Dorne, Sandtower
Year 115 BC
Neferion
When he woke up, the thought that came to his mind was that it was finally quiet. Most of the night the beast made horrible sounds, driving both him and Spring mad. He couldn't block the noise because he didn't have enough magicka to keep it up for more than a minute.
He was starting to come to the conclusion that the limitations to his magic would be more painful than he had expected, and not because of the potential fight, but rather because of the versatility and convenience it offered outside of it.
If only he had had full soul gems, but to his chagrin, he had used them all during the fight with Alduin and the events leading up to it. And he intended to keep the filled Star of Azura just in case. You never knew when it might come in handy.
He ate a quick breakfast consisting of dried meat and a few vegetables and fruits kept in a bag. And after feeding Spring as well, he decided to act.
His ebony Dragonlord armor appeared on his body and in his hand Dawnbraker, burning not with Meridia's flame but glowing with the holy light of the sun of his father, Akatosh/Auri-el.
The blade that once belonged to Meridia was undoubtedly his favourite sword in his collection and certainly since his father blessed it as a reward for defeating Harkon and stopping his mad plan.
The sword not only cut through matter like through butter but also burnt with the flames of the sun itself upon contact. Usually it was an overkill, but Neferion did not know what to expect from the beast he was supposed to face. It is better to be safe than sorry.
With this in mind, he also summoned the Staff of Frostbite to his left hand, which was supposed to help him partially eliminate his magic problem.
Unfortunately, for the same reason, he could not use any of the more powerful staffs, such as the Staff of Magnus or the one belonging to Mirak. He hadn't figured it out yet, but somehow just using them seemed to drain more magicka in a second than he could regenerate in a minute.
As a last resort, he was left with Thu'um. If by some miracle he found himself in a life-threatening situation, he wouldn't mind being watched by unknown forces but would instead wipe the beast out with something like Unrelenting Force or Fire Breath.
He stopped about two hundred feet from the ruins, looking at them carefully. Made of some beige stone, the walls and towers seemed to be in fairly good shape, despite the fact that the place had been abandoned for decades.
The fort was attached to the side of a small mountain, less than a mile high. Three massive square towers were connected by walls, and in the middle of them was the keep itself, which at first seemed not much higher than the towers themselves, until he realised that it was carved into the mountain itself and that more of it had been carved out of the rock itself.
He hated fighting in tight spaces and twisting corridors. He had had enough of it in Tamriel, but then again he doubted there was anyone as experienced in this type of combat as he was.
He looked once more at Spring to see if she had stayed at a distance as he had ordered her to, and seeing that she had, turning towards the ruins themselves, he shouted a challenge, hoping to draw the beast beyond the narrow walls.
"Monster, I am here! Come and challenge me!" His low, deep voice, strengthened by years of thu'um use, echoed through the wasteland.
He waited a moment, then a minute, five, and nothing. Either the beast was more cunning than he had expected, or it was completely deaf.
Although he allowed for the second possibility, he preferred to accept the first option. In this way, he did not underestimate the opponent, who was probably intelligent enough or had such heightened senses and instincts that the monster knew that he was dealing with a more powerful opponent than usual.
Besides, in Neferion's own opinion, it was obvious that he was the hunter in this case and the beast was the hunted.
"By Akatosh!" he growled in irritation. But soon his dovah soul came to the fore, and he began to feel that maybe it was better that the beast did not want to show itself. The fight would be more interesting and longer.
Neferion clutched his head, feeling a piercing pain as the voice of his greatest enemy echoed in his head again.
He had hoped that when he had come to this world, he had somehow managed to get rid of that damned lizard from his head, and the last few months seemed to confirm that. However, it turned out that he was very wrong.
Neferion smirked with superiority,
The fury of the first Dovah erupted with redoubled force, but Neferion had had enough. He did not need distractions, not now. He focused his will to push the World-Eater away, but he soon realised that it was not as easy as usual.
Dovah began to struggle and thrash, and what was worse, there was a moment when Neferion thought he would manage to do it. But at the last moment, he managed to push him into the depths of his being.
Alduin bid him farewell with a laugh and one last comment.
With a tired sigh, Neferion gripped the Dawnbreaker's hilt tighter and swung it a few times to warm it up, the staff in his other hand briefly glowing with blue light.
