Dardeh stood at the top of a steep stairwell, on a mountainside overlooking a beautiful, snowy valley. A long pathway wound down the hillside and through snow-covered trees, through ranks of huge sculptures that looked like nothing so much as the Greybeards in their long robes. Far down the valley, he thought he saw the peaks of a building. It could only be the Hall of Valor, or Shor’s Hall as it was sometimes called. The wind was heavy and it was bitter cold, but in spite of that, this place was beautiful in Dardeh’s eyes.
I’m in Sovngarde. In theory, I’m still alive — and yet I am in Sovngarde. By what right am I here? Who am I to have this privilege? Who am I, to be looking at the Hall of Valor in the distance and not have come here by way of death?
He looked up, to see shining stars moving through a dome, almost, of purplish, shimmering light that cast a bluish hue to everything beneath it, and couldn’t decide. Am I looking up at the pillar of light I saw in Skuldafn? Or is this something else?
He moved down the hillside as quietly as he could. The path descended, fairly sharply, from the snow down into the valley, into an area with greenery alongside the path. Near the valley floor, however, a dense mist filled the deepest areas. As thick as it was, once he stepped into it he would be basically blinded. He was just about to move ahead when he heard a familiar, but very faint, sound: a dragon. Alduin was flying somewhere, above the valley, above the mist. Anyone moving about on the ground would be completely vulnerable, not able to see death arriving on the wing until the sound of his wings alerted them, too late to escape.
Dardeh took a deep breath, drew his swords, and continued down the path. It was quiet, with only tree branches and grasses in motion as the wind pushed them, and he could only see a few feet on all sides; so when a soldier in Stormcloak armor and a fur hood stepped forward out of the fog Dardeh jumped, the hair on his neck standing on end. He raised his swords and readied himself for a fight, but the man shook his head and walked calmly, without raising a weapon of his own, to stand just before Dardeh. He spoke bravely, clearly, but in tones and cadences that spoke to Dardeh of an earlier time.
“Turn back, traveler! Terror waits within this mist. Many have braved the shadowed vale, but vain is all courage against the peril that guards the way.”
“Who are you?” Dardeh asked, not certain that he really wanted the answer.
“Near Giants’ Gap, in the gloom before dawn, we marched, unsuspecting into the Imperials’ trap. Then we stood and fought, our shield-wall defending until by dawn’s Light the Legion’s ranks wavered. But I never knew if nights-end brought victory – a swift-flying arrow to Sovngarde carried me.”
Dardeh’s mind flashed back to the night he’d passed the dead soldiers on the road, near Stonehills. That wasn’t far from a place some referred to as Giant’s Gap, just across the ridge of the mountains. What he had seen wasn’t the aftermath of that battle, he was certain of it, but this man could easily have been one of the bodies stepped over – or on – by the opposing side. It brought his heart to his throat.
“What is this mist? Is it… I’ve seen something like it before…” This is very like the mist Paarthurnax uses to shroud the top of the Throat of the World. I might be able to clear it, but I’m afraid it would just draw Alduin in.
The soldier shook his head. “I do not know, but none have passed through. Alduin, his hunger insatiable, hunts the lost souls snared within this shadowed valley.”
The man’s voice wavered.
“Can you lead the way to where Shor’s hall waits, beckoning us on to welcome long sought?”
“Yes, it’s at the far end of the valley. I saw it when I arrived.”
The man nodded. He had seen it too, but stepping into the mist had clouded his mind, he told Dardeh.
“I’ve lost the way and wander darkly.”
The man looked lost. He sounded lost. This was supposed to be his final rest, his reward, and he was lost and alone. Dardeh didn’t know whether to rage, or weep, or both at once, but he looked at the man and said “You follow me. I’ll lead you there.”
Dardeh moved farther down the path, his mind racing. He’d not gone far when he heard the rush of wings just above and behind him. He whirled and looked up. There was nothing else in any plane of existence that looked like Alduin, and he was nearly close enough to touch as he swooped down toward them. Dardeh ducked, then turned to speak to the Stormcloak soldier.
He found nothing. The soldier had vanished.
“No!” Dardeh roared, falling onto his knees. No. I LOST him.
He thought of all the soldiers he had seen dead and dying by the sides of the roads. The guards who had fought with him against the dragons in Whiterun and near Rorikstead, and out by Karthwasten, all the souls that had gone not to the Hall of Valor somewhere ahead of him, but to feed the enormous power-hungry maw of Alduin. The Nord citizens in Raven Rock who had died to the Lurkers because he was too slow. The terror being suffered by the poor souls who were left. This poor man, who had only been looking to him to lead the way home.
Tears dropped freely from his eyes onto the stones of the path he followed.
All the time I wasted. All those souls. I need to pay. Somehow.
He thought of Lydia, always wishing to fight alongside him but too precious to him to risk. What if she had been one of the fallen? He felt his fire rising within him at the thought of it. And what of Lucia? What would have happened to her then, if Lydia had been taken? What if Balgruuf and his brother had gone out to battle against Ulfric and had been among the dead? All of them, their souls might have gone to Alduin.
