An Unforeseeable Reversal of Character

  "… and that is why high elves, we altmer, must lead Tamriel. Only we can provide the vision that the world truly needs – don't you think?" said Arakno, a very annoying mortal who wouldn't leave Caprifexia alone.

  He wasn't a student, and seemed to represent, and never shut up, about something called the 'Thalmor,' which Caprifexia was pretty sure was some kind of theology book club at the college. Maybe. Nirn's SABIGISMFs had definitely been mentioned at some point. At least, she thought so…

  It probably wasn't particularly important.

  Arakno also seemed to be labouring under the totally bizarre delusion that elves, of all things, were superior forms of life. And while it was true that they had slightly less of a propensity for dying than humans, they were still mortals. The idea that it was a good idea for them to be in charge of anything was ludicrous, after all, it wasn't like they were dragons.

  The expedition consisted Caprifexia, Einar, the students she had met the day beforehand, the alteration instructor Tolfdir, and Arakno, who had announced at the last minute he was coming. They were presently on their way up a completely snowed over switchback path that climbed towards a saddle that apparently led into the valley that contained the ruins of Sarthaal where supposedly there were fantastically powerful magical objects, as well as maybe some boring information on the proto-drakes that Einar considered such a big threat.

  Far below them lay the currently calm northern ocean, glinting in the sunlight of a still, bluebird day. They had left the college at a completely unreasonable hour, when the sun had barely begun to peek over the eastern horizon, and that alone had put Caprifexia in a bad mood. What was worse, she had to walk all the way up the mountain on her still twinging leg from where the foolish Einar had slashed her, since her ex-minion and supposed 'friend' was taking credit for her true form to pass as a wizard. He'd even had the nerve to refuse to carry her on his back. The nerve!

  Arakno had been twittering on for almost an hour, but Caprifexia was barely listening to the fool. Instead she was focusing further up the line to where Tolfdir was fawning over Einar: offering him advanced one to one tutoring, singing his praises, and somehow not seeing that unlike everyone else present on the expedition, who knew the basic cantrip to walk atop the thick snow, the supposed 'prodigal wizard' was sinking into the fluffy white crystals up to his knees with every step.

  Mortals, she thought, they couldn't even see through the most basic deception and manipulation, the ridiculously gullible, naive things.

  "It's unfair that they give him so much attention, isn't it?" said Arakno, following her gaze and speaking sense for the first time in nearly an hour.

  "It is!" she agreed, glad there was at least one other sane person at this college who could recognise her greatness. "He's just a silly little mortal!"

  "He is, isn't he," agreed Arakno, nodding along with her keen insight. "Why it's you who should be getting their attention, since, naturally as an altmer, you're a far more gifted student than that filthy nord."

  "Exactly!" she said, ignoring his deluded notion that snootier-than-usual-elves were somehow above any other mortal, and instead focusing on the other more rational parts of his statement. "But it's 'do you want some private tutoring, Einar' this, and 'oh you're such a prodigy, Einar' that. I'm the prodigy!"

  "You'd do well back home, you know, on the Summerset Isle," said Arakno. "You wouldn't have to put up with these bigots, the tutors there would appreciate your brilliance."

  Caprifexia had no idea where the 'Summerset Isle' was, but she did like the sound of somewhere her magnificence would finally be appreciated. Back home her people might have been reviled for their corruption, but no one doubted their power and majesty.

  "In the meantime, however, I would be happy to provide you with any extra-lessons denied to you on the basis of race," he said. "I am a skilled mage myself, and taught at the Summerset Academy for several years."

  Caprifexia was about to snort in amusement, before remembering that, strange and unnatural as it objectively was, sometimes mortals knew spells that even her people hadn't. In small, esoteric and probably useless fields, obviously, but knowledge was power, literally in magic, and she could at least entertain their notions of expertise until she had drained them of their parlour tricks. Which she could then perfect with her draconic brilliance, of course.

  "I shall let you know if I require your 'assistance,'" she said.

  "I look forward to it. Now, I'm afraid I must discuss a few things with that fool Tolfdir about the excavation before we arrive. A pleasure talking with you, Miss Caprifexia. And please, think more on what I have said about the pressing need for mer leadership – a young woman with your perspective would go far in the Thalmor," he said, inclining his head respectfully and offering her one last smile before lengthening his stride and moving up the line.

  He made his way further up the line, and Caprifexia reflected that he really wasn't too bad, for a mortal. Sure, he was a bit annoying, but mortals couldn't help that, and heroes had to tolerate irritating people and not set them on fire – she'd checked. His notions of elven-superiority were clearly absurd, but he actually showed her the respect she was due, which was a nice change from the insolence and sometimes outright mockery of Einar. Yes, her friend could learn a lot from the nice elf, she thought, as she continued up the mountain pass.

  "Are you sure you won't cast a snow-walking charm brother?" said the other 'nord' man on the trip, whose name might have been something like On-mud, to Einar from further up the line. Caprifexia thought it would have been more appropriate to describe a mortal as 'In-mud,' but unfortunately for Nirn, no one had consulted her about the local mortal naming conventions. "You look rather tired."

