Ch.1 “why? Just … why?”
It was just another beautiful day in Equestria. The sun was shining, white fluffy clouds adorned the sky, and there where absolutely no conveniently 1000 year old villains to pop up and threaten their very way of life … again. That is until .. a 4000 year old villain popped up to threaten their very way of life.
High in the mountains of skyrim, in the crumbling ruins of Skuldafin legions a Dragur fought to protect their nine masters, the eight dragon priests and Alduin himself, from Dovakiin. The dragonborn was a nord clad in ebony armor dual wielding ebony swords, one enchanted with frost and the other fire. To say the Dragur death lords where having difficulty keeping him at bay would be an understatement. Bodies flew as the dovakiin let loose his mighty thu’um. This was heard by the dragon priests and Alduin as they gathered around the portal to Sovernguard. The other priests urged Nahkriin to finish his ritual and open the portal. Nahkriin lifted his staff up but before he could plunge it into its proper place an ebony arrow whissed by clipping and taking a chunk out of the ancient staff. Nahkriin payed it no heed, he could sense his master’s impatience and fear, after all the ebony clad dovahkiin was fast approaching. As the staff met the hole the portal started to open up. Alduin flew up and dived into the hole.
“Everyone on me!”
The priests complied with their master and plunged into the portal with him. Nahkriin then pulled the staff back out and the portal started to close. He hoped to buy his master some time, but that was not to be. He was tackled from behind by the ebony dovakiin and both where sent careening into the portal as well just as it closed leaving Skuldafin as silent and dead as it once was before for 4000 years.
In those clear blue skies of equestria the pony populace of ponyville looked up at the sky in shock as a blue/white portal ripped itself open in their skies. They were even more surprised to see a black dragon and nine odd looking creatures fall out of it before it closed itself. Alduin himself landed on his back dead center of Ponyville town square, blowing down several stands as well as crushing the fountain. His priests landed on his belly so they wheren’t splattered on impact with the ground. Dovahkiin wasn’t as lucky. He was rendered unconscious when he hit the ground despite the ebony armor. Alduin thrashed tearing into buildings in order to right himself. As the great dragon got on his feet his head shifted left and right surverying the land. Wherever this place was it wasn’t Sovernguard. The dragon made a snap decicion as a bunch of small pastel colored animals ran around in a panic. He leaned over to speak with the eight.
“Eyfur wah hir ven ahrk lahvraan ol pogaas frahzogin ol korasaal.”
‘Scatter to the four winds and gather as much information as possible.’
The priests now had a mission and so they left to get what their master wanted. Alduin watched them go with a devious smile. As he surveyed the destruction and hysteria around him he noticed an orange mare with a blonde mane and what appeared to be a branding of three red apples on her flank, she was glaring at him. He locked his hellish red eyes with her’s and leaned in his muzzle mere inches away from her’s. He opened his jaws and roared at her blasting the seston hat off her head and making her mane blow back, as well as splattering her with his saliva. As he did this Alduin spread his midnight wings and took to the skies roaring as he did so, his call heard throughout equestria.
About an hour later the three princess’ landed in Ponyville square. Repairs where already underway but they needed to know what exactly happened to cause such a rift and the resulting destruction. Twilight Sparkle the youngest of the princess’ broke off from the trio spying her friends. She rushed over as fast as her hooves could carry her. Rainbow Dash, Fluttershy, Rarity, AppleJack, Pinkie Pie, and even Spike where repairing stands and cleaning up destroyed merchandise.
“Guys! What happened here?”
Twilight’s friends greeted her with tired smiles. AppleJack trotted up first to greet her.
“Well howdy Twi. Ah was jus’ standin’ here sellin mah apples ahn suddenly this great big hole opened in the sky! Then ah swear to ya a dragon blacker’n’ night n’ meaner’n’ a rattle snake fell out with a bunch of these .. things. They scattered faster n’ roaches when that dragon spoke sum funny language to em. Only one left is tha feller there.”
AppleJack pointed a hoof towards the unconscious dovahkiin. Said Dragonborn was being tended to by Nurse Redheart while Celestia herself oversaw it. His ebony armor and weapons were removed and his cuts, bruises, and gashes were being tended to. Twilight and company trotted over to investigate.
“What do you suppose it is Celestia?”
Celestia looked over at her curious student and most likely successor with a puzzled look of her own.
“I’m afraid in all my years I have never seen one such as this. Its upper body suggests it is of minotaur lineage, but even so there are plenty of bits that don’t add up.”
