Archive of Our Own

The Temple stairs feel more endless than the Ashlands.

Sirisare's boots scrape against the harsh stone of them as he climbs them, the Archcanon's key clenched in one gloved hand. With every step, he can hear it clink against the Moon-And-Star's band, the ring of metal on metal counting out the rhythm he walks, like a second, sharper heartbeat. The Ordinators had stared at him when he left the Hall of Wisdom, their hands twitching to their weapons, but there had only been two of them and something had stilled their hands. Maybe it'd been the look on his face - he's not sure what expression he wears even now, but if it shows even a fraction of the strange, twisting turmoil in his chest, that feeling that can only manifest as determination, he imagines it must be eerie to look at.

His birthmarks - Azura's brand on his neck, the Tribunal's on his sternum - are visible through his armor in the sort of challenge that'd seemed appropriate once the Moon-And-Star was on his finger and his guide had gone home to Azura and all he'd had was the chorus of ghosts echoing in his ears: You are the Nerevarine. You must not fail. The Tribunal's betrayal had been an old wound torn fresh, and he'd known it would be a game of appearances as much as actions, to unite the disparate, squabbling factions across Vvardenfell. Armor from the Indoril, robes from the Urshilaku, Azura's claim nestled against the flicker-thrum of his pulse, and the scar from his murder uncovered like a dare. Take it. Try it again. You martyred me once, in the blood of my own lover. Here I am again, skin as gold as the day I died. Doesn't it drive you mad?

…he's not going to say any of that. Probably. (He'd say he hasn't gone that native, but his head aches with the weight of all his desperate dreams and he thinks perhaps he was never not native at all; a century of life lived in among the white and crimson of the Imperial City has started to feel almost more like a dream than the dream-memory-visions of old Resdayn. Still they call him outsider, outlander, but even that has begun to fade as the path he walks outweighs its beginnings.)

Something in his stomach quivers; anger, he thinks. He has been viciously angry and terribly maudlin in turns since he read the letter Dagoth Ur - Voryn - sent him, since he realized the two sides of his odd dreams were in fact just aspects of the same man, a life lived and outlived, preserved in nightmare and mournful recollection. He's been tempted, he has to admit, tempted to seek out Ghostgate and vanish through it to the blighted lands beyond. Tempted to roam the slopes of Red Mountain until he finds his way back to the Heart that is the heart of the world, and the heart that was the heart of him, and just say fuck it. Forget Azura, forget the prophecies, forget the path and the destiny and above all else the mantle (loaded as the term may be, it is not inaccurate), let him disappear into obscurity alongside all the other False Incarnates, at the side of the man he'd loved and lost by his own hand. But-

He honors the blood of the tribe unmourned. He eats their sin, and is reborn.

No one else will do it. And he thinks often of Azura, speaking to him through Her statue, Her visions spinning through his mind, and how She had asked him to heal and guide their people - the one true goal he'd held to then, as Her Champion and Resdayn's King. The one goal, in some ways, that guides the path he walks, prophecy aside.

No one else will do it - any of it. No one else can as long as he lays claim to the mantle. And yet the last hour he's spent in Vivec City has brought him closer to fleeing than the months spent traipsing around the Ashlands and the Telvanni, Redoran, and Hlaalu holdings, playing politics and proving his strength in turns.

The door looms in front of him, unguarded this late at night. No Buoyant Armigers to spare, perhaps, and the Ordinators untrustworthy, and what god has need of mortal guardians anyway? Certainly not one who wishes to maintain, still, that he is not false, Sirisare thinks, and shakes his head. He has no choice but do this. He needs Vivec's aid and counsel, if he's to stop Voryn and save Vvardenfell and recover the Heart of Lorkhan. Nerevar Incarnate or not, the Tribunal has held the line against the Sixth House for centuries; they have far more information than he does.

And this…is better than facing Ayem first. He doesn't know what he'd do if he saw her, with the poisonous words they threw at each other still echoing in his dreams.

He takes a breath and fits the Archcanon's key into the lock. It clicks open with a single smooth twist, and he pushes through it and closes it behind him, exhaling slowly. The temple's main room is a wide, round thing, with murals all along the domed ceiling, marked with the symbols of ALMSIVI. Two doors are tucked into opposite sides of the circle, though he has no idea where they lead, and in the center of the antechamber is a circular podium inset with the raised prongs of a triangle, and in the center of that triangle- well.