  "Ah, no – good cardio," said Einar, the chatter of his teeth audible from all the way back where Caprifexia was as he struggled back onto the more firmly packed snow, stopping and letting the others past and waiting for her to catch up.

  "Finally," gasped Einar. "I thought that Thalmor prick would never leave you alone-"

  "You shouldn't speak about him like that. Arakno, unlike you and the rest of these foolish mortals, actually can see my greatness. Your lack of tolerance for those different to you is a very ugly flaw, you should work on that."

  "His name is 'Ancano' – not 'Arakno,'" said Einar, wrongly.

  "I think you'll find it isn't."

  "Oh for Akatosh's sake!" he said, pressing his hand against his temples and taking a deep breath of cold mountain air as he chastised himself for getting the nice elf's name wrong. "OK, fine, whatever, 'Arakno' it is. Listen Capri, he's being nice to you because he thinks you're a high elf, and he's a rabid, frothing at the mouth altmer-supremacist maniac. He's trying to manipulate you, and is apparently succeeding."

  "Manipulate me?" she scoffed. "I'm a dragon. We don't get manipulated, we do the manipulating."

  Einar scrunched up his eyes and took a deep breath. "Just cast the snow-walking charm on me, please?" he said, shivering. "And also whatever heating spell the rest of these buggers are using to stop freezing – I can't feel my toes!"

  "I wouldn't want to deny you the chance to show off your amazing magical prowess," she said sarcastically. "After all, they're simple spells; even the cat can do them, apparently."

  "Oh for- are you still hung up on this? You know I can't cast magic; you know why I needed to pretend to be able to polymorph you; you know that I think you're a brilliant wizard. What more do you want?" he said. "And J'zargo is a khajiit, not a cat – that's super racist."

  "So you can discriminate against dragons, say we need to be held to unreasonably high standards, but I can't call a cat a cat? How is that fair?"

  "You are, by your own terms, the only dragon in this world. You're not from an oppressed group who are profiled as thieves as a matter of course. And I'm not discriminating against you. No one is discriminating against you. Oblivion, if what half you've said is true your people, your people were doing most of the oppressing back on your homeworld."

  "Dragonist," she sniffed, ignoring his confusing and probably fallacious argument. "I don't know why I put up with your bigotry."

  "Just cast the damn spells," he said, shivering. "I didn't even want to come here!"

  Caprifexia rolled her eyes, flicking her hands – which were infinitely inferior to her talons – towards him and muttering under her breath. "Nievelevantus. Comodus."

  Einar sighed with relief as the warming charm washed over him, and he grinned as boots barely even made a dent in the white powder snow when he took an experimental step.

  "Why haven't you cast this on me before?" he said as they set off again. "The warming charm I mean. It would have made the last few months a lot more comfortable."

  "You didn't ask," she said.

  "Divines sake Capri – I have no idea what you, or any other wizard, is actually capable of. Beyond setting things on fire I mean, that seems to be about ninety nine percent of what you do."

  "I cannot held responsible for the ignorance of mortals!" she said, outraged. "Imagine! I would be the most guilty being in the multiverse!"

  "Imagine that," he agreed in flat voice.

  ***

  "J'zargo is wondering. He knows that Einar is a master of Alteration, but is he also an expert with the Destruction magics?" asked the cat, addressing Einar as they reached a rusty metal door.

  "Err," said her ex-minion, giving the metal an experimental push. "Um, no, not an expert."

  "A shame," said the cat. "J'zargo was hoping that there would be some real competition."

  Caprifexia scowled. She was an expert at destroying things. But did that cat ask her? No – it asked Einar. She was getting sick of this ridiculous pretence that Einar was actually good at something other than being insolent.

  They'd arrived at Saarthal in the mid-afternoon, and had been broken up into groups to investigate the ruins and report back anything interesting they found. Thus far, however, Caprifexia was unimpressed. Far from the trove of magical artefacts she'd been expecting, there was nothing in the winding stone tunnels but the bones of long dead mortals, dust, and cobwebs. And where there were cobwebs, there was fire; at least, when Caprifexia was around. She didn't know why she had let Einar talk her into coming on this ridiculous expedition.

  "Hey, watch it!" said Einar as she blasted a suspicious looking patch of silk. "Instead of setting potential spiders on fire, why don't you open this jammed door?"

  "Why don't you do it?" she grumbled. "You're the 'prodigy.'"

  "Capri, don't be difficult," he hissed, flicking his eyes to the cat, who was investigating some kind of terrible mortal carving on the wall.

  "Fine," she said, thrusting her palm – which was infinitely inferior to her talons – forward. "Fuerza."

  A jet of force erupted from her hand and blasted into the metal. The ancient hinges, which were probably more rust than anything else, exploded and a torrent of dust fell from the ceiling as the doors crashed to the ground, echoing throughout the ruins. Both she and the cat hastily conjured shields over their heads, funnelling the dust away from themselves, and in large part into the hair of a cursing Einar.

