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Caroleigh remembered the first time she rode a dragon. The wind had blown her hair behind her, the beating pulse of Odahviing’s wings lulling her into a peace she had never felt before. It was like she belonged in the sky, and her soul longed to fly the skies of Tamriel.
Now she was flying on the back of the serpentine dragon Sahrotaar in Hermaeus Mora’s plane of Oblivion, heading towards the Summit of Apocrypha, and what was no doubt her death.
The feeling of freedom was still as strong as it was that first time, laced with the unnerving dread that she was extremely underprepared for what was to come. She was terrified, and that was something she didn’t admit often. Not even her wife, Kariie, knew just how scared she was.
The Summit rose above her, a twisted black spire in a sea of ink, and she felt her Thu’um crawl up her throat in preparation of the battle that was to come. Sahrotaar pulled up, and flew perpendicular to the tower, rising high above the two dragons that circled the Summit, before lowering and landing on the platform at the top.
Standing in the middle, in a pool of the inky blackness that surrounded the Summit, was Miraak, standing tall and unafraid, his face hidden by the mask given to him by his fellow Dragon Priests, twisted by the evil of Hermaeus Mora. Caroleigh’s own face was hidden by the mask of the Dragon Priest Morokei, killed deep beneath the ruins of Bromjunaar. She was glad she decided to wear it. It hid her fear from her enemy.
“Sahrotaar, are you so easily swayed?”
His voice was deep, and projected over the entire Summit, loud and commanding. The two dragons the circled the Summit roared, eager to kill their traitor brother and the Breton he carried on his back.
Miraak raised a hand, and they stopped. “No. Not yet. We should greet our guest first.” He lowered his arm, and turned to face Caroleigh. “And so the First Dragonborn meets the Last Dragonborn at the Summit of Apocrypha. No doubt just as Hermaeus Mora intended. He is a fickle master, you know. But now I am free of him. My time in Apocrypha is over.”
She could feel the tendrils of Hermaeus Mora in the ground beneath her feet, and thick in the air surrounding her. She could feel him watching, waiting, listening to every word his prisoner spoke. She wondered if Miraak could feel him too, his mass of eyes and writhing tentacles just on the corner of his vision.
She knew that if he did he wouldn’t be speaking like he is now.
“You are here in your fell power, and thus subject to my full power. You will die. And with the power of your soul, I will return to Solstheim and be master of my own fate once again. Kruziikrel! Relonikiv! Now!”
The two dragons dived, spewing fire and ice at Sahrotaar, who roared and launched himself into the air, leaving Caroleigh and Miraak alone as they fought their battle in the skies.
Miraak drew his sword and pulled a staff off his back, tentacles writhing along the hilt of the blade and the wood of the staff, and stepped out of the pool of inky water and towards Caroleigh.
Caroleigh took a step back as he approached, channeling her magicka to her hands. Sparks surrounded them, arching up and around in a little ball, before she concentrated them and pushed her hands towards Miraak. Lightning arched towards him, hitting him square in the chest, making him topple backwards.
As he stood up she cast another spell, a ball of dark energy filling her hand as she threw it onto the floor, and purplish-black smoke appeared and spiralled around, condensing into a solid pillar, before dispersing and revealing a flame atronach floating above the ground and made of literal fire.
Miraak got to his feet as the atronach appeared, and thrust his staff forward, tentacles spewing out of the top and landing on the floor, reaching up and grabbing whatever it could.
Caroleigh rolled out of the way, and placed her hand onto the floor. Arches of lightning rose out of the ground, in a line headed towards Miraak. He stood his ground, though, and Shouted.
“IIZ SLEN NUS!”
Frost came out of the mask and hit the wall of lightning, freezing it in place. Caroleigh breathed hard inside her mask, and Whirlwind Sprinted to the other side of the platform, where Sahrotaar had just thrown Kruziikrel out of the sky and towards the inky blackness below.
Miraak turned and Whirlwind Sprinted towards her, swinging his sword down on top of her. She reached up just as her sword materialised in her hand, pulled from the planes of Oblivion to help her fight. She wasn’t really good with a sword, but when needed, she could use one.
The two swords collided as Caroleigh’s flame atronach threw fireballs at Miraak, who had dropped his staff and held a hand up casting a ward to shield from from the flames. Distracted by the atronach, he didn’t notice as Caroleigh conjured up an ice spike and plunged it up under his ribs, into his lungs.
He let out a groan of pain as he dropped his ward and staggered backwards. Caroleigh sent another ice spike at his chest and it pierced his heart, and he took a couple more steps back before collapsing onto his knees.
“You bitch,” he spat out between ragged breaths.
“The name’s Caroleigh,” she told him.
He took a deep breath as the ice spikes disappeared and blood ran down the front of his body and over his hand that was trying to close one of the wounds, a pool of blood slowly growing beneath him.
And he Shouted.
“FUS RO DAH!”
The Shout rang out around the Summit and hit Caroleigh like a tidal wave, slamming into her like a wall and pushing her back. She flew through the air, tumbling and turning, only being able to see Miraak for a split second at a time, and only just seeing Hermaeus Mora appear and stab Miraak through the chest with a tentacle.
And then she was falling.
Falling was different than flying. The air rushed around her as she plunged towards the ink black sea, her heart racing in panic and terror, adrenaline coursing through her veins. Her hands reached up to grab something, anything, to stop her descent, but there was nothing but air surrounding her.
Her back hit the water with a crashing thud, pain coursing through her entire being as it had felt like she had landed on stone. The air was knocked out of her lungs, and she tried to surface to get more, but tentacles reached up from the depths and wrapped themselves around her. They grabbed at her arms and legs and torso and dragged her deeper into the brink, deeper and deeper until she couldn’t see light anymore, until her lungs felt like they were going to burst from the lack of oxygen. She closed her eyes in a desperate attempt at praying, at hoping on of the gods was listening and would save her.
She didn’t open them again.