The first time he'd seen Vehk, he'd been young and scrawny and particularly-dressed, and Nerevar had yet been a caravan guard longing for the young lord of the House he served but longing for power more. Vehk had tried to seduce him for a meal, and had read terror and fate in the lines of his palms, and Nerevar had paid for two hours of his time and then bought him a bath and fresh clothes and a meal and asked him about power and philosophy and if he wanted to learn to read. And Vehk had looked at him, finally looked at him, and muttered, milord asks high questions of me for a man who refused to touch.

You can do better than this, Nerevar had said. And he hadn't needed to say anything else.

"I expected you," says the Warrior-Poet. His voice is a faintly-layered thing, like he's speaking over top himself, and a light golden glow pulses out from him like the rhythm of some otherworldly - no, too-worldly - heartbeat. If Sirisare half-closes his eyes, leans into the beat, it echoes in the same cadence as that distant dream of an unreachable body, and his own heart settles into sync with it. "We have business, you and I."

Is it anger or regret? You followed me. You all followed me. And the cause of your downfall was your loyalty. And the cause of my downfall was my dependence.

"Did you," Sirisare says, not a question, dry and strained with that emotion he can't define. And Vivec looks at him, with one golden eye and one red one, and Sirisare stares at the line drawn down the center of his tiredly-stoic face and thinks about curses. "Of course you did. You know what I am."

He'd nearly been run out of the city trying to get House Hlaalu to recognize him as Hortator. Being open as the Nerevarine had made it impossible to move quietly during the busy hours of the day, when the crowds would hide him better from the Ordinators, and at night there had been nothing to blend into but shadows. Oh, there's no way Vivec doesn't know exactly what heretical claim he's made - and there's no way he doesn't know it's true.

"I know what you are," Vivec agrees steadily, and then his gaze drifts down, to the mark like a scar left for all Morrowind to see. "Who you are remains to be seen. Yet knowing what I know of you, and knowing what you know of me, I must first ask: will you let us speak first of our business, that I might confer upon you how to defeat Dagoth Ur, and save Morrowind, and tell you what aid I propose to offer you?"

"His name is Voryn," Sirisare says, and watches the expression on Vivec's face age a thousand years in the span of a second.

"Very well." He doesn't hesitate. In that, Sirisare thinks, he's still much like that young man who became one of Nerevar's closest advisors and friends, very long ago. "Say what you would, Sirisare - though perhaps that name suits you ill, now that this thing has come to you. I will not deny you recrimination, only the right to render judgement."

It's the acceptance, almost, that stokes that burning anger in his chest, and he clenches his jaw, feeling magicka dance along his fingertips a moment before he calls it back. Everything the three of them did, and now, standing face to face, this is all Vivec can offer? And yet his voice, when he speaks, is soft, laced with something that feels too much like desperation. "You made a fool of me, Vehk. Why?"

He needs- he needs to know.

For a long moment, Vivec doesn't answer. His two-toned gaze simply rests on Sirisare's face, a thin furrow between his brows, as if by studying him closely enough he thinks he can divine the answer to that question - as if he doesn't already know it, or as if what he knows is something he doesn't want to be true. And then he sighs, and his shoulders sag slightly, and he looks as though something in him diminishes. "You were dying," he says, the words slow and careful. "This we knew - it could not be prevented, save perhaps by the very magicks we had sworn before Azura not to use. We had no intention, at the time, of breaking our oath. Of all the things we have done, I hold that to be the most evil, and it is my greatest regret."

He exhales slowly, closing his eyes. For a moment, the golden light of power around him fades. "Or perhaps I had no intention of falling to such folly and was merely determined to avoid the hesitance that led to war, and Sotha Sil had already set his mind to the task of divining the function of the Tools, and Almalexia wished only to, in your final moments, win the game of power between the two of you. I do not know. Our minds are closed to one another; we do not speak often, and of Red Mountain and the demise of both you and Voryn Dagoth, we speak even less. I think it for the best. What fool I made of you I made of myself a thousandfold. Is that bitter enough for you?"

No, Sirisare wants to say, because his answer isn't even truly an answer, and it doesn't seem bitter at all. But looking at the exhaustion on Vivec's face - something that by all rights a Living God should be immune to, or warded from - it's hard to snarl and snap the way he wants to. It's hard to lash out the way he once had at Caius, the only one around who could bear the brunt of all those horrific revelations. "You knew what it did to me to kill him," he says instead, and pretends the words don't make his voice shake. "I was always going to die the moment I hesitated. But you knew, and you still-"

Still what?

Only the ending he deserved, Ayem had said, with that quiet viciousness she so rarely espoused and had always cut the deepest. She had been a good queen. He had loved the challenge of her, the way they strove to outwit each other, but he had never loved her like he loved Voryn, and there had always been something in her that resented the way she lost his attention. It had been his own fault, even. What queen would not be hurt and humiliated by the true rumors that her husband spent all his time in Kogoruhn? The faithful lieutenant becomes the rabid dog and must be put down. Give us the Tools, Nerevar - we will guard them the way he could not be trusted to.