Celestia was interrupted by a mint green unicorn running in circles in the background screaming about ‘The humans are coming to take over Equestria!’. Her mate Bon-Bon simply facehoofed and tried to take her home before she stoked the flames of paranoia. But it was too late as Celestia put a golden hoof to her chin.
“That mare maybe very well correct.”
Twilight’s pupils’ dilated to pinpricks as her jaw slowly slid open.
“You can’t be serious Princess!”
“Calm my faithful student. Think about it clearly, he matches most of the legends and myths of old about these ‘humans’. Not to mention all myths have some truth to them, wasn’t it you who made a point to prepare for the return of Nightmare Moon?”
Twilight blushed at being reminded of the incident and her own hypocrisy of questioning of the myths. With her student now pouting and a red blush across her face Celestia merely giggled and patted her student on the head.
“Now AppleJack what was this about a black dragon?”
AppleJack gave Celestia a respectful nod and retold her story.
“Now these ‘things’ you mentioned that fled when the dragon spoke to them?”
“Well they were like him, only they didn’t look to peachy. They looked like raisins left out in the sun to long.”
Celestia raised a brow to this. She was familiar to undead because of the wars with both Sombra and Nightmare. Necromancy is a staple of dark magic, but how can a dragon preform magic? Or are these corpses at all? Perhaps a different species of human? So many questions swam in Celestia’s head.
“Well then my little ponies perhaps we can discuss this over dinner. Fluttershy can we perhaps eat at your place? I am curious as to what Discord has to say in all of this.”
The shy Pegasus gave a small nod and Celestia gave her a warm smile. A few hours later everyone was gathered at the cottage prepped for the pleasant meal ahead. Fluttershy allowed the princesses and her friends inside. Discord himself was entertaining himself by putting on a play with his food. Hamlet only literal. Discord sighed and shook his head.
“You had to make that joke didn’t you?”
“Discord.”
The draconequus looked up from his play and a slow grin slid across his face.
“Oh my, what brings my dear Celestia here? Am I that truly irresistible? Because truly I will be frank I find your sister far more entertaining and enjoyable to be around.”
Luna blushed and Celestia grimaced. Discord merely groaned and rolled his eyes.
“Yes, yes I know. I have nothing to do with it. If you actually took the time to investigate where the portal was you would find that the magic used wasn’t my own. Granted it has trace amounts of chaos magic but there is also dark magic mixed with a touch of necromantic magic and finally touched up with some good ol fashioned raw magika. For some reason that gives the portal a snozberry taste.”
Discord’s meal then proceeded to bow and lay back down on his plate. Celestia only grimaced and sat herself down. The other ponies did much the same as Discord snapped his claws and plates of food began flying around and serving themselves. Discord himself propped his elbows on the table, folded his paw and claw and rested his chin on the bridge that was now his hands. A slow grin spread across his muzzle.
“Does that give you the information you wanted?”
“Close but we still don’t know how it happened of what we are up against.”
“Perhaps you should ask your man when he wakes up?”
“Now that you mentioned it do you have an idea what it is?”
Discord chortled.
“Isn’t it obvious? He is a human of course!”
Twilight slammed her hoof onto the table.
“But that goes against all reason and logic!”
Discord merely raised an eyebrow at her.
“Twilight my dear, you are living in a world filled with magic. A world where I exist, hell a world where Pinkie exists!”
The pink pony let out a squee at being mentioned. Twilight sat down with a grimace and huffed. She hated not being able to explain things, but perhaps they might get something out of their new ward.
To be continued…
Author's Note
And not the hilarity commeth.
Ch.02 “The Dragon Awakens”
As the sun lazily climbed over the horizon the dragonborn’s eyes slowly slid open and he rolled out of bed. Nurse Redheart who had been keeping watch trotted up to him with a smile on her face. Had anyone been observing they would have seen her trot in place as she came to a halt near him before stopping completely.
“Glad to see you are awake. Your clothes are in the dresser next to you and I will be off to fetch the princesses. Stay put.”
After flickering in and out of existence for a moment Nurse Redheart trotted off to grab the royals. To the Dovahkiin this was nothing new. He did have some problems with his homicidal cat Karjo after all. As he turned to the side of his bed he did in fact see a wooden dresser. The prompt of ‘Search Dresser’ popped up as well as an X in a circle appeared. Again business as usual. The dresser opened up without him touching it and a box appeared. The box in his vision told him there where three bits, a clothes iron, and blue fine clothes and fine boots lay inside. The Dovahkiin grabbed these with the exception of the iron and closed the dresser.
