Here for elder scrolls stuff idk

In its gaping chest beat the only spot of color here that wasn't a shadow. Red, deep and rich, the color of blood, the color of life.

Beside the body was another, who saw the dragon forming from the man, or mer, or whatever it had been when the shadow made it. The shadow made to eliminate it, calling it words she didn't understand directly, but could tell were terms of disgust and revulsion.

What is this?

A by-product of the creation she'd just seen? A lump that had fallen from the formless body before? Whatever it was, it stumbled, barely moving, and followed the larger dragon.

Ages passed in an instant. The smaller dragon following first that one and then another, growing and watching from the shadows.

What is it?

Weak, a voice called it. Useless, another said. A copy of the true and grand dragon!

It hid behind the red-hearted dragon, who spoke to it in low tones. It left to do...something, she did not know what.

But she knew this: it was waiting for something.

Or someone.

She forgot what she had heard about it, and her last thought before the fog trying to pull her back claimed her entirely was: maybe I was supposed to.

--------------------------

Someone was shaking her.

Sadrith blinked, and shook herself free of the confusion. Her vision had dimmed, but was recovering even as she shook her head free.

It was Voryn.

"Well?" he asked. "Did you see anything?"

"I saw...Lorkhan saying the heart was necessary...he looked right at me," Sadrith said, "I was sure it was him. But then...then I saw...I don't know, the void using its blood to make something..."

An impulse struck her. She put the scroll away neatly, gathered up the artifacts, and rushed off to the Archmage's quarters.

"What are you doing?" he asked, "What--"

"If I tell you, you'll stop me," she said. Or she'd stop herself. Her impulses didn't always lead to bad things, sometimes good things, and right now she had nothing more to go on anyway. She knew she had to take some kind of a chance.

She arranged the items around her in a circle, clumsily drawing circles around them with a stick of chalk she found on one of the tables.

Now. Now, or never.

"What are you doing?" Voryn asked again.

"I don't know. I just--I saw something and I'm going to try it. We're out of options. Are you going to tell me it's stupid and I shouldn't do it?"

She waited, for scolding she was sure was coming. Why can you not plan like someone reasonable? Why can you not do things that make sense.

The admonishments did not come.

"I was going to say this was mad," he said quietly, "But these are mad times. I worry you will destroy yourself."

Sadrith took a shaky breath, and reached into one of her bags for the White Phial.

"What would you say if I told you I considered that an upside?"

"You're shezarrine," he said then, in a voice she found unusually soft. Why did he speak like this? "The world needs you."

"They need the Heart of Lorkhan," Sadrith said quietly, uncorking the bottle, staring into its inky depths, "They don't need me. I'm just...the necessary host. The shell. It should have chosen you a second time."

Silence.

Stop. Before you make a mistake.

Was it her own mind?

You are playing with forces you have no knowledge of.

But I don't know how else to do this, she thought back, tipping up the bottle.

Put the bottle down, child, or someone will get hurt.

When the thick, unpleasant liquid crossed her lips the voice grew angry.

You disobedient fool! Remember, when you look upon the body of the one next to fall, it will be all your fault.

Sadrith's immediate feeling was nausea, her stomach did not at all care for the bitter fluid and wanted to eject it. But she kept drinking, forcing it down like an unpleasant medicine, until the White Phial was completely empty.

"What was that?" Voryn, still close by but outside the circle, asked.

"The blood of Sithis."

No sooner had she said the words than she felt an explosion in her chest. Sadrith fell to her knees, clutching her chest as her heart burned...and burned...pounded against her ribs, seemed to stop--and then began to beat fast, and then faster still.

You are nothing but a collection of parts!

You are not even real!

You only exist because I created you!

Lorkhan's spark, his madness, his order, his warrior spirit, his divinity, his shell and countpart...so many parts...am I here?

The world dimmed.

No. No. I EXIST. I EXIST!

In Sadrith's mind she screamed it. Silence, there was silence all around, inside and outside her. How could she still be fading? What had she done wrong?

You are nothing but a collection of parts!

I AM! she screamed back, And so are they! I AM AND THEY ARE AND--

A fire lit once more, in her chest, in her her blood and bone, in her very mind.

I AM AND WE ARE, BOTH!

The dimming stopped. The light returned to the world, and she saw once more the Archmage's quarters. She scrambled out of the circle, out of the items which seemed suddenly to have crumbled into ash.

Outside. She had to be OUTSIDE.

"Stop!" Voryn called out as he followed her. "Where are you GOING?"

Door, stairs, door. Snow, and chill on the skin.

And far, far above, not a bloody dark sun as she expected (had she?) but an eclipse.

Though not a complete one.

Masser and Secunda...but then, also, the Necromancer's moon, set in place to block the light of Aetherius, and yet one small sliver remained.

One little light amidst the darkness, one shade greyer than the void around it.

A debt repaid by not just a necromancer, but the necromancer, the reason magic, the reason life, was still able to go on in this void-rain.

A single defiance in a sea of death.