Tamriel is threatened by at least one dragon. General Tullius, commander of the Imperial Legion in Skyrim, witnessed its arrival. Previously, Delphine, last of the Blades, was telling Skavild how she once helped Esbern the lore-master search for an magical Elder Scroll about these very legendary flying monsters.
"Of course something's wrong, Tullius. You're sitting on the floor and you just screamed at me to go away." said Andalius Cosori, retired but still somehow active Penitus Oculatus commander.
"Damn it, nothing gets past you." said General Tullius, rising from the floor of his office in Castle Dour. "I had everything perfect, Andalius. Nothing's gone right since that day. What are you doing in Skyrim?"
"Since what day? Don't worry, I've got something to say that will cheer you up. I've just come from Dragon Bridge. There was a letter from my wife. She's furious."
"Dragons." said Tullius. "Why did they have to exist? I was busy. Couldn't they wait? Why is your wife furious? And why would that cheer me up?"
"I was chasing some of Second Archivist Eldaline's librarians and they wouldn't stay still, so I lost my mind a bit and followed them to Skyrim. I don't know what came over me. I left Vilona waiting in the Jerall View Inn. It's very nice. Have you been?"
"Yes, they've got a famous bath." said Tullius. "What am I supposed to do about this dragon, Andalius? Did the Emperor send you?"
Andalius politely closed the door and approached the table. "That's exactly why I'm here. The Emperor asked me to fish for information about a dragon on the border. Well, he told me to take my wife on holiday, anyway, and said that if I found any information about dragons I could act on it within reason. I've got some."
He sat down. So did General Tullius.
"Now, it's not that he doubts your report," said Andalius Cosori. "and I've passed Helgen myself, and regardless of all the lazy cynicism I'm inclined to employ, the dragon clearly does exist. And I'm sorry you're finding yourself the one to deal with it. But you'll be glad to know that the border guards are doing a fine job of keeping the news contained in Skyrim."
"That's nice." said Tullius. "Is he sending anyone to help?"
"Me."
"Well, you don't count, you're already here. I mean soldiers."
"Well, he obviously didn't even send me this far. You don't need soldiers, Tullius, you need an Elder Scroll containing the history and the future of dragons, as well as their existence and nonexistence, if the information we gathered during the war is correct. And thanks to Vilona, I now know exactly where to get it. Eldaline doesn't still live next door, does she?"
"Oh, no. I heard Second Archivist Eldaline was sick somewhere. The Archon of War's elves have moved into her apartment. Don't even talk to me about Elder Scrolls. I don't want to play with the fabric of time. If even the Brothers of the Ancestor Moth can't keep track of those things, I don't want to try. Please go and ask the Emperor for some soldiers. I want to kill a dragon."
"Tullius, my wife's a genius, did you know that?"
"Yes, she's very bright. There's not a man in Tamriel who doesn't envy you."
"Well, Vilona reminded me, while she was in bed with Eldaline's library assistant, Skavild, she extracted the location of the Elder Scroll."
"Where?!" Tullius whispered.
"Under the floorboards of the Bureau of Advanced Communications." Andalius explained, as the General's head tried to sink into the table. "Tullius, there's an Elder Scroll under the floor of the building next door, and the Archon of War doesn't even know about it. Why don't you say something?"
"Because I don't understand. Why has Eldaline got an Elder Scroll? Oh, wait, she tried to bribe some of my Legionnaires with it, if I remember. That time I thought she'd burned down the Hall of the Vigilant."
"I don't know why she has it, but I do know that she thinks they're worse than useless. Skavild said they found it under a tower in the ground while they were looking for something else."
"Is there any evidence that the scrolls aren't worse than useless? How would having a scroll about a dragon help? What are we supposed to do, wave it at him?"
"There was an old scholar who once brought it to our attention. An expert in lore and prophecies. The Emperor thought the old man was an oracle of some sort and that his understanding of the scrolls could help us win the war."
"And did it?"