As he started to look around the rather bland room Twilight and company started to walk in, that is until everybody froze in place and mid conversation except for Twilight. She could only look at her friends in confustion. Figuring this must be the cause of a powerful sorcerer she immediately looked to her ‘guest’. What she saw only served to confuse her though. In front of his face was a compass of sorts. The top needle read “Skills”. The bottom read “Map”. The left and right respectively read as “Magic” and “Items”. The needle reading map glowed before the compass disappeared and a map of Equestria replaced it. The man wasn’t even holding it. It was simply floating in front of his face. The only thing on the map was an image of Twilight’s cutie mark and the text ‘Ponyville’. A second later the map disappeared and the compass was back. The items needle glowed and a large black box appeared. In it where the words “apparel” and “misc”. Apparel glowed and another box slid open. Arrows now appeared around fine clothes and fine boots. The boxes disappeared and Twilight saw the man was now magically in the clothes. The compass disappeared and life seemed to resume again. Twilight could only sit there mentally broken as her jaw hung lazily open.
Twilight now was the one frozen in place as her friends continued to walk forward unaware of what just transpired. As Pinkie Pie started hopping by humming to herself Twilight’s hoof shot out grabbing her and pulling her close.
“Please tell me you of all ponies saw that.”
“Saw what Twi? I was just hopping and humming like usual.”
With that the pink party pony resumed her hopping and humming. There was now a visible twitch to Twilight’s eye and a single hair in her mane sprung up. Celestia continued to trot up to the man and had the same exact problem Nurse Redheart had. She trotted in place, flickered in and out of existence, and stopped. The princess gave a bow of her head and the dragonborn rather creepily turned to the princess as if drawn to her as she addressed him. Her name mysteriously appeared between them as well as an arrow pointing to a parallel line. Twilight had a feeling another box would appear there. And as before no one noted the odd behavior. Twilight also noted with mild horror that whenever one of her friends trotted within a certain proximity of Celestia that the princesses head would twist in their direction at an odd angle but would still be continuing her talk with the dragonborn as if nothing was wrong despite her head being at an odd and unnatural angle.
Twilight fought the urdge to simply crawl into the nearest corner and rock back and forth clutching her Smarty Pants doll.
“Greetings, I am Princess Celestia of Equestria. Who may I ask are you?”
As Twilight predicted a box appeared and three lines of text also appeared.
‘I am Dragonborn.’
‘What is Equestria?’
‘Where in Tamriel am I?’
Another arrow appeared and started moving around the selections, until the ‘Where in Tamriel am I?’ selection went from white to a dark grey. Twilight could only assume that was what he intended to say, but nothing was spoken. Celestia’s brow furrowed and Twilight only could hope that she wasn’t hearing voices in her head now. But it seemed the fates gave Twilight a massive middle finger and a royal buck you, as all of her friends began asking what Tamriel was. Twilight was now resisting the urge to smash her face into the wall repeatedly.
“I’m afraid I don’t know what Tamriel is. You emerged from a portal along with eight others of your look and a large black dragon.”
Again more options appeared.
‘Alduin is here!?’
‘Those wheren’t humans, they are undead.’
The selection ‘Alduin is here!?’ went dark and Celestia stepped back as if she was just yelled at.
“Who is Alduin?”
This time only one selection appeared.
‘Alduin is an ancient dragon, who seeks to rule all of Skyrim as he did 4000 years ago.’
Celestia closed her eyes and nodded as if a fear of her’s was confirmed.
“I didn’t get a good vibe from that portal. And of the other eight?”
‘They are undead sorcerers. They were dragon priests of old who served their dragon masters and ruled over Tamriel.’
Celestia shook her head and sighed. This day was just getting worse and worse.
“And you? Are you friend or foe?”
‘Friend.’
That got a small smile out of the princess. If they had to face yet another terrible creature they might as well as have a new ally at the same time.
“Ah yes that reminds me. We found some articles of clothing on you that you might want back. Now you may take one of the four but we would like to keep the others for study, after all they do have fascinating enchantments on them.”
The dragonborn looked down and saw his garments. One was Miraak’s helmet and robes, along with his weapons. Another was his Dark Brotherhood clothes along with his Ebony Dagger. The Third was his Nightingale armor and blade. Finally was his classic iron armor.
To be continued
Author's Note
YOU the reader gets to choose what armor the dragonborn gets to wear! His personality will adjust to what he wears as well as his name. With Miraak's robes it will be Miraak, the dark brotherhood robes his name will be Sithis. With the Nightengale armor it will be Mercer, and with the iron armor it shall remain Dragonborn or whatever you guys wish to call him.
BUT! for a bonus you can also decide whether he is a vampire, werewolf, or standard human.
have fun!
