Blackwater Islands You go back there when you’re done

She speaks of how the rock came to be. She speaks of her life before — a creature of the void trapped in mortal flesh. Alduin feels trapped and that’s because he is. He heeds Banesteppe’s words and when he doesn’t, he suffers for it. But she says she has control now — power — but she is still chained by her god.

Tell me more of your curse, Alduin.

He finally blinks his eyes away from the alter and shifts bloody orbs over to her own mismatched ones. He’s quiet for a few moments, until he feels Banesteppe’s hand rest on his lower back casually. 

Go ahead, cursed one. Tell her. Tell her all about me — your curse. He teases venomously. 

The words and touch cause Alduin to scoff quietly. The chills only come harder now with Banesteppe’s ghostly fingers petting along his back.

“He is a man — alien to me and anything I’ve ever seen before.” He whispers out. “I found an odd structure — a den of some kind. Large and imposing with many twists and turns. The dead of many kind walked freely there, but were trapped to the land.”

He pauses for a few seconds. “That is where I acquired this curse. Now that man, Banesteppe is what he calls himself, is attached to me. He’s powerful, I can see him, feel him, hear him.” He hasn’t talked this much in a while, but there’s too much not too tell. “I have to listen to him and when I don’t I get sick. I vomit, bleed, and choke.” He ends darkly.

“He will be my undoing,” His eyes meet her own then, a dark understanding within them. But Alduin believes he can escape death — he’s been escaping it since birth.  “I cannot die, but he will be the one that ends me when it is time.”