"The Age of Nirn is coming to a close."
Hearing Akatosh speak these words made the Dragonborn's blood run cold. Her hands shook as she balled them into fists at her side, cold sweat beaded at her brow and her eyes were white-rimmed in shock.
"What do you mean?" Her voice ought to have been shaking as badly as she was, but her words came steadily despite the tension. "I defeated Alduin. I defeated Vyrthur, Harkon and Miraak. After all of that, how can the world still be in danger?"
Was it all for nothing?
"Do not misunderstand, Dragonborn." Akatosh gazed upon her, his two faces focusing on her out of the corners of their eyes—were they really looking at her, though? It was so hard to tell when his eyes seemed to be made of molten gold and light. "It is not disaster that brings an end to this age. No great threat shall befall the mortal world for many eons to come. This age ends not with devastation, but with change." The twin-faced God of Time spread his arms wide, and the distant, metallic echo of his voice boomed across her mind and the vast, empty whiteness that surrounded them in all direction. The only other sound was the soft shifting of sand as it flowed in streams that defied reason—up or down, some diagonally, some twisting like rivers in the air, as they moved into and out of the nothingness just out of sight. "It is because of your efforts that this change will come. With the coming of my First Born, all of Nirn was to be devoured, so a new world could form in its' place. But now, it has been given the chance to grow into something new, something beyond what any of us would have predicted, and grow it shall."
"Why tell me this, then? If the world isn't at risk of destruction, then…" Knowing that her world wasn't about to be destroyed lifted a weight from her chest, but this still left more questions than answers. Akatosh couldn't be relaying this message to her purely to inform her that things were changing; the Divines did not directly interfere with mortals and their affairs save for the direst of situations. Unless this grand change and growth was swift and sweeping, she could likely go her whole life without ever knowing the difference, things would just go on as normal.
"Any future that this world reaches is beyond even our knowing, and the Scrolls cannot show how far it will continue to go. But we do know this: whatever future lays ahead, you are meant to be a part of it. You are Dragonborn, and you are Shezzarine. The future is yours."
She woke then, knowing what she had to do. She composed farewell letters to her friends and housecarls, saying she would soon be leaving Skyrim and would not be returning. She had previously granted her various housecarls the house she owned in each respective hold; the houses belonged to them, all she had asked was that they keep a guest room available for when she stopped by in those cities. Apart from Breezehome—it had been her first house, and her base of operations for most of her time in Skyrim—which she now left to Lydia.
The Nord woman put up her best stoic front, but the truth slipped through the crack in her voice. "I would go with you, my thane." Those simple words held all of Lydia's desperation to keep her thane—whom Lydia had come to view as a sister of sorts in the years they spent traveling together—from going where she could not follow. It felt too much like when she'd been flown off to Skuldafn for the final confrontation with Alduin, and Lydia had been forced to remain behind and worry and wait for her Dragonborn to return. Her gut was twisting uncomfortably as that feeling returned.
"I know you would, Lydia," her thane smiled, sad and understanding. "If I could take you with me, I would," she'd said that before, and they both felt the pang, "but I won't be able to return to Skyrim when I leave this time, and I wouldn't want you to walk away from the home you've made here."
"But you're fine walking away from the home you've made?" She hadn't wanted to sound so bitter, and she regretted it for the sadness she saw in her thane's eyes, though her smile didn't falter.
"I have to be. This is what I have to do."
Lydia's stoicism broke, and they pulled each other into a tight embrace, quietly crying their goodbyes.
Her last order of business before leaving Whiterun for good was to inform the rest of the Circle of her departure. It came as a great, sudden shock to everyone that she was leaving. Aela recovered from the news the fastest, but was disappointed that their Harbinger had turned her eyes to the horizon so young. Vilkas was at a loss for words, his eyes falling forlornly to the floor, and Farkas had tears welling up in his eyes. She had been particularly close with the twins, and they probably felt as though she were abandoning them.
"Come on, you guys, it breaks my heart to see you looking so down. It's not like I'm dying."
"Then why do you say you won't be coming back?" Vilkas's temper was beginning to show, but she knew that it was only because he didn't want her to see how sad he was.
