his Voice?
The people of Morthal could not explain what happened that day, when a man fell from the sky and walked out of the swamp like nothing happened.