Chapter Text
This was not like it had been at the ruined farm or the courtyard of Fort Frostmoth. When Miraak struck the ash spawn down before, they fell, leaving piles of ash to show where they had been. Here the floor was thick with ash, ankle-deep dunes of it. As each one fell and added to the mass, the ash would rise from somewhere else.
He had needed to Shout Feim more than once to slip through lunging arms, fingers of ash passing through him like the mist. Part of the problem was that he was not giving the fight his full attention. His eyes kept darting to the center of the shrine, to Teldryn standing before Falx Carius with no weapon drawn, then Teldryn with no helmet on—
There, he’d been caught unaware. One set of arms clamped down on Miraak’s shoulders from behind before he could Shout. As he turned back, another set shot up half-formed from the ground to grab his staff.
He Shouted the newly risen ash spawn back. It fell back against a far pillar, scattering to dust. His staff went with it, sliding through the ash into a distant corner of the shrine.
Before he could draw his sword, the spawn at his shoulders shot forward, wrapping an ashen arm around his neck in a choke hold. He gagged and threw himself backwards, smashing the ash spawn against the wall. This did nothing. It did not feel pain, and he could not hurl himself back hard enough to cause it real damage.
Through the swirling dust in front of his mask, he could see Teldryn stumbling towards Falx Carius, blood streaming from a gash in his scalp.
An ashen hand grabbed the front of Miraak’s mask. Everything was ash now. He was gasping for air and getting mouthfuls of ash.
Then it all crumbled.
The arm at his neck dissolved. The hand on his mask sloughed away in an instant. Miraak fell back into the wall, grimacing in pain as his shoulders cracked against the stone. The ash had fallen so quickly, there was nothing left to cushion the blow.
Miraak looked up, doubled over and still panting, and saw Teldryn fall.
He did not mark how he got to the center of the shrine, though he had no opposition now. All the ash spawn had fallen in piles where they stood. He only remembered seeing Teldryn fall, and then he was bending over him, hands on his face.
His hands were already warm with healing before Miraak realized the sallow, ragged look to the skin around Teldryn’s eyes was from magicka depletion. He took a moment to rifle through Teldryn’s pack for a potion—it was fortunate Teldryn was always so prepared—and then carefully poured it into his mouth. Not too quickly: one drop at a time. Drowning him in an overzealous effort would do more harm than good.
It took barely a fourth of the bottle before Teldryn began to cough, and his eyelids flickered open. They did not open very far. He squinted at Miraak, blearily, like he’d just been woken from a long night’s sleep and wasn’t sure if he was still dreaming.
“I’m sorry,” said Miraak, pulling the bottle back from his lips. “I should have waited longer.”
“Don’t apologize. It’s the right thing to do.” Teldryn shoved himself up on an elbow and reached out for the bottle. Miraak let him take it with no resistance, one arm curling around Teldryn’s shoulders to help him stay upright as he gulped down the rest of the potion.
The exhaustion faded from Teldryn’s eyes, then his gaze hardened. Miraak followed his line of sight to the center of the room—to Falx Carius.
Though Miraak’s focus had been entirely on Teldryn, out of habit, he had rolled Carius onto his back and crossed his arms over his chest. It took very little effort; his body was still warm, and the rigidity of death had yet to sink in.
“Seems you were keeping yourself busy,” said Teldryn, gesturing to Carius with the empty potion bottle. Only some stiffness in his delivery gave any sign of how much control it took to keep his usual tone. A sharp pain shot through Miraak’s throat at the sound of it.
“It was also the right thing to do,” he replied, wishing that he could have done more.
They both agreed that Falx Carius should be given final rites, though neither of them were familiar enough with Imperial funerals to carry them out. In theory, they could return to Raven Rock and ask Crescius Caerellius for help, but after only one day, he would be still busy with his own ancestor’s interment.
No, they would have to figure something out on their own.
Miraak knew Arkay was the arbiter of life and death in the Imperial cult, though this did not help much. It was normal to have fear and reverence for the testing gods, especially the snake no one could flee, but the way Carius had thought about Arkay in his dreams bore no resemblance to what Miraak was familiar with.
