Chapter 127: Travel and future proofing

In my perception the last Dragonborn served the role of the worlds chosen hero and I was a self-made hero. They got their gifts handed to them on a platter and I had to take the longer route. The end result was similar enough but the process couldn't be more different. Assuming the timeline holds still I had another four years before that person got their near Alduin experience and things got hyped up. Plenty of time to beef myself up some more. At least enough not to get sidelined by whoever it ended up being.-

"I wouldn't worry about it." I say reassuringly.

"Don't worry!? You just list confirmed that you can use no less than four things that having even one of is enough to make one famous and you tell me not to worry about it!?" he demanded dramatically.

"I'm still mortal. Just one with a bag of tricks that would make almost anyone else pull out their hair." I said with a chuckle.

"You're mad." he said rubbing his nose bridge to nurse the headache he no doubt has now.

I rolled my eyes at that and pushed my toad to speed up a bit as the sooner we got to the mountains the sooner I could finally breath comfortably as the air cools down. I wasn't built for the desert. Neither Nords or Altmer were native to it after all. Nords were cold faring folk and Altmer lived in temperate and tropical conditions. The Alik'r desert was all dry heat and no moisture so I was not only baking under the sun but also drying out fast as hell. Alontar wasn't all that bothered by it though as he'd been here for over a decade and had gotten more or less used to the heat.-

From Karghistan the eastern foot of the Dragontail mountains was a minimum of a week long trip at MY top speed. At the speed we were going so as to not kill Alontar's horse from heat and exhaustion it would take two weeks. On that route there was exactly ONE oasis in the vast desert at the middle point. Naturally this meant I had an entire barrel of water for us and his horse to share. My toad was a daedric beast and hardy enough that he wouldn't die from a little thing like dehydration in the time frame of me summoning him in the morning and sending him back home at night.-

Didn't mean he didn't bitch at me every time I summoned him though.

For the first three days Alontar stayed true to his word and drilled me on "proper" manners. By the fourth day he gave up as I proved that while I had learned them I refused to use that knowledge in a casual setting. He naturally tried to appeal to my "nobility" and tell me that I should act in accordance to that. But all that earned him a slightly too spicy bowl of soup, I had no idea how that could have happened. Nope not one bit.-

On the fourth day we came across a patrol of six Thalmor that tried to intercept us but I crushed with a single [unrelenting force] shout. I didn't even leave my toad for it, just inhale, shout, profit. Alontar looked at the cone of displaced sand already burying what remained of these soldiers and had a twitch appear on his face that he quickly brought back under control. I understand the internal dilemma he must have faced, really I do.-

It's one thing to be told that a legendary skill is something someone can use and a very different matter to see it for yourself. And if I truly could shout then the possibility that the rest of what I said being true was a lot higher than he probably thought originally. Additionally he might be wondering just how much aid someone like me could give my mother and the resistance if I fully committed to that idea. The answer was a lot. I made sure to dabble in pretty much everything and as a result could adequately fit into any role that might be needed but sheer power was where I lived normally.-

And if it weren't for the dragon crisis on the horizon I would absolute latch onto the Thalmor like a rabid starved wolf and tear off chunks of their flesh. Don't get me wrong I will absolutely murder the unholy fuck out of them any chance I get but I simply can't spare the time to fully commit to waging war on them. I'm too damned busy focusing on my own strength for that. For example even while we traveled I was mostly meditating with my eyes open on the words of power. -

The desert was, probably obviously, an excellent environment to deeply contemplate Gol(earth). While the first word of the [bend will] shout that Mora gave to Miraak it's purpose in that shout is more an adjective than the normal noun use it has. Shouts are a bit funny like that sometimes where some words that are normally nouns are used like adjectives to achieve a certain goal. In this case it's purpose in that shout was to describe the breadth of reach. Specifically "all upon the ground". The second word is the main focus of the shout as it is Hah(mind). -

This changes the full meaning of the shout to "the minds of all upon the ground". The final word Dov(dragon) is the expression of the strength. The final full tonal meaning of the shout is "With dragon strength dominate the minds of all upon the ground". This is also why in the DLC of the game where the shout is learned by the last dragonborn they must master this shout themselves before facing Miraak. Without it their soul is still susceptible to the shout when used by Miraak. Only with the full shout in their soul do they have the right to resist him and fight as a true equal.-

It was why I was going out of my way to learn these words myself so that I could sort of reverse engineer the shout to protect myself because I am not okay with being someone elses puppet. As Mora was the source of this shout however the full shout was not so easy to learn. At least not when you have the intent to learn the words for that purpose. I'm sort of loop holing his knowledge blockade on the subject by learning the words neutrally first. i'll only start banging my head against the blockade when I start fusing them into the shout.