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"They will die," Irileth stated matter of factly, gesturing to the distant fighting. "But the Thalmor's paranoia aside, everyone in Skyrim should know the truth by tomorrow morning. With Aerion wielding that kind of catastrophic power, and Aeloria leading your vanguards with the voice of a dragon... the civil war is over, Legate. It is just a matter of how many Stormcloaks have to die before Ulfric realizes it. You have two living weapons fighting for the Empire."
Legate Rikke swallowed hard, her mind racing through the huge political nightmare that Aerion's existence presented. "Let them try," she muttered, a fierce loyalty to Skyrim and the Empire surging through her. "Everyone in this province will soon know that with Aerion and the Dragonborn fighting on the side of the Empire, this civil war is going to end, and it is going to end soon. The Stormcloaks cannot fight a incarnation of Kyne and whatever Aerion is."
She let out a heavy, exhausted sigh, looking up at the cold, gray sky.
"I just hope this war ends quickly," Legate Rikke admitted, the weight of the conflict pressing down on her. "It is a pointless, bloody distraction. We are wasting good men and women killing our own brothers and sisters in this conflict, especially now... with those damned dragons lurking around the entire province. we cannot afford to keep killing each other. We need a unified Skyrim if we are going to survive the beasts returning from the grave."
As if the universe itself had been listening to the Imperial commander, waiting for the perfect, agonizing moment to strike, the air suddenly changed.
The low, distant rumbling of the battle was completely overwhelmed by a sound that shattered the morning sky.
It was a roar.
It was not the roar of a mammoth, or the battle cry of an army. It was a deep, guttural, world shaking vibration that resonated in the chest of every single living soul on the plains of Whiterun.
And it was immediately followed by a second.
ROOOOOAAARRR!!!
The sound did not come from the battlefield. It came from the sky. It was a guttural, bone shaking bellow that vibrated through the stone of the walls and rattled the teeth in their skulls.
Legate Rikke froze, her heart stopping in her chest.
She looked up.
Descending rapidly from the jagged, snow capped peaks of the Throat of the World, silhouetted against the rising morning sun, were two massive, terrifying shapes. Their leathery wings beat the air with the force of a hurricane.
Two dragons.
They were not circling lazily. They had smelled the massive, staggering volume of spilled blood, the chaotic surge of elemental magic, and the absolute chaos of the war. They were diving directly toward the battlefields of Whiterun, intent on claiming the feast.
Legate Rikke's jaw literally dropped open. The color drained entirely from her face as she stared at the two incoming nightmares of the skies.
Irileth closed her eyes for a long, painful second. She let out a heavy and long exhausted sigh, resting her forehead against the cold stone of the parapet.
"You just had to say it, didn't you, Legate?" Irileth muttered, her voice dripping with sheer, unadulterated sarcasm. "You couldn't just enjoy the victory. You had to mention the dragons."
The two massive beasts let out another simultaneous roar, their jaws opening to reveal the glowing, superheated fire and cold frost building in their throats, as they dove directly toward the battlefield.
The battlefield, which had been a deafening cacophony of clashing steel and screaming men just seconds prior, fell into a paralyzed, horrified silence.
One of the colossal beast with scales the color of rusted iron and hardened magma banked sharply toward the northern ridges, locking its reptilian eyes on the massive, ongoing slaughter orchestrated by Aerion. The second dragon, a jagged nightmare of pale, frost bitten white and glacial blue, banked southeast, plunging directly toward the shattered remnants of the East Camp where Aeloria and the Imperial and Hwiterun Army were butchering the rebel lines.
At the North Camp, the fire dragon opened its massive, cavernous jaws. The air warped and shimmered with intense heat before a roaring, torrential river of superheated fire rained down upon the earth. The dragon did not distinguish between friend or foe, but its flight path dragged the inferno directly across the dense, reforming ranks of the Stormcloak heavy infantry.