Something in him had broken, in that moment. Like glass sliced perfectly down the center. Like the tonal magic the Dwemer had employed, dividing his heart into the fragmented dissonance that burns and breaks the world. He hadn't felt right being near the Heart and its enchantments to begin with, even before he'd found himself weak from blood loss and exhaustion, struggling to keep his feet, on edge and jittery with it, and he'd hesitated because of it. Hesitated, and hadn't trusted himself, and had gone to speak to Azura and his advisors, and had come back to Voryn insistent that even Nerevar himself could not be trusted with the Tools as long as there was someone with him. There had been a fight. He had struck down the man he loved, because he could do nothing else. And he had stood there, Trueflame still dripping with Voryn's blood, and Ayem had said that-

There had been perfect clarity in the way anger and grief had taken him, in that moment. It hadn't felt like inviting in the Fourth Corner of the House of Troubles. It had felt like the only sensible choice, when all he wanted to do was scream until something shattered. He'd lunged at Ayem, his wounds unimportant. They'd dueled. Seht had done something, magicka curling through the air in a way his throbbing head couldn't comprehend.

Vehk had stepped up behind him and thrust Muatra through his chest.

He remembers the shock of it. He remembers a dream of Azura turning away from him as he reached for Her. And he remembers that Voryn's blood had still been damp when his cheek landed in it.

Sirisare swallows, and lifts his chin, looking up into Vivec's tired face. "You say you want to offer me aid. But tell me, Vehk - after all you've done, how can I possibly trust you?"

"Even a thousandfold foolishness is not enough to make me ask for your trust." Vivec shakes his head, no more than a small, contained motion. "I propose only to surrender to you the power and the responsibility of defeating Dagoth Ur. Conceive of him as you would like, but the current state of affairs must not be allowed to stand, and the Tribunal can no longer ensure this. We have made a great many mistakes. I do not deny this, nor do I deny our sin, such as it is. We paid our price. Will you accept that, for so long as it takes to end the Sixth House and restore peace?"

He should accept it. He'd come to the temple knowing he needed Vivec's aid, or at the very least his information, that this has to end, that if even the Archcanon is agreeing with him then the Tribunal Temple must know how dire the situation is. He is more than smart enough to know that it is always better to take help given freely than to make enemies out of offerings, but it hurts to do so. It hurts because he'd loved them, all of them, and they'd brought each other to ruin, and Vivec is at once the netchiman's son and the man who stabbed him in the back, and perhaps he deserved it. Perhaps he led them there. But he did not guide their hands.

And he did not ask them to break their oath.

"Do I have a choice?" he asks. Because in the end, there is a disadvantage here - Vivec is a god, stolen and profane power or no, and Sirisare is only a man whose mantle isn't even Divine. The responsibility of stopping Voryn has always fallen to him the moment he began to fulfill the prophecies, so that is hardly anything new; the question then becomes if Vivec will only work with him if he promises to let the history between them lie for the time being.

Which would be the smart decision. But perhaps he's always been a bit of a s'wit.

"Every moment of existence is a choice. A choice to breathe, and continue that existence. A choice to walk the path before us, or to forge the infinite possibility of the future into a new present, which of course may take the form of many choices. In this particular matter…your choices are, of course, simple. You may swear the oath I ask of you, knowing what I ask of you, and later keep it or break it as you see fit, and I will not stop you." He takes a breath in and lets it out slowly, in measured increments. "Give your oath, and I will share all I know of Dagoth Ur, and the history of our conflict, and the diminishment of the Tribunal, and our plan to defeat him. You may also refuse. Should you refuse, our audience will be concluded, and you may then act as you choose against me, or leave as you wish, and I will not stop you.

"…I will remind you only this: your duty as Nerevarine and Incarnate will be far easier with my aid, and the aid of my Ordinators and Armigers garrisoning Ghostgate."

Beneath all the philosophy - which the University professor in him would enjoy prodding deeper into, he thinks, were they back on campus and it all a mere thought exercise - the options are clear. Agree to Vivec's terms at least temporarily, or be left a heretic in the eyes of the Tribunal Temple and any of the faithful who do not believe, despite three Houses naming him Hortator. Though - something shifts uncomfortably in his stomach at the steadiness with which Vivec says keep it or break it as you see fit, and I will not stop you. He's made many of his own mistakes, both before his death and after it, but in this he will not bear the same regret the Three do. He will not make their same mistakes, only his own.