He also had to admit that thousands of years had not taken away the sting of memory—a black snake curled around a birch tree near Angarvunde, speaking only painful truths that Miraak could not deny.
“Perhaps they do not need to be Imperial rites,” said Miraak, forcing his eyes down to the ash and his mind to the present. “I know the songs and rites of old, brought over from Atmora. I could honor him with them.”
Teldryn’s half-lidded eyes were also lowered to the ash, and the bags under his eyes seemed deep. “It’s better than nothing.”
“The rites of the wolf, then.” He rose slowly to his feet, standing upright with his shoulders back: the proper stance of a sonaak at work. “They were the best loved in my time, and the wolf has only become more beloved as time has passed.”
Teldryn nodded. Miraak took it as something like approval.
He took in a deep breath, and when he let out the first tone, it was as much relief as a sigh. These were among the first songs he had learned, and the chanting rhythm had been a part of his life for longer than he could remember. His voice filled the air and soaked into the stone as he sang the handmaiden’s words of devotion, spoken to Kyne during the first fall of rain.
Teldryn could not and would not know what any of it was. Even if Miraak could translate for him, something would be lost. But even in the time that Miraak was born, the ways of Atmora were fading and the old tongue was barely spoken anymore. He had been to so many funerals where no one but the priests and acolytes knew more than the sound of the melody, a heavy tone rising from below like a mournful howl.
It was not necessary for them to know to understand.
He would look at the mourners’ faces, eyes fixed on the body laid before them, and every twitch of movement revealed a memory passing through them. They did not need to think, then, on the gentle green sprouting from the earth to catch Kyne’s tears, blossoms opening like hands. That could come later. This was a time for silent farewells. The song was an accompaniment to their thoughts—a way to be alone with the dead without being truly alone.
The look on Teldryn’s face was the same as theirs had been. His crimson eyes glistened in the light, and they remained on Falx Carius the entire time.
When they opened the door to leave the shrine, the brightness with which the sun struck them seemed like a personal insult. Teldryn shielded his eyes, helmet held under his arm, as he strode out through the remnants of the south gate and across the ash piles that engulfed the coast. He did not stop until he had waded ankle deep into the tide, staring out across the undulating waves.
After a moment, he reached down to his side, removing a small bag from his belt. Miraak knew there was only one thing in it: the stone from Falx Carius’ chest. Teldryn spun the bag by its drawstring, whipping it over his head like a bullet in a sling. He let it loose when the air itself began to shriek.
The bag shot forward in a hard, straight line, as if he had been aiming for an unseen giant. It went far enough that Miraak could not make out the bag itself at the end, only the splash of the water when it finally hit the surface.
It was too far away to watch it sink into the depths. Teldryn stood there anyway, his eyes squinting hard from the sun’s reflection.
When they arrived back in Raven Rock, Captain Veleth was waiting for them. More accurately, he had been watching from the top of the southeast wall of the Bulwark. The moment he saw them approaching down the ashen coast, he told them, he rushed down to meet them at the open gate.
“I showed the letter to Councilor Morvayn. Took it very seriously.” His eyes swept over the two of them in careful assessment. “Looks like you made it out in one piece. Did General Carius give you any trouble?”
Teldryn said nothing. He’d put his chitin helmet back on for the walk back, and the lenses revealed nothing. The waves beat against the coast while Captain Veleth waited for a response.
It was Miraak who broke the silence. “General Carius is dead. There will be no further attacks on Raven Rock.”
“I suppose it goes without saying that you mean ‘dead again’,” said Captain Veleth, dryly. “There’s honestly no other way he could have survived over two hundred years.”
Teldryn had a response to this, of sorts: a sharp hiss of air in through his teeth.
“This is not the best time to discuss this,” said Miraak, hesitantly. “Perhaps tomorrow—”
“He was raised by a necromancer who couldn’t control him,” said Teldryn, almost barking the words. “I’ve got a lead, but I don’t want to share it with the whole damn Bulwark. There won’t be any more ash spawn coming from Fort Frostmoth. That should be enough for you.”
“Oh, it is. Don’t get me wrong.” Veleth’s eyebrows had raised as Teldryn spoke, and now lowered again, as even and controlled as the tone of his voice. “It’s a shame, to be honest. He deserved better.”
