Falls of the Hinterlands It's the last midnight

EEEE so excited!

Alduin’s back. Not for any particular reason besides the fact that he has been searching for artifacts from the gods that is. He had left though…cold and outright.

Banesteppe told him to.

And for that he comes back with a skull. Not just any skull though — ohhh, no, no, no. It’s Banesteppe’s skull, short muzzled and alien shaped with blunt teeth. It’s cleaner now that the hellhound has licked it of all the dirt and grime stuck to it, but it is now considered a precious treasure. It’s old, yellowed and a crushing hole marks a gruesome, brain spilling death.

But he was reborn into a god, a deity, an entity of power, knowledge, mystery. Banesteppe holds the secrets of becoming one himself — a god.

But whereas Banesteppe told him to leave, he also has ordered him to return. And so here he walks with the skull in his jaws, held so delicately — something Alduin has never done before. He rounds the southeastern mountain of his birthplace, but he does not stop — no — he’s heading right back to the burnt, decrepit lands of the Heartwood where the Forsaken still lies heavy in his cold dead heart.

But there’s a surprise for him waiting in between…a familiar face laced with scares. One who also gave him his own set not so long ago.

Arashi.

He sees the male walking, paws dragging him. He seems different to Alduin in a way he cannot explain or describe — he just feels it.

So Alduin would zero that bloody gaze on him and brazenly close in. His pace is lazy, not quick or sneaky, merely strolling — yet careful. Alduin’s always ready for a fight despite his path to godlihood, that has not changed.

Whether he is heard or not, he would halt a fair fifteen or so feet away and speak, voice hoarse and rasping.

“Arashi.” He’d call, demanding the man’s attention, but unwilling to wait long for it.