Dozens of rebel soldiers were instantly incinerated, their agonizing screams cutting through the roar of the flames as their chainmail melted into their flesh. The dragon pulled up sharply, its massive wings catching the updraft of its own fire, circling high above the chaos to prepare for another strafing run.
From his towering vantage point atop the alpha mammoth, Aerion assessed the new, mythological threat with cold, mathematical precision. The Stormcloaks were broken, routing in terror from the dragon fire, but the beast would undoubtedly turn its attention to the massive, armored herd next.
"FALL BACK!" Aerion commanded, his voice magically amplified to cut through the panic.
He sent a surge of absolute authority through his Animal Affinity link. The alpha mammoth let out a deafening, echoing bugle of compliance. The herd, which had been systematically grinding the Stormcloak vanguard into bloody paste, immediately ceased their forward rampage. They wheeled around with surprising agility for their size, their massive, steel plated feet crushing any terrified rebel soldier foolish enough to be caught in their path, and thundered back toward the safety of the Imperial ice barricades.
As the herd reached the glacial walls, Aerion looked down at his command staff.
"Tribunes! Sinmir!" Aerion roared over the din, pointing his gauntleted hand toward the retreating line. "Lock the shields behind the ice! Pull the wounded back! I want your absolute focus on minimizing casualties. Do not break formation to chase the routing rebels! Let the dragon burn them!"
Valerius, Hrogar, Livia, and Sinmir offered crisp, frantic nods, instantly barking orders to their respective units to tighten the formation and brace for aerial assault.
"Jenassa!" Aerion called out, his golden eyes locking onto the Dunmer mercenary. "Get up here! I need your bow!"
Jenassa didn't hesitate. She sprinted toward the alpha mammoth, leaping onto the thick leather harnessing and scaling the beast's side with the blinding agility of an assassin. She pulled herself up onto the wide, flat expanse of the mammoth's back, drawing her glowing ebony bow and planting her boots firmly behind Aerion.
"Apprentices! Eirik! Lydia! Eisa!" Aerion shouted to the rest of his retainers on the ground. "Ignore the beast! Keep your magic and your steel focused entirely on any Stormcloak attempting to exploit the chaos! I will handle the dragon!"
The fire dragon folded its wings, entering a terrifying, sheer dive directly toward Aerion's fortified position. It opened its jaws, a blinding orange light building in the back of its throat, preparing to bathe the Imperial line in a sea of ash.
Aerion did not flinch. He reached into the void of his system and inventory, directly tapping into the infinite, cosmic singularity of the Eye of Magnus. The rush of boundless Magicka filled his veins with liquid lightning.
He thrust his right hand upward. He didn't cast a ward. He went on the offensive.
A massive overcharged Ice Storm, a swirling, jagged vortex of absolute zero, tore from his palm. It screamed through the air and slammed directly into the dragon's open jaws just as it released its fire. The thermal shock was explosive. A massive cloud of blinding steam erupted in the sky, and the dragon let out a shrieking roar of pure agony as the jagged ice shredded the sensitive, unarmored flesh inside its mouth.
The dragon violently aborted its dive, pulling up and snapping its jaws in pain.
Its glowing, reptilian eyes snapped downward, locking entirely onto the towering High Elf in the bronze mask.
Across the northern ridges, the surviving Stormcloaks and the Imperial legionnaires alike stared in absolute, unadulterated shock. They watched a mortal man, a High Elf who possessed no legendary Thu'um, no blood of the Dovah, single handedly challenge a dragon and physically beat back its breath with raw, overwhelming magic. His personal retainers had seen his apocalyptic power, but to the ordinary soldiers of Skyrim, it was a sight that defied all known reality.
The dragon banked hard, furious that a mere morsel had caused it pain. It swooped low, attempting to bypass Aerion and roast the tightly packed legionnaires huddled behind the ice walls.
Aerion swept his left hand in a wide arc, casting a massive, glowing Greater Ward that expanded like a shimmering glass dome over his troops. The dragon's fire breath crashed against the magical barrier, splashing harmlessly against the ward like water hitting a stone, leaving the Imperial soldiers completely untouched.
