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Eris had been sleeping for time now out of mind, not that he had bothered to count the hours, days, weeks. Even years, if he’d been that unlucky—and he likely was. He remembered a stretch of sunlight before this, its light searing into his skin and burning his one good eye before the mists of Morthal kept him hidden and kept the hunger at bay. Though he was not awake, he was prone to wandering, but if you asked him, he would not be able to explain how. Or further—why. Only that he’d felt a kind of severing from himself, and all that had plagued him in the time before was left behind in his coffin.
He would rather have decomposed and become part of the loam under the banks of fog and mess of swamp water. Only, that had ceased to be an option long ago. That was the burden of running; one never could stay in place long enough to procure a potion to cure the diseases one picked up from fighting vermin. Or see a healer. A priest. Anything. At the moment, his hunger was gone, and that was something.
When he was freed from the prison of his blood-starved body, he wandered, the world shifting beneath his feet to become less and less recognizable. It was as if the realm was trying to become that which he would normally be terrified of—but the stasis had pulled fear from him, too. The nightmares had, at first, been of tearing flesh from bone, of skin and veins split wide open, blood running in rivulets, his own hands unrecognizable under vast amounts of viscera. Eris supposed that was the way of things, vampires being what they are, and after a time, even this ceased to affect him. After that, he stood idly by and watched a thousand iterations of Nyenna’s death. Oddly, mostly these ended in dragonfire. He was not sure why, but could not muster the energy to enquire. Nor could he figure out exactly who to ask.
The answer to that question came after he had wandered far enough away that he could not quite find his way back to his body. Not that he wanted to return—it simply seemed the thing to do.
The once-Dunmer perplexed Vaermina in the same fashion Galthis had tended to, before She had pulled him into Her embrace, and well before his soul-turned-vestige was torn from him so rudely. He had been the perfect nightmare, all bone monstrosity, towering above cowering mortals. Their fear, palpable and visceral, had fed Her realm well, shored up the defenses that blocked the unworthy from wandering too far in. Somehow, despite all the work to prevent it, a once-mortal had arrived here unscathed.
But there was no such fear in this one. What good were his memories without a touch of dread? It had not come through with him. And so he had made it past the worst of the horrors She could pull from his skull. So rare for that to happen. And it was curious, was it not?
She did not need to focus on mortal concerns under normal circumstances. Sleep was Her sphere, as was the energy generated by dreams. Things that kept the warp and weft of the world tightly in place. Who else but She would know exactly the way this tapestry repaired itself? Well. This far into the depths of the Quagmire, anyone could see past the veneer, She supposed.
This not-quite-living, not-quite-dead dreamer wandered by as She watched and She felt a certain longing. A memory of a time before. She’d been staring at the stars as they fell or tore through the fabric of Aetherius, when all had been darkness, and the bones of the earth beneath Her feet had not yet settled. That feeling had been awe, then, She believed. It was before Her own sundering, the two halves of Herself fated to be separate in order to balance truth and lies. When She had been whole, there had been reverence.
Her mask dropped, snakes slithering away into the further reaches of Her realm to haunt the unworthy, as they tended to do. She let the awe wash over Her again, foreign in the way of memories long forgotten. Or stolen, but that was another story for another time. Who was this man? And how was he so blithely unaffected? It had been so long since anyone had managed to find Her.
Eris, meanwhile, had never intended to approach the gleaming pale stone citadel in the center of the shifting violet chaos he’d found himself stuck in. Even upon turning to retrace his steps, before long the place would change and he’d be staring down the glittering path toward something that seemed to pull him closer. To let himself be drawn toward the unknown was ill-advised, but where else could he go?
At the end of the path, in a room open to the sky, draped with silk curtains billowing in a breeze he couldn’t feel, She stood. He was not sure he’d ever seen someone quite as…well. Beautiful was too small a word, but it was all the vocabulary he could muster. He approached, footsteps echoing ethereal across marble flooring, mist swirling around his feet.