  "Did you really have to make so much noise?" said Einar, shaking his head and trying futility to get all the greyish dust out of his hair. "You know there might be undead here, right?"

  "You think that a dra- a very powerful, totally mortal and normal elf wizard, who is definitely not a dragon, would be scared of a few shambling corpses?" she laughed, remembering at the last moment that the upright feline with them was not actually a house-pet, but, allegedly, a wizard. A wizard who probably shouldn't know the majestic truth about her. "And if you're making me do the magic, you don't get to criticise, 'prodigy.'"

  "It's, ah, good practice for you," said Einar, clearing his throat as the cat moved into the corridor, increasing the illumination of his warelight with a wiggle of his claws. "And stop that," he added in a whisper. "You want him to realise I can't cast magic?"

  "Relax – mortals are fools," she said.

  "I'm a mortal."

  "QED."

  "Ugh. Stop using those, what did you call them, 'dragonyms?' They don't even make sense."

  "To a mortal, perhaps."

  Einar huffed and moved after the cat into the tunnel – without his own warelight of course, because he was, in fact, not a prodigal wizard – and Caprifexia took a few moments to check that there weren't any cobwebs or spiders hanging down ahead before following them.

  She had barely taken two steps when there was a clunk behind her. Frowning, Caprifexia turned, directing her warelight back behind her towards the sound.

  The large rubble covered cavern lit up with the light of her spell, and long shadows danced on the far wall as she moved the small ball of light back and forth. Seeing nothing, she was just about to turn back to follow the others when she sensed a whisper of frigid, stale magic waft past her. It wasn't a type of magic she had felt for some time, but even months and months after the fall of Blackrock Spire she knew necromantic energy when she felt it.

  Then what she had assumed was a rock jumped towards her, and she caught a glimpse of pale flesh before the creature barrelled into her and knocked her from her feet. In her surprise, she lost control of her warelight, and the room plunging into total darkness save for the two baleful points of blue light in the creatures eyes, and the angry red glow cast by her own irises. She fell with a shriek and landed hard, yelping as the in-dragonly fast undead creature raised a hand-axe and brought it whistling down towards her face.

  Sparks flew as the axe struck stone and her form shifted, and with an outraged roar she flapped out from underneath the ghoul and bathed it in flame. The undead creature groaned as her dragon-fire ripped through it's body, still reaching out towards her even as it's desiccated flesh sloughed away and the energy binding it collapsed.

  The orange flames gradually dimmed, but the room fell back into darkness shuffling and clunking sounds came from beyond the dying firelight, bringing with them dozens and dozens and dozens of sets of glowing blue eyes.

  Caprifexia calmly assessed her options, definitely did not scream, and was just about to make a reasonable withdrawal and open a portal to the Void when she remembered that Einar wasn't with her, and without warning would be overrun by the ghouls. He was only a mortal after all, a magic-less mortal with a slightly more magical house-pet – fragile creatures in need of her protection.

  Cursing her new heroic obligations she flapped off the ground and accelerated down the corridor Einar and the cat had taken, doing her best to ignore the cobwebs, and possible spiders, that clung to her scales as she streaked though the gloom. Einar turned to her as she rounded a corner and the rays of her newly conjured warelight reached him, a frown playing across his features.

  "What the-" said the cat, a feline eyebrow rising as she flapped to a stop before them, clearly overcome by the majesty of her true form.

  "Undead!" she shouted as behind her the sound of dozens of footfalls entered the hallway behind them. "Run you silly little mortals!"

  Einar hesitated for a moment, before grabbing the cat by the shoulders and pushing him onward as Caprifexia turned her head back towards the ghouls.

  They rushed towards her, moving incredibly quickly. With her wings she could easily outpace them, of course, but her bipedal charges were, in addition to their other shortcomings, far slower, and after a few quick mental calculations she realised that the ghouls would reach them in a matter of seconds.

  She spread her talons, visualising a line of fire running across the tunnel and pouring her power into her spell.

  "Augis!" she shouted as the creatures closed on her, and a pleasant heat rolled over her as a blistering wall of fire burst from the floor in front of her, reaching to the ceiling and charring the ancient masonry.

  "Hah!" she said. "Try and get past that you disgusting-"

  She hadn't even finished her sentence when disintegrating body toppled through the fire, taking a large part of the power she had invested in it as it's necromantic energy disrupted her spell, twitching for a few moments before growing still.

  A moment later another of the ghouls hurled themselves through her the wall of fire, and Caprifexia said several words that a young dragon shouldn't have known as she realised she had only delayed, not stopped the ghouls. She turned and soared off after her companions, feeling her spell gradually weaken behind her as more and more of the reanimated corpses rushed headlong into the flames.

  "Run faster!" she said as she caught up to the others. "Move those limbs you ridiculous looking bipeds!"

  "J'zargo is wondering how the angry elf polymorphed herself," wheezed the cat as he stumbled onward, clearly unused to intense physical activity. "And how she can speak and cast spells in that form."

  "More running, less stupid questions!" said Caprifexia as they reached the end of the hallway.

