Time was never suppose to mean, never suppose to pass, never suppose to stop.
She traveled, within the silent realm under greenish inky sky, breathing in the poisonous vapor, listening to her own steps echoing through the endless corridors.
Apocrypha.
She smiled, closing the book and fumbling its cover, the oily thickened touch fading between her fingers, so as her gaze, blurred, the writing seeped into her mind, like the all too familiar beats, the tentacles striking the metallic hollowed ground.
She thought she missed the Moon lit water.
Is it possible to turn back the clock? Or time itself was a foolish delusion.
She knew it from the first time her gaze locked on his gleaming silhouette, a fallen dragon, the burning wounds, everything flying then faded like the world swirling.
She remember he said, "One step closer to my return."
For a long, long time, longer than she could count, she put aside every other business she might had at hand, trod every inch of the land searching for dragons, the blades said she was a natural, though only herself knew the reason.
It was only when the dragon soul dissolving into the air she could see him, no matter what he said, she just needed to see him. Before she remotely caught his name.
Miraak.
The first of their kind, and the only other person bears a soul of a Dragon. Another Dovahkiin, her kind.
I want to drown... in the river of time.
Thousands of eyes staring at her, thousands of floating tentacles wrapped at its side.
She tilted her head, smiling, "What exactly is the perk of being your champion? The knowledge?"
The huge head nodded, the eye in the center blinked once.
"Good then."She lowered her gaze at the black book opened on the pedestal, "Because I need one specific knowledge."
"And what might that be, my champion?"
"How to travel back in time."
When the morning ring bell knocked the eighth time.
She lazily stretched her body, curled up in bed when Lydia walked in greets her good morning.
"A nice day, isn't it?"
"Of course."
They met, under the Babel towering the center of a fiendish realm.
Her soul roared at their proximity, like blizzard hailing inside her brain, all those speech lost its meaning, she shivered, so close, so very close.
She stared at him in a trance, through the mask right into his eyes, and her heart ached.
"You have slain a great many dragons, I see. And yet, you have no idea the true power a Dragonborn can wield."
She playfully winked, "I know."
If only I could see you again.
"Is it true your kind will be able to make someone your thrall?"
Serana turned back, surprised, "Why you are asking?"
"I want you to turn me into one."
"Are you... Sure?"
"Yep, let's just say, I'm officially ran out of options."
Wind stone, the well dressed man knelt in the front. Tharstan.
"I... I must obey you, master."
The chanting and chiseling noise distanced, from afar, the ghost sea roaring.
"Oh, please save it." She quipped, eyes turning to the gradually blackened sky, "I need your research."
She reopened her eyes, the air blows slashing her skin open. Blood penetrating the ground dipping into bottomless abyss.
"Send her back where she came from. She can await my arrival with the rest of Tamriel."
"Can I see you again?" She asked, more like a whisper tailing the leaving dragon.
And the sight turned black, with one single tear dropped, no where to be found.
If it was all but a dream.
"And so the First Dragonborn meets the Last Dragonborn at the summit of Apocrypha. No doubt just as Hermaeus Mora intended."
She stepped forward, before he could continue, where all the silent became unbearable.
"Tiid. Klo. Ui." She shouted, and the time around her became still.
Closing their distance, she shifted right in front of him, gently printed her lips on his mask, and soon retreating. In a matter of seconds, she cracked a smile, then taking out the book, which dragging her away back in mortal land.
If it was all but tide of fate.
"There is something down below. Very much likely sealed. I need you to unseal it." The anonymous hill, a Dragon's tomb, right before dawn.
She tossed the scholar in front of the thick layers of dirt and stone, where, she learned a while ago... Or later, the tomb of the Jailer.
"It is an unsolvable puzzle isn't it."
"No, this is amazing. How did you find it?"
"I meant that." She raised a brow, leaving the confusing man, marching towards the other isles circling the main island. Deathbrand, the treasure? Not so much, the secluded place, perfect.
Powdered Black soul gem, void salt, Daedra heart... A vent run through the void, where time meant different thing. Nightshade paving the path and Crimson colored Deathbell growing along the side.
Eerily beautiful.
The opened note and crusted scars carved the Matrix deeply in her skin. She'll never remember, and now she'll never forgot.
The unyielding loop.
"A nice day, isn't it?"
"I bet so." She chuckled, went back lying on her back and staring at the ceiling.
Breakfast, shopping, taking a bath and opened the book.
In the endless realm she wandered, aimlessly until from far, far away she caught the glimpse of the figure she wished to see. Never closer never making a sound.
Only once she caught a seeker looking for a book from a pile of tomes and tragically fell at her feet.
Only once she found maybe the same seeker or a different one pretend reading a book within her sight, then quietly followed her wherever she traveled.
Each time she closed the book with a single tinge of smile, she should be right, she must be.
If the world shall stop revolving.
She had always hated fire. And no, that's not just because the Vampire thing.
Merging herself into the shallow water, the tepid water just right about ease the brutal burning.
The scholar drawn to the word wall writing down every depict, yet the word resounding within her soul.
The profundity of a single word, the ancient spans and the power carved within, the restless and struggling, she had never care to explain to any of her friends, any of her companions.
They said she sometimes stood forever in front of a wall, and her mind was winding, like thousands of miles away.
She never expected anyone to understand that, saving but one.
If one day it will all blank into zero.
Countless eyes surrounded her. The Daedric Prince was... Less than pleased.
"You betrayed me."
"I didn't." She stared at the front, did not flinch, "You wanted my soul, and you still have it."
"And so as the Prince of Domination."
"I'm not a pure blood." She spread her arms, "If you two really are going to fight then be my guest." Sneered, "I seriously couldn't care less."
"Cure yourself."
"Oh, I will. Eventually."
"And you shall continue to be my champion."
Time flew different in a realm of oblivion, where an eternity can be ephemeral and a moment may never ends.
So a promise may meant nothing, though she was telling the truth, she will cure it, eventually.
I love you, it doesn't concern you.
Ageless slumber and staring at every sunrise and sundown on the top of the world. She was getting used to curling up under the word wall, listening to an old Dragon rambling about his memories with that dwelling tongue.
She was quiet, for the most of the time, and idle, even in the harshly hailing nights. Either way, the cold was far more tolerable than fire.
By the time she felt about right she left it all behind, taking the last ship leaving the dock in a silent night.
The world shifting, when the sky cleared and the full moon revealed itself.
The ash smelt familiar, yet she didn't stop.
On the top of the central mountain a newly constructed temple, she smiled, following the trail of withered dragon bones.
She heard him calling.
"Dovahkiin."
She slightly bit her lower lip, "It's nice to finally meet you."