Excluding the howling wind, and the steady breath coming from the Dragon's half-snarl, silence filled the void between them. Eerika grunted as she attempted to move her jaw to speak.
Paarthurnax noticed this, and mumbled deeply, "Bo tiid."
Eerika collapsed as her knees buckled, sending her on to the stone hard ice. She began stumbling to stand upright again, scowling at the so-called Greybeard.
The beast's eyes flicked across the Dragonborn's expression, studying her glare and the fierce look about her. "I can see I am not what you expected, joor."
Scoffing, Eerika replied, "Well, I wasn't expecting you to be a dragon."
What Eerika assumed to be a chuckle, erupted from Paarthurnax. "Well, I am as my father, Akatosh, made me." He bowed his head in ceremony as he said the dragon god's name. He slowly looked back up to where Eerika stood stiffly, looking her up and down as the light faded. "As are you... Dovahkiin."
Eerika felt her breath catch in her throat.
Without giving her time to respond, Parthurnaxe began walking away, his thundering steps leaving deep gashes in the snow. "Tell me. Who are you? Why do you come here, volaan? Why do you intrude on my meditation?"
Eerika shuffled after him, mind still numb from trying to process too many things at once. "I er..." She cleared her throat. "My name is Eerika Dragonborn... I was sent here..." She slowed to a stop. "And I need to learn the Dragonrend shout."
Paarthurnax stopped in his path. A moment of silence echoed over the mountaintop.
"Can you teach me?"
The dragon didn't move. After a pause, he sighed deeply. "Drem. Patience, Eerika. There are formalities which must be observed, at the first meeting of two of the dov." He turned back around to face her. He continued, "By long tradition, the elder speaks first." He lumbered to stand before the word wall that teetered at the edge of the precipice. standing on his hind legs, raising his tattered wings in the air. "Hear my Thu'um! Feel it in your bones! Match it, if you are Dovahkiin!" As he smashed his claw-like wings into the snow in front of him, he shouted with immense power, "YOL TOOR SHUL!"
A firey spit of flames came from his maw, a screeching roar also seemed to echo around the hold, making the ground tremble. The fire twisted and churned in the air, and exploded on impact when they hit the aging rock of the ruining wall. Light flooded the peak, reflecting and glittering off the snow and ice, singeing the cold around it.
An instant passed and the blaze was gone, only a scorched rock with burning embers reminding of its presence only moments before. But as Eerika looked closer at the wall, she noticed the firey remains of a word in the dragon language scorched into the rock.
"The Word calls you." Paarthurnax motioned forward with his had, "Go to it."
It seemed like Eerika didn't even have to tell her feet to move as she walked forward to the voices of a thousand ancient Nord heroes she heard in constant reverberation. HEr head swam with their ringing voices, always shouting, "YOL TOOR SHUL" as she approached.
The blackened stone was an arms distance away when she felt the magic of the word take hold of her, filling every hair and bone with its power. When the wave of energy subsided, she turned back round to face the dragon, watching her inquisitively.
His eyes still testing her, he stepped forward. "A gift, Dovahkiin." He nodded to the burnt wall. "Yol, fire. Understand it as the Dovah do." Paarthurnax bowed his head before her and seemingly sighed his knowledge of the word into the air around him, which naturally gravitated to Eerika. The tendrils of magic spiraled around her, embedding itself into her very being.
YOU ARE READING
The Dragon's Legacy: Return
FantasyThe dragons were thought to be stories of old, and memories long forgotten. However, that was before Eerika came to Skyrim. In this land torn by war and myth, not only must she face the monsters that plague the land, but she must also face herself t...