"No. Because we didn't find it. But perhaps if we had found it, it wouldn't have worked anyway. But now I understand. He didn't give a damn about us or the slaughter of our citizens at the hands of elves. He just saw everything as a chain of events leading up to a big dragon."
General Tullius turned to his letters. "I see. And now there's a big dragon. You still think the scroll is worth a try?"
"The Emperor might take some persuading. The last attempt shattered plenty of his charming illusions. But that was before there was a dragon. Yes, I want to try again."
"Good, then you get started. You didn't tell me what happened at the time, so I don't expect you to tell me now. I have to reply to this letter from Maven Black-Briar in Riften."
"That information was restricted at the time. The alcohol woman? What does she want?"
"She's accusing us of sending a strange Imperial into the sewers of Riften to spy on her. She says if we don't go and get him, she'll take Other Measures. One day," Tullius fell into a dream and examined his map. "I'll pick up that flag over Riften, and throw it across the room."
Andalius Cosori lowered his voice and leaned onto the table. "It isn't restricted information now. I want to tell you about the time I didn't find an Elder Scroll."
General Tullius sighed. Andalius clearly refused to be prevented from telling a potentially long story. "What about it?"
"It was four months after the city fell to the Dominion. That's when Esbern walked in, with a wizard from Windhelm called Wuunferth."
"You're joking, aren't you?" said Tullius.
"I'm not. And he'd just come from Winterhold, too."
"Well, Wuunferth the Wizard of Windhelm walked in where?"
"I was guarding the Emperor in an abandoned fort in a secret location."
"Which fort?" said Tullius.
"I can't tell you that, it's a secret."
"Why are you so bad at telling stories?"
"Salvianus was there, too. Do you remember Salvianus?"
"Is he a secret too?"
"Salvianus was a good officer and I didn't deserve to know him."
In his office far away from the story, General Tullius looked up sharply. "Are you talking about Esbern the Blades' lore-master?"
"I am. He said, 'You there, Salvianus. What's your Emperor's answer to my proposal?'
The Emperor turned to my commander and asked: 'This is to do with the matter of the Elder Scroll?"
To my surprise, Salvianus immediately addressed the Emperor unbidden. He seemed quite excited. "Esbern has discovered a terrible prophecy, Your Imperial Majesty."
And Esbern said, "Yes. I could waste hours explaining how I came to this conclusion, but there's no guarantee you'd understand. The College of Winterhold were useless. Wuunferth here is the closest thing they have to competent. They didn't have the scroll I needed. I had a warrior to help me locate it but the stupid woman broke her leg while failing miserably to recover my notes after they blew off a cliff."
The one called Wuunferth, though, thought we were worth humouring. "Esbern believes that the fall of the city forms part of a sequence of catastrophes foretold on an Elder Scroll."
Esbern said, "That's right. You're simply not looking at the wider problem, as you should be. That's why I'm here. The fall of the city is only a portent of greater evils to come."
The Emperor didn't seem able to speak for a moment. Then he said that only being a portent of something more important would undoubtedly come as a relief to all the dead Imperial citizens, but Esbern just said, Yes, they'd be happier that way. He didn't seem to understand sarcasm when it came from other people."
In the present day, General Tullius played with the Riften flag. "You had a pony tail in those days."
"I'm trying to tell you a story, Tullius." said Andalius Cosori.
"And I'm just trying to add some background, since everything else is a secret."
"The Emperor was desperate. He wouldn't turn away allies, even those who'd turned their backs on us before. He agreed to hear Esbern's plan.
And the next thing I knew, the plan was poor Salvianus sneaking into the occupied city, into the Imperial Library itself, in his heavy pots and pans armour, to get an Elder Scroll about dragons, which Esbern had somehow convinced himself was in there.
It wasn't my place to be, but I was angry.
"The Blades abandon their duties until they get the kind of magical fairy tale Emperor they want, and somehow we're supposed to indulge their cravings for more fairy tales?" I said, or something like it. Actually, what I said might have been more like, "Until he pulls a Dragonborn Emperor anointed by Akatosh out of his arse, sod the bloody buggery Blades, bugger them all to Oblivion, and Divines witness me, I'll help." There was a war on and I was quite emotional.