  There was another door, but the cat blasted it open before they reached it, and they piled through it into a large, roughly circular room, at the centre of which floated a glowing ball of twisting metal roughly six feet in circumference that shone from within with azure light. It positively oozed magic, and Caprifexia forgot for a moment that they were being chased by a horde of undead.

  She couldn't really tell what it was doing beyond that it was affecting space around it, but whatever it was, it involved a tremendous amount of mana.

  What was odd, however, was that it wasn't pulling magic from the world around it, from leylines, or anything she could sense. Normally enchanted objects drew on the energy around them and then transformed it into some effect, and to the mystically sensitive this throughput was usually easily identified.

  It was possible to make an item that drew on energy and then stored it for later use, or gradually consumed some kind of magical fuel, but unless the object had detected them approaching and started emitting energy only after that, she knew of no fuel that could have kept whatever the orb was doing going for the thousands of years since the city of Sarthal had been inhabited. Even Titan relics didn't have those sorts of internal reserves, and needed to draw on the power of the Twisting Nether.

  "Capri!" yelled Einar, shaking her from her reverie. "Stop gawking and help J'zargo!"

  Caprifexia wasn't really sure what a J'zargo was, but she flapped over to Einar and the cat regardless, where the latter was busy reinforcing the door with some kind of ward. She lent some of her power to the matrix, and after a few moments the spell took hold and a barrier of blue-white light rolled over the door.

  The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

  "There," wheezed the cat, lowering his claws and doing some approximation of a smile. "If any of them try to break down the door, J'zargo's spell will stop them-"

  He was interrupted as a glowing blue axe head cut through the door, and the ward, with a shower of sparks.

  "Or," said the cat speculatively, stroking his furry chin. "If they were to have enchanted weapons, maybe not."

  "There must be another way out," said Einar, looking frantically around the room, which apart from the entrance they had come through seemed to be nothing but smooth circular walls, before looking at Capri meaningfully. "Capri? Can you, ahem, 'do anything?'"

  Capri looked between him and the glowing magic ball a few times. "But..."

  "Capri, this is serious – we can't get the shiny ball if we're dead, can we?"

  She huffed before nodding, scrunching up her eyes and focusing on the mild unease provoked by the horde of super-fast, super strong undead that were battering through the cat's ward, and trying to channel it into summoning up a portal.

  For a moment she thought she felt the familiar tug within her she had begun to associate with the strange magic she used to traverse the Void, but a moment after she sensed it, it vanished, and in its place the beginnings of a headache took root behind her eyes.

  "Capri."

  "It's not working!" she exclaimed, calmly.

  "What do you mean it's not working?" said Einar. "Be more scared!"

  "J'zargo feels as if he is missing something," said the very unhelpful cat.

  "I mean, it's not working!" said Caprifexia, her voice rising a few octaves for completely unrelated reasons. "I can't make a portal! It feels like something is blocking me."

  "Could the orb be doing it?" said Einar after a moment.

  "How should I know? I don't even understand how this power works!" she snapped. "Just because I'm a dragon doesn't mean that I know what every single ridiculously obscure, ugly, and probably pointless magical artefact does!"

  "J'zargo does not think that the spell will hold much longer," said the cat, clearing his throat. "Or maybe it will, who knows?"

  A moment later the door and ward shuddered against as an axe bit through the metal, sending out another wave of sparks and firmly answering the cat's speculations.

  "Can you teleport us J'zargo?" asked Einar.

  "What?" said the cat. "No – J'zargo would need time to prepare, and next to an object like this… no, impossible. How is Einar not knowing this?"

  "Err, well…"

  "It does not matter," said the cat. "We must fight – they will be through soon. You are the most powerful, you should take the point."

  "Oh well, um, I don't think-" stammered Einar.

  "Now is not the time for false modesty friend," said the cat. "We need-"

  "I can't cast magic!" exclaimed Einar, earning a confused look from the cat. "I'm not really a wizard! I'm a fraud! A charlatan!"

  "A lying dragon-credit-stealing-imposter!" supplied Caprifexia, helpfully.

  "But you were saying-"

  "Capri is the one that can shapeshift, I don't even know how to conjure a spark!" said Einar, his voice taking on a high-pitched quality. "I just really needed to use the library, so we pretended it was me turning her into a baby dragon."

  "I see," said the cat neutrally, looking back at the door. "So the human is useless."

  "I can fight!" protested Einar.

  "You have no magic, no armour and weapons, and you are not khajiit – clawless squishy pink paws will not help you," snorted the cat. "You will be killed in seconds."

  The mortal might have been quite hypocritical, but Caprifexia did approve of pointing out Einar's many and varied shortcomings.

  "Probably less," she agreed.

  "I have a dagger," said Einar defensively, drawing the short blade.

  "So you are the powerful wizard then?" asked the cat, ignoring Einar and eyeing Caprifexia.

  "Hah! I am mighty beyond your comprehension, mortal."