And what about Roggi? What if Roggi hadn’t made it, when Miraak’s Cultists nearly killed him? Would Alduin have claimed him, or would he have been one of the lost, cowering in fear as Alduin hunted him down in the land of the dead?
What about Briinda?
All those soldiers, all those fallen men and women, they had families, lovers, children, spouses who thought they would meet again someday, and none of them would. Not even Roggi and Briinda. As sad as it made him to imagine, as much as he wanted Roggi for his own, Roggi deserved to meet the soul of his beloved wife when they passed to Sovngarde, as he felt certain they would.
The more he thought about it, the angrier he became, and the hotter the fire in his blood burned. It’s not right.
Then he stopped, a thought occurring to him. The Stormcloak had said…
Wait… If Alduin is hunting them it means that…
He stopped, staring intently into the mists around him, his fists clenched.
Think! Think!
That means they’re not all gone, not all consumed. He has to hunt them down, they don’t just go to him immediately. I still have a chance to save them, the souls of some of these brave men and women. They only were doing what they thought was right, Stormcloaks and Imperials all. They deserve their rest in Shor’s halls.
“No more, Alduin,” he said aloud. “This ends now. You can’t have any more, not a single one!”
He stood, and he raged. He thought he could understand something of his father, the bottomless anger that kept him pushing his children toward violence from beyond the grave; and of Jine, the unshakable, arrogant faith in his own power that had spoken to him before the statue of Talos in Whiterun and which had helped him in the Temple of Skuldafn. It was a powerful rage, all-consuming, the rage so powerful that it sometimes found him standing before a body he knew he had killed, but not how. He nodded to himself.
Today I am going to use that. Yes, father. On this day, I will be your son. I will use your rage, your desire to kill, and I will use it joyfully.
He raised his eyes to the sky before him and shouted, the words coming to him as though he had always spoken in this tongue. They erupted from deep within him, the roar he’d used all his life mixed with his Voice, louder than it had ever been, filling the world around him.
“ALDUIN! ZU’U LOS DARDEH AT-DADARH! ZU’U NI DOVAHKIIN! ZU’U FEN KOS DINOK!”
Alduin. I am Dardeh at-Dadarh. I am Dragonborn. I will be your doom.
It echoed back to him from the rocks he could see and those he couldn’t for all the mist.
Ahead of him, he heard Alduin’s roar echoing back to him but couldn’t make out the words. Alduin wouldn’t come to his call, not the way Odahviing had, not yet anyway, although he was certain Alduin’s arrogance would have him there eventually. It didn’t matter. Dardeh needed to find his way to Shor’s halls, and he started down the path before him.
I am Dragonborn. I am Nord. And by the gods I am also the son of a long line of men who kill those who stand in their way, who mantle the great serpents, and who, in this age, destroy the dragons. I can’t do it alone but I will use every part of me to take you down, Alduin. Your time has ended. Ended, I say.
He trudged forward, down a hill to the left, and then came upon a short staircase to his right. He climbed it, and found himself just high enough out of the mist to get a good look ahead at the gigantic, magnificent façade of the Hall of Valor. The great hall stood – almost floating – on its own island, across an unfathomably deep crevasse into which roared the waters from the mountains on all sides of the valley, and only a perilous-looking bridge of gigantic whale bones allowed access to it.
This is where I want to come when I die.
Right here.
I may only be half Nord, but in my heart I am all Nord, and this is my home.
He swallowed hard and moved forward. There was a gigantic man – nearly two heads taller than Dardeh – blocking the entrance to the bridge, dressed in the same kind of armor Dardeh had seen on Jine, revealing his huge muscles. He was not threatening, though; he merely stepped forward and said “What brings you, wayfarer grim, to wander here, in Sovngarde, souls-end, Shor’s gift to honored dead?”
Dardeh looked to the sky behind him, snarling as the great dragon soared above the trees and then disappeared back into the mist.
“I pursue Alduin. His time is at an end.”
The man raised a massive eyebrow.
“A fateful errand.”
He explained that his name was Tsun, shield-thane to Shor; and as such was the keeper of the gate. Only those souls – living or dead — who he deemed worthy through battle were allowed to enter the Hall of Valor.
“By what right do you request entry?” Tsun asked Dardeh.
Indeed. By what right? I am not dead. I am not a full Nord. I am not even a fallen soldier who died a valorous death in battle.
He raised his eyes to meet Tsun’s gaze and spoke quietly.
“By right of birth. I am Dragonborn.”
“Ahh!” Tsun said, his eyes gleaming. “It’s been too long since last I faced a doom-driven hero of the dragon blood!”
But still, he said, nobody could cross the bridge until he had tested them. Dardeh nodded and pulled his swords.
He thought, later, that he remembered Shouts, but he wasn’t sure. He thought, later, that he remembered whirling as if he was possessed by a true, full-blooded Alik’r. What he did remember was looking up and seeing the gigantic Tsun splattered with blood from dozens of cuts, grinning from ear to ear, telling him that he had done well. And he walked across the whalebone bridge, looking down into the abyss, and into the Hall of Valor.