"Honestly, the truth is so beyond belief, I doubt anyone would believe me." She spent the next ten minutes trying to convince them that this was just something she had to do, but none of them were willing to accept such a vague answer. She eventually caved and told the three of them that Akatosh had sent her a dream-vision the night before sending her on a specific quest. "Quit giving me that look, guys, I know it sounds preposterous."
While their disbelief that one of the Divines had made such contact with a mortal was understandable, they soon accepted that such a thing must have been a result of being Dragonborn. It made it easier for them to accept her leaving, even though she couldn't share the details of her Gods-given quest—well, she could, as there was nothing truly stopping her, but playing out in her mind how she might explain it, she couldn't come up with a way that didn't make her sound pompous or grandstanding. Better to leave it open ended.
They desperately tried to put off goodbyes, but the longer it lasted, the deeper the knife dug. "It's been an honor to fight at your sides all these years, and it's been a privilege to have had you in my life." Those words were what broke Farkas, and as he crushed her against his armor in a tight hug, she could hear him sniff back a sob.
"We're all gonna miss you, sister."
"I know. I'm going to miss all of you, too." She wrapped her arms as far around his large form as best she could, her hands rubbing comfortingly at his back.
Perhaps the second hardest part of this affair was the fact that they would need a new Harbinger, but none of the other members of the Circle felt it was their place to take up the mantle. In the end, she left the leadership of the Companions jointly in the hands of all three of them, at least until they'd be able to find someone they deemed suitable. The three seemed reluctant, unsure if the three of them could effectively keep the group going, collectively, though it took only a little reassurance. Farkas had such a big heart, and his compassion kept the others grounded, Vilkas was driven and had an eye for detail and organization that others lacked, and Aela had ferocity enough for the lot of them—though certainly none of them were lacking in that department.
It hurt to know that this was the last time she would see her friends—any of her friends—ever again, and it made her question if this quest was worth what she was giving up. She had left a life behind once before, when she first left Cyrodiil for Skyrim, but it wasn't the same. She had significantly less to give up then than she did now. No one was happy to see her go, and she wasn't happy to be leaving, but the farther she got from the gates of Whiterun, the clearer her mission became in her mind. Nevermind the tears that fell from her eyes once there was no one around to see her shed them.
She made her way to Ivarstead, and then up the mountain to High Hrothgar. The Greybeards seemed to be expecting her, and she told Arngeir freely of her dream-vision and the mission Akatosh had left her with. She didn't know how Akatosh intended for her to reach this future intact, but she knew that the way lay at the height of the Throat of the World. Arngeir had mixed feelings about the news, though this wasn't surprising, as he'd been so willing to accept the coming of the end the first time around when the threat of Alduin still loomed. But, he had also developed a sense of pride in the young Dragonborn these last few years, and there was a certain sense of accomplishment in knowing that she had thwarted disaster so many times that the world was essentially in the clear for the foreseeable—and unforeseeable—future. All the same, he and the other Greybeards wished her well, in their way, and left her with a few tomes to take with her. She had packed light for the journey, taking only those things she felt she couldn't do without, so there was room enough in her pack for them.
When she made her way to the summit, she found that Paarthurnax already knew the story, because of course he did, but she was tired from the trip and was glad she didn't have to explain it again, so she didn't question it. But as she gazed upon this… sarcophagus before her, just there below the broken Word Wall where Paarthurnax had taught her the first Word of her Fire Breath shout, she felt an uncomfortable weight settle in her gut. Her gaze fell first to her feet, buried in snow, then to the elder dragon who perched upon the wall as he had when they first met.
"Lok ni paaz? What troubles you, Dovahkiin?" Her worry must have shown on her face. But maybe not, as Paarthurnax was a perceptive old dovah.
She smiled her sad smile but held back her tears. At this altitude, any tears would freeze in her eyes before they could spill.
"I'm sorry, Paarthurnax. I should have come to visit you more often than I did." She was a sentimental person, and Paarthurnax had become a sentimental dragon during his long years, and now he promised to watch over her for however many long years he had left. For a dragon, time was meant to have no meaning, but with this unknown, far-flung future that now presented itself, eternity was looking a lot longer than it used to.