Frustrated and enraged, the dragon broke off its attack on the shielded Imperials. It needed to burn something. It turned its massive head and unleashed its remaining fire upon the exposed, disorganized ranks of the Stormcloak soldiers who were desperately trying to flee the glacial fortress. Hundreds of rebels were caught in the crossfire, their bodies turning to ash upon the blackened grass.
"Now, Jenassa!" Aerion commanded.
Thwip. Thwip. Thwip.
Jenassa was a machine of lethal precision. She loosed steel arrows in rapid succession, her keen Dunmer eyes finding the minuscule gaps in the dragon's thick, iron colored scales. One arrow sank deep into the membrane of its left wing, another buried itself in the soft tissue of its underbelly.
The dragon roared, snapping its jaws toward the mammoth.
Aerion retaliated with the wrath of a god. He dual casted Thunderbolts, sending thick, blinding columns of pure electrical energy tearing through the sky. The lightning struck the dragon's chest with the concussive force of a cannonball, shattering scales and sending the massive beast reeling mid air. The dragon was bleeding, its flight pattern growing erratic, but its primal fury kept it fighting, circling the alpha mammoth for another brutal pass.
Meanwhile, on the shattered plains of the East Camp, a completely different, equally brutal duel was unfolding.
The pale, frost bitten dragon swooped low over the carnage, unleashing a torrent of freezing, glacial breath. Unlike the fire dragon in the north, this beast's strafing run caught everyone in its path. Imperial legionnaires, Whiterun soldiers, and Stormcloak defenders were instantly flash frozen, their bodies turning into brittle, statuesque monuments of ice before shattering into pieces as the crush of the melee pushed against them.
Aeloria, her greataxe dripping with rebel blood, looked up at the sky.
When she saw the massive beast circling back for another pass, her blood, the ancient and mythical blood of the Dovah, sang with a fierce, possessive fury. This was her domain.
"Valdemar! Fall back!" Aeloria roared, grabbing the massive mercenary by the shoulder of his armor and physically shoving him backward, out of the immediate impact zone. "Get the infantry off the frontline! It's mine!"
Valdemar didn't argue with the Dragonborn. He nodded grimly, signaling for the Imperial vanguard to pull back and form a defensive perimeter.
Aeloria stepped out into the open, blood soaked mud of the camp. She cleaned the blood from her greataxe and do some swings over her shoulder to get herself some flexibility.
She stared up at the circling dragon, planting her boots firmly in the earth. She drew in a deep, resonant breath, gathering the power of the Voice.
"FUS RO DAH!"
The Unrelenting Force blasted into the sky, striking the frost dragon squarely in its armored flank. The dragon was not grounded, but the sheer kinetic impact of the shout staggered it mid air, disrupting its flight path and forcing it to clumsily beat its wings to maintain altitude.
The dragon snapped its head toward the lone, armored woman standing in the mud. It recognized the power of the Voice. It recognized the soul of a rival.
Aeloria did not wait. She counted exactly five seconds, allowing the magical resonant cooldown of her unique Thu'um mastery to cycle. She drew another breath, her eyes blazing with golden light.
"FUS RO DAH!"
A second shockwave slammed into the dragon, this time catching it directly in the chest.
Infuriated beyond measure, the dragon folded its wings and entered a sheer, terrifying dive, plunging directly toward Aeloria with its massive jaws opened wide, intent on biting her completely in half.
Aeloria did not flinch. She tightened her grip on the leather haft of her Greataxe.
As the dragon crashed into the mud, its jaws snapping shut mere inches from her face, Aeloria sidestepped with blinding, supernatural agility. She pivoted on her heel, using the momentum of her turn to swing the massive Morthal Greataxe in a brutal, horizontal arc.
The heavy steel blade slammed directly into the side of the dragon's snout with a sickening, bone shattering CRACK.
The dragon roared in agony, its head violently knocked aside. Jagged scales and dark, freezing blood sprayed across the mud.