"I don't swear false oaths," he says quietly. "Not even to you, Vehk. Azura be my witness, I walk this path to the end, and if that means making common cause with you, then I will. And I refuse to repeat your own sin in the pursuit of avenging it."

And for the first time since he stepped into the temple, Vivec looks surprised. It's a subtle expression, but Sirisare had known him well once, and in the silent, empty, too-large room, it's impossible to miss. "…good," he says, after a long pause. "Not very sensible of you. But we the Three lose to Dagoth Ur in part because we've bound ourselves to sense, and have forgotten the passions of madness. Very well. Will you give your oath, before all gods and men, before all spirits visible and invisible, before my honor and your honor, to dedicate yourself to the defeat and destruction of Dagoth Ur, and the preservation of Morrowind and its people?"

Sirisare sucks in a sharp breath, right hand clenching into a fist. The Moon-And-Star presses against his fingers even through his glove. "I can give my oath to all but his destruction. I will not kill him again." There's another tremor in the words, and he closes his eyes against the choking press of emotion in his throat, the memory of thin, stained paper between his fingers. It was a cruel blow, a bitter betrayal, to be felled by your hand. He has nothing of Voryn but dreams and memories, and no matter what he might face under Red Mountain - not this. Not this. "Not for you. Not for Azura. I'll do whatever I must to stop him, but do not ask me to kill him."

Vivec sighs, the sound heavy with resignation, and nods once. "If any may convince him, it would be you. But he is mad, Sirisare. He dreamed himself out of death and into the Heart through a mechanism we do not understand - not even Sotha Sil. Or if he does, he has not deigned to inform us. Dagoth Ur…Voryn…will wish to seduce you to his cause, for reasons we are both aware of. He is not as you recall him, but perhaps his desires will provide an opening; for certain they are a weakness. But you must destroy Kagrenac's enchantments on the Heart, or all our planning will mean nothing, and to do this you will need the Tools."

For a moment his heart stops. (For a moment, so does the familiar gold-glow around Vivec.) (For a moment, far away under Red Mountain, another Heart trembles.)

When Vivec draws Wraithguard out from a nearby strongbox, its magic humming so strongly Sirisare's head aches, he takes an instinctive step back. Not out of fear - not because he doesn't want it. Because he does. Because he was a professor, in this life, and has spent decades studying Lorkhan, and while he has no interest in the Heart's divinity (he thinks, at least, after seeing what it's done) his desire to study it remains. He wants to know it as intimately as his dreams of it, and perhaps there's a larger than there should be part of him that still wants to refute his idiotic colleague's research once and for all. And that temptation is a frightening thing when faced with the consequences of binding the Heart.

He should have listened to Voryn and destroyed the Tools immediately, or at least unbound the Heart.

"Vehk," he says too-quietly, and knows that despite all the pain and tension and bitter grieving betrayal between them, he's falling back into an old, old habit. "The last time I held the Tools in my possession-"

His hands are shaking, in a way they hadn't even when he took the Moon-And-Star and slid it onto his finger, knowing that he wouldn't even have time to realize he wasn't the Nerevarine if it wasn't his to bear.

And Vehk looks at him, truly looks at him, and smiles, something old and mournful. "You have suggested I avoid the implication you may, through ignorance or deliberate decision, mimic the sins of the Tribunal. In return, I counsel you thusly: you, too, have paid the price for your sins. Do not repeat them…and trust the path you walk, should you desire to stay it to the inevitable conclusion."

"Your wisdom astounds," he retorts without thinking. The familiarity is- a comfort. To lean into it would only make the tension worse. He finds himself doing it anyway. "I'll take your counsel under advisement." As he did so many times in the past. As he did until it killed him.

"And thus does the Incarnate make known his presence," Vivec murmurs. It sounds, nearly, like a joke. "We have much to discuss, of Dagoth Ur and his plans, his powers, his resources. I should like to suggest you consult with Almalexia in Mournhold as well, though it mean leaving Vvardenfell temporarily to do so. She has grown unstable with the waning of our divinity, and I am concerned for her, and moreover she may have insight I do not. For the moment, however, I am your host, and you are my guest, in whatever way you wish to be. I suggest you rest. In the morning we shall speak again, and I will teach you the intricacies of Wraithguard."

It is still not trust. It couldn't be, with everything left between them, and the betrayals of Ayem and Seht along with, and the knowledge that Vivec would likely care little should Voryn be outright killed, and likely has tried to kill him in the past. But there is- something.

An oath, perhaps. One that, this time, will not be broken.