3 The Long Forgotten Childhood

On the next day after awakening in Nirn, Alduin feverishly tried to understand what had happened to him. He awoke in the same body of a human infant, in which he first became aware of himself in Nirn, after an unknown amount of time. Nearby, in some cages, human larvae lay peacefully asleep, despite being in prison.

Upon inspection, he realised that he too was lying in the same kind of cage.

Enraged, Alduin attempted to use his familiar wing movements to break down the wall, but the human larva appendages were too small and disobedient for such a task.

After turning around for an hour, he calmed down and decided to use Magnus' favorite method - magic.

However, even here, he was disappointed. Attempts to break free from the force that pulled him out of Aetherius cost him four-fifths of his strength. And the rate of its recovery left much to be desired, especially given that he won't be feasting on souls in Sovngarde anytime soon. And the body in which the first dragon of the world's soul found itself was not well adapted to manipulating the energies of Aetherius.

Summing up his conclusions, Alduin realized that not even Paarthurnax had betrayed him like this, although this unique creature was practically responsible for all of Dovah's troubles. Starting from the rebellion of mortals and ending with a headache. The latter, by the way, appeared after any conversation with Paarthurnax.

"I should have named him not Paarthurnax, which means 'Ambitious Cruel Lord', but Klovfazkelnat ('headache'). This would more accurately describe the character of this traitor" thought Alduin, remembering his glorious past.

Returning to future plans, he made one and only correct decision in this situation - he needed to lie low and not draw attention to himself. Otherwise, if his father did not forgive him, he could ultimately be completely destroyed, and that was undesirable. Even if his father forgave him, Alduin had no desire to speak with him.

He tried to forget what had happened in the next three years, like a terrible dream, relying entirely on the instincts of his mortal shell. He faced much more significant problems than feeding the mortal female with his larvae and the ecstatic cheers of her partner regarding the upcoming troubles.

Even if he could deal with Daedric Princes like Molag Bal with the remaining strength, he did not want to think about what would happen to his material vessel.

It was not very pleasant when every particle of your physical body turned into nothingness, and you were conscious the whole time.

Besides, the human larva, which threatened the Daedric Prince, would look extremely ridiculous from an outsider's perspective.

Amidst the mortal shell that he was forced to take, Alduin understood that it was only temporary. Nevertheless, he quickly discovered the unexpected benefits of such a position.

For instance, he could torment other mortals relatively unpunished, especially his brother and father.

His appearance shocked the once-great Dovah as he believed that he should be the one protected by his ELDER brother.

Despite feeling something familiar and dragon-like in Hyodo Issei, his elder brother, it was still different. Alduin's pride couldn't allow it for long, and he enjoyed lashing out at him with any opportunity that presented itself.

It was doubly interesting to maliciously throw at him the food that they attempted to feed him.

Even his father was not spared from Alduin's mischief.

Some people believed that Alduin had a very malicious and impulsive nature, but they were wrong. He knew how to think and plan ahead, understanding that leading a pack of the strongest beings in Nirn, who also possessed overwhelming pride, and ruling over mortals for an extended period of time required patience and strategy. With an impulsive nature, it would be impossible to command Daedric Princes, who were sometimes pitted against each other for the survival of the pack.

However, another issue that arose from his mortal form was his parents' attachment to it. On one hand, he appreciated their care and attention, as he wasn't quickly educated and then abandoned to care for several thousand kin like the rest of his race. On the other hand, the hardened hatred towards mortals became the cause of many conflicts with his parents.

However, over time, he acknowledged, if only to himself, that Shihou and Sinji Hyodo were more responsible parents than Akatosh...and Akatosh. Perhaps it was the fact that both parents were involved in raising their offspring, as opposed to a single father.

As the body of Alduin matured, he became convinced of the inadequacy of mortals, compared to whom the mortals of his second ascension were gods.

There was no magic, people had become more fragile, and the sharp-eared idiots had vanished altogether.

A Nord hatchling would have been able to twist the neck of a wolf, while a modern hatchling of a human would shed tears and seek protection from the nearest adult even from a small dog.

However, seeing how mortals learned to use their brains to compensate for their weaknesses, he sincerely rejoiced that in his time mortals were unenlightened barbarians, albeit with magic.

People, whom Alduin had once despised more than anyone else, managed to grow from second-rate beings into a dominant species on the planet, and he did not consider it shameful to begin to respect them for that.

But this respect extended only to the human race as a general concept, it was rarely, if ever, applied to individual representatives.