“Well, we agree on that,” said Teldryn, stepping forward to brush past him.
“We’re not done here,” said Captain Veleth. “Councilor Morvayn wants to award you—”
“I don’t want it. Give it to Miraak.” He turned back to Miraak, who still hovered at the periphery of the conversation. “If you need me, I’ll be in the Netch.”
With that, he turned back and walked out into the streets of Raven Rock, entirely ignoring Captain Veleth’s efforts to flag him down.
When Miraak finally made his way to the Netch after talking with the Captain, Teldryn was not sitting at the bar or at any of the tables throughout its two floors, and Geldis Sadri had a stern expression on his face.
“He grabbed a flask of sujamma and stomped off to his room,” said Sadri, aggressively scrubbing at a bar stain with a wet rag. “Wouldn’t tell me what happened. He’s sour at the best of times, but he’s never usually this bad.”
His eyes shot up to Miraak’s mask, and Miraak tried not to flinch—there was no accusation in them, but they held an intensity of concern that was almost raw.
“We went to Frostmoth,” said Miraak, and the look in Sadri’s eyes softened immediately, as he’d known it would. Geldis Sadri did not have the full picture, but he was one of the few people who knew enough to understand.
“Well. That explains that, doesn’t it.” It was not a question. Sadri stopped scrubbing with a sigh, seemingly consigned to the new stain, and waved the rag towards a nearby bar stool. “Have yourself a seat, then.”
Miraak hovered by the stool hesitantly, and Sadri shook his head.
“No one’s paying that much attention,” he said, the corners of his mouth turning up in a half-smile. “Trust me, Teldryn’s the only one in Raven Rock who’d notice someone sitting at the bar not drinking.”
That was not completely true, Miraak knew, but he was in no place to explain that to Sadri, and a glance around revealed an emptier Netch than usual. He obediently slid onto the stool, folding his arms on the bar.
“Teldryn’s seen a lot of things. We all have—everyone on this island—but whatever he’s carrying around with him, it’s something else.” Sadri tossed the rag into a bin under the bar and reached for a clean cloth. “Took weeks of begging to get him to even consider leaving Windhelm for Raven Rock, and he only agreed to it because he’d be off working on the mainland most of the time anyway.”
“He hated the Grey Quarter,” said Miraak.
“He did,” replied Sadri, “but he hated Solstheim more.” His eyebrows raised with a flash of amusement. “But I’m rambling now, aren’t I? Telling you something you already know.”
Miraak ducked his head slightly. “I do not know everything.”
“You know enough.” Sadri leaned onto the counter, resting his chin in his hand. “Feels like you’ve been here as long as I have. Maybe longer. You know what Teldryn’s like, Miraak.”
He could not make eye contact, or even turn his face up while looking away. It felt as though Sadri would see right through the mask, somehow.
“I have only been on Solstheim a few weeks,” said Miraak. “Teldryn was not here most of that time. We first spoke yesterday.” One hand hesitantly reached up, gloved fingertips pinching at the edge of his mask. “As intimate as we’ve been, he has little reason to seek comfort from me in this.”
Miraak waited for Sadri’s response. He heard nothing. Against his better judgement, he chanced glancing up at Sadri’s face again. The mer’s eyes were half-lidded, brows high with skepticism.
“I want to help.” Miraak lowered his hand and tugged softly at his sleeve. “But there’s nothing I can do.”
“Nonsense,” said Sadri. “You can be there for him.”
“It wouldn’t be appropriate. I would—” A hesitant pause. “I am a comfortable stranger, not a friend of many years.”
Sadri let out a long sigh as he wiped up the wettest part of the counter. “Just go sit with him, at least. If he kicks you out, he kicks you out. But I doubt he will.”
Miraak said nothing. He turned his face towards the rest of the Netch, staring aimlessly.
A memory floated forward in his mind—a spontaneous moment between Ahzidal and an elderly widow. It was the end part of her child’s burial, when the rites had already been sung and his body rested at the bottom of his grave. As the dirt was being shoveled back in to cover him, the widow began to cry.