  "And yet you fled from the Dragur. J'zargo does not think this is true," he said as the enchanted axe bit deep again, opening a large rent in the door through which could be seen a churning mass of pallid desiccated flesh. "But J'zargo supposes he has little choice. J'zargo suggests the not-wizard EInar stay behind him and the horned elf who thinks she is a dragon."

  He summoned fire to his paws, and Caprifexia did the same, worry settling into the back of her mind, like an itch in the spot between her wings where she couldn't scratch. She had become used to the idea that she could simply withdraw strategically whenever too busy to deal with tedious nonsense. The idea that now she couldn't tactically fall back when necessary felt positively stifling.

  She had grown more powerful in the past eight or so months since she had first arrived on Nirn, and could cast many more spells in quick succession before becoming exhausted. But she was still ultimately only a whelp. Had she been a fully grown dragon, or even a drake, she could have simply bathed the entire tunnel in blistering, magic corroding dragonfire, but her inner furnace was still far too small to produce anything like that amount of flame.

  Then the ward shattered and the undead creatures streamed forward into the room, dispelling thoughts about what might have been as she and the cat unleashed blasts of fire. The mage-fire tore into the creatures, disrupting the dark energy sustaining their unlife and making them fall to the ground in charred heaps after only a moment or two of ignition. But for every one they felled there were a three more ready to leap into their place, and the unquiet dead surged forward like a tidal wave, rapidly closing the distance between the door and where Caprifexia was defending the mortals.

  The cat changed tactics, launching a ball of super-cooled air from it's paws. It worked, sort of, and the advancing undead slowed, ice forming and cracking and then reforming again reforming over their bodies as they forced their way forward through the rime. Caprifexia had to admit, to herself at least, that it was a rather impressive spell – and far better than she had expected from the upright house-pet.

  She swapped tactics herself, letting her fire dissipate and summoning lightning instead. She wasn't quite as practised with it as fire, but she didn't want to make the undead's movement's easier by melting the cat's efforts.

  Unfortunately it didn't really work that well, and while it blew the odd limb off the thawing ghouls they seemed largely indifferent to even a lost leg, and simply crawled towards them as more of their fellows rushed into the circular room.

  Caprifexia's mind raced as she scrambled around for something else. She could have tried to use cryomancy as well, but ice wasn't exactly something that most Black dragons had an affinity for, and while she knew the basics, her focus had always been on pyromancy.

  But since that wasn't working, she was going to have to try something else.

  "OK Caprifexia, just remember what the textbook said: subdue the soul, break the will, and bind it to your own," she muttered to herself, summoning up more mana and beginning to weave it into pale indigo light that flickered between her claws. She didn't have much experience with the discipline, only ever having performed a simple banishing of a bound spirit, but if lightning wasn't working, and fire was out, then her options for offensive magic that worked on undead were starting to run out.

  "Dominatus," she intoned, reaching out a talon and targeting a particularly big ghoul with an axe. The creature stilled, and for a moment her will battled against the magic animating it. Then she pushed past, seizing the remnant of the creature's soul and ruthlessly crushing the last vestige of its consciousness, and a moment later the ghoul turned, cleaving through two of it's former comrades with it's massive battleaxe.

  "Hah! You think you're a match for me, Caprifexia, master necromancer!?" she whooped, unsurprised by her successful first attempt.

  Her words had barely passed her fangs, however, when her dominated ghoul's neighbours turned their attention toward their turned fellow, their rudimentary intellects possessing just enough insight to realise that it was now hostile, and in a few quick moments reduced her thrall to several small pieces.

  "J'zargo does not think that the the elf is really a master necromancer," chuckled the cat as Caprifexia scowled, turning her attention to another of the ghouls and breaking it's will.

  Her second attempt had much the same result as the first, and although suddenly turning a random ghoul on it's fellows and having them immediately begin hacking at the others was more effective than her lightning had been, it wasn't nearly enough to stem the tide. The time it took to turn just one of the creatures to her will was simply too long, and slowly but surely both she and the cat began to retreat further across the circular room.

  Still more ghouls poured into the room, and Caprifexia realised that she had to change tactics once more; breaking their will one at a time was like trying to use a bucket to put out an inferno. She needed something far more destructive than her haphazard necromancy, and more effective than her fire and lightning had been.

  She could cave the tunnel in with lithomancy, earth magic, but without the ability to open a portal to the Void that would just mean they died slowly, rather than quickly – and even if they got the rocks cleared afterward, the ghouls would be waiting on the other side. That, and she wasn't entirely sure she wouldn't collapse the room along with the corridor by accident.

  Caprifexia wracked her brains, her mind slowly pushing her towards a conclusion she really didn't want to reach: that she only had one real option that wouldn't trap them, and which might inflict enough damage to see them through the fight.

  Void magic.

  Ever since she had broken free of the Old One's chains, and become the greatest hero in the multiverse, she had been reluctant to employ or practice with the corrosive energy of the Void in even the most minor of ways. The power was inherently dangerous to one's sanity, and, even for a dragon, exhausting to wield, and even a single mistake with it would destroy the user and their soul utterly.