My commander told me to be quiet, but I wasn't quiet.
I said, "This isn't a mission for an Imperial officer, sir. If you insist on sending men into the city, send me."
But Salvianus wouldn't have any of it. "I brought the Blade into the Emperor's confidence, and if this is doomed to fail by my fault, on my head it should be."
My commander said, "That's enough."
Then he finished writing out the special dispensation, and said, "Andalius will go." Salvianus was about to protest, but the commander told him, "Esbern claims to be able to decipher future events with that scroll. What is knowledge of the future, if it isn't the power to alter it?
And we can't afford to relinquish that power to the Thalmor."
General Tullius, far away from the moments described, asked, "How did you get into the city?"
"As you know, under the city, there's a deep network of tunnels built by the Ayleids, accessible in many places through the man-made sewers. One old Ayleid hall leads to the Imperial library reading room itself, through an old laundry chute.
But the Thalmor just used it to throw bodies down. I got to see just enough of the devastation inside the city to decide that my commander would partially redact my report. The Emperor was miserable enough and we needed him to command an army.
I disguised myself as a cleaner and made my way up to the top floor of the library without being seen."
"What did you do with your hair?"
"I undid my pony tail."
"Good." said Tullius.
"When I got to the top of the staircase," said Andalius. "I saw two guards patrolling around the gallery to the reading room below. I'd hoped to avoid any. Dead guards would raise the alarm.
But I waited, and waited, and couldn't see any way past. I had two brooms concealing sharp steel skewers, and a length of wire.
I looked to see which guard turned her back to me first,
and then got the other one.
I had to go back down the stairs to sneak her into the laundry chute, but at least it cleared a path to the library. You know. Tullius, moonstone armour has an advantage for us, as well. You can barely hear them move, but their friends can barely hear them hit the ground either, even with their long ears.
Anyway, I wasn't seen. In fact, the place was suspiciously quiet. There was no sign of anyone, but some helpful notes left out on a desk."
"What did they say?" said General Tullius.
"I'm getting to that."
"Sorry."
"There were some unfinished letters to the Archives of Alinor asking somebody called Halthir to file the enclosed reports, which weren't there, and somebody called Linvel to compile a list of known side-effects of too much raw ectoplasm. One of those two hit me with a brick a few days ago and then left a note apologising.
There was a notebook, though. I tried my best to remember the exact words but not much chance, I'm afraid. It was by a Thalmor officer having trouble with a lieutenant who'd been exhibiting strange behaviour, and some Elder Scrolls following him or her around the library and into the reading room. Her, as I soon learned. She never tried to read them. Called them bad books written by useless gods and said they didn't even have the power to unmake creation, and this annoyed her.
The notes said that the scroll she kept giving back to the Moth Priests, whom she'd allowed to live and remain in their library, was about Dragons. I found it in none of the bookcases, which were mostly empty, plundered, so I made my way very carefully down to the reading room, hoping to find the scroll there. Nobody was there, and neither was the scroll.
And as I was standing there, searching the piles of unmagical scrolls on the table, about seven suits of very quiet moonstone armour very quietly wandered in.
So I started sweeping as though my life depended on it, which it did, and tried to look deferential and terrified."
"Was that difficult?" said Tullius.
"No, it wasn't difficult, Tullius, it was really easy. But it was too late. I'd looked one of them in the eye, and I should have known the mission was over."
"What happened?"
"It was a dark-haired Thalmor officer who looked like an unkempt owl. He said, 'I'm afraid the Second Archivist doesn't like humans lurking in the library. Unfortunately, that means I will have to make an example of you."
It was a strange feeling, Tullius, to be too afraid to fight back. Time was slowing down for me, so that I could watch the end of my life in horrible detail. I couldn't take on a room full of alerted guards and one clearly insane lieutenant, so I didn't dignify the moment with any kind of resistance.