Despite all standards of decorum, everything that Miraak had been taught was essential to representing the dragons properly, Ahzidal threw his arms around her—a warm embrace engulfing her so thoroughly she seemed to vanish into the long draping cloth of his robes. Miraak remembered his breath hitching as he watched her sobbing form shaking below the solemn mask. His scars seemed to tighten to the point of pain as he watched steady, competent hands caress the back of her head as if she were a lost child.
“We represent Bormahu above all,” Ahzidal had told him after, in private. “There’s no need to fret. It will be fine. This was not a violation of my duty; this is my duty.”
He was right, it seemed. No punishment had followed. Perhaps it was because he had acted in public, surrounded by witnesses, clad in the vestments of ritual. Perhaps it was because he was not raised an acolyte but ordained as a grown man, so it was accepted he would retain some habits and practices from his life before. Perhaps it all boiled down to his dragon patron, and Paarthurnax interpreted the demands of draconic power differently from Vithviinmul.
Perhaps it was because Ahzidal was not like Miraak, and had never tried to pretend he was anything but a sonaak after taking his vows. Suspicious eyes were not always watching him, waiting for a second disobedience.
That time had come and gone eras before, Miraak knew, but some part of him was still afraid.
The knock at his door was so soft that Teldryn almost thought he’d imagined it. He was sitting on his bed, back against the wall, drinking sujamma straight from the jar. Hadn’t done that since Vvardenfell. Never made him hear things that weren’t there, though—half the reason he’d started back then was it helped block everything out. Made the world fade away.
Wasn’t doing a great job of it now.
“It’s not locked,” he called out to the door. “You can come in if you want.”
The door opened with a shy creak of its hinges, and Miraak slipped in, closing it behind him with the barest click of the latch. He rolled the soles of his boots from heels to tip with every step, as if Teldryn was asleep and he was trying not to wake him up.
“Not going to pretend I’m fine,” said Teldryn, hoping he wasn’t slurring the words, “but you don’t have to be that careful. I’m not about to break.”
“I could not blame you if you did,” replied Miraak as he pulled his gloves off. His masked face was lowered, chin close to his chest—if Teldryn had to guess, his eyes were probably taking in the shed pieces of chitin armor scattered across the floor.
“And what’s that supposed to mean?”
Miraak did not reply right away. Instead, he padded over to the bookshelf and laid his gloves on the shelf Teldryn had loaned him. Then he reached up to lower his hood and pull his mask off.
The furrow forming between his one eyebrow and the start of his scars was deep. The cords of his neck were tense enough that a single swallow set off a tiny spasm in his throat. His eyes were so reddened and bloodshot that Teldryn nearly winced in sympathy.
“I have never loved or been loved as you have,” he said, slowly. “At first, it was forbidden, and then it was impossible. To have had what you had, what you both had together, and then to have it suddenly taken from you—” His eyes pinched with sincere pain. “I cannot imagine worse.”
Teldryn’s first instinct was a self-scouring response: what he had was blindness and missed opportunities. He’d been so afraid of ruining his friendship with Falx Carius that they never even kissed. A decade later, he met the only good thing about the Grey Quarter and practically tackled him into bed, but then the High King gifted Solstheim to the refugees and Sadri wanted to start his own inn. The only way Teldryn could handle the move to Raven Rock was with long stints of work on the mainland. One day he came back and the spark was gone. They never got it back again.
He looked at Miraak’s red eyes, and Teldryn knew he’d probably seen all of it.
“Correct me if I’m wrong,” said Teldryn, gesturing to Miraak with the jar of sujamma, “but I’d always heard that the dragon priests ruled with equal power to that of kings. Never heard about being forbidden to love.”
Miraak blinked in confusion at him for a moment, then raised a hand to rub wearily at his eyes. “What you have heard is not quite wrong, but not quite right, either. A sonaak’s power is not his own. It belongs to the dov. They were the ones who were equal to kings.”
“So you’re like a regent, then. Or a chancellor.”
His hand fell, and his gaze went with it. The look on his face was an indiscernible mixture of emotions, heavy enough that it seemed he might sink into the ground at any moment.
“It is not so simple to explain,” he said.
“Try me,” said Teldryn.
Miraak’s gaze rose to the bed again, and Teldryn patted the spot next to him with his free hand. This earned him a bewildered stare.