Although he became more calm than before, he fundamentally refused to recognize anyone's authority, except for his mother's authority, rightly believing that this was sufficient for the firstborn of the strongest Aedra.

Even though she was a mere mortal, he respected and conditionally put her on a par with Akatosh, while his brother and father were members of his pack, for whom he bore responsibility, even though they were ordinary humans.

These simple mortals valued him much more than his true kin once did, for which he responded to them with reciprocity on the level of instincts, the existence of which he had not suspected before his recent rebirth.

When it came to the Thu'um, the problem was only in the unpreparedness of his vocal cords, but with the relearning of the Art of Magic, there were different problems.

Almost all Dovah could use the energies of the Aetherius, but preferred to use the Thu'um, relying on its power and simplicity. Dovah had enormous magical reserves, and the speed at which they replenished made any High Elf Archmage jealous, but it only hindered Alduin now.

His mortal body had a decent mana reserve from birth, and when the body began to adapt to his soul, the reserve became inexhaustible.

However, reaching this reserve and controlling the flow of power was difficult. Part of the reason was that Akatosh had taught newborn Alduin to cast magic with his mouth, since it was difficult to cast spells while flying with wings.

Alduin taught other younger Dovah in the same way. Now he had to relearn to cast spells with his hands, like his past enemies.

After several years of persistent training with the weakest spells, the Elder Dovah acknowledged that it was much more convenient to cast spells with his hands than to spit out spells from his mouth.

You could release more spells at once or hit a spell point-blank, which was difficult to do with your mouth. After all, few would want to climb into the toothy maw of even an ordinary Dovah to get hit with a fireball or icicle.

As Alduin grew, he began to notice details that did not fit his usual worldview.

Firstly, the Masser disappeared from the sky. It disappeared without a trace, and he could not find any mention of the largest moon of the mortal plane in any of the sources available to him. The Secunda, known to mortals simply as the Moon, shone alone in the sky.

Seeing the night sky for the first time after his rebirth, he initially thought he was in one of the planes of Oblivion. But upon looking at the night sky and comparing it to the position of the stars he saw shortly before his fall, he realized that he was still in the mortal plane.

Secondly, the magical background of the modern world stank of decay, weakness, and decline. If during his first rise the magical background of the world resembled a turbulent, full-flowing river, now it was like a lake that slowly but surely overgrew with silt, turning into a swamp.

Thirdly, none of the known summon spells worked, even though he poured more energy into the spell than was necessary. And he knew a lot of them due to his origin.

But the result was always the same: none of the entities from the planes of Oblivion responded to his call. It seemed that his summoning was going into the void, as if there was no longer an entity that should have been summoned.

Alduin was baffled by how the gods could allow such changes to occur in Mundus. However, he couldn't begin an active search for answers to such questions, limiting himself to the invention of mortals called the "internet" and the school library.

Remembering the words of Hermaeus Mora, conveying that knowledge is the key to power, the Elder Dragon diligently studied everything taught in school and what he could find elsewhere. Although he had to carefully filter information and cross-check multiple sources, he considered it a workout for his mind, as he no longer had Paarthurnax to philosophize with about the problems of existence, and after his betrayal, there was no time for philosophical contemplation.

Living in a mortal body for almost sixteen years, he not only managed to restore his former power but also adapted his physical body to withstand at least partial use of his original abilities.

With a couple of Thu'um, Alduin could transform his physical body into something that was a cross between a dragon's and a human's body.

It was as if he were donning Daedric armor, which irritated him somewhat.

Yes, it was strong, black, spiked, and brutal, but Alduin didn't like Daedra. But he learned this no earlier than when he remembered all the protective and camouflage spells with an extensive range of action.

Alduin became known to mortals as a delinquent, graduated from middle school with honors, and his prideful and arrogant character didn't affect his achievement, reflected in his title as the district's top troublemaker.

According to the school psychologist, the reason for this was his transitional age.

According to Alduin himself, the reason for this was the general stupidity of most people.

Nevertheless, he completed another stage of mortal education much better than his brother, who was far from being a fool.

However, his strange obsession with the bodies of human females was a significant hindrance to his progress.

After school, Alduin planned to attend a military academy to better study mortal martial arts.

However, fate, in the person of Hyodo Shiho, intervened.

At the end of March, upon returning from school, where he was nearly expelled at the end of the school year due to a "minor conflict" with a physical education teacher, Alduin found the whole family sitting in the living room.