  When she had been corrupted, like the rest of her flight, those dangers had been vastly lessened, but it had still been not something undertaken lightly, and when she had practised with it back in Blackrock Spire it had only been under the intense supervision of an experienced Wyrm, and with very small quantities. Quantities far smaller than what she was going to have to employ to stop the ghouls.

  But it was powerful. Incredibly, unbelievably powerful. And at that moment she couldn't see any other option that didn't result in almost certain death. So, steeling herself with a growl, she plunged past the surface mana that swirled and churned around her, delving down to where eldritch, terror inducing energy scrabbled against the borders of reality. She reached out with her mind, grabbing as much of it as she dared before dragging it up and into herself.

  Mind bending energy, utterly devoid of colour swirled around her talons, drinking in the light around it as its whispers began to assault her mind. They promised her power, glory, everything she could have ever wanted if only she'd le?t???? ????????h????e??????m?? i??????????????n??????????????? .

  But Caprifexia wasn't some novitiate mortal when it came to the Old God's whispers, and ignored them, focusing instead on weaving the Void energy into the correct form for what she needed to do. The voices grew more frantic and insistent as she fed the spell, straining against her mental control, and her heartbeat became louder and louder in her ears as colour bled away from the world. Still she poured more power in, letting the ball of swirling, hyper-entropic energy build until it was larger than she was.

  She dimly heard herself yelling for the mortals to take cover, before she shoved the ball of unreality toward the ghouls and let go of the spell.

  The corrosive energies rocketed forward, barrelling straight through the first few ranks of undead until it struck the ground somewhere near the centre of the horde. The colourless energy collapsed in on itself, and there was a brief moment of stillness before with a blast of deafening sound the energy exploded outward, washing over the undead constructs, eating through decayed flesh, withered bone, necromantic energy, and stone floor alike and simply erasing it all of it from existence from one moment to the next.

  Caprifexia flapped back, ears ringing and hoping that she hadn't miscalculated the power involved as the ball of expanding non-existence raced outward from the point of impact, getting closer and closer to them. It was possible for a skilled and powerful spellcaster to contain Void energy, but Caprifexia knew that was, for the moment at least, beyond her abilities.

  Then it stopped expanding, and she smugly noted that she had gotten the spell perfect as the devoid energy fizzed out a few feet in-front of the cat, who was scrambling backward on the ground with a look of terror in his eyes.

  Capifexia was about to say something appropriately pithy when a wave of exhaustion washed over her and her wings suddenly felt far too heavy to flap any longer. She crashed to the ground, yelping as she landed on her still only partly healed leg. Her vision flickered, and she must have blacked out for a few moments, because the next thing she knew she was vaguely aware that Einar was dragging her across the ground by her tail.

  "Stop that minion," she slurred angrily. "Bad mortal."

  "Capri – you need to make a portal, you need to make it now!" yelled Einar.

  "Not so loud," she winced. Why did Einar always whinge at her? She never whinged. "What are you complaining about now?"

  "You didn't get them all!"

  "Inconceivable," she said, drunkenly raising her head towards where, in complete insolent defiance of their draconic betters, nearly two dozen of the undead creatures were scrambling through the perfect half-sphere of a crater from where her spell had detonated.

  The cat was attempting to hold them back, but without her indomitable might to assist him his powers were proving to be insufficient for the task.

  A sliver of unease reasserted itself into her tired mind as she realised that she'd exhausted herself entirely, and wasn't going to be able to fight them off. Yes, Einar was right, it was time for a tactical retreat.

  Focusing on her slight concern, she tried to use it to push aside the barriers of reality once more. She once again felt the process take hold for a moment, before once again running headlong into the same block, and immediately her headache ratcheted up another few notches.

  "Capri!"

  "Can't," she said. "Trying."

  Einar stopped dragging her, and she realised that they'd reached the far side of the room. The cat was still casting balls of ice, but his movements were becoming sluggish, and his spells were even more feeble than his initial amateur flailings.

  It suddenly struck her that she was going to die. The minute the cat became as exhausted as she was they would be overrun in seconds. Above her Einar readied his dagger and set his jaw, and the cat stepped back and poured his magic into a swirling golden shield, erecting it just in time to stop a jagged looking sword from taking his head off.

  Caprifexia lay still for a moment, before growling and shakily pushing herself off the ground and wobbling to Einar's side. If she was going to die, she wasn't going to do it lying down.

  She was a dragon; guardian of mortal-kind; the greatest hero in existence. And maybe she didn't know a whole lot about heroism just yet, but she knew enough that you didn't let your friend's face their deaths alone. Even annoying and disrespectful mortal ones.

  Cracks began to appear on the cat's shield, and Caprfexia tensed, bringing the rest of her dragonfire up her gullet, waiting for the barrier to fall to unleash the last of her might.

  Before the barrier could fall, however, the attention of the ghouls turned, and a few moments later a wave of fire rolled over their back ranks, turning the corpses to burning pyres and washing forward, larger than anything the cat, or even she, had produced. As it faded, the shape of a familiar black and gold clad elf became apparent through the heat haze, bringing with it a feeling of intense relief.