“Or don’t,” he added, shrugging, “but there’s still half a jar left if you want any.” He waved the sujamma at Miraak for emphasis before diving in for another drink.
It was a few blinks before Miraak’s face settled again, but he slipped off his boots and climbed into bed next to Teldryn, the side without scars against his own. He’d done that the night before, as well—though with as much nerve damage as he’d probably had, it might have just been more comfortable that way.
Teldryn passed him the sujamma, and couldn’t help but lean in as he took his first drink. Non-Dunmer drinking sujamma tended to at least make a face. Some of them would even sputter and wheeze. Miraak had no overt reaction at all beyond a sigh and a softening of his one brow.
“I should not be talking about myself,” he said, staring at the bottle in his hand. “Adding misery on top of misery does not seem helpful.”
“You know what they say,” said Teldryn, as he allowed the lean to ease into Miraak’s side, his cheek resting against his deltoid. “Misery loves company.”
Miraak took another drink, pensively staring through the opposite wall for a moment. Then he brought his other hand around, shifting the robe’s sleeve back to expose the thick scars on the back of his wrist, snaking and twisting along the length of his arm.
“This is a dragon’s mercy,” he said, with a low voice and heavy eyelids. “One only granted because I was the Dragonborn, found and brought in by the Firstborn himself.”
Teldryn’s brows raised, his eyes flicking up from Miraak’s scarred arm to his face.
He curled and uncurled his fingers, seeming to watch the movement of the scarred skin on his own knuckles. “A sonaak is to have undying loyalty to the dov, and nothing but the dov. When he is ordained, he is given a new name to take the place of the old and a mask to become his new face. He is no longer a man, with his own needs and wants, but the empty vessel of majesty.”
“Hard to imagine any man would agree to that,” said Teldryn.
“For most, it was a hard-sought honor—power beyond what most men can even imagine. Many gave decades of their lives in desperate hope that a dragon would look upon them and find them worthy.” Miraak took a deep breath through his nose as he let his hand fall to his lap again. “The eyes of the dov were on me from the start, whether I wanted them or not.”
“Because of this Dragonborn thing.”
“My mere existence was proof of the All-Father’s favor, or so Alduin had said.” He turned to rest his cheek on top of Teldryn’s hair, the scruff of his chin lightly scratching against his scalp. “Years later, Hakon One-Eye was convinced of the opposite. My coming was the sign that the dragons had lost their way, and I was to be ‘the savior of men’.”
“Everyone but the Nerevarine gets to say what it means to be Nerevar reborn,” said Teldryn, wearily. “No one ever asks you what you want.” He blinked, as if surprised by his own words, and craned his head back to look up at Miraak’s jaw. “What did you want, actually?”
Miraak drew himself in, his throat thrumming deep against the bridge of Teldryn’s nose. He set the jar of sujamma down between his knees and slipped his hand across Teldryn’s lower back, warmly settling on his hip.
“I wanted this,” he said.
Teldryn snorted. “You wanted to sit on a bed in an inn with a grieving old mer.”
“I have earned the wrath of dragons for far less.”
“It’s not really worth a dragon’s wrath, honestly.” He lowered his head again, resting his cheek against Miraak’s collarbone. “You would have gotten bored eventually.”
“No,” Miraak said, his arm tightening around him. “I don’t think I would.”
The sujamma sat forgotten between Miraak’s knees. Teldryn reached for it half-heartedly, his fingers brushing against the clay before coming to rest on Miraak’s leg instead. The cloth of his robes was soft from wear, and the give of his thigh beneath Teldryn’s palm sent a rush of heat up his throat and into the tips of his ears.
The sujamma somehow made it safely to the bedside table in spite of Teldryn climbing into Miraak’s lap and pulling his robes apart. In fairness, it was far slower than the night before and that morning—urgent in its own way, but the urgency was to feel skin against skin, to kiss Miraak’s mouth and melt into his arms.
“Is this all right?” Miraak asked, breathing heavily after Teldryn broke off a particularly long kiss. His hands cupped Teldryn’s shoulder blades, and his fingers trembled.
“More than all right,” said Teldryn, diving back in for another.
He didn’t have the words to say what he wanted to, but it was close enough.