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Apotheosis II	By : OneMoreAltmer Category: +A through F > Elder Scrolls - Oblivion Views: 3007 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I didn't create and do not own Elder Scrolls: Oblivion or its characters (except for Tavi, within game format). I make no moneys.

Chapter List
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Fourteen � Post
Nubila, Phoebus

I told Jeelius of my wishes, and he agreed:� a saint�s relics would be an asset to the Temple.� The blessing of the Dragonborn flooded me,
but the god I loved would not let me stay and rest this time.
Hurry now, he
said.� All will be well.� I am with you
� we are with you.� Hurry.
Sir Thedret greeted me immediately at the Priory.� �They are all in the chapel,� he said, �with
the Prophet.� He wishes to speak with you
at once.�
There he was, indeed, the old man, giving a sermon in our
chapel.� My Knights surrounded him, along
with one Bosmer I had never seen before.�
�I have come to serve Auri-El,� he whispered to me as I
passed him.� I accepted him and moved
forward to the Prophet, who beamed at me.
�I knew you were the one,� he grinned.� �The time has come, Crusader, and I have been
sent with gifts for you.� The dreadful
and unique power of Meridia is her access to both the daedric and the aetherial
realms.� When Pelinal killed Umaril�s
body, his soul was able to flee down a path no being but a god could follow �
which is what gives him the arrogance to call himself a god.� Daedric fires reforged his body, and aedric
consciousness retained his nature. �
Mephala�s words leapt into my mind.� All the
gods are whole.� Even Martin, born
mortal, then apprenticed to both the Daedric Lords and Auri-El �
�Pelinal carried the blessings of the Eight
gods of that time, but they could not carry him to the fight against Umaril�s
spirit, and that is why he failed.� But
the times have changed.� Tiber Septim
found the way of ascent and became Talos, and the Eight became Nine.�
I�d had words very like these from Pelinal himself, but had
not understood then.� The way of ascent.� My head was swimming.
�In token of the pleasure of the gods with your selfless
service in their names, Talos has charged me with passing his blessing to
you.� Call upon it when Umaril�s mortal
form has fallen, and it will empower your spirit to give chase to his.� You will have to kill him twice, in body and
in spirit, before he is broken forever.�
I fell to my knees to receive the blessing, and he laid his
hands on my head.� It was a lightening
power, full of brightness and air and �
And I wasn�t tired.�
Stendarr�s curse was gone.� When
the Prophet moved his hands, I fairly leapt to my feet.
�I have seen his lair in visions,� the Prophet intoned.� �He gathers his forces at Garlas Malatar, on
the coast, far in the west.� Soon he will
be strong enough to strike out in earnest:�
you must defeat him before he does.�
I nodded, turned, and saw my Knights waiting for my
orders.� My first instinct was not to
take them:� I had always worked most
efficiently alone, and it was quite likely some or all of them would be
killed.� Now that I was vital again, I
rather relished the prospect of clearing my own path through the Aurorans to
get to Umaril.
Then again, after that would be Umaril
himself � twice.� And I realized
that this was not only about me and my love now:� these people needed to feel they had done
something good for their world.� They
needed a triumph that would allow them to carry on without me.
I struggled to make the words right:� in my various forms, I had typically spoken
in either beautiful lies or ugly truths, and the combination of loveliness with
honesty always felt awkward to me.�
�Noble Knights.� We go into battle against unworldly forces,
and some of you may not return.� I myself
may not.� But you will be defending the
gods and their people.� If any of you are
spellcasters, know that the weakness of the Aurorans is fire.� Focus yourselves on them, and I will press
forward to find Umaril.�� I paused,
allowed them to nod their agreement and approval.� �If I am among the fallen, I instruct the
survivors to bear my body to the Temple of the
One in the Imperial
City.� That is where I have arranged for my
interment, out of love for the Dragonborn.��
I paused again.� �Go and arm
yourselves.� We will leave shortly.�
Sir Thedret left me last, of course.� �You would even be buried there,� he
murmured.� �Then it is true what they
say, about you and Martin Septim.�
�Yes.� It is true.�
He grimaced, but there was sympathy in his eyes.� �One cannot see the stars when the sun is
shining.�
I smiled at him.
When I went down to retrieve the relics, the ghosts of the
first Order were there to greet me and wish me luck, with an additional
member.� �Your squire brought me to rest
with my brothers,� Sir Berich said.� �You
have erased the stain on me as well as on the Sword.� Thank you.�
I had felt my old self when the Prophet blessed me:� in the holy armor I felt nearly
invincible.� The combined blessings
interwove into another entire layer of protection.� I felt obligated to carry the Mace for its contribution
to the effect even though I intended to use the Sword.
The ride west was excruciatingly slow � Shadowmere seemed
agitated by our pace, and would sometimes canter impatient rings around the
other horses � and we attracted gawkers.�
I had no idea what they thought we might be doing, since although the Prophet�s
words and rumor of the Order�s existence had both spread far and wide, that did
not necessarily mean that ordinary people really understood the nature of the
threat.