The melee that ensued was a chaotic, brutal clash of titans. The dragon snapped its jaws, its massive tail whipping through the ruined tents, shattering wooden barricades and crushing the bodies of the fallen. Aeloria danced around the lethal strikes, her Greataxe biting deep into the beast's forelegs and chest.
From the perimeter, Whiterun archers and Imperial crossbowmen provided desperate support, raining steel tipped bolts and iron arrows down upon the dragon's wings, pinning it to the earth.
But the Stormcloaks were not entirely broken. Seeing the Dragonborn engaged in a life or death struggle with the beast, several opportunistic rebel officers saw a chance for eternal glory. A squad of Stormcloak heavy infantry charged through the mud, raising their battleaxes, intending to strike Aeloria in the back while she fought the dragon.
Aeloria heard their war cries over the roaring of the beast.
She ducked under a massive swipe of the dragon's wing, spun around, and faced the charging rebels.
"FUS RO DAH!"
The shout struck the Stormcloak squad point blank. The ten heavily armored men were violently launched backward off their feet, their bodies flying through the air and crashing brutally into the remnants of a catapult, their bones shattering on impact.
Without missing a single beat, Aeloria spun back to the dragon, burying her Greataxe deep into the beast's scaled shoulder, eliciting another deafening shriek of pain.
Across the blood soaked plains of Whiterun, the two legendary duels raged simultaneously. The mortal armies, completely paralyzed by the sheer power scale of the violence, could do little more than watch, fight off the stragglers, and pray to their respective gods.
In the North Camp, Aerion's duel was rapidly approaching its bloody conclusion.
The fire dragon was battered, bleeding from dozens of steels arrows, its wings riddled with holes from Jenassa's relentless precision. Its scales were cracked and scorched from Aerion's continuous magical bombardment.
Desperate, the beast banked sharply, diving toward the alpha mammoth for one final, suicidal attempt to crush the High Elf beneath its mass.
Aerion stood tall, his golden eyes glowing fiercely behind his mask. He dropped his wards. He didn't need defense anymore. He needed an execution.
He raised both hands, drawing upon the deepest, most volatile reserves of the Eye of Magnus. He wove fire, frost, and lightning together into a single, stable, dual casted Elemental Blast. The sphere of plasma grew to the size of a boulder, crackling with blinding, destructive energy.
Just as the dragon opened its jaws to snap him in half, Aerion thrust his hands forward.
The Elemental Blast struck the dragon squarely in the center of its broad chest.
The explosion was massive.
A blinding flash of white light illuminated the entire northern ridge, followed by a shockwave that knocked legionnaires to their knees. The blast literally blew a gaping, smoldering hole entirely through the dragon's heavy chest scales, obliterating its heart and lungs in a single instant.
The beast was dead before it even began to fall.
Its massive, lifeless body plummeted from the sky. With a world shaking crash, the dragon slammed directly into the center of the Stormcloak North camp, its immense weight crushing dozens of tents, supply wagons, and terrified rebel soldiers who couldn't scatter in time. The earth shuddered violently, throwing a massive cloud of dust and debris into the air.
Simultaneously, in the East Camp, Aeloria was ending her own war.
The frost dragon, bleeding heavily from the brutal wounds inflicted by her Greataxe, was grounded and desperate. It lunged forward, snapping its massive, blood stained jaws at her.
Aeloria didn't dodge backward. She lunged forward, stepping directly into the danger zone. She leaped, planting her heavy steel boot directly onto the dragon's lower jaw as it snapped shut, using the beast's own kinetic momentum.
As the dragon violently whipped its head upward to dislodge her, Aeloria used the immense, flinging momentum to launch herself thirty feet into the air.
She hung suspended in the sky for a fraction of a second, the morning sun catching the blood on her armor.
With a feral, roaring battle cry, Aeloria brought the massive Nordic Greataxe down with all her physical strength, her body weight driving the strike. She fell like a meteor, driving the heavy steel blade directly through the top of the dragon's armored skull, burying the axe up to the haft.
