“You’re not supposed to ask that,” says the Nerevarine, somewhere deep in the hollow heart of Red Mountain.
It feels, ze thinks vaguely, like one of the dreams. The dusty cavern, almost blurred at the edges, the hot, heady press of stagnant air, sweatingly warm and scented sweet with rot. Braziers burn with something that is not fire. The meandering, shockingly empty path ze took to get this far, through all the proper corridors, with their rusted corners and scraps of rugs – no furniture, not even stacked up in the inexplicable way ze’s come to expect; almost nothing at all, like a house unfinished, like all its denizens have only just arrived. Like they’ve spent all their centuries prone on the floor. Ze kicked up so much dust as ze walked, like no-one had ever trod there before. There’s so much dust in here now. It’s all so very barren-bare, like the dreams; so lonely. Just zem, in all this great sprawling subterranean building, and the figure – statue-still in front of zem, a safe distance away, watching from behind the lucent gold of its mask. The bejewelled hollows of its eyes glimmer, unblinking, three points of an untraced triangle; the face is sculpted with fretted care.
It all feels, ze thinks, like a dream; like the months on months on months leading up to this moment have been compressed, pushed down and packed tight, until it seems like Caelestis Vitellius stepped off that horribly rocking boat directly into this chamber, clad in warped bonemold, jewels pressed down the line of zir sternum and against the joints of zir elbows, conjured blade in ungloved hand. Ze has held the knife for hours, but ze does not hold it ready; the dead skin of zir thumb presses against the guard as ze shifts it loosely in zir grip, arms down, weight placed squarely on zir back foot. The devil is standing in the flesh in front of them, sharper-edged and more tangible than in the dream-messages but otherwise so eerily much the same, and ze thinks ze should feel afraid but ze can’t seem to dredge it up. Maybe it’s the sickly air, setting zir head spinning; maybe it’s the stop-starting rhythm of the conversation they’ve been attempting instead of the fighting ze expected. It’s something of a relief for there to be honesty at the end of it all; not even the opportunity for more deceit or espionage or complicated chess-board moving. Just questions, and promises of answers. Caelestis feels very small, in the dust-coated hollow of the cavern, and as new as ze was the day ze stepped onto Seyda Neen soil, but not afraid. There’s no room for it. It’s all so close to the end, one way or another; everything so very nearly makes sense.
So very, very nearly.
But then the Sharmat asked that question and broke the languid pause before it all begins-to-end to bits.
“You’re not supposed to ask that,” says Caelestis, again, not-fire lambent in the braziers, light liquid against the sculpted gold of Dagoth Ur’s face. Ze tastes the air thick on zir half-a-tongue, cloying, unwell. “What do you mean, am I truly – you called me –” ze realises that ze is gesturing at him with zir knife, shining crystalline in the not-firelight, and ze drops zir arm. (Ze has held the blade all this time, though it hasn’t been needed, not yet; the most use it has been of is scraping Red Mountain’s bitter, caking ash from the soles of zir shoes. Earlier, in one of the quiet stretches of their surreal half-conversation, ze held the humming hilt between zir teeth so ze could fix zir hair.)
It's so silent, in the belly of the mountain; not even an echo. The Sharmat, in front of zem, does not move even to breathe. Ze feels very small. Ze feels very new. Ze feels like ze’s breathing Vvardenfell air for the first time and trying to figure out how to account for it all.
Ze says, “I thought you knew,” and there is more in zir voice than there has been before. Ze doesn’t know what there is more of, just that there is more.
Dagoth Ur tips his head, considering, to one side. He moves in fits and starts, like smoke, deliberate as a rockslide despite it all. “Oh,” he says in his too-ordinary voice, and then, “A pity.”
And it’s all so horribly like one of the dreams; breathing the rancid air of a strange, empty place, conjured blade useless in zir hand, earth drifting out from under zem. The devil stands before zem, impossibly close, impossibly far, and Caelestis is confused, and alone; so very dreadfully alone, maybe forever. And ze doesn’t know what to do.
(In the dream, he called zem Nerevar.)
(Ze wonders, vaguely, how many people got that dream.)
“I don’t want your pity,” Caelestis says, pressing zir thumb against the guard of zir blade until ze can feel its quiet murmur through the long-dead flesh of zir hand. What ze does want – ze doesn’t know. Ze didn’t think about it. Ze should have, clearly, but again, to zir detriment, ze’s assumed that other people will act with honesty, that they won’t bluff and lie where ze wouldn’t think to; he talked as if he knew, so ze believed he did. Ze thought he knew. He was supposed to know.
(The ring shining quiet on its chain is some kind of confirmation. The fact that ze’s here, burrowed like a tick into the belly of the mountain despite its attempts to rebuff zem, is some kind of confirmation. But that’s not the same thing as an answer. A yes isn’t worth much when ze doesn’t have the how or why or even, quite, the what.)
(Ze thought ze’d get that here.)
Caelestis arrived in Morrowind sometime between a century ago and today – it is hard, in the flicker-red-gold of the braziers, to pin down anything more specific – and ze’s spent the entire time grasping for anything that might make it make sense, that might illuminate some kind of reasoning behind it all. Planted because ze might be a myth, or close enough that no-one could tell the difference; put here to do something impossible, and to be unmissed if ze died trying. And the whole time – the whole bloody time – ze’s been looking, and watching everyone else looking, too, from Caius at the very beginning to Nibani to Vivec – looking and looking and looking with varying degrees of hope, and never finding. Ze’s been looking for answers since ze first stepped onto Vvardenfell soil, trying to solve a mystery that wouldn’t be given shape for months, dogging zir steps through city streets and wilderness pathways and on boats and through caves and up mountains and into rivers, lurking indistinct as the cavern shadows in bone-patterned shrines and the burnished-brassy masks of the Ordinators, until ze arrived here, half-dead at the end of the world, staring the devil in its golden face and waiting for it to find what no-one else, agent or priest or god, has been able to.
And he doesn’t see anything, either.
Caelestis takes a deep breath, sour air moving barely noticed through zir misshapen lungs, and lets it sit there.
(There are no answers here. There is only zem.)
(Perhaps there never will be. Perhaps that will have to be enough.)
The Sharmat shifts again, lurchingly fluid. “Then I do not pity you,” he says – his voice still so eerily close to ordinary – “but yet I have compassion, and I will weep for your death. If you have questions, ask them.”
Caelestis exhales.
Ze shifts zir grip on the hilt of zir summoned knife – lifeless skin pressing smoothly against its shape – and ze says, “There was nothing else I wanted from you.”
“Then to you goes the courtesy of the first blow,” says Dagoth Ur; his mask, liquid as it looks in the light, cannot move, but Caelestis gets the strong impression of a smile somewhere in the dark, all the same. The Sharmat inclines his head, gracious as a bow. “I’m waiting, Nerevar.”
