The Aurorans were an entirely different foe than the flickering, weakening Atronachs who were ever decreasing in number. Unlike the other daedra that Viconia and I had faced these creatures were just as quick as they were strong. Every daedra it appeared were blessed with an unholy strength that a very rare few mortals could ever match and only people like myself with my vampirism, or Falid with his years of training, could consider ourselves to be their physical equal. Their blows shattered shields and bones with ease and with their daedric weapons they could cleave through the thickest of armour with a single blow and did so repeatedly. More than one knight or guard was killed when the enormous golden beings hacked them into pieces, sometimes cutting men and mer in half with little effort.
Together with the handful of knights I engaged the nearest one, casting aside Sunchild in favour of a weapon that was more devastating and drawing the Light of Dawn. I had my doubts to the enchanted blades effectiveness against beings that appeared just as heavily armoured as Falid but at that point every little advantage was worth it.
Getting closer to such a creature left no doubt to its otherworldly nature and the magicka-corruption stink that emanated from it was almost a physical sensation. The strange helmet that it wore was fused with its flesh which was somehow the same colour and texture of its armour and it made it difficult to determine where the creature ended and the armour began. The armour-flesh was also impossible and yet beautiful, flowing into curves and plates of such intricacy that no mortal could match there was still the underlying appearance of edges and blade-like protrusions. Especially the pair of horizontal blades that jutted from the temples of the open-faced helm and twisted back like the wings a bird made of golden knives were gleaming with sharpness.
It attacked like a storm of gold and razors, swirling around with the same impossible grace as the Atronachs and glowing with its own faint radiance as it parried and dodged our blows. Impossibly agile it was difficult to get close enough to hit but our numbers were working in our favour as we managed to corner the creature and trap it between us all.
Roaring with the sound of a summer storm, it laid about itself with its sword and I found myself horrified to see the way that its face shifted within its helm-skull. In many ways its armour was its flesh and already some of the plates were bleeding a silvery, mercury like substance that evaporated and somehow flowed upwards as though rejecting the world’s pull upon it. There was no mistaking its monstrous nature however as its mouth unhinged like a snake in its unspeakable rage and revealing no tongue, teeth, gullet or even eyes as it roared. Beneath its flesh was no normal being but one that seemed to consist of nothing more than a brilliant while light that smouldered and glowed in silent promise.
While it appeared to be similar in terms of strength and size to the other daedra that Viconia and I had faced, the Aurorans were not filled with the similar rage and bloodlust of the Dremora or even Xivilai. They were no less deadly for this, and if anything they were even more dangerous as they attacked with lightning speed that forced all that they fought onto the back foot. This was further compounded by the fact that their strength was enough to shatter shields in a single blow and break bones through thicker armour. One of the Knights who had so recently pledged himself into my service died without the time to draw breath as his skull and neck was cloven in two from a blow of incredible speed and strength.
Despite being surrounded by almost a dozen armed men and mer the Auroran showed no hesitation as it engaged us all. It was so quick that while our numbers managed to force it onto the defensive it was able to parry and glide out of the way of our blows. Even worse, it was canny enough to know which blows to let through and which it needed to parry or block. Falid’s enormous greatsword was certainly one in the latter category but it was also extremely wary of the Light of Dawn, using its daedric weapon to deflect and knock away as like all enchanted weapons it counteracted the Ayleid sword’s magicka.
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Unfortunately, it was also appearing much more resilient than Dremora. The servants of the Prince of Destruction bled and died like mortals and shared many of the same similarities in terms of weaknesses and organs but the Aurorans did not. Under their outer layers there was nothing underneath except for white light and silver blood and they were able to ignore many injuries that would have crippled a Dremora Markynaz. Most of us managed to land solid blows, even the Light of Dawn hacked into a golden calf shaped like knee high boots but there were no muscles to sever, nor arteries to gash and allow it to bleed to death.
Fighting like the legionary that he had been his whole life, Carodus was in the thick of the fighting like the rest of us and he used his enormous tower shield to full effect to protect himself from the creature’s sword. As powerful as the daedric weapon was, it was proving enough to batter and hack chunks out of the shield boss by little else as he soaked up the punishment. It allowed him to stab the thing several times but he was nowhere near as spry or agile as the rest of us and it was not long before he paid for it.
The taloned hand the size of my head latched onto his shield after a particularly successful stab from his gladius left his blade sunk halfway to the hilt in golden flesh and before any of us realised the retired legionary was thrown through the air. None of us had time to see where or how that he landed before the creature was already moving, twisting and kicking backwards like a mule and throwing Falid away with a metallic crash even as its free hand caught an Iron Knight’s hand and pulled. One moment the steel plated knight was swinging his mace with the full intention of breaking the Auroran’s knee and the next there was a flash of gold and he had been pulled onto the daedric sword, losing his arm and a large portion of his armoured shoulder with it.
There was no time to react, no moment to allow us to come into terms with the sudden shift in the fight before it speared the censer wielding priest through the chest and swung the severed arm like a club, smashing us all from our feet in a spray of crimson. I tasted copper from the blow and my vision was filled with stars from the impact of the shredded limb across my jaw and for a ludicrous moment while my head spun I was suddenly more concerned by the possibility of a broken jaw than the likelihood of dying to daedric horrors.
It was a struggle to move, breath, or even think and I found myself rolling over and trying to force my aching body to push up off the floor and find a weapon, any weapon to defend myself with. The Light of Dawn was gone, briefly skittering away before its incredible nature allowing it to cut into the floor until only the hilt was sticking into the air several metres away. I caught glimpses of Alexi being the only one of our small group having held onto his sword but my wounded mind also noticed something far worse.
The entire interior of the cathedral, while appearing more and more like a slaughterhouse than a house of worship was now filled with dozens of panicking, terrified people fleeing in all directions. The appearance of a fourth Auroran and their seemingly unstoppable advance through the soldiers and warriors had broken the spirit of almost all within the cathedral and with the door still blocked by the majority of the civilians they had simply run anywhere they could. Young and old, soldier and civilian alike they all fled and only a few such as ourselves and the small knot of resistance around Viconia and the Men-at-arms held firm.
If anything, the killing worsened and was not caused by the daedra. Men and women alike tripped and fell and were trampled in the stampede of panicking humanity and the screams and cries of women and children were even worse than the roars and wind chime echoes of the Atronachs and Aurorans. I was still unarmed and staggering to my feet when a dozen terrified worshippers almost knocked me down in their efforts to reach the stairs to the catacombs and while I remained upright some of their number were not so lucky.
A young girl, being dragged along by her weeping mother had been tripped on one of the Knights of the Nine who was lying motionless and unmoving from the fact his helmet was staved in from being stuck by the severed limb. She shrieked in fright as she fell, losing her grip of her mother’s hand and skidding in a fresh puddle of gore right in front of the towering Auroran.
There was no hesitation from the daedra, seeing the child land in front of it and even before it finished dropping the bloodied limb an enormous boot was lifted into the air. It had no emotion, its angular face dispassionate and burning with the lights in its empty, soulless eye sockets as it stomped down as hard as it could.
