A changeling's visit to Skyrim

Fenora took point as they walked through the doors, with Luna following on her left and Stross on her right. The first thing each of them noticed upon entering Labyrinthian proper was the number of skeletons littering the floors, gathering dust and cobwebs. The entire first room was practically covered in bones.

“Everyone keep your guard up in here, and take this slow and careful.” Fenora told them “This place apparently has a lot of magic in it, so there’s no knowing what we might come across. Stross, see if you can sense any life coming from th-“

“J’zargo has found fifty-two septims!” the Kha’jiit said as he ransacked the piles of bones.

“Trixie found a spell tome!” Trixie said from the other side of the room.

“You guys, come on! Forget the small loot, we have to get the staff!” Onmund called to them as he ran further ahead without them.

“Gods dammit,” Fenora growled “Fine! Let’s just dungeon rush this thing!”

“Fen, wait up! Don’t leave me here!” Stross yelled as he chased after her.

“Stross no! Don’t leave me!” Brelyna screamed and chased after him in turn, leaving Luna standing alone, dumbstruck.

The lunar Princess just stood there in the entrance for a few moments as the shouts from her companions grew quieter and quieter. “So… have we decided to not be careful?”

After rushing down a long dark hallway, their charge came to a halt at an old iron gate. It was impossible to see anything in the darkness that covered the area beyond, and attempts to cast spells through it ended with very lackluster results.

Onmund found a lever nearby and tried to use it, but it was stuck in the shut position, and he had to push and shove with all his might to get it up. When he did, a loud snap echoed out, as though part of the mechanism broke when he forced it.

“I’ll hold it up, go!” he shouted to them.

The others nodded, and once they had made it through the door, Onmund dropped the switch and dashed through before the gate collapsed shut behind him.

“Well we’re not getting back that way.” He stated by the obvious fact that there were no other levers around, and the door was likely too broken anyway.

“That’s alright. These tombs in Skyrim always have a shortcut back, only you can’t get to them until you make it through all the stupidness.” Fenora told him and drew her sword “So what did we just walk in to?”

It appeared to be some kind of large, cavernous area. But it was hard to tell with the nearly pitch black darkness covering it.

Stross decided to shed some light on the situation and shot some fire towards the ceiling, hoping that maybe there’d be a chandelier or something to catch it. Brelyna did one better by casting several balls of magelight into the distance, while Luna decided to best them both, conjuring a giant orb of light that suspended itself near the ceiling like a disco ball.

Each of them wished they hadn’t when they saw what they awoke in the darkness.

Dozens of skeletons, archers and spell-blades cloaked in tattered ancient robes began advancing towards them and nocking their arrows.

In response, each of our heroes took up defensive positions, readying their combat spells of choice. But before they could start whittling away at the bone soldiers, they found the worst had yet to come.

A great rumbling shook the ground, at the far end of the room, before the exit, a giant skeletal arm erupted from a burial mound, followed quickly by its twin. After a second for dramatic anticipation, the whole beast emerged; a giant dragon skeleton, likely one of the first to fall in the great dragon war and enshrined here by the cultists.

Despite its lack of eyes it spotted the ones intruding into its lair. Despite its lack of lungs it let out a terrifying roar. And despite its lack of a stomach or even a tongue, it decided to get itself some lunch.

“Luna! You’re with me, let’s take that monster down!” Fenora commanded just as an arrow flew by her head “Yikes. Stross and newbies, keep the rest of these things off us!”

With that they charged, rushing past the infantry to face the giant dragon.

“Who are you calling a newbie?!” Trixie yelled in offence before throwing a blast of magic into the nearest skeleton archer.

The archer was knocked back, but not impressed, and quickly recovered to fire its shot. Trixie ducked under it with a yelp as it punched a hole through her great and powerful hat.

Onmund covered for her with an ice spike that crushed its way through the skeleton’s torso, making the rust crumble in its absence. “She was probably talking about you… newbie.” He said with a smirk as he moved on to the next.

…

At the start of the fight, Luna had taken to the air to distract the beast by raining spell beams on it while Fenora took out its legs. After a particularly devastating attack from the Princess, it was left vulnerable for a split second. Fenora took advantage of this and leapt for a downward slash across the skele-dragon’s face, landing and rolling away from its frost breath when it recovered immediately after her strike.

It still baffled her as to how it was able to use its shouts. Perhaps the magic of the sanctuary allowed it to retain the use of its voice during the afterlife, or maybe dragon’s voices weren’t linked to their physical bodies. Either way, she didn’t really care. All Fenora knew is that it was annoying as balls having to constantly dodge the torrents of frost.

Luckily Luna was there to hit it while it wasn’t focused on her, and the Princess’s magic blasts were much more effective than her sword.

Unfortunately the skele-dragon seemed to notice this and began attacking its airborne opponent instead. After the first few swipes with its talons were ineffective, it reared back its head as the Princess charged up her attack. It then lunged forward even as its face was bombarded with the Princess’s beam.