Then he headed towards the ruins, trying not to think about the words of his greatest enemy, now a stowaway in his own mind. That was a topic for later.
He crossed the ruined wooden gate reinforced with iron, one wing of which was completely broken off, and the other was barely hanging, bent at a sharp angle.
The first thing that hit him was the stench. Of course, he had smelt it from afar, but inside it seemed unbearable to his sensitive senses. Rotten meat, excrement, and other smells unrecognisable to him formed a kind of first line of defence against intruders.
The next thing was much more subtle. The ruined fort was filled with some magic that he couldn't identify, but he could say with complete certainty that its origin was very dark.
He felt it writhing and even screaming. However, for most people, it would be a delicate veil that muffled the senses and attacked the mind directly, causing relaxation, recklessness and lethargy.
It didn't surprise him at all that the brother of the princess of Dorne had died here with his men. He felt that this beast was too strong even for most adventurers in Tamriel. Even he, Archmage, had a hard time understanding how the beast was able to transform such perverse magic into something so subtle.
Suddenly, out of the corner of his eye, he thought he saw a sudden movement in the corner of the courtyard, but now he couldn't be sure if he saw anything. Instinct told him, however, that the beast was close; he felt its gaze, but he couldn't tell from which direction.
He directed his steps towards the entrance to the keep itself, constantly alert, constantly attentive and ready to attack at any moment. However, the enemy was cunning, lurking and waiting.
He entered the interior through the shattered door, and inside, his eyes, seeing in the dark, saw the reason for the stench prevailing in the fort. Piles of corpses and animal carcasses were strewn against the walls.
Some were still partially recognisable; of others, only skeletons remained. He felt his eyes begin to water. He swayed slightly. Or rather, he simulated such a movement. He knew that the beast was waiting for a sign of weakness.
And indeed, as soon as he swayed, as if losing his balance. From the entrance, he felt the movement of air. If he were an ordinary mer or a human, he would have no chance. However, he not only had inhuman physical abilities but also experience fighting an apex predator from his world.
Dawnbreaker lit up in an instant, cutting through the space right behind him in a wide arc in the blink of an eye.
He immediately felt the blade make contact with something and go through it like through butter. A terrifying screech, a hiss, pierced his sensitive ears. He winced involuntarily from the pain, which the Beast took advantage of by running away, and the only thing that remained was a nearly human hand covered in yellowish scales lying on the ground in front of him, holding a two-handed sword.
He found that it was almost human, because despite the similarities, it was covered with reptilian scales, and instead of a hand, it ended with a paw. Most importantly, despite being cut off smoothly just above the elbow, it was the size of a normal human. 5-6 feet.
The Beast had to be much bigger than him, and it was alarmingly fast. What he managed to observe before it ran away was the fact that it seemed to him that it was some kind of snake. However this hand ruled out that possibility.
The Tsaesci of Akavir immediately came to mind, some of whom were supposed to be half human and half snake. With the upper body of a human and, from the waist down, a snake.
It could indeed be a similar creature, although the Tsaesci were a rational and civilised race. Here he was dealing with an intelligent but still monstrous person. But much more powerful,
Remaining alert, he bent down and lifted his hand from the ground, then began to observe it, not physically, but with his magical senses.
It took him only a few seconds to confirm his earlier conviction that the creature was not of natural origin but the result of some magical experiments.
Now that he had the body part in front of him, it was trembling with the amount of magic so dark that many a necromancer from Tamriel would have recoiled at the sight of it.
The creation of this entity involved a lot of torture, suffering and other perverse methods that he didn't even want to think about. If only he knew who had done something like that, he would have shortened his life without hesitation.
Throwing the severed hand to the ground, he left the keep and looked around the courtyard once more, looking for a place where the beast could have gone. The entrances to the towers were out of the question because they were too small.
Suddenly, his eyes fell on a large breach in one of the smaller buildings, which seemed to lead to the interior of the mountain. Well, he had already stated that if the keep cut into the side of the mountain, there must be some corridors and rooms there.
"So this is where you've been hiding? I'm coming for you," he muttered to himself before slowly cracking his neck and stepping into the darkness of the tunnel.