The dragon went completely, terrifyingly rigid. Its eyes rolled back into its head, and it collapsed into the mud with a heavy, final thud, dead.
Silence fell over the East Camp, save for the crackle of burning tents.
Aeloria stood atop the beast's massive skull, her chest heaving. Suddenly, the flesh and scales of the fallen dragon began to ignite with a blinding, ethereal, golden fire. The meat and muscle burned away in seconds, transforming into streams of pure, glowing soul energy that rushed violently into Aeloria's chest. The wind whipped around her, absorbing the ancient knowledge, leaving nothing behind but a massive, pristine skeleton resting in the mud.
From the high, fortified battlements of the outer wall, Legate Rikke and Housecarl Irileth watched the twin executions in absolute, paralyzed shock.
Legate Rikke's jaw hung slightly open yet again, her eyes darting between the smoking crater in the North Camp where Aerion stood victorious atop his mammoth, and the glowing skeleton in the East Camp where Aeloria absorbed the soul of a dragon.
"By the Eight..." Legate Rikke whispered, her voice trembling. "They actually did it. They killed them both."
Irileth crossed her arms, her dark eyes gleaming with a mixture of profound awe and cold, political calculation.
"I told you, Legate," Irileth murmured. "Aerion is a force of nature. And the Dragonborn is exactly what the legends promised. When the Thalmor hear of this... they will realize that the Empire holds assets they cannot possibly counter. This civil war is already over. Ulfric just doesn't know it yet."
But the Stormcloak officers, watching the destruction of their armies from the ridges, understood it perfectly.
The shock running through the rebel command was absolute, suffocating terror. They had lost thousands of men. The casualties across the three camps were staggering, easily numbering ten thousand dead or wounded. They had been slaughtered by heavily armored beasts, burned by Daedric entities, and their lines had been shattered by the Imperial vanguard.
And now, they had just witnessed the two commanders of the Whiterun defense single handedly slaughter dragons.
They were not fighting a conventional army. They were fighting otherworldly, mythological forces. They were fighting an Arch-Mage whose power rivaled the ancient gods, and a Dragonborn who wore Imperial steel.
If Aerion and Aeloria decided to converge on the same front, there would be absolutely nothing left of the Stormcloak rebellion but ash and bones.
The senior surviving Stormcloak commander on the northern ridge, his face ashen, turned to his drummer.
"Sound the retreat," the commander croaked, his voice devoid of all hope. "Sound it now, before they turn those two monsters on us again."
A long, frantic, desperately rapid beating of the war drums echoed across the plains.
It was the signal for a full retreat.
But it was not a disciplined, tactical withdrawal. The Stormcloak soldiers, thoroughly broken in mind and body, completely abandoned their formations. They dropped their heavy shields, threw aside their battleaxes, and ran. It was a blind, chaotic, panicked rout back toward the eastern mountains, a desperate scramble to escape the killing fields of Whiterun.
From his vantage point atop the alpha mammoth, Aerion watched the sea of blue tunics fleeing into the hills.
He was not a merciful general. He did not intend to let them regroup and fight another day.
"Run them down!" Aerion roared, his voice echoing across the ice walls.
The eleven armored mammoths surged forward, their massive legs pumping, charging after the routing army. They plowed through the fleeing rear guard, trampling dozens of terrified soldiers into the frozen mud.
Aerion stood tall on the alpha's back, raining absolute destruction down upon the fleeing masses. He cast sweeping arcs of Chain Lightning and hurled massive Fireballs into the tightest clusters of retreating men, blowing them apart as they ran. He was putting the final, bloody nail in the coffin of the Stormcloak siege.
Only when the remnants of the rebel army had completely scattered into the distant, rocky crags of the mountains, entirely broken and out of range, did Aerion finally pull back on the reins.
The plains fell silent, save for the groans of the dying and the crackling of magical fires.
Then, it started.
