Theodore’s Journals: Red Year
I spent five or more years wishing that it would never happen. Apart of me hoped that the vision was merely a misdirection weaved by the deadric prince, another trick disguised as truth. Each day was leaden with grim anticipation, and I had no proof in warning the people of Vvardenfell. How would anyone be convinced that I saw a vision of Red Mountain’s eruption? What if I was solely responsible for the mass panic of thousands of people as they fled from a catastrophe that was never fated to happen? The wisdom in me knew that this was all a facet, that the vile being in the black book could change the reflection of fate in whichever way I turned it. Perhaps I could warn the masses, and destruction would never happen. Perhaps I could never tell anyone outside of those I trust and the vision would play out nonetheless.
Hermaeus Mora holds the truth that is too lofty to know. The kind of epiphanies that one does not ask for. If I would of had the choice to return this offering, I would gladly do so, but a responsibility has placed itself upon my shoulders, growing heavily with each syllable spoken out loud.
Gar…din…ier.
I took my earnings with House Telvanni and bought myself a room in the village of Riften. A small hold in the province of Skyrim that lay just across the Velothi mountains, a place and culture that strangely unfamiliar despite how physically similar I was to the nords. The group I traveled with was treated with an immediate hostility, having entered the hold in a guar drawn caravan, but once I had separated to find the inn there was a much warmer accommodation. I didn’t need to enunciate my fluent dunmeris to gain the favor of strangers, but despite it all, I felt as if my traveling companions shouldn’t have been treated so differently.
A few days passed, and then a month. I spent the time taking walks through the birch forests that reminded me of Solstheim, with the towering peak of what I learned to be called The Throat of the World. On one side of the Velothi pass was this land of ash and creatures I had grown accustomed to, with the fiery peak at it’s center. Here, was an endless expanse of woods with deer, elk, wild horses, and the odd black birds that gathered in a curious flock around me. It was pleasant to be rid of the responsibilities of House Telvanni, to be alone and practice magic under the influence of herbal medicine while the solemn snowcapped peak stood tall like an ominous giant. The contrast felt like I had traversed into a liminal space of serene solitude. Perhaps I never belonged to Morrowind after all.
I may return, if the vision of Hermaeus Mora was false. I know my father would love to see this land and hunt it’s game. My mother must have passed through here on her journey as well, seen what I see now long before I was born. I should write them, perhaps convince them to move here to ease my anxiety.
———
Summer was pleasant in The Rift, unlike the humid heat of Sadrith Mora. The air was clean and dry with fields of verdant grass growing beneath the soil. After a day at the market I brought home my supplies for the trek west, this time on horseback. The skies stretched endlessly without a cloud in sight, but along the cliffside I could see the familiar plume from the eastern peak of Morrowind. A terrible feeling brewed, with such visibility rare and nostalgic. I couldn’t pinpoint where it derived but the tremors beneath the earth were much deeper than before.
…and then the ground violently jolted.
The horse whinnied, nervous and confused, as my eyes directed towards the east. Without break or blinking I gazed at the pale smoke that billowed up from a fiery maw, red streaks pouring out in mile-long stretches that were visible from so far away. For a moment I felt like I had traipsed upon a vivid nightmare fueled by my paranoia, but the waking moment never came as the tiny spec on the horizon collapsed upon itself and threw ash into the otherwise cloudless expanse of sky.
A desperation struck my heart as I ordered the horse forward as fast as it’s legs could carry. Dropping supplies and trampling the loose dirt road that served as a shortcut to Riften. I passed the fort and carried on towards the Velothi mountains alongside the bewildered travelers whose eyes remained affixed to to the ever growing plume. Within the valley clearing we all watched in disbelief, a mariner’s telescope was passed between us all. When it was my turn to look, to take in the reality of what had happened as the only visible parts of Vvardefell appeared black and streaked with lava.
Ald’ruhn, Caldera, the Zanab camps, the Urshilaku tribes, perhaps even Balmora and Gnaar Mok…so many civilizations now under a black sheet of molten stone. My heart sank until I could feel nothing. I couldn’t even feel the fall as my knees collapsed to the ground and the rest of my body followed. The Yanimimbal camps, they had to have been… my mother, father, Yan-Ilu…everyone.
Everyone.
Gone.
My vision faded to black.
I awakened the next day, in a yurt much like the few I was familiar with since childhood. A row of people laid adjacently next to me, mostly dunmer coughing up soot and tending to their wounds both physically and mentally. At first I assumed this was a dream, picking myself up to shuffle through the healers and mourners exiting the shear cloth flap that was caked in dust. The air was thick and hazy, neither peaks were visible through the white fog and snow. How odd, it normally did not snow this far south in mid summer and the air felt too dry and hot. Someone had even brought my horse to the stables and wrapped cloth around it’s muzzle.
…and then, in my own postponed shock, I realized that the soft feathery flakes falling from the sky was ash.
I can not even begin to describe the sudden emotional pain I felt. I would have rather lost a limb, and eye, even my own voice, than endure this sense of loss. I battled with the idea that nothing happened, trudging my way through drifts of grey powder as my lungs heaved with every hastened step forward. I could make it to the shores on foot in a couple nights if I kept up this pace. The Velothi Valley was crowded with survivors from the inland region who built tents and silently gazed ahead. My body strained against the ash, both at my feet and in my lungs, screaming in physical pain like a demand to stop, but yet I pushed forward as if my grief was a shadowy predator behind me.
Rows, and rows, and rows of yurts. All weighed down by debris. The corpses of exausted guar settled under evergreen trees, life expended by loyally leading their masters and families to saftey. I should have heeded that warning of blind dedication as I began to cough violently, leaning against the lantern post for balance. I had not noticed a stranger approach me in sympathy as a grey hand laid itself upon my shoulder.
“There’s nothing there but death.” The hoarse grain of his voice caught my attention. I looked up to see a dunmer, scar across one eye and clean shaven. He appeared to acknowledge the tattoos across my face long before I replied in dunmeris.
“Are you certian?” I rasped, a semblance of my rationality seemed to have returned as this mer spoke.
“Yes, but we will survive. We are different from outlanders. I still have a task to do and I have a feeling that you do too.”
The words remained true in my memory for years after. I replied with nothing more than a nod of respect, slowly and carefully making my way back to Riften. Although my mind was quarrelsome I had to remember why I left Vvardenfell. I had ties in High Rock that were still left open in the wind.
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