Luna gasped as the dragon pushed through her beam and tried to snap her in two with its jaws. There was no time to swerve away, so a barrier was her only option.

The skele-dragon didn’t care however, merely getting angrier and smashing her through the nearest pillar and into the wall behind it, her shield barely withstanding the force of the blows.

“Dragonborn, we require your aid!” she yelled as she tried to maintain the protective bubble around her as the beast gnawed on it.

“On it!” Fenora said as she lunged forward and smacked at one of the dragon’s back legs with Volendrung. Though it had just lost a tibia to the daedric sledgehammer, the dragon didn’t seem to particularly care and kept chomping down on the Princess, causing cracks to form in her midnight-colored shield.

“Fuckin’ stubborn, ain'tcha?" Fenora cursed as she sucked in a breath of air “Fus Kren-Kroz Fusriin! (Force shatter-rend shockwave)”

As the elf collapsed in pain, a rippling wave was sent through the air that tore apart anything in its path, including the skele-dragon’s left arm and most of its ribcage. Bones rained down on the floor and the dragon fell on its side.

Luna, now free from its jaws, flew up over it and conjured a giant orb of raw magic energy and threw it down on the weakened beast.

The resulting explosion sent even more bones flying this way and that. But when the dust cleared, there was only a pile of dismembered dragon bits where the monstrosity once stood.

“It is over. That was quite exhilarating.” She said with a smile as she landed next to Fenora, who was spitting up blood.

The elf simply gave her a thumbs-up as she pulled out a small health potion, taking a sip before replacing it alongside the other three she had with her.

Before they could get too caught up in their victory however, they noticed a rattling amongst the scattered bones. They began rolling, even flying to reunite with each other, more and more of the pieces piled onto the growing mass as the Fenora and Luna watched in horror. Finally the skull and jawbone found their place atop the now twisted and gnarled gathering.

The skele-dragons had mended and reformed into a much rougher and jagged shape, broken bones forming deadly spikes along its arms, back, and tail. It turned to face them once more, and roared.

Fenora gripped Volendrung and the hilt of her sword tighter. “Oh motherfu-“

…

J’zargo forced more magika into his cone of flames as the skeleton bared down on him with an axe. Finally as it was about to swing he cancelled the spell and opted to simply punch the flaming warrior’s head off.

“Our foes refuse to stay down!” he cried as he kicked at the bones already reforming at his feet.

“Trixie can’t keep this up much more.” The unicorn wizard panted as she blasted another archer apart with a brilliant display of light and sound.

“What do we do!?” Onmund yelled as he parried a blow with his conjured sword. “Stross!”

“I… I don’t know!” Stross yelled as he blew apart a pair of skeleton spell-blades for the fourth time, without flesh to cut, his anti-healing dagger did nothing to them. “I don’t know how to kill these things for good. Should we run for the exit?”

Just then the skele-dragon let out a thunderous roar that swept dust up even near the entrance where they stood.

“I like our chances of that even less!” Onmund told him as he cleaved the skeleton in front of him in two, only for it to start repairing itself yet again.

“Then what are we supposed to do?!” Trixie screamed as she kicked a skeleton’s head away. “This is a nightmare!”

“Hang on a second, what happened to Brelyna?” Stross looked around and spotted her cornered by two of the spell-blades “Brey!”

Stross was about to rush over and save her, but it seemed she didn’t need the help. Her eyes opened, glowing bright blue, and the light spread over her whole body before erupting into a pulse of blue flame that engulfed the skeletons right as they were about to hack her to pieces.

The skeletons went limp and burned for a few seconds before their bones simply turned to ashes. Meanwhile, the dunmer’s friends just stared in astonishment.

“It’s called Bane of Undead.” Brelyna told them when she noticed them staring “Colette taught it to me; she seemed more than happy to teach me about the uses of restoration beyond simple healing sp- Stross watch out!”

Before Stross could turn around he found his head being repurposed as a snow-globe while another wave of skeletons assaulted his friends. “Ge-e-e-t…. i-i-i-t… o-o-o-f-f-f-f-f… me-e-e-e-e!” he pleaded as the skeleton continued throttling him and shoving its bony fingers up his nose-holes.

Brelyna was quick to oblige, and the second she touched him with her glowing hands the fire spread through him and onto the skeleton.

“Thanks…” Stross mumbled while he got his eyes to stop spinning. It was then that he noticed the glowing flames covering him when Brelyna held his hand. “Huh…”

He let go, and the flames dispersed.

He poked her with a finger and the flames spread to him once more.

After poking her a few more times to mess with the fire the changeling smiled at her. “Brelyna I’ve got a crazy slash awesome idea!”