She perceived him in a way he would never fathom. She saw his soul held within the confines of a cage, all rib and sinew and blood gone cold. The pallor of his blue-grey skin was so stark against the pure white of the center of the citadel, the black of his clothing a contrast reminiscent of the night. An overwhelming urge washed over Her. She wanted to reach for his face, hold his chin and kiss his scar, the one that all but took his eye. So much pain in too short a time. A life that had already been waking nightmares. Little wonder the ones She’d sent him did nothing more to dredge up fear. He already saw the truth of the world. Had She a heart in the traditional sense, She imagined for a moment it would have broken. Instead, She simply sighed, the sound almost…mortal.
Vaermina, though he did not yet understand the ways in which this name belonged to Her, set aside Her mask and gauntlets, the gentle clink of metal strange in the silence. She wove Her fingers together, gossamer lace of Her sleeves drifting past Her elbows. The platinum of Her pauldrons shone in the light of stars Eris couldn’t see. The gown She wore sparkled like diamond dust as She moved. She was tall and willowy—fair features sharp and elven, but somehow other. Still graceful, despite the surrealness he could not place. Her eyes, though serpentine, were violet as the mists, and Her hair, long and fine, could have been spun silver. Eris could have sworn he’d seen Her before, or Her likeness, in the moments before waking. In the time before, when waking had still been possible.
She smiled, itself a mask that hid an understanding of what had happened to the wretch appearing now before Her. She remembered being beseeched. The Redguard. The stones, the offering, the ritual. Her other half had been busy, hungry, troublesome, reaching for an artifact that had gained a will of its own in a different part of the same province. The conjurer had guessed, perhaps, if news in the mortal realms traveled as fast as She’d assumed. So She’d descended instead—or else Her voice—and lulled the fledgling to sleep. An ease of that hollow emptiness, if nothing else.
“You know there is no turning back,” She said, voice gentle and soft, yet coming from every direction. The words would not be missed.
“There’s nothing left of me to turn back to,” he answered, forlorn, grief lacing the sentiment. She drifted toward him, clasping his hand in Hers. Thoughts left him for a second, focused only on the odd warmth of Her skin.
She knew the meaning. He’d felt the sundering, too, not as different from Hers as he’d imagine. More than once he’d split from the prior half of himself, each stage of his life or un-life a different version of separation.
“Then dream. All the world is in your hands here,” Vaermina said, tone low. Eris could feel Her voice in the ground beneath them, if it was ground at all. He still wasn’t sure. He looked up at Her, and still She smiled. He knew there was pity behind it. And he deserved it, after all that he’d endured. Welcomed it, after the stretch of nothing which led to this wandering.
“What good would this shell of myself be here, to You? To anyone?” he asked, all melancholy and sorrow.
His words fell like rain. Vaermina could almost hear the thunder of storms in the distance, could almost remember the deluge at the start of all time, washing away the chaos of creation. He was but a drop in the ocean, but he had found Her nevertheless. It was not about what he could do, or the good or the bad. It was not about use or uselessness. He had already given his memories over, his fear, his apprehension. She reached and took his hands in both of Hers. Eras had passed since She had felt anything at all; Eris could not tell. Slowly, the anguish seeped from him. Slowly, something filled the place in each of their chests where hearts were supposed to sleep.
Silence fell between them, of the comfortable sort so rare in this realm. When Vaermina smiled this time, it was warm—like the sun, from the time before. Or its reflection on the moons. There was a certain finality to this gesture, to this conversation. He remembered this had once been called peace.
Vaermina did not know what came over Her. The kiss was soft, gentle, mutual—mortal. So very mortal. His lips were cool against Hers, his near-inaudible sigh sending a chill down Her spine. His fingers grazed the side of Her cheek as he held Her serpentine gaze, like the brush of snowfall. She remembered this, too, had once been called peace—or else, love, if such a thing existed.
She said, “Stay with me and be whole.”
And Eris thought he would.