Dardeh had to fight to keep his composure as he looked around the great hall. Everything about it was enormous. A firepit that seemed almost the length of Jorrvaskr ran down its center. There were mead barrels taller than the tallest of the men he could see milling about. The tables were groaning with food, men and women were laughing, and it was warm, and welcoming, and beautiful.
A man stepped forward and spoke, and Dardeh nearly fainted. He recognized this face from sculptures, from stories, and from songs.
“Welcome, Dragonborn!” said Ysgramor of Atmor, leader of the Five Hundred Companions. “Our door has stood empty since Alduin first set his soul-snare here.”
Shor had ordered them all to stay inside, he told Dardeh, and so they had, all these heroes of past and present. Dardeh shuddered. Yes, a wise choice. What would happen if Alduin managed to consume the soul of a person like Ysgramor?
But there were three of them who were waiting for him, for Dardeh, to make one last attempt at the dragon, Ysgramor told him. Gormlaith, Hakon, and Felldir, the three Dardeh had seen in his vision, reading the Elder Scroll at the time-wound before Paarthurnax’s wall. He ran to where they stood, at the right-hand end of the hall, and listened to them greet him as if he was somehow, in any way, their equal. They told him that Alduin’s mists were too great for any one of them, but that perhaps, with four of them together clearing the skies, they might well be able to take him down. Alduin cowers, they told him. He fears you, Dragonborn.
Alduin… fears me. The miner from Markarth.
Dardeh followed them back outside and across the bridge.
Later, Dardeh wouldn’t be able to recall all of the details of what ensued. It was as it had so often been: a blur of overwhelming sound, and motion, and swords. The sulfurous odor of Alduin’s flames, the woody scent of burnt foliage. Four great voices Shouting: “LOK VAH KOOR!” followed by Alduin’s summoning of the mists. He recalled Shouting at the great beast over and over: “JOOR- ZAH FRUHL!” to bring him to ground, keep him grounded, as the four of them hammered at him with everything they had, dodging and weaving to avoid the destruction of his fires – but he could not have said how many times over he repeated the shout, how many times he needed to heal himself from the flames, or how many strikes his swords had made. Finally, at the last of it, they stood watching in awe as Alduin screamed his rage and confusion, arched his massive head toward the skies, and exploded into the void, leaving nothing at all behind, not even a bone.
Dardeh vaguely remembered what followed, numbly, distantly, as though he was outside himself looking down at someone else. He remembered hearing the Heroes hail him. He remembered talking to Tsun, being told he could linger in Sovngarde with the heroes if he wished, but that Tsun would Shout him home when he was ready.
Just like the Seekers did, when I first met Miraak, he thought, shaking his head and returning to himself just a bit. He grimaced, thinking of how thoroughly his life had changed by meeting Miraak. Maybe someday I will be able to leave that behind.
The thing I wanted most, then, was to kill my enemy and return to Roggi.
I have killed my enemy here. And now all I want is…
He could picture it already. Roggi would be waiting for him on the Great Porch at Dragonsreach, and they would return to Breezehome and celebrate their lives, and each other’s love.
“I am ready, Tsun. Send me home.”
Tsun smiled, leaned forward, and Shouted.
Dardeh blinked and looked around. Once again he stood in the bitter cold at the Throat of the World. This time, the peaks around him were covered with dragons, and all of them shouting, speaking of Alduin.
“Alduin mahlaan,” they cried. Alduin has fallen.
NO! All the way up here? Not Whiterun? Why? Why??
The dragons swooped and circled the Throat of the World, all of them shouting a sort of epitaph to Alduin. The Dragonborn is his slayer, they said. His Thu’um is silenced. We no longer follow him.
Dardeh shook his head in frustration.
I’m nothing! I’m nobody! I just want to go home! Leave me!
That’s not right. I am the Dragonborn. And I have slain Alduin, with the help of three others of the greatest heroes who have ever lived. And I want to go home.
Paarthurnax landed atop the wall before him and spoke, for a time, about his sadness that his brother, the eldest, was no longer. The world would never be the same, he said.
“Alduin had flown far from the path of right action in his pahlok – in the arrogance of his power.”
Dardeh sighed. The arrogance of power. Arngeir had gotten that phrase from his master.
“Pahlok, is it? I suppose that should now become part of my name, given all the things I’ve done since I first met you.”
Paarthurnax bared his fangs in a toothy grin and reassured him that it had been necessary. He would not have offered his help otherwise.
“And, as you told me once, the next world will have to take care of itself. Ful nii los. Even I cannot see past Time’s ending. Savor your triumph, Dovahkiin.”
Paarthurnax leapt into the skies, bellowing that he felt younger than he had in many an age, and flew away, only to be replaced by Odahviing. The dragon nodded to Dardeh.
“You have proven your mastery twice over. Thuri, Dovahkiin. I gladly acknowledge the power of your Thu’um. Zu’u Odahviing. Call me if you have need, and I will come if I can.”
Dardeh nodded, and watched, numbly, as the great beast rose again and slowly receded into the distance.
I suppose I could have asked him to take me home. How stupid of me.
And then he turned, readied his shout, and hurtled down the mountain.
“LOK—VAH KOOR!”