Laying down in her tomb, settling in against the light stone—despite the chill of the snow and the wind, it was warm to the touch—with her pack at her side, her heart raced in her chest. The shimmering veil of the aurora dancing overhead helped to calm her, though. The pale blues and purples were one of her favorite sights when she looked up at the clear night skies, and she was grateful that it was the last thing she saw as the lid slid closed above her and she began to dream. She dreamed of her little tomb, there in the mountain snow, and her gaze pulled back, until she was viewing the mountain from miles away, juxtaposed against the night sky. She felt herself moving, being pulled upward, until she was looking down upon the world from the void of space, and rings of flame danced into and out of her vision—was she looking down from the center of a star? —as the world began to turn, faster and faster.
The world spun ever onward, ever faster, and she began to comprehend as she saw continents shatter, split, rise from and sink into the sea that this was the passage of eons. Landmasses shifted to and fro, some splitting and drifting off to become islands, others colliding together and driving up mountain ranges to heights that easily equaled the Throat of the World, or rather where it had once been. Gods only knew how much time had passed before the world began to slow, and she certainly had no concept of how long she had been dreaming. Had Nirn always been so big? A strip of land stretched north and south around the world like a ring, the only solid continent on the planet, with islands of varying sizes dotting the vast oceans.
Eventually the world slowed to a normal pace, and her focus fell upon an island near the equator. She felt herself being pulled back towards the world once more, and soon she was close enough to see the island was largely covered in sand. But hadn't I been in the far north before? She thought she had, though it was hard to remember where you really were in the world while you were dreaming. Pulling in closer, so found herself viewing a grand city that sat atop a mesa. She saw masses of people in the streets, heard the clamoring and the shouting and the clashing of steel.
Ah, I remember war.
Her vision then plunged downward through the ground, just as sand and stone erupted upward. As she sank further down, she saw the stone chambers, reminiscent of the many Nord burial tombs she'd delved into before. She noticed that she was descending through a hole that had been broken through several floors, dust and small chunks of stone falling along with her. She stopped just above the last hole, seeing solid stone on the other side, then she turned, gazing about this room until she spotted a familiar slab of white stone.
I didn't stop to notice before, but my sarcophagus is quite beautiful.
The slab that comprised the lid was emblazoned with the Akaviri symbol for Dragonborn, like she had first seen at the entrance to Skyhaven Temple. Across the rest of the sarcophagus was text inscribed in Dovahzul, the script appeared untouched by the rigors of time. A quick glance over suggested it told the legend she had cultivated. As she seemed to float over her resting place and looked towards the ceiling, she thought she heard a voice call out somewhere, but her senses clouded as she sank down to rejoin her physical form, and she couldn't make out the words. Her world went dark, and for a few moments, she knew peaceful rest.
At long last, she felt warm air graze her skin, and her eyes began to drift open. She flexed her fingers and toes, felt the leaden sludge begin to flow out of her limbs as her sight began to focus. Three blood-stained faces gazed down at her in wonder, one belonged to a woman, another to a young boy, and the last to man with the first strands of grey beginning to show in his beard.
"Hey," the boy blinked owlishly at her, "are you actually alive?"
"Last I checked," she croaked out, throat dry and voice hoarse from sleep. She let out a cough that pushed her into sitting upright. The older man and the woman said something to each other that she didn't catch, but then they both looked back to her.
"Excuse me, uh, miss," the man addressed her, though he seemed to almost stumble on calling her 'miss,' "but, what is your name?"
"My—" She coughed once more, trying to clear the rough dryness from her throat. "My name is Lee."
A/N: Thank you all for reading! This is my first attempt at writing fanfiction in a long time, and my first dedicated attempt at a crossover. I've been working on this story for about a month, but between moving to a different city and only just recently getting internet set up at the new place, I've only now had to chance to upload this. Special thanks to dukefan01 for being cool with me using the beginning of their own fic, The Dragonborn Straw Hat as inspiration for the beginning of this story. Reviews feed my soul, so please don't be afraid to leave one, a criticism, or even just a comment on how awesome or terrible you thought the chapter was. Chapter 2 is already in the works and nearly done, so expect that up in the coming days/sometime next week. Pairings are as yet undecided, but I will be taking down notes on fan favorites, so if you have a preferred ship for Lee down the road, be sure to let me know as the story progresses.