I tried: "I'm very sorry, sir, I wasn't lurking." to see if that helped.
He said:
"Now, you probably didn't think you were. I don't blame you for your ignorance in the slightest. I feel very sorry for you."
Do you know one of the other advantages of moonstone, but for them, Tullius? It hardly makes a sound when it hits you, but it still really hurts.
The staff he was carrying caught one side of my head like a hammer, and the floor got the other side of my head when I fell on it. Nobody had hit me that hard while being completely emotionally inconsistent since my father had left.
I worried at first they'd found the guard I'd killed, but they hadn't, they just didn't like me. The mad owl lieutenant was still there when the clouds started to clear from my head and the bright lights went away. He said to me, "I have an offer for you."
"If you can crawl to that laundry chute in the corner without being dragged, I'll kill you mercifully before you go down. I'm afraid some of the others made us work."
And before I could answer, I looked up and saw a golden figure appear behind him on the gallery."
"What did it do?" said Tullius.
"She shouted at us all to be quieter, and said that the next person who made a peep would be feeding Mr. Daedroth.
I honestly have no idea where she'd been while I was up there. But she went on berating her lieutenant and eventually ordered him upstairs when he didn't reply.
Whatever respite this offered me gave me no hope. I don't know if it was his crazed eyes at fault, or the glimpse through the sewers of the occupied city, or some other unseen horror.
"Just put it down the hole." he told one of his soldiers.
Then, without looking around, he gave the most contemptuous 'Coming, Second Archivist' he could bring himself to utter, and flounced off up the stairs.
They did put me back down the chute, and they still didn't see the body I'd put down there earlier. I suppose it was lucky that it was so dark.
I managed to slow my fall by desperately grabbing one of the ladders, which also pulled my left shoulder out. I fell on the guard I'd killed, and as I landed, a bloody skull bounced up and hit me in the eye.
It's fair to say that it was one of the most upsetting moments of my life, and I had no Elder Scroll to show for it. They didn't know, of course, that I'd come in this way. But I could scarcely see, and I was surprised when I tried to stand that I needed to hold onto the wall.
The chute led back to the Ayleid tunnels, but my heart started racing, my head felt incredibly heavy, and then I felt a tearing pain through my left shoulder all the way to my right one. I couldn't turn around, but I knew I'd only made ten paces.
I thought: I'm dying. Perhaps it's for the best. Perhaps the Elder Scroll means for us all to die.
The marble staircase was the next thing that attacked me.
I couldn't feel my arm or most of my head when I briefly woke up, sick and frozen, but Salvianus was with me, and he'd brought Wuunferth."
"I heard you were sick." said Tullius.
Andalius said, "For weeks. The Emperor had been forced to change his position and retreat further from the city, and lying in a damp tent in the hills near Chorrol didn't agree with my constitution.
Apparently, Esbern wasn't very happy when the Emperor decided not to prioritise finding an Elder Scroll. In fact, I hear that he called me an idiot and asked if they couldn't just send somebody else.
He said that the Emperor had incompetents to protect him and that a real, Anointed Dragonborn Emperor of the Septim dynasty wouldn't rest until he'd found an Elder Scroll.
The Emperor said that the real, Anointed Dragonborn Emperors of the Septim dynasty were all dead because they'd had incompetents protecting them.
It was really all very hurtful. Esbern stormed off into the hills, leaving Wuunferth trying to save the life of an incompetent who couldn't find an Elder Scroll."
General Tullius said, "Well, that explains why you went quiet all those months during the war."
"I would have stayed quiet if it hadn't been for Salvianus, and dead if not for Wuunferth. Though he had a skull amulet, and while delirious I might have accused him of being a necromancer and raising me from the dead.
But he was very understanding. He said he didn't practice any more. It had just been a way to get girls in his younger days."
"I see." said General Tullius. "Oh, yes. You've got me distracted again. You were going to write to the Emperor."
- continues -