  "Ah, look what we have here," said Arakno as he blasted apart the rest of the stragglers in what, even Caprifexia had to admit, was reasonably impressive magic. For a mortal, of course.

  "Your timing is most excellent," said Caprifexia, walking shakily forward as the exhausted cat lowered his shield. "They were beginning to become a bother."

  Arakno frowned at her for a moment, before raising a confused eyebrow. "Miss Caprifexia?" he said uncertainly.

  "Oh," she said, having forgot she was in her true form, and taking a moment to shift back and wobbling slightly from her exertion. "Ah, yes – that definitely wasn't my real form. I'm an altmer," she said, deceptively. "Not a dragon at all."

  "I thought that it was him that could…" he said looking at Einar and frowning, before shaking his head. "Irrelevant, I suppose. I am glad that you are unharmed. It would be a tragedy for the brightest student in this frozen hellscape to have perished."

  "It seems that luck is with khajiit today after all," said the cat, once again interrupting. "Hail Ancano, J'zargo is most pleased to see you."

  Arakno barely even looked at the cat, instead advancing on the orb and stroking his chin.

  "Incredible," he said. "So much more remarkable in person…"

  "J'zargo thinks it is doing something to the space around it," said the cat, coming to a stop beside Arakno. "Perhaps it is what the ancient snow elves were-"

  The cat's speculations were abruptly cut off as the elf turned, unleashing a blast of lightning straight into the cat's chest with a contemptuous flick of his wrist.

  "What are you doing!?" said Caprifexia, taking a half-step back in surprise, not entirely sure what was going on as the cat collapsed onto the dusty stone floor.

  "Cleaning up," said Arakno, his lip curling.

  As a mage the cat had some innate resistance to magic, but taking a powerful spell like that point blank was still almost certainly fatal. The cat had been irritating, sure, but Caprifexia didn't think that warranted a summary execution. As far as she understood things, that was a villainous action – something that a friendly elf shouldn't have done. Was there something she had missing? Had she somehow not noticed that the cat had really been a villain? But no, he'd fought alongside her. And Einar had said that even villains shouldn't be summarily killed – that was what had gotten her into trouble about the proto-drakes and the 'proto-drake-born' in the first place. What was going on?

  "Hmm," said Arakno, before turning to Einar, who has his dagger out. "It seems, Miss Caprifexia, that we also have a good opportunity to rid you of this pest."

  Time seemed to slow for Caprifexia as saw Arakno raise his hand towards Einar, realisation dawning on her as lightning arced over the elf's hand as he prepared another bolt of lightning.

  Somehow, against all odds, Einar had been right.

  Arakno was not really a friendly elf at all.

  Caprifexia was moving before she realised what she was doing, and as the magic shot from the elf's fist her she stepped in front of Einar, taking the blast in his stead.

  The bolt struck her in the sternum, and the force knocked her backwards, straight into Einar, and sent them both tumbling to the floor. Caprifexia screamed and spasmed as every nerve in her body fired simultaneously, and felt thick coppery blood spill over her tongue as she bit it in her paroxysms.

  "Why would you- you foolish girl! I didn't mean to-" she heard Arakno say, his voice distraught as her vision flickered once more. "What a waste. You had such potential…"

  "J'zargo does… not understand," croaked the cat. "Why?"

  "You think the I was ever going to let a bunch of dilettantes at the end of the world claim this prize?" said Arakno, his voice resuming it's more usual, snooty tone. "You don't even know what it is, of what it will be capable of in Her hands. This world will be unmade, khajiit, and the altmer will assume their rightful place as Gods. Not that you'll live to see it…"

  There was a burst of complex magic, followed by a series of fading footsteps and a dimming light as the orb began to float away after the nasty elf. Gradually her body began to stop shaking, and Einar moved beneath her, gently rolling her off him.

  "Capri, Capri!?" he said, shaking her shoulders.

  "Why must you mortals be so loud!" she winced as her muscles gradually started listening to her once more, looking down and grimacing at where her coat had been burnt through and angry seared flesh was visible beneath.

  "How are you… not dead?" said Einar.

  "Dragons are naturally resistant to magic, do keep up," she wheezed. "What, you thought I would throw myself in front of you if I thought I might die? That would be mad. Insane. Definitely not something I would have done. Just let me… catch my breath."

  "You-" he began, before his head snapped towards the fallen cat. "J'zargo!"

  He rushed toward the cat's side, and a few moments later the smell of cooked cat began to fill the room which, as someone who had eaten smaller, non-allegedly-sapient cats before, Caprifexia didn't think actually smelled too bad.

  Would it be unheroic to eat a tasty cat if it had died of non-Caprifexia related causes? She'd have to ask Einar.

  "This is bad," said Einar. "We need to find a healer."

  Further down the corridor there was a boom and a rush of magic, and the ceiling shook above them, raining down dust.

  "What was that?" he said.