The sun glinted off of the sea and the white stone arches
that led out into the water, a bridge to the Ayleid keep beneath � beneath the
waves.� If the way was flooded, that
would be a problem.� I didn�t have enough
water-breathing rings for everyone, and my spells would be better spent
elsewhere.� No, I thought:� if Umaril and his Aurorans were here, then
Garlas Malatar was not flooded.� They
needed air as much as we did.
My Knights rushed in and attacked the first wave of Aurorans
as I sorted out how to get us through the usual Ayleid gates and doors.� Once the way was open I ran ahead of them,
weakening the next wave with fire, laughing with delight as I crippled them for
my people to kill.
So far, so good.� I stopped everyone at the door I knew would
lead down to another level, so that I could heal them first.� Downstairs, there was another pressure
plate-activated door.� Behind it waited
the main force.� They were in a grand
hall lit in rows of Welkynd stones:� in
my remote past it would have provoked a gleeful avarice, but now it only
revealed the hazard to my allies.� I
threw fire until the Knights were too thick in the room for my ranged spells to
be safe:� then I drew my sword.
We fought them, and I thought we were fighting well,
although it still felt more like an impediment than a help to have other people
there, blocking my line of fire.� At
first the Knights held strong, the Aurorans falling steadily.
And yet time wore on, and we did not win through them.
Something was wrong.�
My people were clearly tiring, and I myself had killed nearly as many
Aurorans as I thought had been in the room, and there seemed to be no end to
them.� I scanned the floor and saw that
there were no bodies.� They were being
renewed somehow �
I cursed myself for not having given it my attention.� High up on a platform above us was some other
kind of glow, and a feeling of power that was neither quite aedric nor daedric
� the power of Meridia.�
I forced my way through the battle, leaving my friends to
fight the Aurorans, looking for the way up.�
The steps were guarded, but even if I could not kill my enemies, I could
put them down for long enough to pass them.�
The glowing thing was an orb � glowing not red like those I had been
accustomed once to steal from Mehrunes Dagon, but a soft white.� I plucked it from its perch all the same, and
heard the roar of shifting energy around me.
It was not space that changed, but time.� The orb shattered in my hands but the shards
scattered slowly and then stopped, suspended in midair.� As I looked down from the platform I could
see the battle freezing beneath me:�
Thedret about to cleave his opponent in two; Avita down; Carodus
shooting wildly to cover one of the Nord brothers, who was downing a potion
with one hand and clutching his bloody side with the other.
They stopped completely, and then they vanished from sight,
and I heard a door open behind me.� The
Knights of the Nine were beyond my help, but Umaril awaited.� I went forward.
The twisting hallway led me to a few more Aurorans before it
opened out into the throne room.� There,
atop the dais to which the standard mechanical steps were even now ascending,
was the tall figure in what looked like especially fine Auroran armor, with
peculiar winglike structures on its back.
Umaril the Unfeathered.� He screamed at me in our old tongue,
mistaking me at first for Pelinal � then realizing that I could not be, laughing, assuring me I would share Pelinal�s fate.� He ran down the steps toward me, allowing me
to see that he was more than a foot taller than I was and swinging a
claymore.� I threw the Shield up between
us, and sparks flew into his face as we clashed.� I fell back from the force of the blow,
raised my sword and sang fire toward him.
He was a terrible enemy, but I could feel the powers of
Pelinal�s relics humming, weaving together and brightening as if they had been
waiting for this moment themselves, and together those powers and I pushed him
back and slowly wore him down.� He fell
burning.
I gave myself a moment to stand gasping over the body.� Not done.�
I was not done.� I moved to heal myself
by reflex, then laughed as I wondered what the point would be, if all was as I
suspected.� Instead, I dropped to my
knees and prayed for the blessing of Talos to take me.
Everything rocked and swam and went dim, and then I felt
myself wrenched away from Mundus more violently than ever before, into a place
of hazy light and cloud, not unlike where I had met Pelinal.� Only now it did not feel like a vision:� it felt real, I felt real within it � felt
the strands of light and air that had been worked into every layer of my being.
Aedric energies had been woven through me.� The part I had lacked, the
part whose absence had barred me from Aetherius.� That was my gift from Talos, and now there
was no realm beyond my reach.� I was
whole.
My laughter drew the attention of my fleeing enemy, who
turned to glare at me from across a bank of clouds.� �By what power do you follow here?� he
roared.
I roared back, a wordless howl of triumph and
bloodlust.� By Talos:� by the wiles of the Dragonborn:� by the combined art of Mephala and
Auri-El.� By right of
thousands of years of waiting.�
I flew at him again, Sword raised, fire dancing through
me.� The power of Pelinal�s relics had
followed me and continued to hold against Umaril, continued to knock him
back.� He cut me and it did not
matter:� with a thought, the armor
flooded me with healing.� I cut him, and
he staggered, wounded by holy wrath.
Soon he was dead, and dead forever.
And I looked out over the infinite expanse of sky, the
borderlands of Aetherius, free to go wherever I wished, and realized that I had
no map to guide me through so vast a realm.�
No idea how to begin to seek out the place where my love, my purpose for
everything I had done, would be waiting.
What is the difference between aedra and daedra?
Methusiele would have despaired.� Tavi would have stormed off in a random
direction to see what that gained her.� I
knelt, closed my eyes, and prayed to be guided home.
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Apotheosis II