A single Whiterun guardsman, his face covered in soot and blood, raised his sword and let out a hoarse, ragged cheer.
It caught instantly. The cheer rippled down the defensive lines, swelling into a massive, deafening, earth shattering roar of absolute victory. Thousands of Imperial legionnaires and civilian militias screamed their triumph into the morning sky. They had faced dragons, they had faced thousands of hardened rebels, and they had held the city.
Whiterun stood.
Aerion commanded the mammoth herd to turn back, slowly lumbering toward the Imperial encampment near the outer walls. The ice barriers he had conjured were already beginning to melt in the morning sun, returning the northern road to mud.
As he rode into the camp, the legionnaires parted for him, saluting with a mixture of profound respect and genuine, terrified awe.
Aerion slid down from the back of the alpha mammoth, his boots hitting the dirt. Jenassa dropped down silently beside him, her ebony bow slung over her shoulder. "Gather the commanders," Aerion ordered softly, feeling the genuine, bone deep ache of physical fatigue finally creeping into his muscles. He walked into the center of his private unit. The mercenaries and legionnaires were exhausted, bleeding, and bruised, but their eyes were bright with victory.
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[Main Panel]
Name: Aerion
Race: High Elf (Altmer)
Health: 930/930
Stamina: 970/970
Magicka: 980/980 [External Capacity & Regeneration: ∞]
Level: 245
Skills: Animal Affinity (MAX LEVEL), Fast Skill Levelling (MAX LEVEL), Fast Magic Mastery (MAX LEVEL), Instant Shout (MAX LEVEL), Dragon Master (MAX LEVEL), Eye Of Magnus (MAX LEVEL), Summon Dragon (MAX LEVEL), Destruction (Fire(+6)/Lightning(+4)/Frost(+3)) (Level 0/0/0), Restoration (Healing(+3)/Purify(+2)) (Level 0/98), Alteration (Level 43), Illusion (Level 62), Conjuration (Necromancy/Summoning(+2)) (Level 37/0), Persuasion(+3) (Level 28), Smithing(+1) (Level 79), Sneak(+1) (Level 64), One Handed(+2) (Level 0), Two Handed(+1) (Level 29), Lockpicking (Level 55), Archery(+1) (Level 0), Enchanting(+1) (Level 23), Light Armor(+2) (Level 10), Block (Level 70), Pickpocket (Level 8), & Heavy Armor(+1) (Level 0)
Shouts: Fus Roh Dah (Force Balance Push), Tiid (Time), Krii (Kill), Feim Zii Gron (Fade Spirit Bind), Su (Air), Laas (Life), Yol Toor (Fire Inferno), Kaan (Kyne), Zul Mey Gut (Voice Fool Far), & IIZ (Ice)
[Inventory Panel]
1x Small Sack, Poacher's Axe, the Golden Claw, Arvel's Journal, Inkwell & Quill, Thief Book, Parchment Rolls Of Mammoths Farm And Loan, Ebony Claw, The Mirror, Ring of Pure Mixtures, Grand Soul Gem (Filled), Deed to Tundra Homestead, Dawnbreaker, Traveling Backpack (Supplies), Vampire Armor, Vampire Boots, Movarth's Golden Ash (Unique), Potion of Healing, Mage Boots Of Weight, Master Robes Of Destruction, Staff of Jyrik Gauldurson, Gauldur Black Bow, & Dwarven Battleaxe
2x Common Soul Gem (Empty), Black Soul Gem (Empty), & Potions of Plentiful Magicka
3x Potions of Minor Stamina, Petty Soul Gem (Filled), Potions of Minor Magicka, Grand Soul Gem (Filled), & Greater Soul Gems
5x Mod Chests
8x Iron Arrows, Ancient Nord Arrows, & Common Soul Gem (Filled)
9x Potions Of Minor Healing
10x Lesser Soul Gems
12x Black Soul Gem (Filled)
Weight: 49.21 KG / 785 KG
Septims: 252,867