  "Some kind of earth magic, obviously," said Caprifexia, putting her hand to her chest and willing her coat, which in reality was just a construct of magic, back together. Her chest ached terribly, and she wouldn't have said no to some healing herself, despite her heroic bravery. "That annoying elf, who I certainly didn't ever like at all, is trying to crush us."

  "You must go," wheezed the cat. "It might not be too late for you."

  "Good idea-" agreed Caprifexia, pushing herself shakily up into a sitting position. Her head was throbbing horrifically, and she wanted nothing more than to lie down and have a good, long nap, but the thought of being crushed meant that she was willing to forgo that – for now at least.

  "We're not going to leave you," said Einar firmly as dust and pebbles started to rain down on them. "Not after you saved our lives. Capri, can you open a portal now that the orb is gone?"

  Capri huffed in irritation at the absurd idea that the cat had saved their lives, but nevertheless scrunched up her face and tried to find something to be mildly perturbed by, doing her best to ignore the crushing fatigue.

  Then a rock larger than she was landed beside her and with a yelp a tear into the void opened.

  She scrambled through it on all fours, trying to ignore the way that her chest burned and the Void tendrils and eyeballs squished and oozed beneath her fingers. Einar joined her a moment later, the trembling cat in his arms, and as soon as he was through the sound of falling rocks cut off as the portal snapped closed.

  "Where have you taken J'zargo?" asked the cat in a weak voice. "Is this Oblivion? Are you Daedra?"

  "No friend," said Einar. "Just focus on staying conscious, OK? We'll get you help. And… wait, Capri, are you really OK? Can you stand?"

  "Of course," she said, shakily clawing her way upright with the help of a nearby piece of only partially collapsed masonry. "Totally fine."

  "You're badly hurt," he said.

  "Nonsense – I am a dragon."

  "And you really can't heal at all?"

  "No! I'm a wizard, not a priestess!" she snapped, closing her eyes and trying to push back her throbbing headache.

  "I don't… never-mind. If you can't heal, we need to find someone who can."

  "The fools in that dusty city didn't even have magic," she said, coughing a few times. "Tasty fish though."

  "J'zargo does like… tasty fish…" said the cat.

  "What about your world?" said Einar. "That has powerful magic doesn't it? Could you find it?"

  Caprifexia shifted uneasily. "I… might recognise the architecture. But I do not know how far it is – and an Old God will find us if we linger in this place too long, and I don't think I can… walk very fast."

  "J'zargo is going to die if we don't get him to a healer, and you don't look to good yourself," he said. For a moment she was confused, before she suddenly realised that the cat was actually called J'zargo. She had just assumed it was something weird he, and maybe other Nirnians, said every now and then. "It should be directly above us, more or less, right?"

  Caprifexia had a vague idea of the direction she had come from, or at least she thought she did, roughly to the right of where they were. She could see a dozen or so platforms with planes in that direction before the swirling darkness of the void swallowed the meandering structures, but at a glance none seemed to feature any obviously Azerothian architecture.

  "Maybe," she said. "Dimensions quite clearly don't work like reality here, but it is possible I suppose. But if we don't find it in the next twenty minutes, we must take the closest world. Getting the cat to a healer will be the least of our concerns if an Old God finds us – you mortals will go insane after just a glimpse."

  "J'zargo is… not a cat," said the cat in a faint voice.

  Einar nodded grimly and moved off, Caprifexia following at a slower pace as made their way away from Nirn, taking the most upward of the bridges that led between the different planes in the Void. Every breath seared in her lungs, and she found herself, for the first time in her life, growing cold.

  That wasn't a good sign, she knew. Her inner furnace, an essential component of the bridge between her astral and physical forms, was located in her chest, and might have been disrupted by the horrible, nasty elf's magic, since wounds transferred over between her mortal and true guises. And if that was true, then she was much more injured than she had first thought.

  Why had she jumped in front of Einar? It had been a foolish, reckless thing to do. Certainly nothing befitting a dragon, even an heroic one like her. After all, Einar, no matter how much she tolerated him, was in the end only a mortal, whereas she was the greatest hero in the multiverse. He would age and die, hopefully not for some time, but inevitably. Whereas she was immortal, and therefore had the potential to save a hypothetically infinite number of weak and vulnerable mortals. It was only logical then an immortal life was more important than a mortal's. Wasn't it?

  "We need to stop," she gasped as they reached a platform made up of gothic structures, almost, but not quite, like Gilnean buildings, which strangely weren't ruined or damaged in the slightest – unlike every other entrance they had come across thus far. "I cannot see Azerothian architecture anywhere, and it's been nearly twenty minutes."

  Einar grimaced and looked down at the cat, who's eyes were fluttering open and closed, and then to Caprifexia, who was shivering violently.

  "Talos damn it," he said, moving towards the orb of light that led to the unknown world. "We'll have to try here then."

  A.N. If you like my writing, you might be interested in my fantasy adventure novel – – which is entirely pre-written and with chapters released every Friday!

  Mishka the Great and Powerful that isn't up on Royal Road yet!). However, I don't monetise or time-gate my fanfiction though (plz no sue!).