…

Fenora struggled to remain on her feet as she was shoved across the floor, barely holding her ground against the savagely spiky tail of the skele-dragon. After her sword was lost beyond a safe retrieval in the monster’s jagged maw, she had switched to two-handing Volendrung, and was currently using its shaft to keep the knife-like spines from impaling her. It was amazing how much force was put into the swing considering the beast was merely turning around to get a better angle on Luna.

Luna wasn’t faring much better all things considered. Her flight and teleportation allowed her to avoid the majority of the dragon’s arsenal, but it simply came up with a new method; using the shout of Unrelenting Force to launch arrowtip shards of bone at her in massive quantities. She had already failed to block one of the rending hails when it was first used, and was covered in multiple gashes and cuts because of it.

From then on she hadn’t been able to even risk an attack, and was currently pinned under the dragon’s infinite bone machinegun.

That had to change.

“Ag. Straag Wah Viiz! (Burn. Turn to dust!)” Fenora shouted and the dragon burst into flames.

Its assault on the Princess completely ceased as it writhed, and Luna took this opportunity to ensure that Fenora’s thu’um did its job, conjuring a whirlwind to contain and fan the flames as the dragon trashed.

Soon the movement died out, and Luna let the wind stop, revealing only a pile of sand.

“Is it finally dead?” Fenora huffed.

She really should have learned not to tempt fate, as not more than a second after she said that, the dust began to swirl.

“Oh thou have got to be kidding us.” Luna said in protest and disbelief.

The bone dust collated in a shifting, dragon-shaped sculpture held together by no more than the dragon’s dead soul, Fenora’s sword sticking out of its face like a long slender fang.

The two looked up in frustration and dread, wracking their brains for a way to kill it for good when a blast of red and blue flame impacted the dragon’s face.

Luna and Fenora turned around to see Stross, Onmund, J’zargo, Brelyna and Trixie all wearing blue flames like a cloak. Each had one hand on the shoulder of the next, and the other arm outstretched wielding the combat spell of their choice.

They fired off a barrage of spells, one after another, each one carrying an infusion of Bane Undead.

Lightning, fireballs, exploding magelight and searing spears smashed into the dust dragon, burning it away at each place it tried to reform itself. After quite a few more hits the dragon finally was unable to keep itself together, and as it let out its death roar, the whole mountain of bone dust collapsed.

Stross and the mages strutted over victoriously as the fire around them slowly vanished.

“What in the name of my sister was that?” Luna gasped.

“Oh, you know. Just smiting evil with the power of friendship, the usual.” Stross shrugged “It’s like you haven’t heard of Twilight Sporks and the other Elements of Harmony before.”

“Do not dare speak that name around me, changeling.” Trixie pointed a threatening finger at him “Even if you don’t pronounce it right.”

“I’m sorry; who are we talking about again?” Onmund cut in.

“Twilight Rooster, Rainbow Dash, Applejack, Pinkie Pie, Fluttershy and Rarity; they’re the Elements of Harmony in Equestria, and they’re totally famous! They saved Equestria like…” Stross paused his fan-girling to count on his nifty new fingers “Like FIVE TIMES! And that was just since I left a couple weeks ago. They’ve probably saved it like at least two more time since then. They’re pretty cool.”

“You guys are pretty cool!” Fenora called over while she dug her sword out from under all the powderized bones. “Seriously, when this is all over, I’m treating each of you to dinner.”

“That sounds great; I know a place in Dawnstar we can go. Their mudcrab cakes are amazing.” Onmund told them, nearly drooling as he thought about it.

“Well, we can’t go back this way…” Stross remembered the broken gate “Might as well go forward. But no more rushing forward from now on.”

*Many years in the past*

Savos panted for breath, out of all his classmates, he was the only one to escape the dragon uninjured. But he’d seen poor Girduin die right in front of him. It happened so fast, none of them even had a chance to react. One moment they joked together about what kind of treasures they would find, and the next the bosmer boy had been ripped in half by that… thing.

"We... we have to go back. We can't leave Girduin back there!" Elvali shouted and was about to go back.

Hafnar grabbed her before she could however, looking at her like she was insane. "We barely made it out alive, and you want to go back in?"

"It's too late anyway.” Atmah said sadly as she healed the bleeding gashes across her chest from where the dragon had come inches away from cutting her to shreds “There isn't enough of him left to go back in after. We’d be killed for nothing."

"Gods, what have we done?" Takes-In-Light shook her head, wiping the tears out of her eyes while she slowly bandaged her left arm.

At that moment, it had fully sunk in for Savos how unprepared they were. It was amazing the rest of them survived, even if it was to grieve. But they had already come to this place, they’d already lost one of their friends…

"We can't go back. Might as well go forward.” He said, emotion barely evident in his voice. “We can still do this."

He looked to Atmah and Hafnar as they stared at one another, pale-faced, none of them willing to admit they'd made a terrible mistake coming there.

After nearly a full minute, Atmah was the first and last to speak "Savos is right. We can make it if we just stay alert."