#morrowind fic

"I do not CARE," Nerevar huffed, "What Vivec has to say. Blast him. Blast him to Oblivion and back."

"Well the Dagoths can't be a house again without him, so we've got to play along." Haj-deek quieted down after that outburst. There was a certain discomfort she felt on looking directly at Nerevar, at meeting those blue eyes. Something about the process of looking that felt...wrong.

Nerevar, still struggling to stand on his own two feet, accepted both her help and her father's to get back up the ramp to the previous chamber. "If I had my way, that two faced bastard would be split literally down the middle...I have things to DO, and I don't want to waste time with..."

"We just have to play the game for a bit, and then you can...what were you going to do?"

"Look for my--your mother. Or go after her, I know where she is."

"You--how do you know?" Voryn burst out.

"Because I've spent the last...I don't know how long, time tends to run together when you don't talk to anyone else or even leave the cave..." Nerevar shook his head. "Months, I'll say, with her."

"How?" Haj-deek asked, "What's she like?"

"Lonely, and because as a ghost I had to be attached to an incarnate...the point is, is that I don't have time to waste pissing around with whatever it is Vivec has cooked up, not when one of the last things Dara," Nerevar corrected himself, "Sadara said was that she still wasn't sure I was real but she was glad I was there even if I wasn't. She thinks herself mad, because she can't account for company any other way. She needs to be found, and soon."

"I could go after her," Haj-deek said.

"I don't think you'd do," Nerevar replied, "Not that she'd harm you, but I don't think she'd believe you were real either. It has to be me."

"Or me. Where is she?" Voryn asked.

They were standing in front of the door now, and Haj-deek went to turn the crank to open it.

"Mausur Caverns, it's near Vemynal, old ebony mine that was too dangerous. There's going to be ice everywhere - she blocked up the door with it."

"Why would she block up the door if she was lonely?" Haj-deek asked.

At that point, the door opened. Vivec and Nerevar made eye contact.

In an instant Nerevar was on Vivec, looping one around around his shoulders to stay steady as his opposite fist repeatedly struck Vivec's nose to bloody itself over and over again.

For a few seconds everyone was either too stunned to react or (in Voryn's case) too satisfied to interfere.

"You want to rewrite history, you scum-sucking son of a mudcrab?" Nerevar shouted, not letting up for an instant. "Huh? I suppose next you want me to get down on my knees and suck your--"

"Nerevar!" Voryn burst out. He finally pulled Nerevar off Vivec, who hadn't put up much of a fight, and was currently healing the nose that looked like it had broken.

"Are you done?" Vivec asked, after he wiped away yet more blood, while Martin came forward to give him a cloth to do it with. "I will let you do that again later, but we've got a lot of work to do and less time to do it in. Your wife's body to get out of here, for example."

"Til death do us part, and now we've both died once." Nerevar crossed his arms. "Give me any reason I should go along with this plan you've clearly concocted to take advantage of everything."

"Because if you don't, I lose my power, Baar Dau falls, and Morrowind undergoes destruction that would impress even the Sload at the height of the Thrassian Plague. House Indoril, House Hlaalu, House Dres, all gone, attainted beyond repair. Red Mountain erupts, and--"

"That's a fine story. I suppose next you're going to tell me this guy's secretly Akatosh?" Nerevar gestured in Martin's direction.

"Can we PLEASE get back on track?"

Nerevar's brow only seemed to furrow further.

"How do we explain me AND Nerevar, though, if you're saying I'm the Hortator reborn that...whatever you were saying? It's a lie."

"Everything he says is--"

"As I was trying to say." Vivec tucked the bloodied cloth away, "We all knowing I'm lying, the point is to make the rest of Morrowind believe it. 'The Nerevarine could be born only from the greatest of wounds, and that is why we chastised the false incarnates, for we knew their claims to be the opposite of truth, whose claims would not come loud but gentle as a newborn guar. From darkness the Hortator Incarnate came, bearing sins of...'"

He trailed off.

"You get the idea, I'm certain, but the plan is to end it with your coming from the void-wound to 'witness the penance of the Tribunal failing the Hortator's people, saved only by the Incarnate who banished the stain from the dreamsleeve.'"

"People really believe this tripe?"

"They believe it and come back for more," Haj-deek said. "He could tell them anything."

"Fine," Nerevar somewhat unexpectedly seemed to calm down. "I'll play along, for now. I suppose we'll need each other, considering Azura..."

He cleared his throat.

"I want my Dara's ashes."

"You could've saved a lot of trouble if you'd just asked that first," Vivec replied. Then he looked at Haj-deek, "What was it you called that thing they kept her ashes in?"

"Her treasure box," Haj-deek said.

"What does that have to do with anything?" Nerever grumbled. He let himself lean on Voryn now.

"Just wait."

Vivec looked up, mumbled some letters and numbers under his breath--

--and then suddenly, right at his feet, was the same old small wooden chest Haj-deek remembered. False gold corners seeming greener all the time with age.

"There. Now if you will give me a few hours of your time, you can do whatever you want with them."

A pause. Haj-deek bent over the chest, opened it, noted all the little offerings she'd made to the ash.

"It's the right chest. I remember these pearls..."

"So he can just spawn things out of nowhere now?" Nerevar piped up again, "Maybe spawn me some potion to fix my legs."

"That's normal when you're--awakened," Voryn finally spoke. "The body is weak for a period, it's perfectly normal and wears off within a week."

"I am not waiting a week to go after her!" Nerevar barked. "The few hours Vehk wants is bad enough. Voryn, YOU are going after her, and I swear on A--on the Heart itself, if anything happens..."

"Should I write any of this down?" Martin asked quietly.

"You aren't writing any of this down," came Vivec's stern reply.

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

The game was started.

It was arranged that Vivec and Martin should emerge first, carrying the body of Almalexia, followed soon after by Haj-deek, on whom Nerevar would be leaning. And once the buoyant armigers had the situation sufficiently explained to them - or at least when Vivec had delivered his prepared speech - only then would Voryn appear.

"The Sharmat's reign of terror is ended," Vivec said, "At the cost of Mother Morrowind, and by her mercy, but in the wound of that defeat came forth the Hortator."

And Nerevar, for all his protests before, played his part well.

"I come from the void, with whom I have done battle since the Beginning," he said. That had not been in the prepared script, but it fit in well enough to make the Buoyant Armigers believe the lie utterly. He would not require healing, only rest, in the place which now knew peace.

"But what of the Ghostfence, then?" one bright spark happened to ask.

"It shall be maintained until such point as all the lost souls within are made well. And then - then, you shall all have rest."

The idea of laying down their duties was baffling, but they swallowed that idea as well.

A covered litter was arranged that would carry Almalexia's body to Ald'ruhn, where it would stay for a period to allow worshipers to make offerings in thanks of Almalexia's sacrifice. Vivec would have it moved to Mournhold at some point or the other, as that was where Mother Morrowind had made her home, and thus it was justified that that was where her body should rest for all time.

But before that, he must make a return pilgrimage to Red Mountain.

"What of the mountain?" another armiger asked, casting a doubtful look at Voryn.

"The territory of the newly revived House Dagoth," Vivec replied, "The blight is washed away, but this will ease the transition, if they are not to begin mingling with the rest of Morrowind right away. They must be given time to make themselves appropriate to appear in society, and Nerevar would be there to ground Lord Dagoth in the present, instead of the void-past he lived in for these past centuries."

Voryn finally spoke. "And changed as I am, I am not a spectacle for the masses to be gawked at before my time is ready."

So here, there was a parting. As the buoyant armigers began to move away, Vivec replied that he would reappear in a week's time to renew his and Sotha Sil's links to the Heart's power.

"How are you going to restore his body? He's basically rat food right now."

"Child's play for a god." Vivec replied, "And power I can spare now I know there will be more to replace it."

Vivec smirked. Nerevar, Voryn, and Martin groaned.

The dovahfly would follow Martin then, as he followed Vivec. Nerevar, Haj-deek, and Voryn were left behind.

"Well," Nerevar said, "Now you have to haul my crippled ass all the way back to the volcano, Voryn. And then YOU are going to go after--"

"Yes, yes, I know, Nerevar. Settle down. We'll--it's going to be fine."

It would all be right now, if they could but see it through.

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

On the way back, Nerevar would give the story he hadn't had time to fully do so up til this point: that he had spoken to Sadara just as she was about to walk into the Ghostfence, had managed to manifest in a ghostly fashion to speak to her. To give her the only approximation of touch that they could both manage. And then...something had happened.

Locked away in that cave, with naught but one another to speak to, and only despair waiting outside, he had found such beauty in the struggling strength she had managed to carry on for so long. Had seen it bolstered by his presence, had managed to prompt a litany of smiles that lit up even that hopeless, icy darkness.

He hadn't felt that bloom in his chest since long before he died.

Voryn was quiet when Nerevar spoke of this, yet seemed to understand how it had happened. Haj-deek saw - something like grief, that disappeared behind a genial mask as he congratulated Nerevar for managing what he could not, and that it would be his again, once both spirit and body were reunited. The ashes would not knit without a soul present - there had been a severing that Azura had managed, that required Sadara's presence to mend.

And so Voryn went off, out of Dagoth Ur, past Vemynal, down a dismal looking canyon that was miserable even in the sunlight, to say nothing of the cliffracers with no brains that attacked him. The rickety mine door that came ahead was just as he'd been told - covered in and blocked by ice, which took a solid minute's worth of a fire spell to melt away.

He entered the cave. As Nerevar had said, there was ice nearly everywhere - and where there was not ice, there was water, and life springing up around it. Luminous mushrooms, rats drinking from puddles...

...and far ahead, the sound of laughter. He trudged onward, trying not to slip, until he found, near the lava, a shimmering presence. In its arms, a rat.

"You have no mind at all, do you, little one?"

The voice was soft, warm, and yet...somehow empty, too.

"You cannot simply jump mindlessly around lava, it will devour you."

Squeaking. Wriggling, from that wretched creature in the half-invisible arms.

"Sadara?" he finally spoke.

Voryn expected nearly anything except what she actually said.

"You aren't real."

She went back to cooing over the rat.

"I AM real."

"Dagoth Ur does not leave his cavern," she said, still not looking at him directly. "Even Nerevar knew that."

"Nerevar is awake now," he said, a little firmer now, "You can see him again, too."

"He'll be along at some point, I'm sure. When my mind needs company again. I've never seen you before, which is only proof that..."

"Sadara, please."

A stop.

"Turn around and look at me, if nothing else."

"If--if I do, you'll vanish. Everything does here, except my rats." She sounded - hopeful, but fearful. Too afraid to look. "Even Azura abandoned mocking me, if she was ever speaking to me to begin with."

"I am not going anywhere."

He swallowed. The weight of - all of it, seemed nothing to this in comparison. The rest of it was well, the rest of it was fixed, but this...her...

"Please."

When she looked, he extended a hand, and looked her in the eye.